‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ Jackie asked as they plodded towards the clinic. The street was nearly deserted. Even the passing cars seemed listless.
‘Sitting inside with the curtains closed and the air conditioner on if this insane heat continues,’ Claire replied.
‘How festive.’ Jackie made a face. ‘Are you working?’
She wasn’t. Claire always volunteered to work over Christmas, as well as at Easter and on public holidays. After all, she reasoned, she was single and didn’t have children – it was better that her colleagues with families were able to spend the holidays with them. The cases were invariably more interesting on days when most other vet clinics were closed too. On Labour Day back in October, one of the sweet old geldings from the riding stables at nearby Moore Park had presented with severe colic and Claire had saved his life with emergency abdominal surgery.
And, besides, if she was working she had a legitimate reason to say no to Vanessa every time she begged Claire to go back to Bindallarah. She thought guiltily about the unreturned messages from her aunt on her voicemail, the unopened emails in her inbox. She would get to them. Soon.
But this year, James, the practice manager, had ruined her plans by insisting she take three weeks off.
‘Actually, no,’ Claire said. ‘James won’t let me. Something about having accrued too much annual leave. Today’s my last day until the new year.’
Jackie gave a low whistle. ‘Wow. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall for that conversation,’ she said with a chuckle.
Claire shot her friend a sharp look. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ Jackie said, holding up her hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘It’s just . . . you’re not especially fond of being told what to do, Claire. You were that kid who was always backchatting the teachers, right?’
Jackie was smiling, but Claire’s chest tightened as in her mind’s eye she suddenly saw herself as a skinny sixteen-year-old, cowering in the gloomy, oak-panelled principal’s office at St Columba’s. Her skin prickled at the memory of the thick wool dress and matching blazer, which had to be worn on even the hottest days. Sister Hilaria’s shrill admonitions still echoed in her ears.
‘Anyway,’ Jackie said slowly when Claire didn’t respond, ‘you’re not seriously telling me you’re going to spend your entire Christmas break sitting in your sad little unit?’
‘Excuse me, my apartment is not —’
‘Your bedroom window looks out over the bins.’ Jackie cut her off. ‘It smells like three-day-old Chinese takeaway in there.’
‘It does not smell —’
‘Why don’t you go back to Blendawilla and see your boyfriend?’
They reached the clinic and Claire jerked the door open with more force than was strictly necessary, making the red-and-gold Christmas bells the receptionists had strung up jingle wildly. The blast of refrigerated air that enveloped her as she stepped inside did little to cool her rising temperature – but it was no longer the afternoon heat that was causing her cheeks to flush.
‘It’s Bindallarah,’ she hissed, causing several clients sitting in the waiting room to turn and stare. ‘And Scotty Shannon is not my boyfriend.’
Claire stalked away and used her shoulder to shove through the double doors that led into the clinic’s hospital. She considered hiding in a stall to eat her lunch in peace, but sick horses could be irate at the best of times and weren’t likely to be thrilled to have to share their quarters with an agitated vet and a smelly sandwich. She went to her office instead.
So did Jackie. ‘You do realise,’ she said, ‘that your reaction just now makes me more inclined to keep bugging you about your alleged non-boyfriend, not less?’ She perched on the edge of Claire’s desk. ‘So you might as well just tell me. What’s the deal?’
Claire took a too-large bite of her panini and chewed slowly. She knew Jackie wouldn’t leave her alone until she told her something but, damn it, at least she could make her wait.
‘There’s no deal,’ Claire said at last.
Jackie rolled her eyes.
‘I mean it,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re just friends. Old friends who are back in touch after a few years apart and who chat every now and then.’
‘I think you mean “starcross’d lovers who were mad about each other for five years”.’ Jackie crossed her arms and smirked. ‘It’s been six months since you reconnected online. Why don’t you just ask him out IRL?’
Claire frowned. ‘IRL?’
‘In real life,’ Jackie said slowly, as if explaining the alphabet to a toddler.
‘It wasn’t five years. We were together in high school, but only for a month or so. Then I didn’t see him again until I was eighteen when we were at university together and it was all over within a couple of years.’
‘But you were crazy in love with the guy. That doesn’t just disappear.’
Claire paused. She couldn’t deny that some of what Jackie said was true. She and Scotty had exchanged a handful of chatty emails since he’d accepted her Facebook ‘friend request’ minutes after she’d sent it on that bleak night back in June. And they had loved each other once, deeply. But that was a long time ago. It might as well have been a different lifetime. Claire had grown up; she was no longer the frightened twenty-year-old who broke Scotty’s heart. He was almost her friend again.
She wasn’t sure she deserved it, but when he allowed her back into his life she felt redeemed. She wasn’t about to ruin that by imagining there could ever be anything more between them than friendship. There was also the not insignificant fact that Scotty hadn’t so much as hinted
