Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
S aturday came around rather more quickly than I would have liked. Our small town was awash with bunting and stalls and the large green in the town centre was set up with marquees and white-roped rings for various show classes and displays. The shopkeepers had dressed up in bright colours and ridiculous hats, and absurd and increasingly elaborate scarecrows graced every garden. The excitement of the annual country fayre turned the locals into nutcases. Clearly.
Teddy had sporadically texted me in the last few days, just brief “How are you?” messages, which, at first, I had responded to politely and concisely, but his own answers had been sketchy, inconsistent, and definitely not keen, so I gradually stopped replying. Repairing my bruised ego was easier without his physical presence nearby, so I was grateful that he seemed to have disappeared. It left me to try my hardest to get back to normal, almost able to squash the uncomfortable feelings, to swallow them away, pretend they’d never messed me up at all – and that I’d not acted like an uncontrollable dog in heat in his presence. Because, frankly it was absolutely mortifying.
Turning thoughts away from Teddy, my social anxiety spiked as I accompanied Giles to the fayre committee tent, where a lot of tweed-clad local bigwigs were busy peopling and organising, loudly and importantly. Palms clammy and my feet suddenly leaden, I began to slow down, dropping back from Giles’s side. He turned to me with a puzzled expression.
Then I heard it: the unmistakeable laugh, the false and overtly brash sound that was indelibly etched on my mind, the sort of laugh reserved for those he secretly despised but whom he was intent on smarming up to.
“Are you ok?” Giles asked, twisting his whole body to face me.
“I, um…” My voice dropped off as Jonathan appeared from the tent, his arm linked in my mother’s. Her usually tight, drawn features were open and smiling delightedly up at him. She was almost swooning, which was pretty sickening to observe.
“What’s wrong?”
Giles came back to where I had ground to a halt, my boots taking root in the ground and rendering me immobile.
“Nothing.” But my wide-eyed stare was fooling no one.
“Hannah? Seriously, what is it?”
He turned to follow my gaze.
“What’s he doing here?”
Giles looked uncomfortable for a moment. “Professor Pierce? Well, he contacted me recently about including us in a trial he’s setting up in first-opinion practices, and I said we’d be delighted. It’s a great opportunity for the practice and I was going to talk to you about leading it from our side. I thought you’d like to dip your toe back into some research again?”
“What?”
My head was swimming. Jonathan had absolutely zero interest in first-opinion practice. He’d always sneered at the daily routine, suggesting that vaccinations and dealing with overweight animals and distraught owners was beneath him. He’d focussed on the most interesting and challenging cases in the referral practice at the vet school, cherry-picking the ones that would give him the most glory or allow him to test a new cutting-edge treatment. I could smell his bullshit a mile away. What the actual hell was he doing now?
At that moment, Jonathan saw us, and a slow, arrogant smile spread over his face. Without breaking eye contact with me, he leant down and whispered something to my mother, making her giggle and flick her long hair flirtatiously and then they started to walk towards us.
“Giles, what is he doing here, today, right now?” I hissed, wretched loathing almost swallowing me whole as they neared.
“He called the other day to talk through the trial and said he’d pop down this weekend to show me some of the data so far. When I told him about the fayre he offered to judge.”
“Which bit?”
“The dog show.” Giles winced as he said it, shrivelling under my ferocious glare.
Of course he did.
“Right, well, you don’t need me then, do you?” I turned abruptly and stalked off back the way I’d come, head down, muttering curses and demonic incantations under my breath in a bid to expel the fiery rage building inside. Running away from him, and not facing up to another shitstorm of emotion and regret definitely seemed like the best course of action at this point.
“Hannah, wait!” Jonathan’s voice spurred me on and I almost broke into a trot, desperate to be anywhere else. To escape. To hide away. But he too had clearly quickened his pace in a bid to catch up with me. He took hold of my hand, sending ripples of revulsion under my skin at his touch.
“Don’t run away from me, you silly thing,” Jonathan said with a laugh, as though he were reprimanding an errant child.
Bastard.
Wrenching my hand free, I spun to face him, honey-badger mode locked and loaded.
“Either you leave, or I will.”
“Now why would I do that? I’m the head judge of the dog show,” he replied, not even bothering to hide his disdain.
“Fine, then I’m most definitely leaving.”
I turned around again, heading for the exit, but he stepped in front of me and blocked my path.
“You can’t leave. You’re my trusty wingman, just like the good old days.” This time the slippery and persuasive lilt to his voice was back, one that I knew so well. It immediately put me on high alert. “I thought I was clear. I need you. I love you, and I’ll do anything to get you back.”
Staring into his face, I was slapped again with the odd realisation that I had once had feelings for this man, but that seemed so alien and obnoxious now – nausea-inducing, in fact. I racked my brains, trying to summon up any compassion or empathy towards him, but all I felt was cold and frozen, and unable to bear another moment in his presence.
