Page 33 of A New Family at Puddleduck Farm (Puddleduck Farm #6)

Emilia sounded pleased when Phoebe phoned to thank her for their hospitality and she agreed not to say anything to Carmel about the possibility of her boyfriend being a cat breeder.

‘Pfff. She does not listen to any criticism of Mr Slimy Balls, so I do not mention his name!’ she muttered.

Phoebe wondered whether to tell her the usual expression was Slimeball, but she decided against it. Mr Slimy Balls was so much more evocative an insult.

Luckily Emilia didn’t seem to have made the same connection between Carmel’s boyfriend having a cat-breeding enterprise and her own missing kittens. But then she probably wasn’t aware of the dark underworld of kitten-milling operations.

Maggie was outraged when Phoebe and Sam took Lily and Roxie to see her at the bungalow on Sunday afternoon and told her what was going on. The snow had all but gone now, only the odd sprinkling in sheltered corners evidence that it had ever been there.

‘The audacity of the man. Do you think the cleaner’s in on it too? Or is she just being used as a pawn by Mr Slimy Balls?’ She’d agreed with Phoebe that this was a much better insult than the proper English expression.

‘Emilia seemed to think Carmel was a nice girl, but I guess we don’t really know.’

Phoebe paced up and down Maggie’s kitchen, which was filled with the meaty smells of mince and gravy simmering in a pan on the stove. Pacing around Maggie’s kitchen was getting to be a habit.

She glanced into the saucepan as she passed. ‘Why are you cooking mince? Have you given up being vegetarian? Or is that for Eddie?’

‘It’s for the dogs,’ Eddie told her from his position at the table. ‘I’m not a big meat eater these days…’

‘I’ve been banned from boiling tripe in the kitchen,’ Maggie interrupted him. ‘He doesn’t like the smell.’

‘I don’t blame him,’ Phoebe said as both she and Sam screwed up their faces in distaste at the memory.

‘Lightweights, the lot of you,’ Maggie said, but she was smiling. Phoebe was pretty sure she didn’t much like the smell either and the dogs certainly wouldn’t be complaining about getting Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference mince instead.

‘Give it a stir while you’re up there, can you, Phoebe?

’ Maggie added. ‘In fact, you can probably turn the gas off.’ She currently had Lily on her lap and in between the adult chatter she was communing with her great-granddaughter.

‘You’re not a lightweight, are you, my darling?

I bet you wouldn’t mind a little bit of stinky tripe cooking! ’

‘Gah,’ Lily shouted. ‘Gah. Goh Gah. Gra!’

‘Precisely,’ Maggie said. ‘I couldn’t agree more.’ She glanced at Phoebe. ‘Her first word’s going to be Great-Gran, I’d say.’

Phoebe didn’t disillusion her. She checked out the mince which was cooked and switched off the gas before turning back towards them all. ‘The question is, what do we do next? It’s still all just circumstantial, isn’t it?’ Phoebe counted things off on her fingers.

‘We know Slimy Balls was planning to resell the Puddleduck kittens that he said were for his sister – although we can’t prove that because we didn’t get a screenshot of his advert. And even if we had, it wouldn’t stand up – he could argue they were different kittens, just similar looking.’

She sighed. ‘We know Oscar was living somewhere else – and very likely fathered some kittens, but we can’t prove that definitively either. And we can’t prove any definitive link between him and Slimy Balls either. He might not have had him at all.

‘And we know he had the opportunity to steal Emilia’s kittens but we can’t prove that either. Even with the DNA test it’s not 100 per cent without the mother. Arghhh.’ She made a frustrated gesture with her hands.

‘One thing we do know for sure,’ Sam said, ‘is that he’s a breeder with dubious practices. He lets kittens go before they’re old enough to leave their mother and without being vaccinated. But that’s not going to land him in jail. More’s the pity.’

‘Carmel’s the key to all this,’ Maggie said firmly.

‘She’s going to know a lot more about him and his nefarious activities than anyone else so we need to get Carmel on side.

Or not – as the case may be. And in order to do that we’ll need to tell Emilia what we think is going on.

’ She looked at Phoebe. ‘You’re the best person to do that. She trusts you, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes, I think she does. But then what do we do?’

‘We decide whether Carmel’s loyalty lies with her boyfriend or her employer. That’s what we’ll do, isn’t it, darling?’ She bounced Lily up and down and she squealed in delight. ‘That’s the way forward.’

