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Gus was pleased to find he had a handful of online queries which he answered first. He was just starting out, so it was a good sign. Yesterday he’d done a letterbox drop of flyers to get word out. He’d bumped into Barney, who’d taken a handful for him and covered a whole heap of back streets to save Gus some time and, of course, with Barney on his side, the word of mouth should help too.
Finishing his online queries, Gus looked around the reception area, doing his best not to obsess about whether Abigail had got to school on time, whether Julie might have tried to sneak her off somewhere first. But he hadn’t had a text or email from the school noting an absence or lateness and so he supposed Julie had done what she’d promised and most likely gone on her way to lick her wounds. Hopefully she’d turn up as agreed on Friday.
He unpacked a small box that had been delivered yesterday and put the feeding bowls, dog leads, and dog chews on the shelving display fixed to the wall along with the other pet supplies – collars, cat litter, a couple of pet carriers, and a few cosy cat baskets, bedding for a hamster cage.
In time, as he expanded the patient database, he’d get a second practice room set up, but for now there was only one, and although he’d already done a check, he did a second once-over to ensure everything was ready. He wanted everything to go smoothly with his first appointment. He didn’t want to be looking for what he needed when his attention should be on the patient and the client. The exam and procedure table was already set up – a hard-wearing piece of equipment that would withstand constant cleaning and disinfecting, and which had plenty of room on either side for him to stand and the owner to be with their pet to calm them and help with the exam.
The practice room had cabinets on either side housing equipment beneath, with everything from smaller pieces to an ultrasound scanner. One side of the cabinetry had a built-in sink, next to which were the soaps he needed, paper towels in a dispenser, and he switched on the overhead lights. He’d had nice bright lights put in so that he could see his patients better and in one corner was a mobile light he could position at will to exam a patient.
Gus hadn’t thought he’d see Julie again today given he’d refused to let Abigail have the day off, but mid-morning, she waltzed into the practice. ‘You’re still here?’ He finished tidying some bandages, dressings, and gauze in one of the widest drawers.
‘Aren’t you going to check with me that Abigail made it to school?’ she asked with more than a hint of sarcasm. ‘Call the teacher, the headmaster?’
He ignored the barb. ‘What have you been doing since you dropped her off?’
‘I thought I’d take a walk around the local area to see where you’ve brought our daughter.’
‘It’s a small village on the east coast, it’s not a ghetto.’
‘All right, Gus. You’re pissed off I turned up unannounced, but can’t you try talking to me normally? I merely said I walked around the village. I like it, the locals seem friendly. And I approve of the scones at the tearooms, stopped for those too. I thought you’d be glad I was taking an interest.’
He righted himself. ‘I apologise, I’m being a jerk. Thank you for taking an interest.’
‘In our daughter?’
‘In the area,’ he said quickly before their conversation dissolved into a fight. ‘Abigail will look forward to seeing you at the weekend.’ He smiled at her because he didn’t want her to get agitated at his suggestion she might well not turn up.
‘I’m looking forward to it as well. I’ll come Friday and now I know where the school is, I can pick her up. I’ll let her choose what we do.’
‘You won’t have much time together, I’m afraid. School finishes after three o’clock.’
‘I know, but it makes sense to have a quick visit with Abigail if I’m not all that far away.’
She had a point and he tried not to clench his fists at the thought she might not turn up to collect Abigail and that his daughter would be waiting outside the gate, getting more and more upset.
‘I’ll be there, Gus,’ she said as though she could sense his worry.
‘Just call me if you’re going to be late.’ He checked his watch and explained, ‘First client due in thirty minutes.’
‘I’m really pleased it’s working out for you. I know this is something you’ve wanted for a long time.’ She looked around at the white walls, the clinical space, the sparseness that would undoubtably take no time to fill over the coming months. At least, that’s what Gus was hoping.
‘It’s about time,’ he said. ‘Going off to different veterinary practices, filling in where I was needed, was good for a while but it’s great to finally have the permanence and the stability of my own business. Particularly for Abigail. And it’s good for us to be in a small village where she’ll be able to walk to things, see friends, get out a bit. She’s already been to the ice-creamery to meet friends.’ When Julie shot him a look, he said, ‘Yeah, it took a bit of persuading.’
‘Well, she seems really happy.’ But she was smiling, the same smile that was full of mischief, the smile he’d loved at one time.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘It’s just that… well, I know how protective you are over her.’ She held up a hand. ‘I’m not for one minute criticising that.’ It seemed both of them were wary of upsetting the other with remarks that could be taken a multitude of ways. ‘I know how hard it is for you to let her go. But she would’ve enjoyed the ice-creamery. And she’s certainly loving having a nice stables for Denby. I almost thought she wasn’t going to get out of the car by the school, she talked about him all the way there.’
‘I’m sure she did.’
Gus’s solidity and stability was one of the big differences between them both. With Julie’s wild side, he knew that their opposite personalities might well have been what drew them to one another in the first place. Julie had always moved from place to place and admitted to him once that in the early days, part of what she loved about Gus was that he made her see that sometimes not having constant change could be just as exciting. Clearly the novelty had worn off, though, because soon after Abigail was born, Julie got restless. At first, Gus thought it was because she’d gone from travelling for work – Italy, Paris, Milan – to being a stay-at-home mother, which had to be a shock to anyone’s system. But even when she’d gone back to her job, she never did quite get used to it. She kept wanting more – more responsibilities at her work, more associated travel, more social nights out with colleagues.
He couldn’t blame her for being a certain way, she’d always been like it, but they’d started the journey of marriage together and met a fork in the road, her taking one way, him the other. He’d waited for it to happen, for them to finally meet up again, but it never had. It didn’t make her a bad person, but it had made it difficult to predict what their future held. Gus had waited for Abigail to get older, for their careers to be established, and he’d hoped his and Julie’s problems would sort themselves out, he’d thought she might at last realise she wanted their family and didn’t need everything else. But Julie’s nights out turned into weekends away from her family and she turned into a party girl he’d never seen before. And with the partying came the drinking, the lack of responsibility, the promotions and bonuses at work, all of which she became slowly addicted to and didn’t want to give up. Those things had become her priority. And then, after the accident, she turned to those things even more to make herself feel better and erase the guilt.
‘I thought that in a few weeks, in the summer holidays, I could take Abigail for a trip up to North Norfolk to my parents’ beach house,’ Julie announced.
He stilled. Because Abigail would love it. ‘I’d like her to settle in a bit more here before she heads off anywhere else.’ What he worried about was that Abigail would leave here, have such a great time with Julie that it made it harder for her to be in this village, which was a fair distance from her mum. He wanted her to feel that this was her home before she flitted off anywhere else.
