immortal | wimon sainimnuan

81 as birds, ostriches, wild and domestic fowls and various other species which each had to have its separate abode.

‘How many animals do you have?’ he asked.

‘More than nine thousand – over four thousand dogs, almost three thousand cats, and the rest are goats, sheep, chickens and birds.’

‘It must be expensive to run each month.’

‘Two million baht a month just for food. Salaries and water and electricity charges, another million baht, not counting land and building lease, the cages and various implements, including drugs and cost of operations on wounded animals, which fluctuate from one month to the next. Are you thinking of setting up something similar?’ She sounded intimate with him.

‘I don’t want to take your livelihood away from you.’

He laughed. ‘Especially with huge expenses like that.’

She smiled, inhaled the morning air, looked at the trees, the grass and the sky, feeling more relaxed than on any other day.

‘Isn’t it a problem for the chairman with you in charge on your own?’

‘He doesn’t like it. He’d rather have me spend my time looking after some company than spending it here. This place doesn’t bring any profit. But I haven’t had the heart for that kind of work for a long time, so I resigned from all companies twenty-two years ago and took the money to buy eight hundred acres of land in the suburbs to take care of stray animals. When the number of animals increased, IMMORTAL | WIMON SAINIMNUAN