‘Really quite small, isn’t it?’ said Fiona.
Lucy left in a hurry. Greg stayed to make his excuses, but, really, there were none that Fiona wanted to hear. There were certainly none she believed.
‘I’ll move out at the weekend,’ Greg muttered.
‘Yes,’ said Fiona. ‘I think that’s for the best.’
All four members of Fiona’s team were back at work the next day. Fiona was so miserable she completely forgot to tell the ‘festival three’ they were sacked. And, in a way, she was glad that she didn’t because, perhaps driven by the guilt of having skived the previous day, they were all extremely kind to her. Having heard about Greg’s infidelity, they would not let Fiona out into the dining room, insisting instead that she sit in the tiny office where she usually did the paperwork. They kept her supplied with tea, cake and sandwiches all day long. If only she’d felt like eating.
There was only one customer that Fiona left the office for that afternoon. Jackie Spring was the most regular of the café’s regulars and she noticed at once that Fiona was not there to pass the time as she waited for her latte. Cross-eyed Sarah explained the situation in a theatrical whisper. Jackie told her to go and fetch Fiona out from her hiding place at once. Then Jackie ordered an extra latte –she knew Fiona had a soft spot for them too –a large slice of carrot cake and two forks. She insisted that Fiona take off her apron and join her at the dining room’s quiet corner table. She made Fiona tell her everything. She even offered to put a jiffy bag of dog mess through Lucy’s letterbox.
Jackie Spring had easy access to a ready supply of dog mess. Jackie was well known about the town as the proprietor of the local dog shelter –Paws For Thought. Every Saturday afternoon, Jackie and a selection of her most photogenic puppies would position themselves outside the supermarket to raise funds to keep the shelter going. Jackie lived like a bag lady to ensure that no dog that ended up in her care was put down for lack of money. She may have eaten baked beans six days out of seven but the dogs at Paws For Thought ate like royal corgis. Lattes at the Candlewick Café were Jackie’s only indulgence, though there had been a time when she couldn’t even afford those and Fiona had secretly given Jackie freebies and dropped off unsold sandwiches on her way home every night.
So, Jackie was well loved and respected by the softhearted animal lovers of the town, of which Fiona was a fully paid-up member. Fiona loved dogs. She simply adored them, but she’d never been able to have one because Greg, who’d lived with her for the past eight years, was horribly allergic to dog fur.
‘Good riddance,’ said Jackie when she heard that Greg would be leaving that weekend. Jackie didn’t trust anybody who could resist tickling the velvety nose of a puppy. Naturally, being allergic, Greg had always recoiled from Jackie’s pups in disgust. But it was more than that. He had always recoiled from Jackie too. When Fiona raved about her friend and her devotion to dogs, Greg would respond, ‘She’s a witch. I tell you. The way she looks at me. The way she smells.’
It was true that Jackie did sometimes smell somewhat funky, but Fiona didn’t think that was a reason to dislike her.
‘It’s joss sticks,’ said Fiona. ‘She burns a lot of joss sticks in her bungalow to cover the smell of the animals.’
‘It’s not joss sticks, it’s her potions,’ Greg insisted. ‘She’s a wicked old witch. Just look at the wart on her nose.’
Now, as she sat in the corner with Jackie, who was being so very kind to her, Fiona felt ashamed that she had not defended Jackie from Greg’s insults rather more vociferously. She was certain that there was at least one occasion on which Jackie had overheard Greg being cruel about her looks and smell. At the same time, she sort of wished that Jackie were a witch. If she could just have Greg turned into a frog…
‘It won’t last,’ said Jackie, when she heard that Greg and Lucy were an item. ‘She’ll only have wanted him in the first place because he was forbidden fruit. She’s always been jealous of you, has your friend Lucy.’
‘Really? I thought she was my best friend,’ Fiona said. ‘You know, I used to think it was a load of rubbish when I read about my sort of situation in magazines and the wronged woman always said she missed her friend more than her man. But it’s true; I’m going to miss Lucy way more than I’ll ever miss Greg.’
Jackie squeezed Fiona’s hand. Both of them knew that Fiona was going to miss both Lucy and Greg like hell.
