LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 7

       Present Day

      “Jane? Have you got a minute?” I’m elbow deep in dried dog food when Sheila calls my name. She’s standing in the doorway of the supplies room with a woman I’ve never seen before. Unlike Sheila, who’s nearly six feet tall and all bosom and bum, the woman standing next to her is tiny. She’s barely five feet tall and her Green Fields’ standard issue navy polo shirt hangs flat from her shoulders, skimming her non-existent chest. Her grey trousers nearly cover the toes of her black trainers.

      “Of course.” I stand up, tip the scoop into one of the twenty metal bowls on the table to my right, then wipe my hands on my trousers and cross the room.

      “Jane, this is Angharad, one of the new volunteers. Angharad, this is Jane; she runs the dog section.”

      “Hi!” I smile at the newcomer. From a distance, she looked about nineteen, but, up close, I can see she’s nearer my age. She tucks a strand of her neat bob behind an ear as she smiles up at me.

      “Hi.” She holds out a hand and I shake it.

      “Angharad’s between jobs at the moment,” Sheila says, “so she thought she’d do a bit of volunteering while she’s looking for something permanent. She particularly requested the dog section – a big dog lover, apparently.”

      “Great.” I smile at Angharad.

      “Okay, so, I’ll leave you to it, then.” Sheila nods then turns to leave.

      “You said you came to work by bike; do you live nearby?” Angharad asks as we speed past Freddy and head towards the wild boar pen up near the top field.

      “In a cottage down the road. I can see Green Fields from my back garden.”

      “Wow, that is close. Have you worked here long?”

      “Three years, give or take.”

      I’m giving her the official guided tour of the sanctuary. She’ll already have been shown around when she attended the volunteer evening, but I’d rather chat as we walk than stand opposite each other in the silence of the supplies room.

      “Where did you train?”

      “Bicton, near Exeter. I did a Foundation Degree in Animal Science Management and Welfare when I was twenty-five.”

      “You were a mature student, then?”

      I can tell by the expression on her face that she’s waiting for me to go into more detail, to explain what I did before my degree and why I waited until I was twenty-five to study animal welfare, but I ignore her unspoken questions. Instead I point at the pigs. They greet us with a series of increasingly noisy grunts and squeals as we approach them.

      “Bill and Ben. I shouldn’t imagine you’ll have anything to do with them if you’re going to spend most of your time in the dog compound, but watch out for them if anyone asks you to help out. They’re half wild boar,” I explain. “We’re not sure what they’re crossed with, and they’re a damned sight more dangerous than they look. Clever, too.”

      Angharad gestures towards the multiple locks, clips and chains on their pen. “That’s a lot of locks.”

      “They’ve escaped several times since they arrived, but I think we’ve outfoxed them. They’re vicious buggers, too. Turn your back on them for a second and they’ll bite you. That’s why we always lock them in their shed if we’re cleaning their run, and vice versa. They locked me in, once.”

      She laughs and I’m astonished by the way it transforms her. Gone is the studious look of concentration that’s been etched on her face since we were introduced. Her laugh’s a snorty chuckle, so infectious I find myself laughing, too.

      “You’re kidding?” she says as the laughter dies away.

      “I’m not. I was cleaning their shed on my own, the door was closed, and one of them flipped the stable catch over with his nose, locking me in. I had to reach over with a broom and flip it back to get out.”

      “You don’t think they did it on purpose?”

      “Who knows? I don’t know much about boars and pigs. At least with dogs you can predict how they’re likely to react, most of the time, anyway.”

      “If only it was that easy with people.” She gives me a sideways glance. I don’t meet her gaze.

      “Quite.” I gesture for her to follow me back down the track. “They’re harder to figure out than the pigs.”

      “So?” Sheila asks as I reach into the fridge for my lunch box. “How’s she getting on?”

      “Angharad?” I sit down on one of the hard plastic chairs that line the staffroom wall, and pop open a Tupperware lid. The scent of warm cheese and tomato sandwiches drifts, unappealingly, upwards. I should have taken Will up on his offer of a slice of cheesecake for my packed lunch. “She’s okay. She was pretty quiet when she started, but now she’s warmed up there’s no shutting her up. She’s full of questions. Gets on with her work, though. She didn’t complain when she had to clean up Jasper’s sick or spend an hour in the laundry washing blankets and bedding.”

      “You think she’ll be back tomorrow?”

      “I think so. She did seem keen to get stuck in.”

      I take a bite of my sandwich as Sheila taps away at the computer in a corner of the room, but then subtly spit it into a tissue. The bread is soggy from the damp tomato. Not that I’ve got much of an appetite, anyway. Other than a couple of bites of cheesecake, I’ve barely eaten since yesterday morning.

      “She was very keen to work with you, you know.”

      “Sorry?”

      “Angharad,” Sheila says. “When she came to the volunteer night, she specifically requested that she work with you.”

      “Really?”

      “Yeah. She asked who worked in the dog compound, and when I listed everyone’s names, she said, ‘I’d like to work with Jane, if I could.’”

      I look up sharply. “Why would she say that?”

      Sheila stops typing and glances at me over her shoulder. “Who knows? Maybe she saw your name in the local paper when we had the fundraising? Maybe you helped one of her friends adopt a dog? Your guess is as good as mine.”

      The computer bleeps and Sheila twists back to look at it then swears under her breath.

      “Why do people do that?”

      “Do what?” I wrap the cellophane back around my sandwich and put it back in the box.

      “Enter spam into the contact form on our website. What’s the point? It’s not like I’m going to click on their stupid impotence pill links, or whatever. I mean, look, this one’s just ridiculous; it doesn’t even make sense. ‘Daisy’s not dead.’ What does that even mean? Is that an animal? Wasn’t there a ferret called Daisy?”

      The Tupperware box clatters to the floor as I stand up. I cross the room as though in a dream and peer over Sheila’s shoulder at the computer. The email software is open.

      “See?” She points at the screen. “There it is. ‘Daisy’s not dead.’ That’s all it says. Weird, isn’t it?

      “Jane? Where are you going? What’s wrong?” Her voice follows me as I run from the room and head for the toilet, one hand clutched to my

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