‘He just turned up,’ said Jessie. ‘We thought he might belong to someone so we Facebooked about him.’
‘Under Scottish law a dog is required to wear a collar with the name and address of the owner and the dog clearly displayed on it.’
‘But he is wearing a collar. You just told us that.’
‘But you’ve just told me it’s not his collar. You’re also required to keep him under control, which you clearly did not do or he wouldn’t be here. If you want him back, you have to sign an agreement.’
‘No problem,’ said Ray.
‘How old are you?’
‘Sixteen. Nearly seventeen.’
‘Then you have got a problem. You have to be eighteen to sign.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Ray. ‘We’re happy to wait here till I’m eighteen. Mind if we sit down?’
The police officer gave him a look.
‘Could we not just go and see if he’s all right?’ said Jessie. ‘The one you have might not even be the right dog.’
It was already getting dark out in the car park behind the police station. There were a couple of police cars, a Portakabin, and, standing in a big puddle in the darkest corner, a metal cage. Its bars were covered in wire mesh.
At first I thought Sputnik wasn’t in there. Then I noticed a pile of wet clothes in the corner. It was him, curled up in a heap, clutching his backpack. His eyes were cold. They’d tied a bit of rope to his collar and tied the other end to the bars of the cage, using a clove hitch knot.
In all our times together, the thing that Sputnik was the most was noisy. He was a shouting, singing, crashing, exploding whirlwind of racket. I’d never seen him quiet before.
‘That’s him, but he looks so sad!’ said Jessie. ‘Can’t we take him?’
‘Not without signing the paperwork. Which you’re not old enough to do.’
‘But what’s going to happen to him?’
‘As you admitted yourselves, he is a stray and as such we’ll be asking the Animal Rescue to take him. If they say no, I shall take steps to have him destroyed.’
‘Destroyed?!’ howled Jessie. ‘No. Please.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Ray. ‘I’ll call our mum. I’m sure she’ll sign.’
‘She’ll be in a fury,’ said Jessie.
‘She’ll be in a fury on the phone, but she’ll calm down on the drive over.’
There wasn’t much signal out in the car park. They went inside to use the police phone and I stayed behind with Sputnik.
– I’m really sorry you got arrested.
He didn’t answer.
– I know this is probably not the best moment but . . . you know . . . the list? To save the planet?
‘Forget it.’
– I can’t just forget it. I live on it. I keep all my stuff here. I have to try to save it. We’ve got nine things. We just need—
‘It’s not like it was going to last much longer anyway.’
– What?!
‘Even if we had managed to save it for now, I’d still only give it another thirty million years tops.’
That’s loads of time. That’s the whole of history times thirty.
‘It sounds a lot, but it’s less time than it takes starlight to cross a galaxy. It’s the twinkling of an eye. Literally. Anyway, it’s all over now. So I’m getting out of here before the Big Shrink. Have you got your knife on you?’
– But you can’t just leave. You promised to look after me.
‘Ah. Sorry. Should’ve said. That was a misunderstanding. I was never supposed to be looking after you at all. Even Sputnik can make mistakes. Apparently. Please. Cut the rope.’
– What?! A misunderstanding?! What kind of misunderstanding?
‘Don’t worry. It wasn’t your fault.’
– I know it’s not my fault. Obviously it’s not my fault! How could it be my fault?
‘There was just a bit of a mix-up. I’m going to make up for it. I’m going to make you a special offer. When you’ve cut the rope.’
So I took out the knife that Grandad gave me and I cut through his rope. He rolled his head around, trying to relax his neck.
– A special offer to make up for my planet collapsing? What kind of special offer?
‘Come with me.’
– What?
‘You can come with me. Round the universe. Like a comet. Your whole world collapses but it won’t matter what happens to your planet because you’ll still have . . . me.’
I thought about this for about ten seconds. I thought about shooting stars and nebulae and oceans made of gas. I didn’t know how it would work, but I knew it would be mad and marvellous. Everything to do with Sputnik was mad and marvellous.