‘Perhaps you should take one of my puppies for company,’ said Jackie. ‘While you get used to having an empty house. I’ve got a new lot in this week. Collie-Lurcher cross. Four months old, I reckon. A bit boisterous but ever so lovely with it. There’s a female. She’s got the kind of eyes that make you certain she’s lived before. She knows things. She’s a wise old soul. Morgana, I’ve called her, after Morgan Le Fay.’
Jackie was big on her Arthurian legends. She was big on reincarnation too. She once told Fiona she’d had a past life as a nun, which was what had brought her back to work in a café opposite the cathedral. ‘Your name began with a T,’ Jackie added.
The thought of a celibate existence didn’t especially resonate with Fiona but a couple of days after Jackie mentioned it, as she was shutting up shop for the evening, Fiona discovered a prayer card decorated with St Theresa in a nun’s habit tucked under a sugar bowl and was more than a little freaked out.
‘Coincidence. A customer left it,’ said Greg. ‘Your café is opposite a cathedral. It’s going to attract religious types.’
But Fiona couldn’t help paying closer notice to Jackie’s pronouncements after that. The other girls in the café were all over Jackie when she was in one of her psychic phases. Jackie told Sarah that in her past life she had been killed by an arrow that went right between her eyes, hence her eyes now staring inwards. Sarah was slightly insulted until Jackie elaborated on the circumstances of the fatal arrow wound.
‘You were a warrior princess, riding into battle in defence of your clan. You rode alongside the great kings of ancient Britain. Your name is inscribed on King Arthur’s throne.’
‘Oh,’ said Sarah. She felt a lot better about being cross-eyed after that.
That afternoon, Fiona told Jackie that she felt stupid for having put up with Greg for so long.
‘Not stupid,’ Jackie insisted. ‘Perhaps you had some karma to work through. Perhaps Greg was meant to teach you a lesson about not taking yourself and your own needs so lightly. Not giving your power away.’
So far, so Oprah.
‘You do have the power, my love,’ Jackie continued. ‘You can have revenge if you want.’
‘I don’t want revenge,’ said Fiona calmly. ‘Revenge is for the weak.’ She sipped her drink. ‘No, hang on,’ she began again. ‘I do. I want my bloody revenge. I want Lucy to become repulsed by that arrogant little idiot. I want her to be unable to spend ten minutes in the same room as him without wanting to be sick. I want Greg to come crawling back to me on all fours. I want him to be devoted to me. I want him to follow me around, trying desperately to make me notice him…’
‘You want him as your boyfriend again?’ Jackie asked her.
‘No,’ said Fiona. ‘I don’t want him as my boyfriend. But I do want him to worship me. I want him to howl at the moon if he can’t be by my side.’ Fiona took a deep, stuttering breath. ‘Oh, I only ever wanted him to be faithful.’
Jackie nodded. ‘If you want faithful, my darling, get a dog. Will you take my puppy?’
‘I can’t,’ said Fiona. ‘The lease on my flat says “no pets”. I didn’t think it would matter while Greg was still in my life.’
‘You’re starting a different life now,’ Jackie reminded her.
Fiona’s new life got off to a slow start. It was almost a year later that she was able to get out of the lease on the flat that did not allow pets. During that year, Fiona did her best to alter the flat so that she was not reminded of Greg the moment she opened her eyes in the morning and saw the walls that he had painted and the pictur
es he had hung. Changing the decor of her flat was easy enough, but unfortunately, Lucy’s flat was just two streets away and Fiona often saw them walk past her building, arm in arm, with no care for their brokenhearted former friend. Sometimes Greg even wore the fisherman’s jumper that Fiona had knitted for him their first winter as a couple. She remembered how happy she had been, as she thought about her handiwork keeping her lover warm in her absence. Seeing him wearing it, as Lucy snuggled against him, doubtless making the heavy wool smell of her chokingly strong perfume, Fiona only wanted to cry.
So Fiona was hugely relieved when she was able to move to the other side of the town, to a little terraced house where she would be able to keep pets if she wanted to. Fiona knew it was just a matter of time until she did.
On those days off which she would once have spent watching Greg play Grand Theft Auto on the Wii while tipping barbecue flavour Pot Noodles straight into his mouth from the pot, Fiona now volunteered at Paws For Thought. Morgana and her siblings had quickly found new homes, but there were always new puppies coming in.
