Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts

  Rachel breathed through her nose. This conversation had started four days ago. Val always picked up exactly where she’d left off last time. ‘Mum, there is a letter but I haven’t opened it yet. And can you stop making out that it’s my fault? It’s not like I expected this, you know. I’m sure I can find some things Amelia would like. I don’t think Dot meant it as a criticism.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming Dot,’ her mother insisted, struggling to be fair. Val was always fair, and gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, even when she didn’t actually believe them. Particularly when she didn’t believe them. ‘That’s just the way Dot was – she was used to living on her own, with no ties or anyone else to bother about – but it’s not just Amelia. Grace and Jack ought to have some keepsake from their great-aunt.’

  Rachel resisted the temptation to point out that looking after a pack of assorted dogs didn’t exactly leave you footloose and fancy-free. It riled her, this family assumption that not having children meant you led a life of nightclubs and riotous self-indulgence. ‘Would they like a dog?’ she suggested, only half-joking. ‘Plenty left.’

  She could hear the drawn-in breath of outrage, two hundred miles away. ‘What? No! That would be totally irresponsible! What about allergies? You’d have to talk to Amelia first, Rachel. No, there’ll be a nice silver brush set that would be appropriate for Grace, used to be our mother’s, and as for Jack, I seem to remember Dot did a bit of fishing, I dare say there’s an expensive rod somewhere.’ There was a pause. ‘And don’t say I told you this, Rachel, but Amelia could do with a hand with nursery fees right now. It costs a fortune, childcare. I’m sure Dot left a nest egg that you could . . .’

  ‘Mum, stop,’ interrupted Rachel. ‘I can put your mind at rest on that front. There’s no money.’

  ‘What?’ Val sounded disbelieving.

  ‘There’s no money. There’s the house, and the kennels business, but once the staff have been paid, and the solicitor, there’ll be no cash at all.’

  ‘But . . . how? She had half the money from Dad’s house and no one to spend it on but herself!’

  Rachel could hear the hurt bubbling up through the gaps between the words. It wasn’t about the money, she knew that. Val was generous to a fault; in her own way, as much of a rescuer as Dot, but of people, not animals. She was always helping, resolutely putting other people first, carting old folk to the hospital in her red Fiesta, or doing laundry for bewildered widowed neighbours.

  ‘She must have spent a lot of it on the dogs, Mum,’ Rachel said, walking around her car. ‘But that was her choice.’

  Val went silent on the other end of the phone, and Rachel knew she was counting up to ten, rather than say whatever she was thinking. She heard someone in the background, shouting something.

  ‘What’s that, Ken? Oh, your father says can you have a look for Dorothy’s . . . Dorothy’s what? Speak up! Dorothy’s Acker Bilk albums.’

  Rachel spun on her heel, and looked over to where Megan was still waiting in the car. ‘This isn’t a car boot sale,’ she protested. ‘Look, when probate’s granted you can come and see what you want for yourself. How about that?’

  ‘We wouldn’t like to impose, and anyway, I’ve got commitments here, my hospice ladies relying on me and your dad – I can’t just drop everything,’ huffed Val.

  But I can, Rachel added in her head.

  ‘So. What are your plans?’ Val went on. ‘Are you going to sell it? A big house like that takes a lot of upkeep when it’s just you. I always said to your father, it’s a family house, far too big for Dot there on her own.’

  Rachel stared at the other cars in the solicitors’ car park, noting a silver Jaguar like Oliver’s, and felt the band around her head tighten.

  ‘Rachel? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ she said, squeezing her nose and closing her eyes tight.

  ‘Are you staying there now? I tried you at the flat last night but there was no answer. You don’t tell me anything any more,’ Val continued, more gently. ‘Some girls like to share with their mothers. Amelia’s always dropping in with the kiddies, but I never even know if you’re in the country or not.’

  ‘I’m run off my feet with work, Mum,’ said Rachel, determined to finish the conversation before it got back into the old, unproductive rut. She’d have to tell her about resigning at some point; at least she didn’t have to tell her about splitting with Oliver.

