best for FICTION
It’s amazing how different an empty house feels when the person you usually live with hasn’t just slipped out to the shop or gone to meet his friends for a drink. But somehow, even though I’d just left my son at university with his guitar, laptop and comical gorilla head slippers, I still wanted to call up the stairs. ‘Cup of tea, Josh?’
Maybe I shouldn’t have told Keith not to come round this evening. I’d thought I’d want some time to myself to deal with my sadness without the pressure of pretending to be cheerful. But perhaps being on my own wasn’t what I needed at all.
Deciding to make some tea anyway, I trudged into the kitchen. But as I filled the kettle, I saw something in the middle of the lawn through the window. Goodness, was it a hedgehog?
I hastily reached for the bird-watching binoculars my late husband had always kept on the windowsill. Yes, it was definitely a hedgehog. But why was it lying so still? And surely a nocturnal creature shouldn’t be out in daylight?
Convinced something was wrong, I crept outside to take a look. As I drew near, the poor creature began to move, but weakly, as if it was an effort, and when I crouched next to it, I saw that it had an open wound on its head; a wound surrounded, if I wasn’t mistaken, by fly eggs.
I never have been the squeamish type; just as well with all the injuries Josh seemed to sustain playing sports, and, as I gazed down at the creature, all I felt was sympathy. ‘You poor thing,’ I said out loud. ‘You need help, don’t you?’
I hurried inside to fetch some old newspapers, a pair of gardening gloves and a cardboard box and placed the hedgehog safely inside. Then I searched online for hedgehog rescue centres. There were several within driving distance, but a helpline number caught my eye, and I decided to ring that first.
Rachel, the woman on the other end of the line, was sympathetic and helpful. Ten minutes later I was on my way to her house with the hedgehog. After a melancholy day, it was good to be doing something useful.
Rachel was a smiling woman in her forties, and as soon as she opened her door, it was clear that rescuing hedgehogs was her vocation.
‘You are in a bad way,’ she said, carefully taking the hog from the box. ‘Probably been bitten by a dog or something.’
I wasn’t sure whether to leave or not now my charge was safely delivered, but Rachel seemed to assume I was going to stay. So I did, watching with fascination as she deftly used an old mascara wand to remove the fly eggs.
‘I think that’s the last one,’ she said after several minutes. ‘Now we need to flush the wound with plenty of saline solution and give her some antibiotics.’
‘Then she’ll be all right?’
I suppose, after the