‘It’s just a matter of finding the perfect match,’ said Jackie. ‘I’ll know it when the right dog comes in.’
Then something strange happened: Greg disappeared. Cross-eyed Sarah heard the gossip from her cousin who worked with Lucy at the council offices. Apparently she had come home one evening to find all his stuff gone. There was no trace of him. Not a single stray sock. He hadn’t left a note and he wasn’t answering his mobile. Lucy went to the police but they were of the opinion that there was nothing sinister afoot. He’d done a runner, hadn’t he? Simple as. He’d got fed up of the relationship and didn’t know how to tell her, so he cleared out his stuff while she was at work. At least two of the constables at the station had done the same. If he’d left his stuff, now that would be suspicious.
Fiona tried to feign disinterest but she was absolutely intrigued. Where had Greg gone?
‘He’ll turn up,’ Jackie said, when Fiona told her. ‘Blokes like that always do. Give it a couple of weeks and you’ll hear from him, mark my words.’
Though she pretended she didn’t care if she did, Fiona was secretly thrilled by the prospect. Would Greg come back to her? Exactly how long would that take?
‘Though of course, I wouldn’t want him if he did,’ Fiona assured herself.
Fiona tried not to be disappointed when Greg didn’t rush to rekindle their relationship after leaving Lucy so abruptly. Perhaps, she told herself, he thought he had no chance of getting back together with her. If only there were some way she could let him know that the door was still open. Perhaps if she told a few people…
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said cross-eyed Sarah. ‘What do you want him back for? He’s a cheat and a liar. And he’s been a cheat and a liar in all his past lives, I’m telling you.’ Sarah had been taking lessons in past life divination from Jackie. ‘He’s going to keep on lying and cheating until he works his karma out. Forget about him. Get a puppy. Walking a dog is a great way to meet a new man.’
So everyone kept telling her.
Perhaps it was time. The following day, Fiona wasn’t working in the café so she went to the dog shelter instead. It was a cold day. Jackie was in the kitchen of her bungalow. When Fiona saw her, Jackie appeared to be dandling a baby on her knee. As Fiona got closer, she realised that the bundle wrapped in the tatty old fisherman’s jumper was a dog. Of course.
‘Staffy Labrador cross, I reckon,’ said Jackie. ‘Three months old. Found on the council tip. He was all on his own, wrapped up in this jumper.’
As Fiona drew nearer the puppy scrabbled at its old jumper swaddling to get a sniff of her. Fiona let him lick her hand.
‘He definitely likes you,’ said Jackie.
‘He’s got a sweet face,’ said Fiona.
‘I think you may have found your dog. What are you going to call him?’
‘True-Love,’ said Fiona all of a sudden, without having the faintest idea why.
So True-Love became Fiona’s puppy and he was certainly as devoted as his name implied. It was no trouble at all to train him. While she worked in the café, he sat quietly in the office. Well, most of the time he sat quietly. If True-Love felt that Fiona had left him for a little too long, he would start to howl, a heaving, mournful song that would silence the chatter in the café and make everyone think of the loves they had lost and friends they’d long forgotten.
It was about six months after True-Love came into Fiona’s life that Lucy reappeared. She surprised Fiona as she was locking up one evening. Fiona almost jumped out of her skin. She was glad to have True-Love beside her until she realised she had been accosted by her former friend and not a mugger.
‘I wanted to apologise,’ Lucy began. ‘And to tell you just how much I’ve missed you. Greg was never worth losing you for.’
Fiona nodded. She knew from the gossip around town that Lucy had found Greg’s departure hard. She certainly didn’t look as cocky as she had done the last time Fiona saw her, snuggling into Greg’s fisherman’s jumper.
‘I know what I did to you doesn’t deserve your forgiveness but…’
Fiona remembered the old days when Lucy would sit at the kitchen table and bemoan her single status while Fiona lectured her on the way to find and keep a man. Had Fiona’s smugness at being part of a couple contributed to Lucy’s unsisterly decision to go after Greg?
‘Come to my flat and we’ll have a cup of tea and talk it over?’ Fiona suggested.
