I felt my eyes widen in horror. I’ve never subscribed to the insanity of warring couples having a baby to ‘bring them together’ but I didn’t think getting a puppy was much better. Both required constant attention, peed everywhere and howled during the night, guilt-tripping their way to getting what they wanted until both parental parties were simply too exhausted to argue any more.
And, more selfishly, I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear the entire history of why Jonathan and Cindy had or hadn’t managed to start a family, condensed into the time it would take this evil little mutt to scarf up a gourmet meal.
‘He’s certainly a handsome thing,’ I said instead, trying to be positive. Because, to be fair, Braveheart was handsome. As small dogs went, he looked every inch the pedigree specimen, all perfect snowy coat and shiny black button eyes. And sharp little teeth.
‘Typical Cindy to get a white dog in New York,’ said Jonathan, unrolling his sleeves with more of his usual wry humour. ‘He’s ridiculously high-maintenance. Braveheart has more staff than I do, and he costs about as much to run as Cindy’s car. You know he has his own passport? And microchip? And matching travel bag?’
‘Do you like him?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Jonathan.
‘So why is he here? Did you get joint custody when the divorce happened?’
‘Ah.’ Jonathan paused in putting his cufflinks back in. ‘Well, no. Cindy wanted Braveheart as one of the disposable assets from the house, and I was happy to let her take him because I was in England.’ He pulled a face, as if to say ‘Which I miss already’, then went on, ‘But then when Parker arrived—’
‘Parker?’
‘My nephew,’ deadpanned Jonathan. ‘Cindy and Brendan’s baby.’
Oops. I should have remembered that.
But, really, Parker Riley. Honestly. What sort of name was that? He was a baby, not a fountain pen.
‘How, um, charming,’ I said, embarrassed.
‘Yes, well, when Parker arrived, Cindy decided that Braveheart’s hilarious table manners weren’t so much hilarious as lethal, so she dumped him here. Actually, no,’ he corrected himself. ‘First of all she dumped him in a very expensive doggy rehab centre, for him to await my return to Manhattan, and then when she heard I got back, she told me where he was, and gave me the option of picking him and his scandalous room service tab up, or of getting rid of him altogether. Although that option, she told me, would make her very sad indeed.’
I’m sorry to say that I couldn’t stop myself snorting. ‘That’s big of her,’ I said disapprovingly. ‘I hope she doesn’t do the same thing to Parker when she gets sick of him.’
‘Now, don’t you go getting the idea that Cindy doesn’t care about her Scotch baby,’ he said, wagging a finger at me. ‘You’ll find, if you open that drawer there, that she’s made a list of all his needs, so I can look after him properly.’
I pulled open the drawer, which should have held a cutlery tray and a jumble of whisks and broken nutcrackers. Instead it held a single laminated A4 sheet and a state-of-the-art presentation bound folder.
‘Important numbers,’ I read. ‘Braveheart’s walker. Braveheart’s veterinarian. Braveheart’s canine dietician. Braveheart’s groomer.’ I looked up. ‘Does Braveheart have an astrologer?’
‘Not yet.’ Before he could carry on with whatever he looked about to say, the phone rang in the sitting room. ‘Ah, damn. I told them not to call me at home. Look, I’ll just get that. If he starts playing up, get him into the vestibule and shut the door, OK?’
‘OK?’ I eyed Braveheart nervously.
My father, who was wrong about most things, was right when it came to dogs. He reckoned that a strict ratio of owner height/dog size should apply. Anyone over five feet seven, according to him, should have Labradors or bigger; anything smaller than that looked camp. He would permit Jack Russells – a breed he secretly admired for their tenacious refusal to let go of trouser legs – as a supplement to a larger dog, like an Irish wolfhound or something. Dogs small enough to fit into a handbag, as far as he was concerned, might as well be cats.
Braveheart finished chasing the bowl around the floor in his efforts to remove the last forensic traces of supper – as I would, had I been served that – and stared at me. I could tell he was spoiling for a fight. He reminded me of a diminutive Welsh estate agent at Dean & Daniels: two gin and tonics on top of his residual Napoleon complex, and he’d start getting pushy with men twice his size. I’d had to administer first aid more than once at leaving parties.
