by Kirsty Eyre
‘Well done,’ I say. ‘You’re going to be a brilliant mother.’
She drops her head to nuzzle her calf.
‘You OK?’ Lorna says, shaking the hair out of her eyes.
‘We did it?’ I wring my hands together and look back and forth between Lorna and the calf. ‘We did it!’ I squeal.
‘I know!’ Lorna catches my excitement, hopping from one foot to the other, then flinging her arms around me, her body boiling hot, but covered in goose bumps.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ I squeeze her, tears rolling down my face.
Euphoric, emotional, fragile, we are glued to each other and can’t let go. I can feel her hot skin against mine. And that’s when I kiss her. I kiss Lorna Parsons right on the lips. Not a grateful peck. A proper, deeply connected, undeniable kiss.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
COVENTRY
Kissing your flatmate is like playing with fire, but kissing your vet is like throwing yourself to the flames. You can always find a new flatmate, but finding a new vet … and a good one at that? Especially when you’ve got four pregnant cows?
It’s the next day and I keep reliving the cringe moment of suddenly becoming aware of Guy standing at the entrance to the cowshed, motionless, car keys in hand, watching, his face frozen. Us, mid-kiss, our bodies stuck together, my fingers tracing the valley between her back muscles. I expected Lorna to be shy, but she wasn’t. She cradled my head in her hands and pressed her groin against mine, gently pushing me backwards until I was pinned against the breezeblock wall, her hands running all over me, her big grey eyes like pools of water. She smiled and kissed me again, and then over her shoulder I saw a figure in the doorway.
Guy shuffled his feet in the gravel to emphasize his arrival. Endorphins evaporated, replaced by cast-iron guilt.
‘Now I feel like a dick,’ I said under my breath, as Lorna turned to see Guy.
Her smile disappeared but her hands were still draped around my neck and I wondered whether she was going to try to style it out by pretending she was tying my hair back or something, but she didn’t. Instead her big grey eyes fixed me with a steely stare I didn’t understand. Like she was questioning me. And all the time, Guy was waiting.
I can still hear Lorna’s steps across the yard, the passenger door of their Subaru-whatever-it-is clunking shut and tyres crunching through gravel. I can still see the reflection of her eyes seeking me out in the wing mirror.
From: Lorna Parsons
For the record, I am not without a conscience and know what we did was wrong.
I’m not sure how to reply, so I don’t.
It’s been five days now. Five days of Lorna coincidentally timing her mother-and-calf visits for when I’m out. Five days of Lorna avoiding coming into the house. Five days of feeling on edge.
‘I haven’t spoken to Lorna for a while,’ Grandma says over breakfast.
‘No.’ I maintain eye contact with my Rice Krispies.
‘It’s not like her.’
I shrug my shoulders. ‘She’s very busy.’
‘And what have you been playing at with Charlie?’ She holds her bowl under the running tap, chiselling off stubborn cornflakes with a teaspoon.
‘Charlie?’
‘Charlie from the co-operative. I hear he asked you out.’
Nothing gets past Grandma. She’s like a human firewall. I haven’t told a soul, so God knows how she knows. ‘Who told you?’
‘His mother.’ She turns off the tap and flicks water off her fingertips into the sink.
‘Who’s his mother?’ I say.
‘Doreen from Buns and Baps.’
‘Charlie is Doreen Peterson’s son?’
Grandma nods.
All of this is noise. What really matters is whether I’ll be cited as a third-party adulterer in the disintegration of Lorna and Guy’s common-law partnership, and whether Lorna’ll ever show up again. And if she does, what I’ll actually say to her and, more to the point, what I’ll say to Guy.
It’s all gone sneaky glances and double-takes down in the village, and I feel like a scarlet woman. It’s got to the point where I’m driving seven miles to get toothpaste from a petrol station to avoid sly comments or a cross-examination. Where’s the soothing, carefree anonymity of London when you need it?
‘Hi!’ I open the door to Buns & Baps, the bell tinkling.
