Five Winters(59)

I smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

Together we carried Blazer to the kennels, where I’d be able to keep an eye on him for the next couple of hours and feed him a small meal once he was fully awake.

“I’ll text you Jake’s details in case you don’t have any luck with the school, shall I?” Clive asked on his way out again.

“Yes, please, that would be great. Thanks so much, Clive. I owe you.”

“Well, actually,” he said, “you could do me a favour on Saturday if you’re free? Jasper and I are meant to be visiting a care home to do some therapy duty, but Cara’s coming home from university, and she’s begged me to go and fetch her. I could cancel, but I hate to let them down this close to Christmas.”

Jasper was Clive’s three-year-old cocker spaniel. With Clive’s help, he regularly volunteered as a therapy dog, spreading joy to elderly residents of care homes, many of whom had had to give up their pets when they moved in. Giving Jasper a good fuss was the next best thing for them.

“Of course I will. Just give me the details, and I’ll be there.”

“See?” Clive said to the sleeping Blazer. “She’s an absolute treasure.”

I phoned the school Clive had mentioned during my lunch break, but as I’d suspected, they asked me to call back in January, after the Christmas holidays. So without much hope, I phoned the number Clive had texted to me along with a name—Jake Jackson.

He answered straightaway, and after I’d introduced myself and explained why I was calling, he said, “Come round this evening, if you like. We’ve got a session straight after school—three thirty to six thirty.”

“I’m at work at the moment, but I could get to you by five thirty?”

“Sure,” he said. “That’s fine.”

“But I’ll be in my uniform—I won’t have time to go home and change first.”

“What uniform’s that?” he asked. “Firefighter? Astronaut? Nurse?”

I smiled. “Close. I’m a veterinary nurse.”

“Cool. See you later then, Beth.”

Nerves kicked in when I approached the youth centre at five thirty. What would Jake have told the kids about me? Perhaps I ought to have arranged to meet him for a chat first rather than diving straight in. Still, it was too late now. I was here. And Clare would be impressed if I could give her some evidence that I’d taken steps towards increasing my experience with children when we met next week.

A teenage boy drew alongside me at that moment and pushed the entrance door open.

“You coming in?” he asked, holding it for me.

“Yes, thanks.” I followed him inside and was about to ask where I might find Jake, when Jake himself appeared in front of me.

“You must be Beth, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “Jake?”

“That’s me.” He was tall and slim, with dark eyes and a shaved head, the tattoos on his arms clearly inspired by street art, and when he put his hand out to shake mine, I felt a flicker of attraction I hadn’t felt since I’d split up with Jaimie.

“I’ll give you the grand tour, and then I’ll make you a coffee.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

“It’s no problem.”

Jake showed me a chill-out lounge with leather sofas, a TV, and a ping-pong table where a frenetic match was in progress.

“Are you any good at table tennis?”

“No, really lousy, sorry.”

He grinned. “That’s okay. Too much to expect our volunteers to be animal whisperers and ping-pong champions.”

He led the way from the lounge and flicked on a light in a slightly more formally set-out room so I could see inside. “This is our meeting room, where we hold information and advice sessions—drug misuse, well-being sessions, mentoring, that sort of thing.”

He closed the door and moved on. “And this is our art room for anything messy. In fact, if you’re up for it, you could get stuck in now. Some of the kids are painting lanterns with glass paint at the moment—you know, like the ones at the Festival of Light?” He looked at my face. “Eastern Curve Garden?”

I’d seen the posters for it. “I haven’t managed to get down there yet.”

“You should. It’s great, isn’t it, guys?”

Five young people were seated around a table—three boys and two girls. Some of them nodded. Most looked at me curiously.

“Here,” said Jake. “Take a seat. I’ll make you a coffee. How d’you like it?”

“White, no sugar, please.”

Jake nodded and went on his way, and I smiled round at everybody like an idiot, anxious to hide my sudden nervousness.

“These look great, guys,” I said, shrugging my coat off onto the back of the chair. “I’ll have a go myself if that’s okay?”

One of the girls shrugged. Nobody else said anything.

“I love your designs,” I tried again, helping myself to a jam jar and a paintbrush from the centre of the table. “They’re really imaginative.”

“You can’t do a Christmas tree,” one of the boys told me. “We’ve run out of green paint.”

“Right,” I said, disappointed because that was exactly what I’d been going to do. “No Christmas trees.”