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‘I can’t do that, lovely. It’s a beautiful gesture, but it would be wrong of me.’
‘No, it wouldn’t. Besides, if you end up selling this place, then where am I going to live?’
Flora chuckled. ‘I’m sure I can find room for you in my caravan.’
‘No. This is your home. You deserve a home. You’ve dedicated your whole life to Wagging Tails, to the dogs.’
Flora shook her head slowly. ‘Let’s just see if we can come up with another solution? Yes?’
‘Okay. But if not, you’ll take it. Won’t you?’ Poppy looked at her. She had to. What other solution was there?
‘Sit on it a while and we’ll talk about it again.’
‘Do you promise?’ She couldn’t let her aunt bury her head in the sand again. That was why they were in the mess they were.
‘Like I said. Give me a bit of time to think things through.’ Flora turned her attention back to Dougal, the conversation about the money over. ‘There is something I want to talk about now though.’
‘What?’ Poppy perched on the arm of the sofa.
Leaning forward, Flora took an abandoned crust of bread from her plate and gave it to Dougal. Then, turning back to Poppy, Flora raised her eyebrow. ‘You still haven’t told me why you had a falling out with Mack.’
Poppy frowned. She wasn’t going to get away with not answering, was she? She took a deep breath.
‘Because if it wasn’t for him breaking Gavin’s agreement with Wagging Tails, you’d have had the money to buy a new battery for the van and you wouldn’t have…’
She gestured to Flora’s leg cast.
Flora shook her head. ‘You can’t blame this on Mack. The only person to blame for breaking my leg was me. I wasn’t concentrating and tripped over the jump lead. That has zero to do with him.’
‘No, it doesn’t. You probably weren’t concentrating because you were worried about the debt.’
‘I wasn’t worried about the debt.’ Flora shifted position on the sofa, gently holding Dougal so as not to disturb him. ‘By then I’d decided to remortgage or sell up the cottage. I was worried about Mr Thomas and his animals.’
Poppy frowned. ‘But if you’d had the money, you would have had the battery changed already.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. You know me, if something’s not completely broken, I won’t fix it. Money or no money, I’d have likely kept jump-starting the van for as long as it’d allow me to.’
Poppy fussed Dougal’s ears.
‘Poppy, lovely, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, but I think you’re self-sabotaging your relationship with Mack because you’re scared to get into another relationship. Mack isn’t like Ben. Mack is one of the good guys.’
Poppy shifted position. Her aunt was right. She knew that. Deep down she knew Mack was one of the good guys but… She shook her head. ‘If he is one of the good guys, he’d have given up his time for free to treat the dogs rather than charge full price.’
Flora sighed. ‘Mack’s had it rough over the last few years. And I mean really rough.’
‘I know. He told me about his dad leaving him with Gus and Spencer and how hard it was for him to get through vet school whilst trying to care for them, too.’
Flora patted Poppy’s leg. ‘It wasn’t just hard for him. It nearly damn well broke the lad. Did he tell you that he literally didn’t have two pennies to rub together? Did he explain that they lost their home?’
Poppy looked down at her hands. When he’d said it had been difficult, she’d assumed he’d meant they hadn’t been able to afford luxuries.
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘I didn’t think he would have. If it weren’t for his neighbour at the time, Mrs Moreton, taking them in, he’d have given up and gone back to his old job. He’d been halfway through his vet studies when his dad left.’ Flora took Poppy’s hand. ‘You see, when you’ve been through losing your home and had the fear of those little kids being taken off you and put into care, you tend to think about things differently. Surely you can understand why he’d be so worried about losing money, can’t you, lovely?’
Poppy watched as Dougal jumped down and stretched out on the floor, rolling onto his back, his belly towards the fire.
‘But it wasn’t about money. He just needed to spare some time to see the dogs.’