I said, out loud, ‘No. Thanks. But no.’
‘What?! You know your planet is going to shrink to nothing?’
– Someone’s got to look after Grandad. When I saw him in that place, I thought, They don’t know how he likes his tea. They don’t know how to calm him down when he gets upset. They don’t take him for walks.
‘The whole world’s going to collapse. You don’t need to worry about his tea.’
– If the whole world’s going to collapse, then I really want him to have a nice cup of tea.
‘He doesn’t even know who you are.’
– But I know who he is.
Sputnik didn’t say anything else except goodbye. Oh. And he gave me back Grandad’s harmonica. ‘Maybe he’ll want to play you a tune.’
Back in the police station I could hear Jessie and Ray arguing with their mum on the phone. She must have said something about how there was no point taking Sputnik back because Sputnik didn’t want to live on the farm, he wanted to live with me, because Jessie was saying, ‘Then why doesn’t Prez live with us too? That will solve everything.’
Ray said, ‘Jessie, you can’t ask a person to live with you just because you want to share his dog.’
‘There’s other things I like about him apart from his dog. You like him too, Mum. He empties the dishwasher! He collects the eggs. He makes a really good tomato sauce. Please . . .’
There was a long pause. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the reply. So I put my hand up and said, ‘Don’t worry about Sputnik,’ out loud. They all looked at me – Jessie, Ray and the crabbit police officer. ‘Sputnik,’ I said, ‘has got plans of his own.’
‘What kind of plans?’ asked Ray.
But before I could reply, a noise drowned me out. Not a noise I expected to hear in a police station. I could see that none of the others knew what it was. But I knew right away. I’d heard it before, at a birthday party weeks ago. It was the sound of a red lightsaber blazing through metal.
It stopped. A loud clang. Metal bouncing on to a stone floor.
The bars of the cage had been sliced like a banana. They rolled and rang across the ground. The hot tang of burnt metal hung in the air.
‘What happened?’
‘Where’s Sputnik?’
Everyone looked at me. As if I might know. Which of course I did.
Jessie started to cry. ‘You said you were looking after him! Now he’s gone!’
The police officer was looking all around the yard but she wasn’t looking for Sputnik. ‘There was a police car here a minute ago,’ she said. ‘An emergency response vehicle. It was parked right there.’
She pointed to the empty space.
The moment she pointed, a siren started and a bright-yellow-and-blue police van went screaming past the gate.
26.
Postcards
‘You know,’ said Ray as they walked me back to the Temporary, ‘Sputnik strayed into Stramoddie – maybe he’s just decided to stray somewhere else. Some people are like that. They don’t want to settle. They like to wander. We’re just blessed that he stayed with us for a while. Maybe I’ll do that when I leave school – just wander around the world, try and see it all. And the people I meet, well, they’ll be blessed to have met me.’
It was late by the time they left me at
the Temporary. The mum was waiting for them outside in the car. I could tell Jessie and Ray were in trouble for going off to Dumfries without telling anyone, but she was nice to me. She said I was welcome any time. Then she drove off.
I went to my room, waited until the house went quiet, then sneaked out on to the fire escape to see if I could spot anything unusual in the vicinity of Sirius. Even the stars looked different now he’d gone. When you looked up at night in Stramoddie the sky was velvet smothered in luminous caster sugar. When you looked up in the town, it was just a few hundred specks of paint on a blackboard.
When Sputnik went he took half the galaxy with him.
I wanted to talk and talk and talk about him. I was scared that if I didn’t, I might forget all about him. There was only one person I could talk to though. The only other person who had ever seen him.
Grandad.
I’d promised Mrs Rowland that if I was worried about Grandad I would say so. I texted her that I wanted to see him. She texted me ☺, phoned the Shangri-La Nursing Home and even gave me a lift.
Elsa seemed pleased to see me. ‘Last time you came,’ she said with a smile, ‘we were having a slight stairlift malfunction. But that’s all sorted out now. Your grandad’s waiting for you in the day room. I’ll take you through.’
