‘So,’ he called into the back, ‘who’s ready for a weekend at Alton Towers?’
An awful thought struck Zoe as he slammed the door and started the engine.
‘Stop!’ She hammered on the window, and David buzzed it down, crossly. She could hear Radio 1 on the stereo, too loud. Too young and too loud.
‘What now?’
‘Who’s going to be looking after Toffee while you’re living it up at Alton Towers?’ she demanded breathlessly.
David widened his eyes so the boys wouldn’t be able to tell he was giving her his ‘shut up’ face. ‘What do you mean, who’ll be looking after him? We’ll take him with us, and leave him in the car in his cage thing. He’ll be fine. We’re only going to be there until, I don’t know, three-ish . . .’
‘He won’t be fine! He needs to go outside every hour at least.’ She had a horrible vision of a frantic Toffee, overheated, scared and lonely, sitting in his own mess in the back of David’s stupid new car, or worse, being dragged round on a lead, terrified by the crowds.
David’s jaw dropped. ‘It’s a dog, Zoe, for God’s sake!’
‘Exactly! He’s not a toy! I’m sorry, but Toffee will have to stay here,’ she said in a properly firm voice now. ‘I should have realised. Open the boot.’
I can’t believe you’re doing this, Zoe told herself. You were about to have a dogless, childless weekend of almost complete sleep.
‘What? Don’t be so—’
‘Open the bloody boot!’ she roared.
David’s expression hardened, and then he turned round in the car. ‘Sorry, boys, Mum says Toffee has to stay here with her. He can’t come too.’
There was a howl of protest from the back seat. ‘Muuuuuuum!’
Zoe steeled herself. ‘I’m sorry, Spencer, but it’s too noisy for Toffee. He’ll be here when you come home.’ She struggled to open the heavy tailgate, and lifted Toffee’s travelling box from the back of the car.
Two adoring brown eyes gleamed at her through the wire mesh of the crate and she felt a stab of relief that Toffee wouldn’t be trapped in there for the rest of the weekend. He’d have cried, she knew. And had to sit in his own vomit and poo, and done all sorts of things that would probably have ruined Jennifer’s house in hundreds of satisfying ways, but which her soft heart couldn’t let him go through just to teach David a lesson.
Spencer gave the back of David’s seat an almighty kick. ‘It’s not fair!’
‘Spencer! Don’t kick the seat! It’ll mark!’ snapped David, then, in a change of tone, he added, ‘Please, mate.’
That’s not half of what one hyperactive puppy would have done to it, Zoe thought.
She walked round to the driver’s window, feeling a strange new determination. ‘And if they come back here with so much as a
plastic duck
,
I will be on to my solicitor,’ she hissed, then raised her voice so the boys could hear her.
‘See you on Sunday, lovely boys!’ she called. ‘Be good for Daddy!’
Spencer had his arms folded tight in a sulk, his chin pressed down into it, but Leo was waving his fat little hand, near the window, so she could see. ‘Look after Toffee, Mummy!’ he called out.
Zoe’s heart tugged as she waved back, and she had to force herself to hold her smile. Then David floored the accelerator and they vanished into the night.
Shivering, Zoe lifted Toffee’s crate so he was at eye level.
‘So, Toffee,’ she said. ‘Just you and me. Got any plans for the weekend?’
Toffee licked her nose through the bars and yapped to be let out for a wee.
Which was progress of some kind, thought Zoe.
12
‘Be kind to me, Megan,’ pleaded Rachel. ‘In real life, at this hour, I’m not even awake yet, let alone standing up fully dressed.’ She peered at the rota on the table. ‘And about to organise volunteers.’
It was a Saturday morning, Rachel’s first proper experience of the volunteer walking club’s main day. Megan had woken her up with a cup of tea outside her door, and then Gem had woken her up more insistently by removing the covers from her bed.
Rachel told herself that at least he’d packed in the licking her awake as if he was trying to raise her from the dead routine.
‘You’re doing great!’ said Megan, who looked far too cheerful for someone who’d been up for two hours already and had mucked out all the kennels. ‘Why don’t I put you on bacon sandwiches?’