“You and your needs can take a long walk off a short pier into alligator-infested waters.”
“That’s not very nice, Hannah.” Jonathan’s attention flicked over my head to the crowd of people undoubtedly gathering around us. “I thought you might have had enough time to come to your senses by now.”
“No. But then, you absolutely do not deserve my niceties. You gave up any right to me being nice to you when you cheated on me with your PhD student, or have you had enough time to forget I know about that?”
“I’ve apologised for my indiscretions. Come on, we’re both grown-ups. We should be able to get past it,” Jonathan said quietly, likely hoping that our audience wouldn’t hear this bit.
“Get past it?” I repeated, incredulously.
“Yes, you need to get over what happened. You need to accept my apology so we can get back to normal. You know deep down that we’re good together.” He went to grab my hand again but I balked, stepping out of reach. “Your mother says you’ve never been happier than when we were together, and that I’m just what you need.”
If he thought my mother’s opinion was the way to talk me round, it just showed how little he knew or cared about me.
“I think you’ll find that my mother, rather like you, is so wrapped up in herself and what she can get from other people that she wouldn’t have a clue if I was happy or not. In fact, she’d likely not have the wherewithal to piss on me if I was on fire.”
“Hannah!”
My mother’s screech was ear-splitting. Part of me was actually glad she’d heard that. I really needed the whole world to just bugger off right about now. I was an erupting, self-righteous volcano of putrid indignation and self-destruction. A mountain of mutinous spikes. And should most definitely be left well alone.
Giles sidled up to us and the obnoxious retort that was poised on the tip of my tongue evaporated into thin air as Jonathan put his arm around his shoulders in a matey fashion, casting a sly look in my direction.
Giles stared at him like he was a rock star, then turned to me. “Everything ok?”
“Yes. I think we just took Hannah by surprise. She really doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on, even when we’re all working together in her best interests, right?”
Giles glanced at me and flushed. “Sorry, I should have told you, but I thought you’d be happy to share the judging with Professor Pierce.”
“Jonathan, please,” he replied warmly, making Giles blush a little more. They were dickheads, the pair of them, and I absolutely did not need to be witness to this revolting bromance. A strange, disgusted little noise escaped my lips, a huffy grunt of displeasure now out in the open, so that my feelings on this sickening display of mutual appreciation were now available for external analysis.
Jonathan narrowed his eyes, obviously sensing my desire to flee, or to maim him.
“Come on, Hannah. Don’t let me and Giles down.”
Glancing around at the small circle of people watching intently, my mother giving me a slitty-eyed and pouty-lipped stare, undoubtedly lobbing mental daggers in my direction, I was suddenly faced with the impossible situation of letting my true feelings show or being the bigger person here. I knew I needed to demonstrate that I wasn’t just a prickly and petulant hedgehog, that I could be the professional veterinary surgeon Giles needed me to be. And it was an almost excruciatingly difficult decision.
“Fine, I will judge one class, and Professor Pierce can do the rest,” I said finally, satisfaction blooming as Jonathan’s face fell. “I’ll do the class for the dog the judge would most like to take home.”
Knowing this was the first class to be judged, meaning I could leave promptly and escape to somewhere where other people weren’t. I gave myself a mental pat on the back for my clear and rational decision.
“No, no! I thought we’d judge together?”
Jonathan was panicking. He’d be stuck here all day looking at endless dogs and talking to besotted owners about all their health niggles. Hell on earth for him.
Perfect.
“As an eminent professor of veterinary medicine at one of the most prestigious vet schools in the country, your credentials are far superior to mine, and let’s not forget your numerous television appearances. A famous vet judging the dog show? The contestants will be over the moon to talk to you. I’d only get in the way of your moment of glory, right?”
“W-w-w-what? No!”
“I’ll go and grab a coffee and get ready for my class then. It’s kicking off in a few minutes – isn’t that right, Giles?” He nodded while Jonathan just stared at me furiously. “Good.”
Taking a deep breath, and with a final smile and nod to the now not insignificant audience that had gathered, I made my way over to the coffee stand and joined the back of the small queue, my boiling insides finally calming down.
“Well that was exceedingly rude, and no way to talk about the woman who gave birth to you.”
My mother sidled up to me with a superficially ethereal and yet eerily demonic, calm.
“I’m sorry.” I sighed rubbing my hands over my eyes. “I probably shouldn’t have said the thing about you piss?—”
“Yes, thank you, Hannah,” she said abruptly, cutting me off and pinching the bridge of her nose in obvious despair. “Neither was it a good way to treat a man who’s obviously only trying to do what’s right for you.”
“Right for me?”
“He clearly cares about you and your career and is a hugely successful person.”
“And why should that matter? I’m successful too.”
My mother gave me a once-over with an appraising eye. “He told me he’s kept your place in his laboratory open for you. He wants you to return with him.”