Lucy looked incredibly happy at the idea. But once inside Fiona’s flat the tears started, as Lucy apologised a thousand times and both girls admitted their friendship was the greater loss than Greg Whitehouse’s disappearance. Once the apologies were over, however, Lucy kept right on crying.
‘I can’t seem to stop,’ she said. ‘I think I must be allergic to your dog.’
‘To True-Love?’
At the sound of his name, True-Love raised his head from the fisherman’s jumper that lined the inside of his basket. He wouldn’t be parted from that jumper, though it was a filthy rag by now.
‘I must be,’ said Lucy. ‘My nose is streaming. But I’ve never been allergic to animals before.’
Lucy and Fiona had called a truce but their friendship never really recovered. Especially when Lucy let slip to cross-eyed Sarah that she found True-Love rather repulsive: ‘The way that he slobbers. Just…ugh.’
Not that Fiona had much time for her friends anyway. Jackie had been right about dogs helping bring people together. One sunny spring morning, Fiona was walking True-Love in the fields behind the estate where they lived. True-Love caught sight of a rabbit and made a run for it. Fiona called after him but it was in vain.
‘True-Love. True-Love! Come back here.’
She had to walk home without him but later that day, a responsible citizen returned the dog, having read the address engraved on his collar tag.
‘I don’t know how I can thank you,’ said Fiona.
‘Well,’ said the handsome stranger. ‘You could start by letting me take you out for a drink.’
One thing led to another, of course.
Years later, when Fiona and the handsome stranger, whose names was James, were married and twins were on the way, Fiona took True-Love to stay with Jackie so that she and James could have one last weekend away alone.
Though Jackie had a magical way with most animals, Fiona couldn’t help noticing that True-Love would tuck his tail between his legs as they turned into the driveway of Paws For Thought. Fiona put it down to bad memories of his puppy-hood and abandonment on the council tip.
Jackie opened the door.
‘Hello, Fiona. Hello, True-Love.’
She enveloped Fiona in her arms for a hug: the scent of Jackie’s peculiar perfume would follow her about all day. She remembered Greg’s cruel comments but had to admit there was something a bit witchy about Jackie’s very individual scent.
True-Love looked up at Fiona, his eyes imploring her to take h
im on holiday too.
‘Sorry, True-Love.’ Fiona scratched the top of his head. ‘This is the last chance James and I have for a holiday before the babies come.’
Fiona quickly headed back to her car. She didn’t want a long goodbye.
Alone in the bungalow, Jackie arranged True-Love’s scrappy old jumper on a cushion by the fire.
‘We’re going to have a lovely weekend, you and me,’ she said. ‘I’ve got in all your favourites: minced beef, roast chicken, barbecue flavour Pot Noodles…’
True-Love took up his spot by the fire and laid his head on his paws. Deep in his doggy brain, stirred some very peculiar memories. He used his claws to scrunch the fisherman’s jumper into a more comfortable pile and remembered the day he first wore it.
Third Act
Fanny Blake
Fanny Blake
FANNY BLAKE was a publisher for many years, editing both fiction and non-fiction before becoming a freelance journalist and writer. She has written various non-fiction titles, acted as a ghostwriter for a number of celebrities, and is also the books editor of Woman & Home. She has written three novels, What Women Want (Blue Door), Women of a Dangerous Age (Blue Door), and her latest The Secrets Women Keep (Orion) is out now.
You can visit www.fannyblake.com to find out more or contact her at http://www.facebook.com/FannyBlakeBooks or on Twitter @FannyBlake1.
Third Act
Inside, the old car was stifling. Beth lowered the window. In wafted exhaust fumes fused with the scent of hot metal and melting tarmac. She glared at the line of traffic stretching ahead of her and, in frustration, banged the steering wheel with her fist. Being stuck on the M11 had not been part of her planned journey to Norfolk. Especially not on the first decent day of the summer.
If only Gerry had taken dear old Betty, the battered people carrier in which she was sitting now, with him. In their other car, she would have sped out of London and missed the worst of the traffic heading north. But, of course, along with his half of their joint assets, he had taken the convertible, assuming its ownership even though he’d bought it with their money in the year before he’d left her.
Truly, Madly, Deeply Page 12