She steered Rachel over to the Aga, where two loaves of bread were stacked up next to several packets of bacon and a bottle of tomato sauce. Rachel had raided her emergency savings account to replenish the kitchen cupboards, pay Megan and deal with the most urgent bills; the rest of the bills were scary enough to make sorting out the probate forms more of a pressing matter.
She’d made a new list, anyway. Getting started on asset listing was a job for the afternoon.
‘Fry the rashers, put them in the warming oven, make sandwiches when walkers come back. Repeat all morning. We usually get about ten or so regulars turning up,’ Megan explained. ‘And your poster campaign’s worked a treat.’
‘I warn you, I don’t really do cooking.’ Rachel lifted the heavy old pan gingerly onto the hot plate. ‘I’m more of an eating-out girl.’
‘Hello? Am I too early?’
They turned round to see Zoe Graham standing at the kitchen door, Toffee under one arm. When Toffee spotted Gem in the basket by the Aga he wriggled happily and squirmed out of Zoe’s arms to greet his grown-up friend.
‘Please don’t tell me you’ve come to give him up?’ begged Rachel.
Zoe shook her head. She was wearing a blue knitted hat that squashed her reddish curls around her face. ‘No, my ex has got the kids for the weekend – house seemed a bit weird and quiet, and I got all the hints Freda was dropping about weekend walkers, so . . .’ She raised her hands and her eyebrows theatrically. ‘Here I am! You should put up notices in the solicitors’. Get all the weekend-off single parents down here.’
‘You told your ex, did you?’ Rachel said. ‘About the daycare?’
‘And you said, “No!” ’ added Megan, making the policeman hand gesture. ‘To him
and
Toffee?’
Zoe’s eyes clouded. ‘Sort of. I told him he couldn’t take Toffee and leave him in the car all weekend. I’m going to, honestly, soon as they get back. David gave me some cash, look, so let me give you something up front.’
‘That’s brilliant!’ Rachel took the notes off Zoe before Megan could wave it away. Fifty quid, right now, was fifty quid towards food. Her savings schemes were set up for new season fashion, not kennel support, and they were already running low. ‘Call that Toffee’s first month’s fees, introductory offer. I’ll get you a receipt.’
‘It’s a start,’ said Megan encouragingly. ‘I mean, not about the money, about you setting him straight. It’s about not letting him ride roughshod over you!’
‘Why change the habits of a lifetime?’ sighed Zoe. ‘Like I’m not letting that one there ride roughshod over my life.’
‘Dogs are different,’ said Megan, looking on indulgently as Toffee climbed all over Gem, tugging at his ears while Gem stared at his paws.
Rachel tucked the cash into the back pocket of her jeans. ‘Megan, why don’t you give Zoe a couple of dogs to take out, then by the time she gets back, I might have worked out how to make a bacon sarnie?’
She examined the packet doubtfully. ‘And don’t rush back.’
On the other side of Longhampton, Natalie and Johnny were sitting in Natalie’s Mini, watching Bill emerge from his front door, in his new role as a dog owner.
Natalie was biased, but she thought he looked like a Boden model, all cheekbones, and chunky parka, and knitted hat. And black poodle accessory.
Although, having said that, Lulu did seem to be using Bill as her handsome owner accessory, the way she was strutting over to the car.
‘Only a guy as good-looking as Bill can carry off a poodle,’ said Johnny. ‘So to speak.’
‘I think he looks gorgeous.’ Natalie waved at Bill so he’d see them waiting. ‘He’ll be fighting them off in the park. There’s nothing girls love more than a man with a dog.’
‘Are you going to be saying that when I’m walking Bertie around the park?’ Johnny gave her a cheeky look, and she nudged him.
‘I’m going to be
with
you. We’re going to be walking him
together
. Anyway,’ Natalie settled back in her seat, ready to go,‘just make sure Bill talks to that nice Megan at the kennels.’
‘What? Oh, now I get it . . . This isn’t just a simple volunteering job at all, is it?’
‘We’re going to meet Bertie again,’ Natalie insisted. ‘But I thought, while we’re there, that Megan was very much Bill’s type.’
‘In what way?’