“He told you that?”
He wanted me back in the department? The thought of my academic career being dangled like a carrot before me was oddly exciting and unsettling.
“Yes, he did. He was enormously complimentary of your potential and your ability. He feels you’re wasting your talents here, and frankly so do I.”
“I’m not going back.”
My voice carried a weight of conviction I wasn’t sure I was really feeling.
“Why wouldn’t you want to return to Bristol? Why wouldn’t you want to make something of yourself rather than just settling for this unfulfilled existence?”
Undisguised, easy criticism laced every word, her tone clearly stating that this was a rhetorical question.
“He’s said he’ll take you back and let you move in with him as well. Surely it’s worth considering?”
As I ordered an iced coffee at the counter, I let my mind drift. Undeniably, the pull of research was still there, tugging at my heart. It was an inescapable itch, a yearning to contribute to the bigger picture, to do something worthy. I wanted to continue to expand my knowledge, to ask questions, to be involved in the absolute cutting edge of veterinary medicine. I wanted to be proud of my achievements.
“Dr Havens?”
A quiet voice dragged me back from the brink of my inner turmoil, and I came face to face with Amelia Harris, a teenage girl whose horse, Sparkie, I’d been to see after a late-night bout of colic recently.
“Hello, Amelia. How’s Sparkie?”
The relief and love on her face was evident.
“He’s doing well. He’s eating better and pretty much back to normal.”
“That’s great.” I smiled and touched her shoulder. “You’ve done a brilliant job looking after him.”
“I stayed all night in his stable when you left. My mum thought I was mad, but I couldn’t leave him.”
“It’s a good idea to keep a close eye on them when they’ve been colicky.”
“Thanks.” Amelia’s cheeks turned rosy, twisting her hands together in front of her. “I just wanted to say thank you for saving him. I was so worried and he means everything to me.” The girl’s voice wobbled a little but she took a shaky breath and carried on. “You see, there’re some girls at the stables saying things about me”—she gestured down her body—“saying that I’m too fat to ride him, that I’m not good enough for him, and that the reason he got poorly is because of me.”
I gazed into her pain-filled eyes and my heart broke a little.
“Amelia, don’t let hurtful people get to you. They’re wrong – you know that, don’t you? He got colic because of a build-up of gas in his intestines, likely from stuffing his face with grass in his new field, not because of you or because you did anything wrong.”
She nodded but looked unconvinced. I knew how she was feeling so well. I could see my own teenage self standing in front of me, struggling to believe in anything but the bad stuff. I could see the internal war raging inside her, the words of those around cutting into her self-confidence, the scars so deep and so real that they physically hurt.
In a quiet voice, I said, “Amelia, I was bullied at school, so I have some idea of how you may be feeling.”
“Really? Why?”
There was a slight look of disbelief, as if any adult could possibly know what it’s like to be a teenager.
“Because of my freckles.” Letting my hair fall forwards, I rubbed my face, covering the freckles on my nose with my fingers, before realising and forcing my hand into my pocket. “It’s shit isn’t it?”
Amelia’s eyes went very wide at my swearing in front of her and then she giggled nervously. “Yeah, it is.”
“But Sparkie knows you love him and he loves you back. He sees you for what you are: compassionate, kind, and trustworthy. That’s worth more than the opinions of some judgemental teenagers, who likely have some pretty big issues of their own, right?”
Amelia nodded slowly, a spark of defiance kindling in her eyes.
Attagirl.
“Sometimes we just need to believe in ourselves, block out the mean things people say, and go out there and show everyone what you’re really made of, Amelia. That’s the best revenge in the world.”
“I really want to be a vet too, you know,” she blurted out, before ramming her fist into her mouth in horror, as if the admission was a dirty secret that she shouldn’t have let escape into the world.
Empathy had never really been top of my emotional intelligence checklist, but the desire to help her engulfed me like a wave.
“Pop in to the surgery after school next week and let’s see if we can sort out some work experience for you. There might be a lot of cleaning up of poo and gross things to do, but you’re ok with that, yeah?”
The delight in her face shone out.
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Check with your parents, but I’d be happy for you to shadow me to see if it really is what you want to do. And Betsy, our veterinary nurse, is always grateful for an extra pair of hands in the clinic.”
“Thank you!”
Tentatively, she stepped forwards and hugged me, and I patted her back awkwardly before she bolted from the queue and back to her family. They smiled warmly as she obviously relayed our conversation to them.
The whole time I’d been talking with Amelia, my mother had stood by, amazingly and unexpectedly silent. When I finally looked at her, all she said was, “You were bullied about your freckles?”
“Yes. The whole way through secondary school.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have got you some make-up and taught you how to conceal them properly.”
“That, right there, is exactly the reason why I didn’t tell you,” I replied angrily, grabbing my coffee and stomping away towards the dog show ring.