Chapter Nineteen #3
‘Skyla?’ Raven appears behind Skyla, but her eyes soon land on Alfie. They grow wide and I watch as she grabs Skyla’s hand.
‘Skyla, get some towels. We need to get Alfie to the vet,’ James says. ‘Now!’
James calls the emergency number for the veterinary practice as Skyla collects some towels.
‘I’ve got him,’ James tells me as he carefully pushes me away from Alfie and peels him up off the kennel floor. His body is limp in James’s arms and I just hope it isn’t already too late.
‘I’m coming with you!’ Skyla says wilfully as we get to the car.
‘There isn’t enough space for all of us in this car,’ James says. ‘I’ll take the girls with me. Bella, you take Alfie.’
The garage door opens, revealing the Ferrari James likes to work on at the weekends.
It has been restored and modified, tinkered with in every possible way.
He’s already laying down the towels on the backseat.
I think it’s the first time in my life I’m thankful for that car.
A ridiculous, bright yellow thing I chalked up to a mid-life crisis when James bought it. Now though, it’s serving its purpose.
The engine revs as I start it up, and there’s a flicker of nerves as I sit behind the wheel.
Alfie is laid across the backseat. I’ve always hated this car for its lack of spaciousness, but now the compactness acts as a cocoon for Alfie, injured and frightened, as I speed down the driveway.
It’s then I spot something protruding from the hedges.
Some sort of gardening tool. As I get closer, I want to stop, inspect it, but I don’t have the time.
Alfie’s life is on a tightrope. However, there is a rake tossed into the shrubbery, and something dark is dripping from its sharp points, pooling in the grass.
* * *
The vet, Simon, a young man with wiry brown curls, a beard and kind green eyes takes Alfie from us the moment we arrive. He picks him up effortlessly despite his whines and as we all trail behind him, he spins.
‘Just one of you in the room, please,’ he says, softly. ‘You’ll need to keep him calm.’
‘Me, please.’ Skyla is fighting back her tears, her face scrunched.
She hasn’t taken her hand off Alfie since she got out of James’s car.
Her clothing is ruined, covered in blood, but she doesn’t care.
Right now there is nothing more important to Skyla, to any of us, than Alfie.
Simon beckons her into the room and shuts the door behind them while the rest of us take a seat out in the waiting area.
Years ago, when we’d first met Simon, Skyla had been enamoured by him.
We’d had to bring Alfie in after he’d got into Harper’s rubbish bins and had a reaction to something he’d eaten.
Cannabis, Simon had guessed, from the way Alfie had frothed at the mouth and seized.
Simon had let Skyla stay in the room while he’d examined Alfie.
At the time I’d been in the room too and had watched her follow his every instruction, how to hold Alfie still, how to keep him calm.
Skyla had flushed under Simon’s praise. She adored him, and it was the first time I realised that my little girl was growing up.
Developing crushes on someone other than Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Tudors.
Unlike some mums, this new phase wasn’t exciting for me.
I never dreamed of being the Gilmore Girls, me Lorelai, Skyla Rory.
I didn’t want to cosy up with a hot drink and discuss her love life with her.
I just wanted to keep her safe, swathed in my protection.
I wanted to protect Alfie too, my whole family to be honest. And yet, here I am, sitting in a veterinary clinic feeling like everything I’ve built over the years, everything I’ve had to rebuild from the ground up, is collapsing.
Alfie, my sweet, gorgeous boy, who has been my shadow since we arrived in the Cotswolds, is injured, possibly dying.
Skyla is so detached from me. And James?
Well, we are worlds apart right now. No matter what happened between us last night, it’s not enough to fix things between us overnight, and I still need to get to the bottom of what he was arguing with Raven about on the security camera.
Our family seems suddenly so full of words unsaid, secrets, and lies.
And Raven is at the centre of it all. She sparked this all off, this change, this shift in our dynamic.
Since she came along absolutely everything has felt off.
Up on the light grey walls of the clinic, a series of photographs are pegged, lit up with the most delicate of fairy lights.
Above it are the words Pet Wall of Fame.
I scan through the photos of dogs, cats, rabbits, even some tortoises and guineapigs, until I land on Alfie, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, black snout pushed forward, making it look comically oversized.
Something squeezes my heart at the sight of him, so energetic and excitable.
So alive. Over the years he’s aged, started developing hip dysplasia and arthritis, but I’d always assumed we’d have another couple of years with him at least. Waking up this morning, had I known it might be the last day I was going to spend with him, I’d have done things so differently.
I’d have been more present on my morning walk with him, taken his photo as the sun was rising, making his golden fur shine a brilliant amber.
I’d have tried harder to get out of my own head, to leave behind my anxieties and enjoy my time with him.
But my life has become one ginormous What If.
What if I had done things differently today?
If I hadn’t put him in the kennel after the walk, if I’d let him inside like he always whines to do.
What if I hadn’t gone to that work event all those years ago?
Would Robin still be here — or would there have been another moment where someone seized their chance and took her?
And if there had been another moment, would they have taken her or Skyla?
Was there a difference to them? Or would either girl have done?
My stomach cinches tight at the thought of someone taking Skyla.
It makes guilt worm through me, because I hate being relieved that Skyla was left untouched, that she is still mine.
That isn’t fair to Robin. I go down a rabbit hole of imagining what life would be like if it had been Skyla taken instead of Robin.
Would I still have a little history nut, a homebody?
A girl so wonderfully family focused it makes my heart almost full.
My head hurts to think about it, but I can’t stop.
Was everything that has transpired in my life always meant to have happened, or was it all down to circumstances?
I wish I knew. I wish I knew how to go back in time and stop all the bad things from ever happening — but that isn’t how life works and all I can do is learn to live with what fate has decided to deal out to me.
I don’t think life is something you can ever checkmate, sadly.
‘What the hell could’ve done this?’ James asks into his hands, his voice stirring me from my thoughts.
I shake my head. The rake in the hedge, I think, hoping I’m wrong, but as I look across at Raven, I notice she’s picking at her nails. There’s something stuck under them, something dry and flaky and dark. Something that looks a lot like dried blood.