Bill was fussing around his front door now, checking he’d got the right keys. Obviously he hadn’t, because he turned and waved his hands at them, tied Lulu to the front door and vanished inside. Lulu sat down, patiently.
‘In that she seems the nice organised type,’ Natalie went on. ‘No baggage, good with dogs, well-travelled, cheerful . . .’
‘How do you know all that? You’ve only met her the once!’ Johnny rounded his eyes.
‘We had a nice chat on the phone when I rang up about Bertie’s home check. Anyway, you can tell.’ Natalie smiled through the windscreen as Bill came out, now in a different coat, with a different lead. ‘I can see them really hitting it off. He just needs a bit of a nudge in the right direction. The settling down one.’
‘Well, you’ve been nudging for the last three years,’ said Johnny. ‘But you know what a bloody perfectionist he . . . Hi, Bill!’
‘Hi, Natalie, Johnny!’ Bill lifted up the poodle and put her under his arm.
‘Hi, Lulu!’ cooed Natalie.
‘Hi, Auntie Nata—!’ Bill began to reply in a poodle voice, until Johnny gave him a look and he stopped.
Johnny got out of the front seat so Bill could slide his lanky frame into the back.
‘If you see, there’s a little clip there you can attach Lulu to,’ said Natalie, leaning over to point it out. ‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘It’s for Bertie. She’s got all the gear already,’ said Johnny over the top of the car. ‘We’ve come via Pet World. As if seven hours on the internet last night wasn’t enough to learn every fact about Basset hounds, we now have the whole kit, including something called a clicker, with which Nat’s going to start her new career as a dog behaviourist.’
Bill raised his eyebrows. ‘The full Natalie special.’
‘Yeah,’ sighed Johnny. ‘Well, it’s a bit more complicated, mate. Get in and she’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know.’
Megan had paired Zoe up with Bertie and Treacle the labrador, on the grounds that they were about the size Toffee would eventually grow up to be, and told her to be firm, remember her “No!
”
and if the worst came to the worst, issued her with some biscuit bribes.
And then she sent her out on the Three Mile Lap, as shown on the photocopied handout the weekend walkers were given.
All the way down the hill, and round the first side of Longhampton Park, Zoe could see herself like an advert for shampoo or something, smiling happily at other dog owners enjoying the crisp weekend morning. The dogs were demented with joy to be out of their runs into the open air, and so was she. It was the first new thing, Zoe realised, with mild horror, that she’d done on her own since the boys were born. And it seemed to be going OK.
In fact, it was more than OK. It was like being on holiday – on her own. She felt free and light and released. And better than that, the dogs seemed to be taking her seriously, keeping pace with her steps and occasionally looking back with a touching need to check she was still with them.
But as soon as they hit the wilder part of the park, on the way back, Bertie and his nose got wind of something and he shot off like a pony, pulling out the whole of the extendable lead in one surge.
‘Slow down!’ yelled Zoe, ineffectually, as she felt the lead click out to its maximum extension, and then, with a yank, it nearly tugged her arm out of its socket. She began to walk faster, to stop the collar choking Bertie, who was trotting now, so fast his ears were flapping. ‘Slow down! Heel! Heel!’
What were you meant to shout? She scoured her brain for dog instructions. ‘Stop! Heel! Stay!’
Nothing worked. Bertie was hauling her determinedly across the common towards some other people – and their dog.
Now she was almost running. Zoe looked down at Treacle who had begun to trot next to her, ever obedient, despite the strange new direction the walk was taking. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped, but the docile Labrador didn’t seem unduly bothered.
Zoe felt something vibrating in her jacket pocket – her phone was ringing. The sense of freedom vanished and her brain immediately started to throw out lurid scenes of amusement park accidents, motorway pile-ups, Leo taking ill on some ride.
She looked ahead to where Bertie was heading – it was a fairly clear patch of grass with no bushes or hedges to fall into – and decided to risk it. She switched the lead to the other hand, still running, and rummaged around in her inside pocket for the phone. It slipped out of her fingers. As she was grabbing for it, her foot connected with a loose molehill of earth, and she lost her balance, stumbling forward towards the wet grass and a metal drain cover she hadn’t seen until it was hurtling towards her forehead.