Chapter 3 Open for Business
Open for Business
Phoebe
The removal van arrives at half seven, which is either impressively early or sadistically so, depending on how you feel about mornings. I feel about mornings the way most people feel about tax returns. Necessary, unavoidable, best dealt with quickly and with caffeine.
I’m on my second cup of coffee and still in yesterday’s joggers when the driver backs his truck down the narrow lane with the casual disregard for stone walls that seems to come standard with the job.
His name is Dave. He has a neck tattoo and opinions about London traffic that he shares at volume while hefting boxes through my front door like they weigh nothing.
“Nice spot,” he says, pausing to look at the hills. “Quiet, though, innit? You’d go spare out here after living in the city.”
“That’s rather the point.”
He gives me the look I’ve been getting from everyone since I announced the move.
The look that says you’ll be back in six months.
James gave me that look. My mother gave me that look.
My colleagues at the Islington practice gave me that look while pretending to be happy for me and already dividing up my client list.
Fuck the lot of them, frankly.
By midday, the van is empty, and the cottage is full of boxes stacked in arrangements that make sense to no one but me. Dave drives off with a wave and a final observation about the lack of decent takeaways this far north, and I’m alone with my life in cardboard.
I should unpack. I should find the box labelled KITCHEN URGENT and locate my good knives, the coffee maker, and the ridiculous Le Creuset casserole pot that James said was too expensive and I bought anyway out of spite. It’s the best thing I own. Worth every penny of the argument it caused.
Instead, I walk into the surgery extension and stand in the middle of the examination room.
The morning light comes in through the east-facing window and falls across the steel examination table in a clean bright stripe.
The room smells of antiseptic. Faintly, underneath, the ghost of animal fur and the particular warm musk that clings to any space where creatures have been handled.
I know that smell the way I know my own hands. It’s the smell of being useful.
I run my palm along the edge of the table. The surface is of good quality and well-maintained. The Bradfords took care of their equipment. The autoclave needs servicing, and the X-ray unit is a model I haven’t used since vet school, but it works.
The drug cabinet is locked, which is correct, and the key is where the estate agent’s handover notes said it would be.
Inside, the controlled substances log is meticulous.
George Bradford’s handwriting is precise and slightly old-fashioned, every entry dated and countersigned.
I like him already, sight unseen. You can tell a lot about a vet from their controlled substances log.
This one says careful, thorough, took the job seriously.
The appointment diary is another matter.
It’s a paper diary. An actual physical book with a ribbon marker and handwritten entries in blue biro.
The last six months are blank, obviously, but the entries before that suggest a steady caseload.
Routine vaccinations. Worming. The occasional surgical referral to the hospital in Newcastle.
A surprising number of entries that simply read “W. Henderson” followed by a dash, and no further detail.
I leave the diary on the desk and go back to the cottage to unpack.
The village makes itself known to me in stages throughout the afternoon.
A woman called Helen pops round with a Victoria sponge and stays for twenty minutes, during which I learn that her daughter has just gone to university in Leeds, her husband farms sheep on the fell above the village, and the broadband in Mistwood is, in her words, “criminal.” A man whose name I immediately forget drops off a bottle of home-brewed cider with a warning that it’s stronger than it looks.
Maggie appears at three o’clock sharp, without preamble, carrying a plate of scones and a jar of something dark and viscous that she calls damson gin.
“For medicinal purposes,” she says, setting both on my kitchen table. “The scones are for now. The gin is for later. You’ll know when.”
I don’t ask what that means. I’m learning that Maggie operates on a system of cryptic pronouncements and expects you to keep up.
“The surgery looks good,” she says, peering through the connecting door with the air of someone inspecting troops. “You’ll want to advertise. The village noticeboard is outside the post office. And Graham at the pub will put a card up behind the bar if you ask nicely.”
“Right.” I file this away. The pub. Graham. “Is there a café as well?”
“Nell runs a coffee shop called The Wren. She does a lovely flat white, if you’re that sort of person.” Maggie says flat white the way someone might say performance art. With tolerance but without understanding. “She’s a sweet girl. Quiet. Keeps herself to herself.”
The way Maggie says this carries weight I can’t parse. Like she’s placing a marker down for later.
I walk Maggie to the door after the scones are demolished and the tea is drunk, and she pauses on the front step.
“You’ll do well here, Phoebe,” she says. It’s the first time she’s used my first name. “The village needs a vet. More than most villages do.”
“More than most?”
She smiles, and it’s the smile of a woman who knows exactly how much to say and when to stop saying it.
“Get yourself down to the pub this evening. Introduce yourself. People will want to meet you. And if anyone asks where you’re from, just say London and leave it at that.