‘Hello,’ I said, trying to be nice. Generally, I took quite a firm line with dogs, but this was Jonathan’s dog. Actually, it was Cindy’s dog and I wouldn’t have put it past her, by now, to have fitted him with a microchip voice recorder to find out what was really going on in Jonathan’s life.
Braveheart growled, his teeth jutting over his drawn-back lips in a show of small-dog belligerence.
‘Now, come on. I’m sure you’re a lovely chap,’ I said, leaning over to stroke him. ‘No need for all this grumpiness! We’re from the same country, practically.’
Big mistake. He waited until my hand was millimetres from his wiry coat, and just as I was congratulating myself on charming him into submission, he turned with lightning speed and sank his teeth into the fleshy part of my hand.
‘Bugger!’ I hissed, not wanting to draw Jonathan’s attention, and lifting my hand up to suck it better. To my horror, Braveheart clung on, until we were both eye to eye.
I swear he narrowed his eyes at me.
With a superhuman effort I managed to disengage his jaws – I knew there was some clever trick that Mummy had once employed to remove a Jack Russell from Emery’s leg when its jaws had locked, but funnily enough it escaped me for the moment – and sent him skittering across the kitchen floor.
My skin was unbroken, fortunately, but a series of cross little marks were now stamped into my hand.
‘You little Scottish . . . bugger!’ I hissed at him.
Braveheart panted back, unbowed.
In the sitting room, Jonathan was conducting a yes/no conversation with someone, and I heard his voice getting nearer.
He reappeared in the doorway and I hastily rearranged myself into a semblance of normality.
‘Sorry,’ he mouthed, then nodded to Braveheart who was sitting, stunned, in the corner, preparing himself for his next attack. ‘Well done! Never heard him so quiet!’
I nodded back, hiding my hand behind my back.
‘Won’t be long,’ Jonathan finished and walked back into the sitting room. ‘We’ll be there . . . Of course, I’ll mention it. No, it won’t be a problem . . .’
I sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed my eyes. All I really wanted now was a bath. A bath and a cup of tea, and a change of clothes, and maybe something to eat, actually, then I’d feel more like . . .
What was that faint growling, ripping noise?
I opened my eyes very slowly to see Braveheart with his nose deep in my handbag. It was, as I may have mentioned, a large handbag. It looked as if it was consuming him, slowly, like a Venus fly trap.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ I said, in what I hoped were jolly, unthreatening tones, and reached over to pull it away from him.
The growling intensified and Braveheart increased his purchase on the bag.
‘Now, don’t be silly!’ I said, pulling harder.
He tugged the other way, getting his head looped under one of the handles.
I glanced over towards the sitting room. Jonathan was still talking, albeit in ‘winding up’ mode.
‘Give!’ I hissed, pulling at the bag.
Braveheart’s lips lifted again, almost in a smile, and he started to walk backwards, so we were engaged in a very undignified tug-of-war.
‘This is ridiculous!’ I hissed, and made a lunge for the bag.
Of course, this just tipped the whole thing up altogether, scattering the entire contents over the kitchen floor: lipsticks, tape measure,
white handkerchief, my travel socks, mobile phone, purse, spare purse, change purse for tips, sunglasses, whistle, breath fresheners, mini manicure kit, keys, useful addresses written on business cards, compact, Nurofen, Allegra’s bloody melatonin, the dress and underwear I’d changed out of at the airport, diary, notebook – all sent bouncing and rolling across the tiled floor.
Immediately I fell to my knees, trying to jumble everything back into the bag before Jonathan came back in and saw what a bizarre collection of nonsense I’d carted across the Atlantic with me.
I was searching in vain for the missing right-eye contact lens case when I realised that once again Braveheart’s hysterical barks of triumph had gone quiet.
When I looked up, I saw, to my horror, that he was silent because he was licking something off the floor. I crawled nearer, on my hands and knees so as not to frighten him, and saw that the top had come off Allegra’s melatonin bottle, and Braveheart had one white tablet balanced on his tongue.