  Rachel had weighed it up some years back, and decided that it was easier to pretend to be single and deal with Val’s nagging about ‘finding a man to settle down with’ than it would be to explain her complicated relationship with a man as unsuitable as Oliver Wrigley. Ironically, the only one of her family who knew anything at all about Oliver had been Dot, and even then Rachel had only told her the bare minimum.

  ‘Work isn’t everything in life,’ Val reminded her, unhelpfully, Rachel thought, coming from a woman who’d been a full-time housewife since 1969, thanks to her dad’s devotion to dentistry. ‘You’re not getting any younger.’

  ‘Is anyone?’ Rachel snapped and turned back to the car.

  As she spun round, she came face to face with a pair of bright eyes. Gem was staring at her through the back window, and Rachel staggered backwards in surprise.

  He sat like a sentry with one paw on her box of stuff, and tilted his head, as if he could hear the other side of the phone conversation. One black ear flopped down, while the other stayed pricked up, revealing tender pink skin, flecked with white hairs. He looked proud to be guarding her worldly goods, eager to be useful, unaware that his new owner had no room for him in her messy life.

  An irrational surge of pity swelled in Rachel’s chest and, to her surprise, she felt tears prickle along her lashes.

  Maybe this was an early menopausal symptom, she thought glumly. Getting emotional about animals. Maybe this was what happened, your body telling you the final whistle was about to go and that you should stock up on cats.

  ‘Rachel! Say something!’ Val was still on the line, hoping for an Amelia-style outpouring.

  ‘Mum, I’ll call you later,’ she said.

  ‘There are things we need to talk about,’ said Val.

  ‘And don’t forget the Acker Bilk albums!’ shouted a muffled voice.

  ‘And don’t forget . . .’ Val began to repeat.

  ‘I know,’ said Rachel. ‘I heard him the first time.’

  She hung up, and behind the glass Gem began to pant, his mouth drawn back into a smile, his pink tongue sticking out.

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ Rachel warned him.

  2

  As she shoved the front door open with her shoulder, it was fairly obvious to Rachel that the formal entrance wasn’t the one Dot had used on a daily basis.

  The wood had warped with disuse, and inside the dark entrance hall there were no signs of daily life – no pizza leaflets, or junk mail. Instead, there was a mahogany plant stand with a dusty aspidistra, a brass-faced grandfather clock and a series of prints on the crimson wallpaper featuring chocolate-eyed spaniels with limp game birds trailing from their soft mouths.

  Rachel smelled beeswax polish, and lavender, but not dogs, strangely enough. Val always muttered about how Dot’s house probably ‘smelled like the inside of a wet kennel’, but Rachel’s sensitive nose couldn’t detect anything too bad. The high ceilings dissipated any doggy aroma.

  Nothing had changed since she’d last been here, on New Year’s Eve seven years ago. It had been just after the first serious row she and Oliver had, in the days when she was still trying to persuade him to share the holidays with her, instead of leaving her to face the family festivities apparently all alone. Sick of Val’s elephantine hints about settling down and fed up of Oliver’s evasiveness, Rachel had booked herself and Oliver onto a skiing trip, which he’d cancelled at the last minute, the weasel, so rather than be at home, at the mercy of people’s sympathy, Rachel had come over all Mother Teresa and called D
ot, who had unexpectedly invited her to drop by.

  Rachel did wonder almost immediately what on earth she was doing, driving miles on her own out to Worcestershire, when she could have been flirting in a Soho members’ club, but the wilful desire to be unfindable spurred her on. Once in Longhampton, though, it had been different. Dot had ushered her into the warm kitchen, where she was listening to a Radio Four play, and she’d cooked a fish pie, as Rachel slowly found herself getting absorbed in the play too. They’d eaten in companionable silence, bar the snuffling of about seven assorted rescue puppies in a box by the Aga.

  Midnight arrived and went by the log fire, toasted in with a vintage bottle of Krug. Dot didn’t ask Rachel why she was on her own on a night when most women of her age were engaged in determined partying, just whether she was happy. The simple question had broken through Rachel’s fake nonchalance, and she’d let more slip to Dot than she had to her own mother. Not everything though; just that Oliver was hard to pin down, and she was too proud to stay at home to be pinned herself.

