I hurry over to the barn. Everyone is already settled for the night. All is calm, all is bright – as they say. There’s a lovely fug of animal smells in the air, the odd snuffle and the rustle of the hay as bodies shift and vie for space. This is, of course, when I’m at my happiest.
‘Hi, everyone,’ I whisper. ‘Just came to see if you were all OK.’
The sheep have been brought into the barn as it’s cold and they look like fluffy hummocks as they’re all squashed together in sleep. Even Anthony is settled – though kept apart from everyone else – and he raises his head in acknowledgement. Then I hear a goat bleat. Our pygmy goats – four of them now – are housed further along the barn in their own escape-proof pen, allegedly. Dumb and Dumber were our original pair and they’ve been joined by two more rescue goats, Laurel and Hardy. They are talented escape artists, all of them, and I swear that they egg each other on. Another bleat and it definitely sounds a bit off. A goat in distress rather than a cheery one. Damn.
I leave the sheep and hurry along to their pen and, sure enough, Dumb has somehow managed to get himself stuck in the cargo net that forms part of their – rather optimistically named – adventure playground. His front legs are tangled in the net and his frantic wriggling is only making it worse. At this moment, I should stop to think about the situation and the fact that I’m wearing inappropriate clothing for goat-wrangling, but I don’t. Instead, I charge straight in, thinking only of getting the distressed goat unravelled.
‘Come on, boy,’ I say soothingly. ‘How the heck have you managed to do this to yourself?’
Dumb kicks against me. The other goats, convinced I’m trying to murder him rather than release him, start to charge and headbutt me in the knees. Laurel is taking particular umbrage at my well-intentioned interference. I could do with Lucas’s help, but I don’t think he’d hear me even if I shouted and, obviously, I didn’t think to bring anything as useful as my phone. Not that I’ve got enough free arms to use it.
‘Stop that,’ I say, crossly as I try to hold Laurel at bay with one leg while clinging onto Dumb with both arms and all of my strength. ‘I’m trying to help.’
I manage to heave Dumb out of the net despite him struggling and kicking his hooves at the air. For a little goat, he’s surprisingly heavy. So I turn him round and put his front legs over my shoulders and hang on to his little goaty bottom. In his excitement at being released, Dumb decides to wee all down my front and distracted by the warmth of his grateful outpouring through my nice, clean clothes, I don’t notice that, from the far side of the pen, Laurel has his head down and is taking a run at me.
Before I know what’s happening, the horns of a tiny goat have connected with the back of my knees and I crumple to the floor amid the straw and goat droppings. Dumb lands softly but right on top of me, squeezing all the air out of my lungs. Dumber and Hardy, seizing their opportunity, hit me when I’m down and I get a muddy hoof to the face.
‘Ouff!’ I lie there, breathless in the dirt with a bleating goat on my chest, wondering how much I’ll ache tomorrow.
Laurel, his work done in disarming me, starts to eat my hair.
At that moment, there’s the honk of a car horn from the gate. This is Shelby. With such perfect timing, it has to be. So, instead of greeting him in my nice clothes with my nice hair, I’m covered in straw, dirt, goat wee and poo.
Bev will be very cross when I tell her.
Chapter Eleven
By the time I’ve re-asserted my authority over the goats and have sorted them out, Lucas has gone to open the gate and let Shelby in. Already, this isn’t going quite as I’d imagined. I don’t know much about romance, but I’d thought that, having had an absence of nearly a week, we might rush straight into each other’s arms.
Instead, covered in goat and barn detritus, I approach Shelby rather more cautiously as he’s climbing out of his shiny red Bentley. From the day he first rocked up in it, that car is something that never ceases to look incongruous in my farmyard. He always looks out of place too with his swept back, dirty-blond hair, movie star looks and immaculate clothes. Shelby is tall and handsome. I think if you saw him in the street, even if you didn’t know he was a soap star, you’d think he was someone special. He has that air.
‘What the hell . . . ?’ Shelby says when he sees the state of me. The look of delight I had hoped for on his face is closer to horror.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Very sorry. Animal issues.’
‘What else?’ He shuts his car door with more of a slam than I think necessary.
Lucas, leaning on the gate, says, ‘Jesus, Molly. Even for you . . .’
‘I know. I know.’ I try brushing myself down, but I’m not sure how much difference it makes. Whatever the opposite is of ‘immaculately groomed’, I’m it. ‘I could have done with an extra pair of hands. Four tiny goats overpowered me.’
In fairness to Shelby, his eyes say that he might like to hug me, but his body is backing away from me.
‘I’ll take a quick shower,’ I promise – fully appreciating how easy it is for me to do that these days. ‘Dinner is ready. I won’t be five minutes.’
Shelby stifles a sigh. It’s obviously not the welcome he’d hoped for either – though it may have been the one he expected. I think Bev’s right when she says he likes to have top billing rather than be at the bottom behind alpacas, pigs, sheep, cats, dogs, horses, ducks, goats, hens, etc.
We head to the caravan and I try to keep downwind of him. Goat wee has a fragrance all of its own. When we’re inside, I say, ‘I’ll literally be five minutes. Help yourself to tea, a glass of plonk or whatever. I’ll dish up dinner when I’m back.’
I leave Shelby and Lucas looking awkward with each other.
In the bedroom, I strip off and realise that I don’t have any clean jeans or shirts. I go through at least one set of clothes a day and my mammoth laundry session was planned for tomorrow. As I jump into the shower, I wonder what I can wear. I can hardly go out there in my pyjamas. I quickly wash myself down, using a ton of minty shower gel to try to minimise the eau de goat wee. I do my hair too just in case Dumb’s aim wasn’t true. When I’m dry, I fling my wardrobe door open and look despairingly at the contents. The only thing still hanging there is the beautiful charity shop dress that I bought back in the summer for Shelby’s posh fundraiser. It’s a gorgeous wisp of a dress – black with pastel-coloured roses and with a floaty skirt. I put it on and feel a million dollars, if slightly overdressed for the occasion of Mexican-style wraps in a caravan.
I pull a brush through my wet hair – it will have to air-dry – and venture back out into the living area. Shelby and Lucas are sitting by the window, both of them on their phones. They look up when I enter and both of them seem rather startled.
‘Going somewhere nice?’ Shelby asks.
‘I’ve run out of clothes,’ I admit. ‘It was this or nothing.’
His smile and the twinkle in his eyes say that he might have liked it to be nothing but as Lucas is here – even if he is engrossed in social media once again – we check ourselves.