Lessons From A Llama

Irene is lost, alone, looking for a purpose in life, needing to fill a gaping hole in her soul – and then she sees the llama…

Ihave been reading about co-dependency and decided I have weak boundaries. Or maybe too rigid boundaries? Certainly one of the two.

To be perfectly honest, you can get yourself in a bit of a pickle with self-help books, but my thinking is that I have to figure out where precisely I am going wrong with Eloise.

We’ve been friends for years, you see, and every single time we sit down together, I promise myself I am going to watch my boundaries, be more honest. Also – I will one hundred per cent not be the one to organise the next gettogether. Definitely.

And then the weeks roll by and I start thinking that maybe something bad has happened to Eloise. Maybe she’s ill? Or been sacked? Or maybe I said something to hurt her feelings last time. And OK, I know I promised myself I was not going to be the one to chase but, on reflection, Eloise can’t really help the way she is and maybe…

So today I’m with her at this new gastro pub and I sit down, determined to think boundaries. The pub is almost full and I like the background buzz. It makes me feel safer somehow, in the middle of white noise.

We order two glasses of red wine and some sparkling water and I’m feeling energised, determined to say no to o the “puppy pact”. I smile as the waitress delivers ou ur drinks. I used to wait tables myself, m way back when… It was how I met Sam. I was just fin nishing secretarial college and he wa as setting up his own garage. He cam me in with a group of four friends an nd two of them were a bit worse for we ear, a bit mouthy. Sam gave them a talking to. You behave yourself, boys.

The following weekend, he popped in on his own, looking for me. He pretended he wasn’t; said he was going on somewhere else, nursing a small lager at the bar – but you just know, don’t you, when someone is looking out for you?

This pub is popular with families and has something quite unexpected in a paddock out the back… llamas. Difficult to imagine more appealing faces. I watch them through the window and soon had a favourite – tan and white, a bit on the plump side, standing off to one side. If the others nudge up to compete for food or attention, “my llama” shakes her head and nudges them before stepping away. I say “her”, but I don’t know it’s a her. Just a hunch.

The llama SUDDENLY starts to make this truly HORRIBLE moaning noise

Today we order a light lunch as Eloise is going out to dinner later. We do the small talk. The llamas. The lovely new wooden floor. She asks me how I’m doing and I say “fine” and then she interrupts to put in a little dig about the “puppy pact” before we get immediately on to her new job – which is apparently very tricky just now because she’s been passed over for this promotion and, “I need to vent, Irene.”

To be fair to her, I have no

experience of what this must be like. I’m PA to the managing director of a chain of estate agents. “Irene runs the place,” is what everyone says. I was supposed to retire last year but they all reckon they can’t do without me. I rather like that so agreed to stay a little bit longer.

However, Eloise is younger – fortyfive – and has this very big, stressful job in marketing. Always moving all her goalposts and worrying about blue sky thinking. Brainstorming in and out of the boxes. None of it ever enough, apparently.

She put in months of preparation for the promotion. “A shoe-in” she called it – until they gave it to a new graduate. Broke her heart.

I try so hard to imagine what that must be like. To support her, to listen. But the truth is we go round and round in circles for hours. And hours.

My book said to try distraction, so when the food arrives, I ask how her new kitchen plans are going. She pulls her face back into her neck like a tortoise until I feel guilty and say it must still be terribly difficult for her – the disappointment with the job. And she smiles, takes a very deep breath… and off we go again.

We stay two hours for lunch and at the end I give her a big hug, telling her it will all come good one day. She presses me again about the “puppy pact”.

Eloise, you see, is keen to buy this puppy, and is wondering if I will sign up to help her? Her thinking is that I have more flexibility, being part time and winding down to retirement, so she wants me to agree to walking the puppy… And popping round to her place to let the pup out for a wee.

I have said that I don’t think it’s a very good idea at all – her getting a dog when she’s so very busy. I’m hoping the whole ridiculous idea will pass, but Eloise looks crestfallen.

Outside as I watch her car pull away, I feel a complete and utter exhaustion. I get into my own car and snap on the radio to listen to the news.

Then, for some reason, I think of the llamas and decide I could do with some more air, so I get back out of my car and wander over to their enclosure.

“My” llama is still set apart from the others and I fancy is looking directly at me. I wait, expecting her to walk away but she doesn’t. I watch her… and she watches me. Then she starts to make this truly horrible noise. Like moaning.