But he wasn’t in the day room.
‘Oh. Perhaps he’s getting some air on the patio.’
No.
‘The garden room maybe?’
Not there either.
‘He must have gone back to his room. He sometimes gets muddled up about what time it is. I’ll go up and check.’
I followed her up the stairs.
‘You don’t need to come. I’ll bring him down,’ she said. ‘We’ve got tea and cakes in the lounge.’
One of the good things about not talking is you don’t have to explain why you’re not doing as you’re told. I followed her up to Grandad’s room.
The room was neat and bare. Not like the cluttery cave he’d made in his bedroom back at Traquair Gardens. It had a bed, a bedside table and a wardrobe.
It did not have a grandad.
‘Don’t worry. He can’t be far away.’
Oh yes, he can, I thought. There were some postcards and a school photo of me on the bedside table. They were views of Rumblecairn Bay.
Elsa saw me looking at them. ‘We got those for him. We’ve been explaining to him who you are and where you’ve been. Hopefully he’ll know who you are when we find him. We work very hard to reconnect them with their happy memories. We use music. Poetry. It’s amazing how the mind works. Even when it’s not working properly. Come on. Hide and seek.’
But I’d noticed something else. One of the postcards was marking a page in a little book. I picked it up. The Solway Firth Tide Timetable. The page it was marking was today. One high tide was underlined.
Rumblecairn Bay – 15.33
And Grandad wasn’t the only thing missing from the room.
The sea chest wasn’t there either.
Grandad had run away to sea.
I thought to myself, what would Sputnik do?
Then I realized he would probably do something that involved high explosives and danger to life and limb.
I had to think of a plan of my own.
Elsa left me in the garden room, with a plate of shortcake, some teacups and a promise she’d be back with Grandad in half a mo. Mr Leithen was standing at the window, watching the blue tits on the bird feeder. Without turning round, he whispered, ‘Your grandad’s done a runner.’
I didn’t answer. I thought I might have imagined it. He said, ‘He sent his sea chest down on the stairlift during breakfast. Strapped it on the back of one of the mobility scooters and vamoosed. Made a break for it. He’s escaped.’
I knew he was telling the truth.
I had two hours to high tide, but Rumblecairn was hours and hours away. I didn’t want to think about what would happen to him if he got as far as the bay at high tide. I had no plan. I just had to get going.
‘If you’d just give us a moment,’ said Elsa, ‘we’ll check the toilets. They sometimes get locked in.’
I nodded, smiled and as soon as her back was turned dashed out of the front door and down the drive.
I’d only just turned on to George Street when an electric hooter parped behind me. A mobility scooter was trying to get past. The driver was Mr Leithen. ‘Get on,’ he said.
A mobility scooter? To catch a runaway grandad?
‘He’s on a mobility scooter himself. I’m a better driver than he is. What are your options? Come on. Hop on the back. Let’s do this!’
I think the most I’ve ever missed Sputnik was when I was sitting on the back of that mobility scooter as it chugged slowly, slowly over the bridge and inched up the hill towards the bypass. I just know he would have adjusted its engine so that it could fly or go supersonic or destroy every car in its path. That day, the most exciting it got was when a milk float pulled up alongside us at the lights, and the milkman told us off for using the road and holding up the traffic.
‘You should be on the pavement! It’s against the law,’ screamed the milkman.
‘Don’t talk to me about the law!’ shouted Mr Leithen. ‘I’m a retired High Court judge. I’m perfectly within my rights on this road. Since you clearly know nothing about the law, you’d better take this.’ He handed the man his business card. ‘If you’re ever in legal trouble, give me a call,’ he said.
We puttered along the bypass while the cars tore past us. The sun dipped towards the hills and I thought, Somewhere behind me the moon will be rising, pulling the tide up the bay.
There were roadworks on the Castle Douglas turn-off, so we left the road and bumped along on the grass verge. It was the only time we overtook anything. That’s when I had my idea.
