A Christmas Tail: A heart-warming Christmas romance. Cressida McLaughlin

sure you can do it,’ she said slowly, ‘but there are lots of things to consider. Lots. How much you’ll charge, how many dogs you can walk at a time. Do the owners let their dogs have treats? If so, what kind and how often? Will you pick them all up from their houses? Will they get on with each other? And think of all the poo you’ll have to pick up. It won’t be a walk in the park.’

      ‘Ha ha.’

      ‘What, I – oh!’ Polly grinned. ‘It’s true, though. I know you’ll think things through, but you can be…’

      ‘Impulsive, spontaneous?’

      ‘Excitable, a bit like a dog.’

      Cat threw a cushion at her. ‘I get that I need to think about it like a business, but I’m excited, Pol. As excited as I was about moving here, finally getting to live with you. I think I can do this, and at the very least I can test the water, see if anyone nearby would be interested in a dog walker – other than Elsie, of course.’

      ‘You won’t charge her, will you?’

      ‘I said I wouldn’t, but she insists on it. She’ll be my first client and I’ll give her a special OAP rate.’ Cat sipped her wine and beamed, feeling a swell of something like accomplishment, even though all they’d really done was come up with an idea and the hard work was ahead of her.

      ‘Well, I think it’s pretty inventive,’ Polly said. ‘Inspirational, almost.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Yes. You may not have intended to leave your job today—’

      ‘Get booted out, you mean?’

      ‘But,’ Polly continued, holding up a finger, ‘this could be better. And you’ll have a nearly trained veterinary nurse on hand, should anything go hideously wrong.’

      ‘What’s going to go hideously wrong?’ Joe sloped into the room, sat next to Polly and poured himself a glass of red wine. He was in his usual work outfit of jeans and a hoody, the current one navy with an orange goldfish on the front, his short hair sticking up in unruly tufts as if his day had involved a lot of head scratching.

      ‘There’s a tsunami heading towards Fairview beach. Think of the carnage it’s going to cause.’

      Joe sat up, almost spilling his wine. ‘What? Who said anything about a tsunami?’

      ‘Calm down,’ Polly said, pushing gently against his chest. ‘Cat was having you on. No tsunami.’

      ‘Right.’ Joe glared at Cat and she grinned. Joe and Polly could almost be twins. They were both blond-haired and blue-eyed, Polly’s frame almost as slender as a boy’s, but Joe’s blond was more strawberry than ash. Cat had never found him unnerving, only annoying. ‘So what’s going to go wrong?’ he asked.

      ‘Cat’s new business venture – except it’s not, but if it does, then I’ll be on hand.’

      ‘To offer moral support?’ Joe noticed Polly’s feet up on the coffee table, and gently nudged them onto the floor.

      ‘To provide medical assistance.’

      ‘Are we going back to the tsunami? Why would you need medical assistance? Do your techniques work on people as well as animals?’ Joe rubbed his forehead.

      ‘Not for the people, silly,’ Polly said, ‘for the dogs.’

      ‘Dogs?’ Joe sat up again, this time keeping careful control of his wine. ‘What dogs?’ There was an edge of panic in his voice that Cat might have found amusing, except that it was his aversion to dogs that was stopping her from having one of her own at Primrose Terrace.

      ‘All dogs.’ Cat threw her arms up. ‘I’m going to walk the dogs of Fairview. I’m going to look after them all, from chihuahuas to Great Danes, give them exercise and love and the freedom they deserve, and I’m going to get paid for it!’

      Joe took a sip of wine, his movements slow and measured. Cat had, in the two months she’d been living there, discovered that this meant he was formulating an argument, considering his point carefully before he expressed it. Spontaneity was not Joe’s thing. Cat was expecting a carefully crafted attack on all things canine. It didn’t come.

      ‘So your time at the nursery,’ he said softly, ‘it’s…come to an end?’

      ‘How did you know?’

      ‘I didn’t. But…it seemed slightly inevitable.’

      ‘Why?’

      Joe gave a quick smile. ‘Because every time I asked about your day, you gave me an elaborate description of all the things you wished you’d been doing with the children – some of which would have got you sued, by the way – because the real answer was too boring to talk about. I guessed that you weren’t that happy there. Sorry if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’

      ‘Stick,’ Polly said. ‘Ha ha!’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Y’know, dog walking, stick…we’re collecting dog puns.’

      ‘Not intentionally,’ Cat said. ‘But you’re right, I didn’t last at the nursery.’

      Since she’d been living there, it had become an evening ritual. Cat would tell Joe all the things she wished they’d been doing at the nursery, and Joe, a freelance illustrator, would go on about how wonderfully cooperative his clients were to begin with, and how it would take him half a day to lovingly create a drawing of a single person, only to be told by the client that they looked too angry, or too insipid, or too posh. Joe was currently working on websites, marketing and branding for small companies and, at the moment, a local magazine that was probably the cause of the hair pulling.

      ‘Whose decision?’ Joe asked.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Did you jump, or were you pushed?’

      The room fell into silence, thoughts drifting up towards the high ceiling as Cat tried to conjure up the best way of explaining what had happened. She didn’t need to.

      ‘Cat took Disco to the nursery in her handbag, and she escaped during music time. It gave the children more excitement than Miss Knickers-too-tight could handle.’ Polly poured more wine, put her feet back on the table and took them off again at Joe’s instant glare.

      ‘You took a puppy into a nursery in a handbag?’ He narrowed his eyes.

      Cat nodded.

      ‘And expected chaos not to rain down upon you?’

      ‘I was hopeful.’

      ‘You were deluded. No wonder she fired you.’

      Cat pressed her lips together and gave a small nod. ‘Maybe. But look where it’s led me.’

      ‘What, to a bottle of wine and some pie-in-the-sky idea about becoming the local Dr Dolittle?’

      ‘Hey!’

      ‘Joe,’ Polly chided, ‘that’s not fair. If Cat sets her mind to it, then I think she can do it.’

      ‘Well, I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.’ He raised his glass, and Polly and Cat did the same, though Cat could see amusement glimmering behind Joe’s serious expression. His rather large ginger cat, Shed, took the opportunity to stalk into the room, shaking out his back feet in turn as if discarding distasteful footwear, and positioning himself on the coffee table. He nudged the bottle of wine close to the edge with his tail.

      ‘How come Shed’s allowed on the table and not my feet?’ Polly asked. This was not a new argument, and Shed gave her a look that said just that: I’m allowed, you’re not. Get over it.

      Joe shrugged. ‘It’s harder to get him to behave than you.’

      ‘So your battles are based