They’ll fill in whatever story they like, and it’ll be more interesting than the truth. ”
She’s gone before I can decide whether that’s advice or a warning.
I spend the rest of the afternoon making the cottage liveable. Books go on shelves. Clothes go in the wardrobe. The Le Creuset goes on the shelf above the Aga where it belongs, and I stand back and look at it and feel an absurd surge of satisfaction. My kitchen. My casserole. My shelf.
James would have said I was being territorial. James would have been right, and I wouldn’t have cared.
By six o’clock, the cottage feels less like a storage unit and more like somewhere a person might actually live.
I shower, change into clean jeans and a jumper that doesn’t have bleach stains, and study myself in the bathroom mirror.
I look tired. The kind of tired that’s settled into the bones over months and won’t shift with one good night’s sleep.
But I also look, if I’m honest, better than I have in a while.
Something about the air up here, maybe. Or something about not sharing a bathroom with a man who left his towels on the floor and called it a personality trait.
The walk to the pub takes four minutes. Mistwood really is absurdly small. The pub sits at the end of the high street.
Inside, it’s cosy as village pubs are. Low ceilings, dark wood, the smell of hops and woodsmoke.
Not busy, but not empty either. A handful of people occupy tables near the fireplace, and a few more line the bar.
Conversation drops when I walk in. Not to silence.
Just a dip. The collective pause of a small community as it registers a new face.
The man behind the bar is tall and lean with sandy hair and an easy grin. “You must be the new vet,” he says, which I’m beginning to think is the only greeting Mistwood knows. “I’m Graham. What can I get you?”
“A glass of whatever red you’ve got open, please.”
“Bold choice. The red’s been open since Tuesday.” He reaches for a bottle anyway. “I’m joking. It’s a decent Malbec. Helen’s husband brought a case back from a wine fair, and I nicked half of it.”
The wine is, in fact, decent. I take it to a table near the window and sit with my back to the wall, which is a habit James used to find annoying, but I find essential. From here, I can see the whole room.
The pub has the look of a place that hasn’t changed in decades and sees no reason to start.
The furniture is mismatched but solid. The walls are hung with old photographs of the village, black-and-white images of stone cottages and fell-sides and groups of serious-looking people standing in front of buildings I can still recognise.
In several of the older photographs, I notice the same surname appearing on shopfronts and gate posts. Mistwood.
I’m studying one of the photographs when a voice says, “First night out?”
I turn to find a young woman standing beside my table.
She’s small and slight, with light brown hair tucked behind her ears and the kind of face that makes you think of watercolour paintings.
Something delicate and precise about her.
She’s holding a mug of tea rather than a drink, and she has the look of someone who belongs here so thoroughly that she doesn’t have to try.
“That obvious?” I say.
“Only because you’re sitting alone and studying the walls like there’s going to be a test.” She smiles. It’s a quick, shy thing. “I’m Clara.”
“Phoebe. The new vet.”
“I know. Everyone knows.” She slides into the chair opposite without asking, which would annoy me from most people but somehow doesn’t from her. “Maggie’s been telling the whole village about you for a week. I think she’s already decided you’re staying.”
“Has she? I only decided myself about three months ago.”
“That’s Maggie for you. She knew before you did.” Clara wraps both hands around her mug. “How are you finding it? The cottage, I mean. The Bradfords kept it lovely.”
“It’s perfect. Honestly. Better than I expected.”
“Good.” She nods like this matters to her personally, and then she’s gone before I can say anything else.
Graham refills my glass without being asked, which either speaks well of his hospitality or poorly of his profit margins.
A couple at the next table introduce themselves and ask about the surgery’s opening hours.
An older man whose name is Arthur tells me at length about his dog’s digestive issues, which I handle with the patience of someone who spent six years listening to Islington’s pet owners describe their pets’ bowel movements in forensic detail.
By nine o’clock, I’ve met more people in one evening than I typically met in a month in London.
The wine has softened the edges of the day, and the pub feels warm in a way that isn’t just about the fireplace.
These people want me here. Not in the abstract, distant way that colleagues want you to succeed.
In the immediate, practical way of a village that needs its vet.
I walk home in the dark with the hills rising on either side and the stars sharper than I’ve ever seen them. No light pollution up here. No noise pollution either, unless you count the distant bleating of sheep and the sound of wind in the trees.
But underneath those sounds, as I put my key in the lock and push open my front door, there’s something else. That strange, low call from the hills I heard last night. One voice at first, then two, then several, rising and falling in a pattern that isn’t quite random.
I go inside, close the door, and stand in my dark hallway and listen until it stops.