Doreen Peterson stands behind a counter of sticky tarts and cream cakes and says nothing. The room smells of fresh bread and warm croissants; the sort of smell you want to bottle and dispense when things aren’t going your way. A small black cat jumps down from the windowsill and winds its way around my legs.
‘A large rye cob, please, Doreen.’ She must be preoccupied with something as she’s usually so chirpy.
‘We’re out of bread.’ She folds her arms under her no-nonsense bosom, which is emblazoned with Buns & Baps, courtesy of the apron she’s had made.
‘What about the loaves behind you?’ I point out.
‘Reserved.’
I look to the basket of pastries under the counter. ‘What about a croissant?’
‘We’ve closed the kitchen now and all of these are taken.’
The cat purrs.
‘Well,’ I say, shoving my wallet back into my pocket. ‘Glad business is thriving.’
The bell tinkles as I leave, despite it not being a tinkly moment, and I’ve half a mind to go back in there and tell her what I think, a monologue of fury and injustice building in me – Charlie’s a grown adult, for fuck’s sake. And then I get a better idea.
‘Hi again,’ I say, reopening the door. ‘Just to let you know that Buns and Baps are both a reference to tits.’
She looks at me blankly whilst feeding a wholemeal bloomer through her slicer.
‘Tits,’ I repeat, pointing to each of my breasts.
She continues to stare at me.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say, closing the door again and at least getting a proper dong out of her visitor bell.
All of this because I won’t go out with her son.
A package from Maria awaits me in the hall. I tear open the box to find a ‘first-aid kit’ containing macaroons, a bottle of Disaronno, a satin eye mask and three copies of Vogue in order that ‘you don’t let yourself go.’ Boutique catwalk fashion is at the forefront of my mind right now. Underneath the cardboard flap is a Starbucks loyalty card and Dolly Parton CD. I feel like I’m surviving a world war on modern-day rations.
She accepts my Skype call, eyes completely covered by an eye mask identical to the one she sent me, a plate of steaming pasta in front of her.
‘What are you doing?’ I say.
‘Training my body to exhibit the behaviour of a barn owl.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s part of the “Unleash the Inner Beast” animal theatre workshop I’m doing.’ She grapples around the table for the pepper mill.
‘It’s right in front of your beak!’ Frustration gets the better of me. ‘Surely they’ve got to give you eye-holes?’
‘It’s not the mask, Billie. Owls are far-sighted and wouldn’t be able to see an object that close up. I need to feel for it.’
‘Feel for it?’
‘With my filoplumes,’ she says, sniffing around the table.
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘There’s no point in doing it half-heartedly. I’m supposed to be living truthfully under given imaginary circumstances.’
‘What if the given imaginary circumstance was your flatmate hanging up on you?’
She peels off the mask, feathers from the trim floating into her spaghetti. ‘What’s up with you?’
I blow my breath out at the ceiling. ‘I kissed Lorna and now she’s avoiding me.’
Her voice goes all high-pitched. ‘Isn’t she straight?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘Isn’t she married?’
‘As good as.’
‘Isn’t she your vet?’
‘All very valid points.’ I open a packet of Maltesers, which shower all over my lap.
‘I didn’t think you even liked her!’
I think about this. ‘I didn’t, but I do now.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘And now she’s avoiding me. It was lonely enough before, but now I’m getting treated like a leper by half the village. Like I’m some sort of wanton harlot.’
‘Maybe you should feign mental illness and wander the streets in a lace nightgown in the style of Marie Celeste. Go loopy on them. Wield a shotgun and demand bread.’
‘Wasn’t Marie Celeste a ship?’ I say, confused.
‘Was it?’
‘I think so.’
‘But it must have been named after a real person called Marie Celeste in the first place. And anyone called Marie Celeste would definitely wander the streets in a floaty lace nightgown with a shotgun. Write to her.’
‘To Marie Celeste?’
‘Lorna! Write to her. Tell her how you feel.’
‘I don’t think I can. Not while I know she’s in a relationship.’