He also had my knickers on his head, an ear poking jauntily through one leg hole with a frill of lace drooping over one eye. But I wasn’t so worried about that for the time being.
I grabbed the bottle and slammed my hand over the remaining pills. How many had he taken? I looked so ridiculous that Braveheart forgot to put his tongue back in and for a second I nearly managed to grab the tablet off him. But then he swallowed it, and snapped at my fingers instead.
‘Oh, God almighty!’ I breathed. This was all I needed. Dog poisoning. There was no way I could turn him upside down and shake it out of him, and I wasn’t going near those jaws again.
I grabbed my mobile phone and dialled my home number, praying that Allegra wasn’t tying up the line quarrelling with Lars.
It rang and rang. I kept my eye on Braveheart who was now truffling round the kitchen for more food, howling to himself for amusement. When he passed the door out to the vestibule, I took the opportunity to shove him in and shut it. Immediately he set up a loud protest but for the moment, as far as I was concerned, that was a good thing.
‘Come on, come on,’ I muttered, turning nervously to see where Jonathan had got to in his phone conversation.
‘I’ve got nothing to add to my previous statement. I really can’t comment further,’ said my mother’s voice, very insistently. ‘I have nothing more to say on the matter. And neither has my husband.’
‘Mummy?’ I said, moving out of the kitchen into what looked like a scullery of some kind.
‘Hello, darling!’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Where are you calling from?’
This was her discreet finishing-school method of working out which of her daughters was ringing, since she could never tell us apart on the phone.
‘New York,’ I said heavily. ‘It’s Melissa. Look, Mummy, that melatonin Allegra gave me – what would happen if, um, if a dog ate some? A smallish dog.’
‘How small?’
‘About the size of a West Highland terrier,’ I said with a nervous glance towards the now silent vestibule.
‘Oh, nothing, I shouldn’t think,’ said my mother. ‘Might get a bit sleepy. I sometimes give the dogs Nytol if I have to take them up to Scotland in the car. They don’t mind. I expect they feel as if they’ve been smoking dope. Probably gives them lovely dreams!’
‘Mummy!’ I said, scandalised. ‘You drug the dogs?’
There was a movement in the hall, and I heard Jonathan’s voice coming nearer. ‘. . . I’ll tell her. No, I don’t think . . . Yes, it’s marvellous, I’ve got Cooper’s designer coming over . . .’
‘It’s all homeopathic,’ insisted Mummy. ‘No worse than feeding them tea and biscuits, like Mrs Bleasdale does.’
‘So it should be fine?’ I repeated. ‘To be absolutely sure?’
‘Don’t see why not,’ she said. ‘Just don’t get him addicted. Valley of the Dogs and all that.’
Relief flooded through my system, followed by awful guilt.
‘Thanks,’ I said, then heard Jonathan wind up his conversation. ‘Look, I’ll speak to you later, Mummy. But thank you.’
I hung up, and scuttled back through into the kitchen. I opened the door to the vestibule and found Braveheart there, still chuntering to himself but in a more docile fashion. To test Mummy’s theory out, I took my life into my hands and scooped him up.
He looked at me crossly, then seemed to settle himself in my arms like a baby and then broke wind gently.
At this point Jonathan walked back in and practically did a double-take.
‘You’re kidding me!’ he said. ‘How in the name of God did you do that?’
‘Oh, er, dog training tips from my mother,’ I mumbled.
‘Really? Wow. You never cease to amaze me, Melissa,’ he marvelled. ‘Is there anything you can’t do?’
Braveheart managed to pull back one lip, exposing his teeth, and I knew I’d just stored up a whole lot of trouble for myself.
‘Oh, um, I have many hidden talents,’ I said.
‘Speaking of which,’ said Jonathan, taking Braveheart out of my arms. ‘Why don’t we put him in his basket, and let him get a nap before the walker comes, and we can . . .’
He let his voice trail off seductively, as he nuzzled his nose into the crook of my neck, and murmured some rather outrageous things into my ear.
I dragged my guilty conscience away from the image of the dogwalker hauling a semi-conscious Braveheart round the park and instead let myself be led up to Jonathan’s newly refurbished master bedroom.
Well, to be honest, I didn’t need much leading.
