you not do that?’
‘What?’
‘Consistently point out...’ She was so incensed. ‘I get you don’t do romance but your little digs are unnecessary.’
‘I wasn’t digging, Freya.’ Zack gave a bored eye-roll at her drama. ‘I’ve used the same line for ten years. I’m not changing anything for your benefit.’
That was a dig at the breakfast she’d made him.
Oh, yes, it was because there was a small smirk on his lips as she opened her mouth to argue.
Then she closed it and then, to hell with it, she said it. ‘I’d run out of coffee.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Zack asked.
He knew full well!
‘You overthink everything,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t.’
They were sulking and turned on and now staring ahead as they sniped, and both wanted to be down on the floor.
He had told James with absolute certainty that he would not be staying on after March, but the certainty had been in his voice only.
‘Freya.’ James came back into the meeting room and his voice had them both turn around. ‘That was Red.’
‘Red?’ Freya frowned. ‘Why would he call you?’
‘Because he can’t get through on your phone.’
Red had James’s number in case Freya was away and there was an emergency.
‘He thinks you ought to go home. Cleo’s not well,’ James told her. ‘I’ll drive you.’
‘I don’t need you to drive me,’ Freya snapped, and got up. ‘I can drive myself.’
But she’d run to work this morning.
‘What’s going on?’ Zack asked James when Freya had left, as if he didn’t know, as if just last week a fat pug hadn’t been asleep on his feet and then stood on his chest, baring her teeth at him.
‘Her dog’s not well,’ James said. ‘She’s a vicious little thing.’
Freya or Cleo? Zack nearly said, but stopped himself. It was getting harder and harder to separate things, and he was glad when James gave up on the meeting.
‘Can we do this tomorrow?’ James asked.
‘I’m in Theatre all day tomorrow.’
‘Well, I’ve got a list this evening.’ James was distracted and so too was Zack. ‘We’ll work out a time later.’
‘Will she be okay?’ Zack asked.
‘Cleo?’ James said, and Zack frowned as if he had no idea who James was talking about. ‘Oh, you mean Freya. I think so, though you never really know with Freya. She always says that she’s fine.’
Zack found her coming out of the changing room, where Freya had left her phone.
‘You haven’t got your car,’ Zack said. ‘Do you want me to drive you?’
‘No, thank you,’ Freya said. ‘You’re busy today. I’ll get Stephanie to call for a car.’
Stephanie did so. ‘Are you still not feeling well?’ she enquired, and Freya wished she was more like Zack and simply didn’t answer questions that she didn’t want to.
‘I’m much better. Thanks for all your help this morning,’ Freya said. ‘I just got a call and my dog’s sick.’
‘Cleo?’
‘Yes.’
Freya knew that Red wouldn’t call without good reason and she was right.
The vet was there and Cleo lay on the sofa and her little tail thumped when she saw Freya.
‘She got all breathless,’ Red said, and then the vet told her things weren’t going to get better.
‘She’s comfortable. We can take her back to the clinic and put her on some diuretics...’
‘No.’ Freya shook her head. ‘She hates being away from here.’ It was why she didn’t put her in boarding kennels and why she’d be grateful forever to Red because in the last year of an old dog’s life she’d stayed home every night.
It was time, but not for Freya.
‘Can I have a day with her?’ Freya asked. ‘Can you do it here?’
‘I’ll come by with Kathy at the end of surgery,’ he said, and Freya nodded. Kathy was her favourite nurse at the vet’s.
She thanked the vet and she thanked Red and saw them all out, and then she sat on the sofa with her best friend who’d seen her so far on her journey.
‘I’m not getting another puppy,’ Freya told her. ‘I could never love it as much as you.’ She buried her face in Cleo’s black fur. ‘And I don’t think it would be very fair on the baby.’ She looked into loving black eyes. ‘Shall we find out?’
Poor Cleo had been listening to her rabbit on about it for days now and it didn’t seem very fair that she died not knowing for sure.
And so she peed on the stick and came out a few moments later.
‘I am,’ she said to Cleo, and she accepted her lick and gave Cleo a kiss as the news sank in.
She was pregnant by a man who had hauled on his boots at the first sniff of commitment.
A man she was seriously head over heels about.
But more than that.
She was pregnant.
But more than that...
Freya wanted to be.
* * *
Zack knew that James had an evening theatre list and he actually drove past Freya’s and wondered if he should go up.
It was odd, but when James had said that Cleo was vicious, Zack had wanted to laugh. That morning, back in her bed, he’d thought Cleo had been warning him to be nice to her mistress. Instead, it had just been a demented dog.
It was her demented dog, though, who had been with her through all the hard times. He saw Freya come down the stairs, carrying Cleo and chatting to her as she did her business and then back up the stairs they went.
And a little while later he saw a couple come down carrying a bundle in a blanket and he knew it was the vet and assistant and that Cleo had just been euthanised.
Zack, who never got close to anyone, was tearing up over a dog, or was it over Freya and