She strokes the edges of her mask in the way a man might his beard. ‘You need a distraction. Something to take your mind off things. How about internet dating?’
Ten minutes later, I receive an email thanking me for my subscription to Licker, ‘a unique online dating site dedicated to finding like-minded, educated women.’
Since when have licking and education been natural bedfellows?
The rural Derbyshire/South Yorkshire border appears to be a lesbian blind spot. A lazy trawl through cyberspace for ‘like-minded, educated women’ suggests that the nearest mutually compatible Lick is seven miles away. Once proximity is overcome, it appears that the entire Licker population is ‘a perfect match’. This could be something to do with the dating profile Maria has created for me, in which I ‘love travel, film, theatre, books, art, history, animals, sports and the great outdoors. I go to the gym three to five times a week. I work to live rather than live to work. I’m a non-smoker, an occasional drinker, a home owner, a dog lover, a museum regular, a DIY enthusiast and a positive thinker.’ I’m a maximal minimalist and a minimal maximalist. I have that many characteristics that I have no distinguishable character. I love everything and hate nothing in a transparent attempt to have something in common with everyone; an insipid, generic, unremarkable void of nothingness. I am so inoffensive that I am offensive.
Three messages await me from a Polish acrobat who loves fire-eating, ghost-hunting, cryptozoology and fetish clubs, and is therefore a perfect match. I am about to send her a ‘Hey, how’s it going’ mail when I realize she has deactivated her account now that she is in a relationship with the ghost of her ex-landlady.
I miss Joely. We were right for each other, whereas this just feels like going through the motions for the sake of it.
I half-heartedly plump for Lucy from Chesterfield, who likes gardening, Go-Karting, geocaching and is online.
‘Hi, Lucy.’
‘Hi.’
‘Thank God someone else from round here is on this thing!’
‘Did you read my profile?’
‘Briefly!’ (I lie, having just seen her photo.)
‘Can you be discreet?’
A quick glance at her profile suggests she is married but looking to ‘meet and cheat’. Delete.
People’s interests are wide ranging. There are girls on this site into toy voyaging, car tattooing and dyeing their pets. I find myself signing up to Angels & Devils, a bimonthly singles night in Sheffield. The next event is a masked ball in the city-centre Winter Gardens. Do I really want to pay twenty quid to flirt with desperados in a giant greenhouse? Hell, yes.
I sign up and am allocated the name Angel6.
Angel3, fellow attendee of Licker’s Angels & Devils Masked Ball, wants to connect.
‘Hi, Angel6, any idea how to remove the shit angel icon?’
‘Hi, Angel3,’ I reply. ‘Sadly not.’
‘How’s your day going?’ Hmm. American, or just well mannered?
‘Not too bad,’ I type. ‘Could bore you with the mechanics of my day job, which is turning out to be a day and night job, but you’d probably fall asleep.’
‘What line of work are you in?’
I’m about to type ‘biochemist’ but then realize I am – to all intents and purposes – a farmer. Putting it out there doesn’t feel right, though. Not without an explanation. It all feels too permanent.
‘Wait, don’t answer that,’she types, saving me from my indecision.
‘Why not?’
‘It was shop talk and nobody gets laid talking shop, right?’ Definitely American.
‘Sorry,’ I type, almost blushing.
‘No more shop talk, promise?’ A girl who likes the driving seat. I like it.
‘I promise. Have you been to one of these singles nights before?’ I ask, aware of my inability to inject any sort of personality into my online persona.
‘Last year’s Halloween ball was pretty awesome. God, that makes me sound tragic, doesn’t it?’
‘Does it?’
‘You know, like I’ve been on the shelf *forever*, annually turning up to some masked ball in the hope of snaring someone.’
‘So how long have you been single for?’ I type.
‘Do you know nothing about phishing?’
‘Phishing?’
‘Extracting information from internet chat.’
‘I guess not,’ I concede.
‘Rule number one, never talk shop on your first chat.’
‘OK, hand slapped.’
