‘Oh, so I’m second to a stray furball now, am I?’
Joan looked at me out of the corner of one eye. ‘Well, duh!’
I sat at my lovely garden table catching up on emails while Joan cavorted about in the sunshine, distracting Nesbit from the holes in the hedge, the niggles about Leanne, Mum and Irene Jenkins all safely tucked in my mental in-tray for another day. For a couple of hours, this felt pretty darn close to the life I’d been dreaming about for so long.
By the time I went back inside to throw together some home-made turkey burgers, there was another note pushed through my door:
Please ensure all dog mess is removed from the lawn and disposed of.
Any chunterings about the rude presumption that I might not clear up after my dog dissolved when I got up the next morning and found a chicken-wire fence had been installed around the entire border of the garden, thwarting any doggy escapes.
Steph and Drew were back from their holiday and came straight over to have a nosy at how I was getting on. They brought paint brushes and rollers, God bless them, and Nicky arrived proudly brandishing the new toolbox that his brothers had given him as a flat-warming present.
‘Got any jobs need doing, Ollie, then I’m your man!’ he announced, eagerly glancing around in case anything presented itself.
‘Well, now that you mention it…’
‘Um, kettle on first, if you don’t mind,’ Steph interrupted, before getting nearly bowled over by a fluffy whirlwind. ‘What is that?’
‘You got a dog?’ Nicky cried, pushing past his sister to follow Nesbit back into the garden.
‘You got a dog?’ Steph echoed, eyebrows raised in surprise.
‘Dream List number nine.’ I shrugged.
‘Well, yeah, but I’d have thought items one to eight might take priority. Like, getting your house sorted so you can sleep in an actual bed, and work in your home office.’
‘Those things aren’t on the list,’ I replied airily. ‘And I didn’t plan to get a dog. If anything, he found me. I’ll fill you in while I make us a drink.’
‘Is this a sticker chart?’ she asked a few moments later, nose wrinkled in disbelief as she stood staring at the fridge . ‘For the dog? Blue sticker for a wee, red for a poo? Ollie, I’m not sure living alone is working out for you.’
I shrugged, laughing. ‘It’s for me, really. Nesbit’s accidents were driving me mad, so I thought a sticker chart might help me keep track of progress and feel less stressed about it.’
‘What do you get when he makes a full day without an accident? A Bonio?’
‘He gets a Bonio. I’ll decide what I get once I know how long it took. Now, stop laughing at me and tell me about your holiday.’
We spent the rest of the day painting the bedroom in a pale green while Drew and Nicky repaired the cupboard doors and then ripped up the carpet, sanding the floorboards before painting them a fresh white. Joan appeared shortly after lunchtime, and she joined in with the painting too. After an early morning walk in the woods followed by the excitement of meeting new people, Nesbit was mostly happy to watch from the dog crate I’d bought so that I could leave him home alone without risking him gnawing a tunnel to Ebenezer’s house.
With Steph’s summer playlist on at a neighbourly volume, the windows open to allow the paint smell out and the country air in, a picnic lunch and a giant coffee cake for afternoon tea, I’m not sure it could have been any better had my friends been replaced by a Dream Man.
Did I think about Mum? Yes. Often. Karina had decreased her texts to every other day, and while I knew that Mum was starting to cope without me, this was the longest I’d ever gone without talking to the person closest to me. I found myself wondering what she’d think of the paint colour I’d picked, or wanting to let her know how my promotion was going, to laugh about Irene Jenkins. I knew she’d be nonplussed about me having a dog, and I found myself having imaginary conversations with her in my head, trying to justify this new life I was leading, in some vain attempt to win her approval.
During the week, it was easier to ignore that part of my life, to shut it away and focus on the million other, nicer things I had to think about. But my friends being here was a reminder that I was Olivia Tennyson, with a history and an identity outside of End Cottage and Bigley library. I asked myself a hundred times that day whether it was time to see her, or to at least try another phone call. I asked Steph, once, and the force of her reaction was enough to ensure I didn’t ask again. But now I was moving into my beautiful new bedroom, it needed curtains and bedding. Before long, I would make a trip to the Buttonhole to use their sewing machine. And before then, I would have to decide whether or not to ask Mum to join me.