Village Vets by Anthony Bennett

Author:Anthony Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

We had a student intern, Emily, who came to work with us at the Berry clinic, so we offered her our spare room to stay in. The day she started she drove direct from Sydney in the morning, did the day’s work, and then headed to our place to settle in. I had touch footy and tennis that night so I wasn’t going home after work and neither were Izzo or Hef. I drew a map for Emily and told her that her bedroom was the last on the left at the end of the hall.

‘Great, can I have a key?’ she asked.

‘We don’t lock the house. We don’t even have a key. There’s only Turtle, but he’s a big pussycat.’

‘Oh, okay. All right. No problems.’ Being a city kid, she seemed a bit put off by that but trundled off gamely. She was asleep by the time I got home.

Next morning I took myself off for a jog and didn’t see her again until we were back at the clinic, where she seemed to have an urgent need to tell me about something. But she appeared wary. Suspicious even. She waited until Trish and Geoff were around to back her up before coming out with it.

‘You and Izzo are fond of animals, are you?’ she said, half-smiling, half-frowning.

‘Well, yeah, we’re vets aren’t we? What’s up?’

‘When I arrived last night, I wasn’t sure which house it was, so I drove past a couple of times. I didn’t think it could be your place because, like, the front door was wide open. I could kind of understand you leaving the place unlocked but leaving the door wide open seemed a bit, like, seriously loose.’

‘I didn’t leave it open,’ I said. ‘It was probably Izzo. He is seriously loose.’

‘Well, anyway, I got my bags and came in. I still didn’t know if I had the right place, and as soon as I went through that door I really hoped I had the wrong address. There was horse shit all the way down the hallway. I’m like, “Oh my God, what have I got myself into here? What are these guys into?”’

I looked at Trish and Geoff with an expression that said, ‘I don’t know what she’s talking about. She’s mad.’ And they looked at me with furrowed brows and almost embarrassed smiles as Emily continued her tale, skirting that fine line between telling a funny story and totally alienating her new boss and housemate whom she’d only known for a day. ‘I called out but there was no answer so I came down the hallway and got to the kitchen. Then I heard a noise coming from a bedroom. I was so scared. I wanted to, like, grab a knife but that would have been a bit weird, since I didn’t know whether or not I was the intruder. Anyway, I snuck up to the door and peeked around the corner and there, standing on the bed, was a Shetland pony . .

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