  ‘Men like to make themselves complicated,’ Dot had told her, with something in her wry expression that said she knew what she was talking about. ‘Don’t let them complicate you. That’s the thing about dogs – their affection is very straightforward. A walk, some food a bed . . .’ She paused, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Actually . . .’

  Dot had looked decades younger in that instant and Rachel felt like a naive kid, not a jaded urbanite. But she couldn’t ask. Val had told them never to ask Auntie Dot any questions about her strange lack of husband. Habits died hard.

  Then she’d offered Rachel a whisky, and passed her some crystallised fruits from Fortnum & Mason, and they’d sunk back into their thoughts. Rachel wondered where Dot got Fortnum’s crystallised fruits and Krug from. They didn’t fit in with the image Val liked to paint of Dot at Christmas, sharing a bowl of Winalot with some holly in it.

  Now she paused at the front door, as the memory of that night slid through her mind. She’d left first thing on New Year’s Day, to prepare for a client meeting, and she and Dot never mentioned their shared New Year again. Their relationship of wry birthday and Christmas cards continued as before. From that New Year on, Rachel volunteered at a local homeless shelter, to teach Oliver a lesson. Not that he cared.

  Rachel pushed her way into the hall. Dot clearly hadn’t done any decorating since moving in some time in the early seventies, but the dignified shabbiness suited the country house. With a wash of pale paint and some vases of flowers, it would be a different place. It would be hers, to settle down in. Redecorate as she wanted. It didn’t make Rachel as excited as it should have done.

  ‘Would you like to freshen up first?’ asked Megan, pausing at the foot of the carpeted stairs, one of Rachel’s bags over her shoulder. ‘Or maybe you’d prefer to come and say hello to the folks, get it out of the way? I’ve got to take out some of the dogs at five, so if you wanted to come for a walk, you’d be very welcome to join us, maybe give Gem some one-on-one time . . .’

  Her voice trailed off as Rachel didn’t reply. ‘Sorry, it sounds like I’m welcoming you to a hotel, doesn’t it? And this is your house now.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Rachel. That wasn’t why she was looking awkward; it was the idea of having to make small talk with strangers when all she really wanted to do was put on her Virgin Atlantic eyemask and try to block out the reality of what she’d set in motion back in Chiswick. Her phone kept buzzing in her pocket and she knew it would be Oliver. She didn’t want to hear his messages; he’d be incandescent with rage by now, after what she’d done. ‘Um, when you say folks . . .’

  ‘Actually, I was meaning the dogs.’ Megan grinned. ‘Sorry, you’ll get used to it. But George, the vet, is here, and I guess you’ll need to talk to him about the kennels anyway?’

  George the vet. The bath and a bottle of wine were beckoning, but Rachel dragged on her best PR meeting face. Better to get it over with.

  ‘Good idea!’ she said, rather hollowly, and felt a flicker of shame at Megan’s eager, unforced smile as she set off down the hall.

  ‘We have our team of volunteer walkers,’ Megan said over her shoulder. ‘Couldn’t do without them, to tell the truth – they’ll be in now, dropping the terriers off.’

  ‘Walkers?’ repeated Rachel, though she wasn’t really listening. It was a client trick she’d learned from Oliver – if you don’t want to talk or listen, just repeat the last word and let the other person chatter on.

  ‘Yes, local owners who don’t mind taking a few rescues out with their own dogs. And we’ve got some kids who aren’t allowed a pet, some older people who can’t take one on. Works out well for everyone.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Rachel, pausing by a photograph of Dot, straight-backed and white-haired, surrounded by a group of dogs leaping up to lick her face. Here and there were big portraits of frolicking greyhounds and collies in mid-leap, in much the same way that Val covered the walls of her Dustbusted living room with studio shots of Amelia, Grace and Jack.

  ‘So what do you do?’ Megan asked conversationally. ‘Gerald said you worked in PR! Sounds very glam.’

  ‘Oh, not really. Internet launches, mainly, new businesses, some web-based retailers, nothing too interesting.’ Rachel felt something nudge against her heel and jumped.

  Behind her, Gem was lowering his head to make gentle butts with his nose against her calf. He stopped, and looked up, tilting his head so his ear flopped.

