They turned back towards the road, stopping again to listen for the noise, then Léo darted into the hedges next to the road, agile for such a large man. Juliet peered through but couldn’t see anything, just heard him speaking gently and cajolingly to whatever he had found. In a minute or two, he emerged, his jumper wrapped around a small form that he cradled in his hands.
‘What is it?’ asked Juliet.
He pulled down the jumper to show her.
‘Oh, it’s a puppy! God, Léo, it’s tiny, what on earth was it doing there?’
She looked up to see his normally friendly face looking grim.
‘Abandoned. It was not alone – the mother and another puppy are there also, but I’m afraid they have not survived. It was obvious that the mother had been mistreated.’
Tears sprang to Juliet’s eyes.
‘How awful. Let’s get it up to the house and call the vet.’
They dashed inside, smack into Frankie, who was coming down the stairs. She drew breath, doubtless to start a barrage of fun, when she saw their faces.
‘What’s happened? I thought you two would be sickeningly lovey-dovey, but you just look sick.’
‘Frankie, can you call the vet? We’ve found a puppy.’
She took one look at the pathetic bundle and whipped out her phone.
‘I’ll call now and get him up to the house. Take it into the kitchen, it’s warmest in there.’
In the space of a few minutes, the sleepy teatime house was alive with action. All the Carlisles were ardent animal lovers, and Juliet was touched by their collective determination to save the little dog. By the time the vet, Henry, had arrived there were six people clustered around, plus a concerned-looking Moriarty, the family’s own small dog. Léo was still holding the puppy, wrapped now in a soft towel that Rousseau had seized from the downstairs bathroom. Martha was warming milk in a pan and Sylvia and Frankie were hunched over a phone, frantically Googling ‘how to save a new-born puppy’.
‘Right, let’s have a look,’ said Henry, putting down his bag. He took the little bundle from Léo and placed it gently on the table, then unwrapped the towel and gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘This is a very young dog, not even twenty-four hours old. There, there, poor little thing, let’s see how you’re doing.’ After a few minutes’ examination, Henry wrapped the puppy up again and turned to the assembly of concerned faces. ‘Okay, so you have a little girl puppy. She’s in pretty good shape, considering, but she’ll need a lot of care for the next few weeks. Are you able to do that here, or should I take her with me?’
An immediate chorus of replies came back:oh no, we’ll look after her, we’ll do it here.
Henry smiled and nodded.
‘All right then. I’m going to leave you with strict instructions for her care as well as some powdered puppy milk and a special whelping box for her to sleep in, with a heat lamp. She’ll need feeding every three hours or so, but it looks like you’ll be willing to do that in shifts, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.’
Twenty minutes later, with the vet gone, having promised to remove the bodies of the other dogs, the family sat around the kitchen table.
‘I don’t mind doing the night-time feeds,’ said Juliet, stroking the puppy’s head tenderly with one finger. ‘I’m often up working into the early hours, so it won’t be a shock to the system.’
‘Looks like your motherly side has been brought out recently,’ said Frankie with a sly smile. ‘Look out, Léo, she might get a taste for this.’
Juliet opened her mouth to tell Frankie, as usual, to shut up, but Léo was too fast for her.
‘I think Juliet is a wonderfully nurturing person and that this puppy is just one of us in this room who is lucky to have her.’
She beamed at him, and he gazed back at her, while the rest of the family stared in astonishment. Even Frankie didn’t have a quick reply. It was Martha who recovered herself first.
‘Well, I think it’s great. Good for you, Juliet. I’m willing to do anything that’s needed to help – shall I write up a rota of when she needs feeding and who’s going to do it? And we ought to think of a name for her.’
‘I think that honour should go to Léo,’ put in Rousseau. ‘After all, it is he who found her.’
‘Merci. I have been thinking about this. I wondered whether her name should reference that she was lost and orphaned, but we do not want this to be her legacy. It is more important to lookforward than back in life. So then I wondered about the future – the word for this in French isl’avenir. That does not make much of a name, but what about Ava?’
‘Perfect,’ said Rousseau, and there was a murmur of assent around the table. ‘Ava it is, well done, Léo. And now, I must attend to my own future and return to my work. Put me down for a feeding shift, I am best in the early morning.’
‘I’d better go as well,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’ve got to get something in the oven. I can do any time, but maybe not the middle of the night.’
‘And I’m going out,’ said Frankie, looking at her phone. ‘Is that the time? I’m going outnow. Look, I’d love to help with Ava, but a regular shift might be asking a bit much. Maybe I could help on a more ad hoc basis. Ciao for now.’
