Page 13 of All For You

Curtains still firmly in its mouth, the goat turned, gave me a condescending look, likeWho are you anyway, and went back to chewing.

Really? “Not responding to polite suggestion? I get it. I’m a bit the same.” I gave him a gentle nudge in the ribs. “Go on with you. Out you go.”

The goat did not even turn his head.

“You’ve brought this on yourself. I’ll have to physically remove you.”

Lodging myself behind the goat, hands around his waist, I tried to pull him off the curtain. He wasn’t budging. With his hold on the material, if I pulled harder, he was going to rip them in half. He’d already tattered them with his nibbles.

The goat made an indignant bleating noise and shoved his bum back at me, clearly annoyed I was in his space. How did I get him to release the curtains? Was this the same as with dogs—I had to break his mouth seal? Ugh. Squeezing the edges of his drooling mouth, I tugged the curtain from his jaw. He skittered sideways as I reached again around his waist.

In my attempt to catch him, I stumbled and fell hard onto the wooden floor, rolling and slamming my limbs into the legs of my bed.

“Oh God, my knees, my elbows, my arse. Right, you stinking beast, you are not getting the better of me.”

Scrambling to my feet, I lurched around the room, grasping for him.

He did a nimble quickstep in response.

“They should have let you loose on the dance floor downstairs. You would have been more popular than me, that’s for sure.”

Trying to keep up with his dancing pace, I got close, but he launched a huge kick at my shins.

“You little shit. That’s more painful than bloody Tim Langston when he hit me with a padel racket.”Sorry, mate, was always Tim’s response.Accident.

With a desperate lunge, I managed to clasp the goat around his waist. I lifted him slightly as he kicked and squirmed, and I hauled him out of the room and down the stairs, terrified that, with one false move, I’d trip and break my neck—or he’d piss all over.

At the front door, I frantically yelled out, “Penny? Monty? The goat’s inside. Where should I take him?”

Penny came running from the kitchen, followed by the cameraman in red. “Oh, Goatee, ingenious creature, how did you get in?”

I put him down, still holding him, getting a gagging whiff of his pungent odor. “I found him in my bedroom, chewing on the curtains,” I said, surprised she hadn’t asked yet.

I waited for Penny to offer embarrassed apologies, but instead she giggled. What the hell?

“How did you get up to his room?” she asked the goat in a cooing tone. “Gosh, aren’t you clever? Aren’t you the stealth raider, my love?”

What had this shaggy, malodorous creature done to invite such prideful mothering?

Me completely forgotten, Penny bumped Goatee outside with her knees, full of compliments for his MI5-level skills. The Arsenal-clad cameraman trailed closely, clearly knowing wherever Goatee went, chaos followed.

I trudged up the stairs, my drooled-on hands held in the air, mud marks and goat hair all over my suit and shirt. And I was sure Goatee’s pungent stench clung to me.

I sighed, relieved to be back in the privacy and safety of my sweet-smelling goat-less room. I stepped forward and—squish.

I froze, trailing my gaze around the room, which was dotted with little black pebbles.

Goatee poo.

Clearly, in the tense tussle with me, Goatee had lost control. I would have laughed about this scenario if I’d read about it in a book or in someone else’s bedroom, but this was way too real.

Taking off both shoes, I carefully tiptoed around all the parcels in my socks. I pushed open the window even wider to air out the room, though, thank God, Goatee was a vegetarian, and his coat smelled worse than his poop. I checked in with Max, who hadn’t moved from the security of his donut bed.You paid for the room. You’re picking it up, his face seemed to say.

I pushed open the bathroom door and rolled a wad of toilet paper around my hand to collect Goatee’s droppings.

I faced the room, armed with the same amount of toilet paper Colin Vicar had taken to tell us about his credentials for keeping the woman of his dreams happy. This was the final straw. I’d reached a new low point. Goatee poop under my shoe, reduced to Colin Vicar comparisons, and the threat of more soul mates talk tomorrow. I was definitely getting out of this place.

At the arse-crack of dawn.