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your rope and the hook . . . some bone . . .’
    ‘Cool. So go forward from there, over the calf.’
    There was a pause, and I bit my lip hard to stop myself from asking what he could feel now. Watching someone else calve a cow is a bit like watching them fumble with a knot; it leaves you twitching to elbow them aside and have a go yourself.
    ‘I think I can feel the tail,’ he said at last.
    ‘Awesome. So push the introducer down between the calf’s legs, if you can. And then the trick is not to pull it back out with you when you bring your arm back.’
    ‘Mm,’ he said. Then, ‘Hah! Got it!’
    ‘You legend !’
    ‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling at me. He had a particularly nice smile, swift and warm and infectious. You wouldn’t think it would be possible to spend a wonderful evening dismembering a rotten calf for Horrible Joe Watkins, and yet here we were. It was the best night I’d had for months.
    Half an hour later the last haunch of rotten calf slithered onto the concrete, and Mark bent to unhook it from the calving jack. I swept my arm around the heifer’s cervix, pulled it out again and began to strip off my gloves. ‘Well, what d’you know? We didn’t rip a big hole in her uterus.’
    ‘So she’ll be okay?’
    ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I’ll fill her up with penicillin and anti-inflammatories, and we’ll see if she’ll stand up. I wonder where Joe is?’
    Mark shrugged. ‘Who cares? What should I do with the bits? It looks like the scene of a chainsaw massacre.’
    ‘Leave them,’ I said firmly. ‘It can be his first job in the morning.’
    ‘Very good,’ said Mark, and picking up my calving jack he vanished towards the milk room.
    I chose a cocktail of nice expensive drugs for my patient, seeing as Joe wasn’t there to refuse pain relief on her behalf. Then I opened the gate in front of her and she struggled gallantly to her feet. Cows really are amazing. I let her out into the paddock beside the shed and went back into the milk room to see Mark scrubbing my embryotome with hot water and an ancient brush that had lost half its bristles. It is often said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and it is equally true (although less well known) that the way to a vet’s heart is through cleaning her gear.
    ‘How’s the patient?’ he asked.
    ‘Up and eating,’ I said, peeling off my calving gown. ‘Thank you so much.’
    ‘You’re welcome. It was fun.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yep.’ He laid down the embryotome and held out a hand for the gown.
    ‘It’s okay, I can do it.’
    ‘I’m sure you can,’ he said, twitching it out of my hand in a very managing fashion.
    I reached up to touch my hair. It felt crunchy, which is always a bad sign. Cupping my hands under the running water I started to wash my face.
    ‘Want some warm water?’ he asked.
    ‘No, cold’s better.’
    ‘Why on earth?’
    I scrubbed at an ear with my fingernails; there was a towel hanging up in one corner of the room, but it looked like it had been festering there unwashed for at least a decade. ‘The theory is that the warm water makes your pores open, and then the smell really gets in.’
    ‘I see. Do you have anything against soap, then?’
    ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Is there some?’
    He looked around the room. ‘Ah. No.’
    ‘Never mind; we can scrub properly at home.’
    I carried an armful of gear out to the ute and retrieved my docket book, bringing it back into the milk room and opening it on top of a plastic drum in one corner. Rotten calving, head back. Full foetotomy. Time on farm: two hours. And Joe could pay for both of them, the miserable old sod. Drugs used – but at this point Mark pulled his filthy T-shirt off over his head and I temporarily lost my train of thought. He was beautiful : sleek and muscled and perfectly proportioned.
    He looked up and caught me staring, and I felt my face get hot. This was a shame; those of us whose faces are round and rosy to start with