It’s all too much, so I march inside up to the bar and ask who is in charge of the llamas. I think one of them is sick.

The manageress, who introduces herself as Shelley, comes straight outside with me and when I show her my llama sitting down still, so very oddly, she nods her head and smiles. “Ah yes; she’s getting ready.” “Sorry?” It turns out my llama is pregnant! And Shelley, who’s been keeping llamas for years, explains that the odd way of sitting and the moaning will go on for a couple of days.

“We’ve had eight crias – baby llamas. That’s what they’re called.”

I turn the word over in my head and find that I like it very much. Cria… Cria.

Still my llama is looking at me. Shelley smiles at my worrying but

says I am welcome to visit any time. The vet said the llama will be fine. Just a few more days.

And she’s right. I sneak back, you see. The following day and the day after that – just to check on her. I don’t tell Sam. I tell him about the disastrous lunch and the mad puppy plan. He tells me, “You should cut that one off, you know.”

But I don’t tell him about the llama. What I do is wait until he has gone to his poker night and I drive back a third time.

She isn’t sitting this time. Just walking around, a bit uncomfortable looking. Set apart from the herd still. It’s cold outside on the bench but I don’t mind. Not at all. And – get this! – I’ve started talking to her. To my llama.

Well, not out loud, but I know she’s listening from the way she looks back at me. Big unblinking eyes. Waiting and worried. Oh, goodness. I remember that. I tell her it’s perfectly normal to be afraid but she’s not to worry. I tell her this is not something I talk about usually, not to real folk, not out loud.

I lie when people notice the stretchmarks. I see them looking and wondering at the pool. Stretch marks when they know we don’t have any kids, me and Sam. I tell them I put on a lot of weight and lost it too quickly and the stretch marks are the price. It shuts them up. We called her Emily. Just four pounds two ounces…

Iwonder how big the cria will be. Whether it hurts less for a llama? I had an epidural but it still hurt. I thought they would do a caesarean – you would think, wouldn’t you? – but no. When they find there is a problem with your baby, they put you in a separate room but you still have to go through the whole thing.

Sometimes I wish they didn’t have so much technology… No heartbeat, Mrs Evans. We are so terribly sorry… Sam and I don’t discuss it. Too hard. He wanted to move house. Fresh start. But I wasn’t keen. I sort of drifted, friends wise. Everyone had kids which I found hard. And then years later, I took up with Eloise. I don’t remember why.

I can’t tell the llama all this so instead I tell her that her cria will be beautiful. And I’m going to stay as late as they let me, and come back every day.

My llama is looking tired. I wonder if she will sleep tonight. I stay until closing time and hurry home, making it just before Sam gets in.

I don’t sleep very well and in the morning I return. There’s that smell in the air from childhood. Dew and daisy chains. It makes me think of lying on the grass. Stained socks. A scolding from my mum.

I hurry from the car and then… Everything suddenly stops. The breeze on my face is the only thing moving. I can see them both. The mother standing head up proud. The cria feeding. Tiny, tiny thing with the silliest legs.

Oh, my word! The most beautiful thing! With her skinny white legs and brown patches on her knees.

“Lovely, isn’t she? Told you it would be all right.”

I turn to see Shelley, who is smiling with a mug of coffee which she hands to me.

“We’re serving breakfast in ten minutes if you want to come inside. Also I have a bit of an idea, if you’d be interested?”

Shelley signals with her head to a new sign – Llamas for sale – and I take a sip of the coffee and start thinking.

I said no to moving house way back then because I wanted to keep the nursery… just in case…

But it was never needed. And Sam, keen to retire himself, is wondering again about a move. He keeps going on about chickens and goats. I’ve been resisting but am thinking now that may have been another thing I got wrong. Like the friendship with Eloise.

He’s such a good man, my Sam. And though we still can’t talk about it, he remembers the date every single year. Always sends me flowers. White roses for our Emily.

So I smile at my llama and her cria and realise they must stay together. And I will make that happen.

I will have a big, pub breakfast and check estate agents on my phone. I will text Eloise to say a firm “no” to her puppy. Then I will message my lovely Sam to tell him I’m up for a move after all. A place with a paddock, yes. But can we forget the chickens and the goats, please? Because we need, my darling man and me, to talk about llamas.

My lovely HUSBAND Sam and I don’t DISCUSS it – it’s too hard