‘Rule number two, never ask a lady how old she is.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Just in case you do, because Angel6, between you and me, you don’t seem massively tech savvy.’ Has to be a fiery redhead.
‘No offence taken!’
‘Rule number three, never ask a lady how long she’s been single for.’
‘Is it rude?’
‘It’s a bit like asking someone how long they haven’t washed for.’
‘Really?’
‘Not really, but everyone knows to lie about how long they’ve been single for, as they’ll be judged on the answer.’
‘Will they?’
‘OK, let’s role-play. I’ve been single for a year (I haven’t, by the way). Does that make me look good, or bad?’
‘Neither.’
‘If you were a judgemental person, as I am – but you’ve probably realized that by now – you’d probably think a year is acceptable. A year shows that someone can be on their own; anything longer suggests you’re undatable.’
‘How about three months?’
‘Rebound,’ she types. ‘Actually, it depends on whether you got dumped or did the dumping?’
‘Are you asking me?’
‘Of course not, that would violate rule number four. I was merely talking hypothetically.’
‘Do you have a degree in internet dating?’
‘Thankfully not, though it’d be more vocational than the American Fine Art course I’m currently on.’
‘So, you’re an artist?’
‘Of sorts. I could wow you with renaissances and revolutions, but that would be almost as bad as talking shop. Shit, it’s late and I’ve an early start tomorrow. Must sign off. Nice chatting, Angel6.’
‘Ditto.’
I feel mentally invigorated for the first time in months. It’s refreshing to meet someone with a bit of fire in their belly. That said, Angel3 could be a three-metre-cubed alcoholic called Kevin.
It’s two weeks since I kissed Lorna. She continues to avoid me and the farm, and I’m now thinking the whole thing is ridiculous and blown out of all proportion. We are adults, and this is all just so childish, and maybe I should just apologize so we can move on. After all, I did kind of initiate it, despite her being in a committed relationship. I vow to pick up the phone and call her. After all, it was just a stupid, heat-of-the-moment mistak
e. Or was it? Perhaps I will not call Lorna.
‘Billie!’ Grandma shouts through the kitchen window. I turn round to see her grinning over the dishevelled window boxes. ‘Allie’s in labour.’
I glove up and rush out with a bucket of warm water.
Allie paces around her pen. The moment anyone so much as dares to put their hand on the gate, she roars. It all looks to be pretty straightforward, but what the fuck do I know? I decide to get Dad. He has a special relationship with her in the way that Thatcher had with Reagan. I find him in the conservatory, his eyes half shut and the television blaring.
‘Dad?’
He rubs his eyes. ‘I wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me.’
‘Allie’s in labour.’
He shuffles his feet into his carpet slippers. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’
Refusing to stop for either his stick or his coat, Dad powers through the house to the back door, gingerly navigates the porch step and makes a beeline to the cowshed.
Allie lowers her head, her doleful eyes looking up at Dad as he opens the gate to her pen, maintaining a respectful distance. She cranes her neck, the rest of her body seemingly still while peristalsis enables her calf to slide out. Mother Nature does her stuff. There’s no drama. No tears. Not even much sound.
The little calf stands up almost immediately and shakes her ears.
‘Well done,’ Dad says, stroking Allie’s neck, his face alight with wonder. ‘A beautiful baby girl.’
We call her Lydia, after one of Dad’s nurses.
Lydia gives me a solid-gold reason to phone Lorna. I go to the bathroom, wash the gunk off my fingers and role-play what I’m about to say, training my voice to sound light and breezy.
‘Hi, Lorna, it’s Billie.’ I don’t sound in the slightest bit breezy when it’s for real.
There’s a small pause. ‘Hello.’
‘I’ve had another delivery,’ I blurt.
‘Flowers again?’ Her voice cracks.
‘Flowers?’ I’m confused. ‘I mean arrival. I mean we’ve had another calf.’
‘Congratulations,’ she says flatly.
‘Thanks.’ You’d think she’d be a tiny bit happy for me. I mean, it’s not like I’ve phoned the bin man. She is my vet, after all.