The Impossible Search for the Perfect Man by Debbie Howells/Susie Martyn Read Free Book Online Page B

unconditional
effort that Leonie so generously does.  It’s not a welcome thought, but
maybe our relationship wasn’t as great as I’d assumed.   Maybe, like
Emma, I too made a mistake.  I mean, far from falling apart, I seem to be
managing just fine without him. 
    On that less than comfortable note, I
fall asleep.

5
     
     
     
    The next morning is clear and
sunny.  The kind when you’d like to pause for a moment and believe that
summer is just around the corner, but today – no way.  From the word go,
it’s so hectic, there’s barely time to think.  It
all kicks off with Miles, who was summoned to a riding school at the crack of
dawn to a horse with a suspected fracture. For a horse,
that’s life threatening and the owner will be worried out of his mind.  Meanwhile Emma has spent most of last night sitting in a stable with an
in-foal mare in a very sorry state and has had about an hour’s sleep, if
that.  And now, just to top it all, Beamish has phoned in sick. 
Gastric flu, he says, sounding extremely sorry for himself .  Hmm.   It might just possibly have been the
whisky.  So, while Emma is catching forty winks in an empty stable, it’s
just Marcus and a rather full diary.
    ‘Okay,’ he starts.  ‘Let’s sort
this out.  This yard here.’   He points to
the first entry.  ‘It’s all vaccinations and other routine stuff. 
Can you phone them and say I’ve been called out to an emergency and will be
over this afternoon?  Miles can cover this one.’ He points to the next
entry in the diary. ‘It’s just down the road from where he is now, and I’ll get
started on the rest.  Think I’ll take Sam, it might speed things up a
bit.  Give Emma another hour’s sleep and ask her
to call me.’
    And with that, he’s striding out of the
office, wasting no time at all.  Gosh.  How jolly masterful.  I
feel ever so slightly inadequate.  Uncharacteristically quiet, Agnes
raises her eyebrows at me.
    The afternoon gets better though. A very
pretty Shetland called Lucy comes in for an ultrasound, and we all spend ages
making a huge fuss of her.  She’s followed by a very shouty little pony
with an equally gobby owner, who’s unfortunately in no hurry to leave. 
Paris cruises by (cerise jodhpurs and classic raybans, hair screwed up in a
sort of pineapple thing on top of her head) but stays all of about ten seconds
once she’s sniffed out the absence of testosterone. 
    Miles has sorted out his fracture, which
ended up in the nearest equine hospital and which being Miles, he’s frightfully
worried about.  Emma by now is fully revived and perky as ever, after an
hour’s sleep on a bale of hay.  How do vets do that?  Mind you,
pilots do it too.  They can sleep anytime, anywhere it would seem - particularly in my ex-husband’s case.  But
keeping my mind firmly focused on work, I’ve no doubt Beamish will be back in the morning - right as rain - and we’ll be back on track.
Marcus, to my surprise, is working his socks off.  I’m not easily
impressed, but dare I say it, without him, today would have been a
nightmare. 
    Just before I leave, there’s the roar of
a very expensive-sounding engine from outside, followed by the clip-clop of
very high, very pointy heels as Amanda M-T makes her way into our office for
just about the first time ever.
    ‘ Hellair ,’ she says in that silly
way that posh people do, as she flips her highlights over her shoulder. 
‘Do I need to register?  Not me personally of course…’ and she giggles in
a girly way as if no-one’s ever said that before, which they have, of course,
gazillions of times.
    Agnes steps forward.  ‘Good evening
Mrs Mankly-Talbot.  Can I take it you have a horse that you’d like us to
look at?’
    It transpires that Amanda and Dick have
bought Paris a little show-jumper.  Only a little one.  
And it only cost thirty five thousand, she tells us, because after all, Paris
does still have the sweet little horse she won at