‘And then what?’ Phoebe asked.

‘Give me a chance. I haven’t got as far as that yet.’ Maggie shot her a look.

‘I know what we can do.’ Eddie spoke for the first time in a while. He’d been looking at the sports pages of a newspaper that was lying on the kitchen table.

They all looked at him.

‘We can have a sponsored walk,’ he said, nodding his head in agreement with himself. ‘They’re good fundraisers.’

Phoebe blew out a breath, remembering what Maggie had said about her husband turning off his hearing aids when he didn’t want to participate in a conversation. Had Eddie even been listening at all?

* * *

During the latter half of January, the plan for the proposed Mission Cat Rescue inched forward.

Phoebe went to see Emilia and told her everything they had found out so far.

Emilia suggested immediately that they tell Rufus everything too.

Then they could all decide on the best way to proceed.

Maggie got involved with these discussions too.

As she was fond of telling Phoebe, her middle name was ‘devious’ and she didn’t have to stay whiter than white like Phoebe did, because she didn’t have a vet practice to run and a reputation to worry about.

Sam didn’t get as involved as either of them, although he listened to Phoebe’s updates with interest. It was impossible to get too involved with anything else or even give it much headspace when he was still so hands-on with Lily.

Phoebe had gone back to work full time and that was working out well, but his plan to go back to Hendrie’s on Wednesdays and Thursdays while Maggie and Eddie and Jan and Louella helped out with Lily wasn’t working out quite as well.

Life kept throwing up curve balls. Ma had a flu bug for two of her Wednesdays, and then she passed it on to his pa too, so that scuppered a third one.

Louella had had to cancel one of her days too, thanks to car trouble.

Sam had picked up the slack every time. It was much easier for him to juggle commitments than it was for Phoebe to try to arrange cover for her appointments. Puddleduck Vets was more than busy enough for three vets, especially as Seth was only supposed to be part time.

Maggie and Eddie were fairly reliable Saturday babysitters, but they couldn’t do every one so Sam had put most of his plans on hold.

He’d already ended up having to cancel two appointments he’d made to go and talk to Marjorie Turner at Brook Riding School, and his plans for setting up any private tutoring at Puddleduck were firmly on the back burner.

Every time he brought Ninja into the stable at night and rugged him up, with Lily watching from her buggy, buttoned up warmly in her hat and coat, he felt guilty.

Not so much for his daughter, who loved these excursions, but for his thoroughbred cross, who was growing flabbier and more unfit by the day.

‘We’ll get back into exercise one of these days,’ he told his horse. ‘I promise.’

Ninja would blow softly on his hands and accept a treat with gentlemanly grace, but it didn’t alleviate Sam’s guilt.

It didn’t help that the latter half of January had been beautiful.

There had been no more snow but crisp cold mornings with clear blue skies greeted Sam every time he went outside.

Frost sparkled across the Puddleduck fields and spiders’ webs strung across bushes, glittered like little silver masterpieces.

Forest rides had become a distant memory.

Sam missed the peace of the forest. The time to think when it was just him and his horse.

Puddleduck Farm was rarely peaceful. The comings and goings of clients to the vet or the comings and goings of Natasha and the visitors and volunteers meant there were aways people around.

In a bid to help out Phoebe, Sam had also agreed to be chief overseer of the dog field. What this meant in reality was that he kept an eye on who was coming and going and made sure that it matched with who was supposed to be coming and going, according to the booking website.

This was possible because hirers had to put their car registration on the booking forms as well as to say how many dogs they were bringing. People were fairly good and respected the other field users. Sam hadn’t yet had to sort out any disputes.

He also restocked the coffee and tea supplies that were in the shed, emptied the honesty box, cleared the field of dog toys if any had been left out, and locked up the gate every night.

The worst bit was making sure the field stayed dog poo free.

There was a lidded dustbin just inside the entrance which had to be emptied daily.

Sam was used to clearing donkey and horse manure from the neddie field but dog poo was in a league all of its own.

A very smelly league. It was a horrible dirty job that Sam would never have let Phoebe do.

Sometimes, when he was carting bin liners from the dustbin to be disposed of, Sam consoled himself with the thought that although much of his life these days seemed to consist of clearing up poo, it was all done in the name of love.

He’d often thought the same thing when he was changing Lily’s nappy. Love wasn’t about flowers and chocolates, although he had taken Phoebe for a wonderfully romantic meal out on Valentine’s Day and the house was full of roses.