There was a caravan stuck in the traffic jam. What if it was going to Rumblecairn Bay? No. How could you know? We trundled on. The driver of the car that was pulling it was on his phone. There was a sticker on his back window: ‘I’ve been Rumbled! at Rumblecairn Bay Caravan Site.’
I reached past Mr Leithen and pulled on the brake. ‘What are you doing? I’m the driver!’
I shushed him and told him to follow me. I tried to make it look as though we were just out for a stroll.
‘Don’t look at that caravan,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t even give it a glance.’
We went right past it, but then at the last moment I twirled around, wrenched open the caravan door and stepped inside.
When I turned to close the door I found that Mr Leithen was trying to follow me.
‘No, no,’ I hissed. ‘You can go back to Shangri-La. On your scooter.’
‘Once you’ve left Shangri-La,’ he said, ‘there’s no going back. This is cosy.’ He headed straight for the kitchenette. ‘I think you may well find this little adventure will lead you into legal troubles. You’re probably going to find my advice and expertise invaluable. Oh – a kettle! Be a good lad and fix us a brew. We’re off.’
Mr Leithen really did make himself at home in that caravan. He helped himself to biscuits, tucked himself up in the bed and read a magazine about camping.
I found a little pull-down couch under the window. I sat there watching the hills and farms go by behind the net curtains. Just hoping that this caravan was really going to the bay today and that we weren’t going to find ourselves on the boat to Ireland.
Then out of nowhere the wonky tower of the Coo Palace rose up above the treetops. As we twisted through the lanes towards it, it seemed to be turning round to face towards the caravan, as if it was pleased to see us.
Geese were honking just above our heads.
The caravan started rocking from side to side. We were on that little lane that runs along the Merse edge. We were moving slowly now. I eased open the caravan door, looked back at Mr Leithen. He gave me a thumbs-up and I jumped.
The caravan was going faster than I thought. My legs landed ages before the res
t of me. I rolled down through the long wet grass.
27.
The Sea Chest
I lay for a moment looking up at the clouds, getting my breath back, feeling glad I was still alive. Then I remembered my mission.
The first thing I saw when I got to my feet was a red mobility scooter wedged into one of the little creeks, its back wheels up in the air, its front end caked in mud.
‘Grandad!’
I searched all around the wrecked scooter in case he’d fallen off into the mud. No footprints even. No sign. Well, no sign of Grandad. There was a big sign. It said: ‘Danger of Drowning! Fast Incoming Currents!’ There was also a thick straight line gouged into the mud right next to it, as though someone had just dragged a fridge out to sea.
No, not a fridge.
A sea chest.
I looked out over the Merse, to where the trail was headed. The sun bounced so brightly off the mud, it was like looking into a headlight.
Half past two.
Already, somewhere out there, the tide was coming in.
I trudged along the track in the mud, looking left and right for some sign of him. I suppose that’s why I didn’t notice the big hank of blue rope under my feet. I tripped and went flat on my face in the mud. I looked up. Everything looked different from down there. The mountains were in the dazzle, but you could see clearly across the ground. I saw the long-legged wader birds dashing all over the place. I saw the salmon poles standing over to my left like a row of policemen. I saw barnacled rocks sticking up. And I saw a figure. A man walking, hunched forward, dragging a heavy box after him. He was heading straight out to sea.
‘Grandad!’ I jumped up.
As I stood up, I noticed something happening under my feet. Where I’d landed, I’d made a hole in the mud. As soon as I stepped out of it, water began to trickle in. Just a trickle, but a steady trickle. A trickle that wasn’t stopping.
The sea was coming.
I ran over the mud, bent double so I could keep out of the glare, calling, stumbling, slipping, shouting, ‘Grandad! Grandad!’ The closer I got to him, the clearer I could see the danger. Every little rivulet and indentation, every footprint I made, was filling up with water. Water spilled over on to the flat mud. A skin of water was spreading all over it, catching the light. It was water that made the Merse so hard to look at. The whole bay was just one big bathtub that minute by minute was getting fuller and fuller.