‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, and all eyes swivelled to Fergus. The dogs reacted with startled aggression, hurling themselves against the chicken wire.
‘Hey,’ Ginny said. ‘Manners. You want more hot dog? Quiet!’
Her last word was a roar. Three tails went between six back legs. ‘Sit,’ she said, and beamed as they sat. She promptly distributed more hot dog.
‘They’re Oscar’s dogs,’ he said on a note of discovery, and she grinned and climbed over the chicken wire.
‘I knew you were clever.’
‘Why are Oscar’s dogs here?’
‘Ginny always was fabulous with dogs,’ Richard managed, giving his sister a faint smile.
She bounded up the veranda steps, three at a time, reached the bed and gave her brother a hug.
‘I still am. I still will be. Weren’t they great?’
‘My daddy likes dogs,’ Madison said cautiously, and Richard smiled at his daughter.
‘Your daddy certainly does.’ He had to stop there-energy was fading as they watched-but some sort of link had definitely been made, Fergus thought.
‘Oscar had six dogs,’ he said, feeling his way.
Ginny plumped down on the step beside Madison and hauled her in so they were linked hard, side by side.
‘These are the good dogs. The others had to go to a home for bad dogs.’
Fergus stared at the dogs. He stared at Richard and then at Ginny and Madison. Then he turned to the nurse on duty. ‘Do you know what’s going on?’
‘You know Oscar’s agreed to stay in the nursing home?’ Tony asked, and Fergus nodded.
‘Yeah.’
‘The council ranger called at the place yesterday,’ Tony told him. ‘Ginny’s been feeding the dogs and caring for the stock in general. One of the neighbouring farmers has agreed to take on the sheep until things are sorted out but no one wants the dogs. Oscar’s said he doesn’t care, so the ranger told Ginny yesterday that he’d take them to…’ He hesitated and glanced at Madison. ‘To the dogs’ home.’
‘Right,’ Fergus said, still feeling his way. He looked at the way Ginny was hugging Madison and he thought, She’s changed. Something’s definitely changed.
Was it the way he thought about Ginny?
Sure, that had changed, but there was more. Until yesterday Ginny had treated Madison with kindness. She’d held her at the funeral. She’d treated her feet, she’d told her stories, she’d done the physical caring, but there’d been that tiny distancing. A professional distancing, he’d thought.
Today there was no such distance. Today she was hugging Madison as if she meant it.
‘I went over this morning,’ Ginny told him, still hugging Madison. ‘On the way back from…where I’d been. I knew the whippet-or sort of. Years ago, when we left our farm, Oscar took over our two dogs. He always liked a dog pack, even if he never trained them, and back then when I was a teenager it was either leave our dogs with Oscar or have them put down. The social worker who…who took me away said I didn’t have a choice.’ She gestured down to the whippet in the pen. ‘I’m guessing this one’s related. Anyway, I ran them all through their paces.’
‘Paces?’
He still sounded cautious, he thought, but it behoved him to be cautious. He’d come out here with plans for himself which just might include Ginny. But suddenly Ginny’s side of the equation didn’t look quite as uncomplicated as it had last night.
‘I fed them and took their food away halfway through their meal,’ she said. ‘I’d fed them last night so they weren’t all that hungry but, despite that, three of them tried to bite me. The other three looked at me like I was being mean but they let me do it. That was test one. I sat down with them for an hour and at the end of the hour I had the three non-biters on my knee, all telling me they were prepared to be devoted. The other three took themselves off to the other side of the yard and refused to be friendly.’
‘She’d gone over prepared to take on the whippet,’ Richard whispered into the silence. ‘Trust our Ginny to bring back three. Her heart’s bigger than the
He subsided. Fergus glanced at him, concerned, and gestured Tony to adjust the oxygen flow. Tony gave an almost imperceptible shrug, which told him a hundred per cent oxygen was already running.
Richard’s time was fast running out. Maybe a week, Fergus thought. Maybe less. He looked back at Ginny and saw the wash of pain cross her face. He knew that his diagnosis had found concurrence.
‘Is there anything you need?’ he asked softly, but he was asking the question more of Tony than of Richard. Richard had slumped into sleep. Soon his sleep would be more than that.
‘Things are fine,’ Ginny whispered, tugging Madison up onto her knee and burying her face in her hair. ‘Your daddy’s sick but he’s not hurting, is he, love? He’s gone to sleep now. Soon he’ll sleep all the time.’
‘My daddy and mummy are going to be together,’ Madison whispered, so softly that Fergus had to stoop to hear her. ‘But Ginny and the puppies will look after me.’
What…? Fergus stared down at Ginny as if she’d taken leave of her senses. ‘What are you saying?’ he asked, and she gave him a rueful smile.
‘What I ought to have been saying two weeks ago. The heart expands to fit all comers.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I went to Oscar’s to get a dog,’ she said. ‘One dog. Only two other dogs put their heads on my knee and I thought, OK, I can fit three dogs into my life.’
‘In your hospital apartment?’
‘Things might have to change.’
‘How?’
‘I think I might make a cup of tea,’ Tony announced into an atmosphere that was suddenly charged. ‘Does anyone else want a cup of tea?’
‘I’d love one,’ Ginny told him, and gave him a grateful smile.
‘You want to come with me?’ Tony asked Madison. ‘There’s cookies with smiley faces in the biscuit barrel.’
‘You’ve been making cookies?’ Fergus was so astounded that he almost barked the question, and Madison flinched at the unexpected noise. He winced. ‘Sorry,’ he told the little girl. ‘I didn’t know your… I didn’t know Ginny knew how to make cookies.’
‘I don’t,’ Ginny agreed. ‘One of the neighbours brought over a bunch of baking. But I might learn.’
‘You might learn.’ He stood, feeling winded, while Tony gathered Madison up and carried her into the house. Richard had seemingly drifted into a deep, untroubled sleep. There was suddenly only Fergus and Ginny.
And the future?
Ginny was silent. Fergus hesitated, then sat on the step beside Ginny and stared out over the yard. The dogs had slumped into a pile of canine contentment in the shade of a cotoneaster. Ginny looked as if she was watching them.
Maybe she was, but who knew what she was seeing?
They remained silent for a couple of minutes. Ginny didn’t seem inclined to talk and Fergus was struggling to find the right words. He didn’t know the right words.
‘Ginny…’ he said softly at last, and she nodded.
‘Mmm?’
‘Last night was fantastic.’
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ she agreed, and there was a note of smugness in her voice that had him taken aback.
‘You agree?’
‘Mind-blowing sex,’ she said in satisfaction. ‘If I’d known that was what I’d needed to jolt me out of my misery, I’d have had it years ago. Mind, it’s a bit hard to find. Mind-blowing sex, that is.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said faintly.
‘You don’t know how hard it is to find? You haven’t been looking?’
‘Ginny…’
Her smile faded. ‘It was fantastic,’ she said softly. ‘And not just the sex. Thank you, Fergus.’
‘You’re thanking me?’
‘I surely am.’
