Mel & Penny #5

The Marmite had done it’s work. Mel was now officially developing a crush on Penny. The laughing-in-the-mud episode had broken down all her usual boundaries erected against tall, nicely put together blondes. The small-animal-cuddling had cemented it. Who didn’t fancy a mud-covered pretty woman cuddling a rabbit? And now she was sitting at Mel’s kitchen table in Mel’s dressing gown, hair ruffled and face flushed. Mel was entranced.

“Erm,” she said, intelligently. “Sorry, what was that?” She could feel herself blushing.

“Tell me more about what you need?” Penny said.

Mel’s brain stopped working entirely and her throat went very dry. “Need?” she heard herself squeak.

Penny’s expression was puzzled. “To raise money for?” she said, a bit cautiously. “How were you thinking about approaching it all? Do you have any actual figures?”

Oh. Oh, okay. Mel wrenched herself back to budgets and away from…other things.

“I worked out that I could do with being able to pay a regular helper,” she said. “Say, for fifteen or twenty hours a week. So three or four hours a day for five days a week. That would mean that they could clean out the pens and brush the animals and do things like mend the odd fence and cut the grass along the paths. So that’s three or four hundred pounds a week.”

Penny had taken out her phone, a posh kind with a little stylus, and was making notes.

“And then there’s the feed bill.” Mel pulled a face. “That’s what’s really important at the moment. Paying a helper is a fantasy dream, honestly. Just being able to afford feed and bedding would be amazing.”

“And how much is that?” Penny glanced up from her screen.

“Probably another two or three hundred pounds a week. It depends on the weather, the time of year, how many animals we have staying, all that kind of thing.”

“And…what about your own living expenses?” Penny was pulling a thinking face, scribbling on her screen.

“My…what?”

“Living expenses. You know. Car, food, electric. All that.”

“Oh. Well. I work.”

“What?”

“I work. At the farm shop. I said, didn’t I?”

“I think you might have said you were working next week to help pay the feed bill. You work all the time then?”

“Usually I work fifteen hours, but I’ve asked for more for a bit, starting next week.”

“So…you support all this…,” she waved an arm, encompassing Mel’s whole life, “on a part-time salary?”

“Well. Yes. I mean, there are a few donations when people rehome animals. But mostly, yes.”

She realised Penny was staring at her open mouthed, and busied herself with her tea.

After a moment, when Penny still hadn’t spoken she looked up at her cautiously. She was back on her phone.

“Round here, lots of people do part-time jobs,” Mel explained, feeling as if she had to justify her whole lifestyle. “It’s not unusual, honestly. My friend Patrick is an undertaker. Then he also runs a door-dipping service from his garage. And the doctor’s receptionist has a grocery van round on a Saturday.”

Penny frowned at her. “But if you had the income, then you wouldn’t need to work anywhere else and you could devote all your time to the sanctuary,” she said, explaining slowly, as if Mel was a bit thick.

Mel bit her lip. She felt a bit thick. “I know,” she said. “But I don’t. I don’t have the money.”

“So, we get you the money.” She looked back down at her phone.

“Oh. Okay.” It sounded so simple when she said it like that. Just…wave a wand and produce it from thin air, like the hottest fairy godmother ever. Her subconscious immediately produced a picture of Penny in a tulle ball-dress, with wings and a wand, floating round the front field sprinkling fairy-dust over Basil.

Perhaps not.

“How, though?” she asked, instead.

“Hmm. I have some ideas.” This was a different Penny to the slightly hapless one who had arrived a couple of hours ago and been laid low by a pig. “Let me go and get my bag out of the car and get my laptop.” She looked down at herself as an afterthought. “And some clothes. I’ve got an overnight bag. I’d forgotten I’d shoved it in the boot when I left.”

She rolled her eyes, as if everyone packed for a few days at a hotel with an overnight bag thrown in the car as they were leaving. Maybe they did? Maybe Mel was so out of touch with real life that everyone had a last-minute hotel habit now? The last time she’d stayed in a hotel was about ten years ago when she’d gone to visit her dad after he’d moved to Ireland. It had been a fried-breakfast type of place, very comfy, but not the kind of hotel someone with clothes like Penny’s stayed in.

Penny stood and brushed past her to get to the door, sliding her bare feet into her wellies in the porch. Mel rose to follow her.

“I’ll come and help,” she said.

“No, no, it’s fine. It’s only a small bag. Make some coffee, whilst I get myself set up.” Penny smiled at her. “I’ll put some trousers on, too. I make it a personal rule not to do financial planning without some sort of clothing on my bottom half.”

Her smile turned into a grin and Mel found herself responding in kind.