  ‘Gem! You bossy dog!’ yelped Megan, outraged but obviously amused. ‘You’ll have to excuse him, Rachel, he’s a real collie – always herding us around if he doesn’t think we’re moving quickly enough.’

  ‘Was he a hand-in?’ Rachel asked, making eye contact properly for the first time with her new dog. ‘I don’t remember seeing him when I was here.’

  Megan’s cheeriness drooped. ‘No. He was her puppy. Dot got Gem when he was two weeks old. Our local policeman found him in a box down by the play area in the park with three of his baby brothers, just dumped there to die.’ Her eyes widened. ‘God knows what happened to their poor mum. The river froze over, so you can guess what sort of state these guys were in. When they came in, they were just clinging to each other for warmth. Their sister had already frozen to death in there.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ breathed Rachel, jolted out of her self-pity. She crouched down to Gem’s level, so she could stroke his neck.

  Gem stared up at her, his bright eyes shining in the dimly lit corridor. His coat was so thick and strong, it was impossible to imagine him tiny and struggling for life.

  ‘He looks amazing now,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, well, that was Dot.’ Megan leaned over and fondled his ear. ‘She virtually kept all four in a sort of sling round her for the first week – they were far too young to leave their mother, so she had to feed them with pipettes and stuff. One little guy didn’t make it – he’d got too thin. George did what he could, but even Dot couldn’t keep him alive.’

  There was a roar of male laughter from the kitchen, and Rachel wished she didn’t have to face everyone just yet. Especially not now Gem’s story had brought her back to the edge of tears. ‘So what happened to them?’ she asked, to delay the moment.

  Megan bent down to Gem’s level to stroke him better. ‘Shem and Star went to a farmer up near Hartley, Spark went to an agility trainer in Rosehill. But she couldn’t bear to part with Gem, so she kept him. Broke every rule in her book, she said, but he was worth it. And you loved her as much as she loved you, didn’t you, poor sad boy? Eh? You’re missing your mistress now, aren’t you?’

  Megan buried her face in his black fur and Rachel got the feeling she was paying him extra attention so she wouldn’t see how tearful she was. Maybe they were both putting off the kitchen moment.

  ‘Dot didn’t normally take dogs for herself?’ she asked. ‘Wasn’t that really hard, if she loved them so much?’

  ‘No, she had to be tough – if we took all the sad
cases that are handed in we’d be running our own dog rescues from home. She made me promise I wouldn’t try to save all the dogs myself! The best we could do, she reckoned, was to make sure their second chance didn’t let them down. We had to give the dogs their second chance, because they’d given us humans a second chance, despite how badly they’d been treated.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Rachel suddenly. ‘You’ll make me cry.’

  Megan straightened up, and forced out a watery smile. ‘Sorry. I don’t know how we’re going to manage without her, never mind Gem. He was with her, you know, when she had her stroke. At least he doesn’t look out for her, like the other dogs do. He knows she’s not coming back.’

  Gem came forward with two delicate steps and this time nudged Megan’s leg with his snowy muzzle until she broke off and looked down at him.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, tea time.’ She raised her eyebrows at Rachel. ‘Actually, I shouldn’t say that. That was another rule. Don’t pretend the animals talk like humans. They’re bloody dogs, she said, about ten times smarter than we are. And ten times better company.’

  ‘Well, that I can believe,’ sighed Rachel, thinking of Oliver’s silences and her mother’s constant probing. ‘But don’t get any ideas,’ she added quickly.

  The kitchen was buzzing with hearty conversation when Megan pushed the door open, and it didn’t die down as she went in.

  ‘. . . and I said, here, have a poo bag, lad!’ the old lady at the kitchen table was saying, nodding for emphasis so hard that her neatly set hair nodded with her. ‘It’s like I say to Ted, we should have training classes for the owners, not the dogs. Pippin never toileted anywhere inconvenient, did he, Ted?’

  ‘He certainly did not.’

  ‘He did not. He was a very clean doggie.’

  ‘For a Yorkshire terrier, Pippin was a lavatorial miracle, Freda,’ said the big man leaning against the Belfast sink, with a hint of what Rachel recognised as teasing, although Freda didn’t.