“Well, look more like one,” I instruct him. “Put the hat on and roll your sleeves up a bit more so I can see the veins on your forearms.” I pause. “Would it be okay for you to be bare-chested?” At his look of horror, I dismiss that. “No, you’re right. Shirtsleeves up and try to look moody rather than sleepy and grumpy.”
“I wasn’t aware when we set out tonight that I’d be re-enacting Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”
“I love it when you think you're funny. Okay, smile.” I hold up the camera and snap a few pictures. Then I pull up my gallery. “These are great,” I say happily. “They’ll love them.”
“Who will love them?” he asks, sounding fairly alarmed.
“The men and women who are your customers on your practice’s website.”
“Oz, the customers are the animals.”
I wave a careless hand. “I don’t think so. Theo and I had a look at your website the other week when he came for supper, and we agreed it was boring, so we did something.”
“Did what?” He definitely sounds alarmed and pulls his own phone out. I know he’s found it when he groans. “Oh my God, what is that photo?”
“Which one?” He holds up his phone, showing the picture on the homepage. The image is of Silas in jeans and a green polo shirt smiling down at a red setter. “Oh, that’s a good one. I didn’t know whether it was the one of Theo dealing with the kittens.”
“There’s one of Theo too?” he says faintly.
“There is.” I click a few buttons on my phone. “Done. ‘A Very Happy Christmas from Silas Ashworth.’ I could have said ‘from one of The Hunky Vets’, as you and Theo are being called, but that’s overkill.”
“Oh my God,” he says faintly. “You’re doing that right now?”
“Yep. And Theo reports that traffic is up on your site by seventy-five percent.”
“Why did nobody tell me?”
“Because you have the IT ability of a caveman.”
He considers that for a second and then nods. “Okay, that’s fair.” He looks down at his phone. “Up by seventy-five percent, eh? We might be able to afford a holiday after all.”
“Okay, Rockefeller. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
He comes and hugs me. “That’s never going to happen when I have you by my side. I know I’m going in the right direction when I’m with you.”
I kiss him back. “The same for me,” I say softly, but when rustling sounds in the stall behind us, I push him gently. “Go make some money, baby. Oz needs something pretty.”
He shakes his head in disgust, and I settle happily back on my hay bale, pulling up the Kindle app on my phone and going back to the book I’ve been reading this week.
The barn settles into a silence broken only by the howl of the wind outside and the low murmurs of Silas in the background, and I only realise that I’ve fallen asleep when Silas calls my name and I jerk awake.
I stumble over to the stall, massaging my neck which is stiff after sleeping at an awkward angle on a hay bale. “What is it?” I ask sleepily.
“The foal’s coming,” he says. “I didn’t want you to miss it, Pika.”
Nutmeg is lying on the floor, looking agitated. Silas is next to her. He looks tired and hot but also very calm. He strokes the horse, his big hand looking somehow comforting. The horse whinnies and strains and her tail raises and all of a sudden I see it.
“Ooh look, I can see tiny hooves,” I say.
He smiles. “Here he comes.”
Steadily, two long legs appear, and then as the horse pushes, more of the foal appears, ensconced in the birth sac, which looks very similar to a white bag. Silas immediately pushes his fingers into it, freeing the baby foal’s face from the birth sac. “Easy, girl,” he says in a low, kind voice. “Nearly done.” The mare gives one last heave, and the foal slithers out.
“Ugh!” I say decisively as a gush of fluid emerges.
Silas grins at me. “Do you need to go and sit in the waiting room and smoke a cigar?”
“I need to go and hurl,” I say, but I watch curiously as he eases the foal gently out of its birth sac. The baby foal starts to move and struggle to get up, its skinny legs quivering, and as Silas attends to the mother, she sniffs curiously at the baby, nosing him until he stands unaided.