9
To say I wanted to make a good impression at Bonnie and Kurt Hegel’s Welcome Home party was the understatement of the year. I’d never been to a ‘casual get-together’ that came with its own engraved invitation, now propped up on the mantelpiece.
As I’d told Gabi, our meeting at the Oxo Tower had been rather fraught; Bonnie had more or less admitted Cindy had despatched them to size me up, and even though she assured me over coffee that I wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d expected, I was rather dreading a second inspection, this time on Cindy’s home turf.
‘I’ve booked in for a blow-dry,’ I informed Jonathan over breakfast coffee. I felt too hot to eat much, but he’d already put away a bowl of power granola and yoghurt. I’d never had him down as a muesli man. It also turned out he had a very messy bathroom and five multi-vitamins with his coffee. The things you learned when you lived with people.
‘Blow-out,’ he said without looking up from his papers.
‘Blow-out,’ I corrected myself, ‘and a mani-pedi and what have you, and . . .’ I paused. ‘What time are you going to be back tonight? Because I don’t really know what to wear. I could do with your expert opinion.’
Jonathan jotted a final note on his sheaf of notes, clicked the pen with a flourish and shoved it into his top pocket. Despite the heatwave predicted for the day, he was already in his suit, with a spare shirt, freshly laundered, in his briefcase for later.
‘Don’t know. I’ve got a mad day. But, sweetie, whatever you wear, you’ll look a million dollars.’ He smiled. ‘You always do.’
‘But everything I’ve brought with me is . . .’ I trailed off. I didn’t want to tell Jonathan that all my Honey clothes, the ones that made me look curvaceous and bombshell-y, required the sort of underpinnings that could stop bullets. I’d die of heat exhaustion within half an hour, and swooning into the canapés was a pretty drastic way of breaking the ice.
A deranged yapping at the door prevented me from explaining this to Jonathan. The yapping soon turned into dull thuds, suggesting that Braveheart was hurling himself against the glass like a football hooligan.
‘Can you deal with Braveheart?’ sighed Jonathan, finishing up his coffee, and sliding his briefcase off the table. ‘I can’t. You seem to have a knack with him.’
I swallowed guiltily. Braveheart needed a dog psychiatrist, not a trainer, and I didn’t have enough melatonin tablets to drug him for my entire s
tay, even if I wanted to. But Jonathan was beaming at me like there was nothing I couldn’t do. ‘I’ll try,’ I said weakly.
‘That’s my girl.’ Jonathan beamed. ‘I love that about you, Melissa. You’re a can-do sort of woman. None of this “We’ll have to get a specialist dog behaviourist in” nonsense.’
I smiled bravely and made a mental note to call my mother for dog tips. Ones that didn’t involve turning them into junkies.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, making his way to the front door, ‘I appreciate that you’re a little daunted by tonight, but, honestly, there’s no need. It’s just a very small, very informal party. You’ll be among friends – Kurt and Bonnie already love you to death.’ He paused, then had an idea. ‘Hey, do what I do – go to Bloomingdales and get one of their shoppers to pick something out for you.’
‘I could do,’ I said slowly, thinking of the air-conditioning. And the sales. Maybe they’d have some magic American underwear that could suck in my stomach without giving me internal haemorrhaging.
‘Look, whatever you wear, you’ll still be the most beautiful girl there,’ said Jonathan seriously. ‘Don’t forget that.’
I blushed. ‘Oh, stop it.’
‘I mean it.’ Jonathan reached into his pocket for his wallet, picked out a card and chucked it across the table. ‘But treat yourself – go to Bloomies and charge it. Call it my welcome to New York treat. OK?’
‘You don’t have to,’ I began, not wanting to seem like I was angling for presents.
‘I want to,’ he said firmly.
Did Cindy need buying off with clothes? ‘Thanks,’ I said, as graciously as I could. ‘I’ll get something special.’
‘Jesus, what is he on?’ Jonathan shot a weary look at the source of the thudding and howling, then turned back to me with a relieved smile. ‘I’ll see you later.’
As soon as I’d kissed him goodbye on the front step, however, the howling and thudding stepped up a level.