Chapter 3
Tuesday dawned with a sky the colour of porridge. In a way it was a relief. If you were going to feel crap, you might as well do it on a crap day. No point in wasting a blazing blue sky and dazzling New Year sun on a big grump.
‘You’ll have to put up with a blow-by-blow account of her renovations – nobody gets away without that, God forbid,’ warned Mam.
Cassie didn’t care.
After a breakfast of a boiled egg and half a slice of toast in an attempt to be good, even though that probably meant she’d be starving by eleven, she packed up her leads, dog treats and roll of poo bags – the tools of her new trade – and set off towards her first job. Today was the first day of her life without illusions, she told herself. She remembered what Josie had said earlier: ‘Whatever it is, just do it. Let go of your expectations. Expectations are disappointments waiting to happen.’
Which was a quote Josie had stuck to her fridge.
Stop expecting life to deliver exactly what you want, and just get on with it. She was decked out in her warmest of clothes against the frosty January weather: polo neck, Aran sweater, long puffa coat, sturdy boots and a woolly hat – it all added a good three sizes to her figure and none of it in the right places. Oh well, bugger-all difference it was going to make at the dog park, she thought gloomily as she stomped up the hill towards Patricia’s. The front door had a touchpad that apparently recognised her fingerprints.
‘For feck’s sake,’ she’d overheard Mam mutter, ‘if you’re too fancy for a keyhole, what’s next?’
She pressed the doorbell and waited for Augusta, Patricia’s cleaning lady. She was led into what looked like an unprepossessing hallway, but when you went through a nearby door, it opened out into what looked like a full-on tropical glasshouse straight out of the Botanic Gardens, but was in fact the kitchen.
‘Cassie, love, is that you?’
A hand waved from behind a wingback armchair. ‘Come round here and let me have a look at you. All muffled up like a Christmas turkey, aren’t you great? Well, I couldn’t be happier to see you. The boys and girls haven’t had a proper walk for a week. And tell me, how is poor Iris? I think of her down there on her own sometimes. Tell me, is she doing all right in that little house? Sad, really .?.?. Gosh, dropping in there is a walk down memory lane.’
Mam obviously hadn’t said a word about Eric, and it wasn’t her place to blab about her mother’s love life, but in a flash, she could see exactly why Mam had it in for Auntie Patricia and her condescending attitude. You had to admit, though, her house did look like something straight out ofGrand Designs.
Without warning, she roared over her shoulder, ‘Augusta, let them in.’
A moment later a cacophony of frantic barking ensued as a pack of white fleecy bullets tore into the kitchen and began doing laps of the kitchen island, skidding around the corners.
‘Oh .?.?. I thought there were only one or two.’
‘No, we’re six little rascals, aren’t we? But we’re going to be very good for our auntie Cassie, aren’t we? Because she’s new at this and mightn’t be very used to it.’
Finally, after an exhausting ten minutes, between herself and Augusta they managed to wrangle the spring-loaded Bichons onto leads. All the while, Patricia regaled her with the names and personalities of each one: ‘This one is Snow, short for Snowdrop – don’t be fooled by her, she’s very entitled.’
‘Little feckers,’ muttered Augusta at the back of the armchair.
By the time she’d steered them down the hill and across the road towards the park, Cassie was already overheating. Surely it couldn’t be the perimenopause yet. The sun had come out and the morning had grown unexpectedly warm. Far too warm for her outfit. She desperately needed to snatch the bobble hat off her head, not to mention scratch her nose, but with three dogs in each hand, all trying to go in opposite directions, she felt like something out ofBen-Hur.
She lifted the latch on the inner gate, only to notice at that moment that there were about five large energetic Labrador types joyfully lolloping around as their owners watched listlessly. The Bichons were beside themselves with excitement and, taking pity on the little things, she reached down and unclipped the leads, causing them to shoot off in all directions, diving and rolling. Soon they were soaking brown blobs, almost indistinguishable from the sticky, thawing mud. This was Pandora’s box in action: how the hell was she going to get them back? Apart from that, the big bouncy Labradors seemed totally oblivious to their size and were joyfully launching themselves on the tiny bodies. She noticed to her further horror a frisky black Labrador attempting an intimate act with one of her charges.
‘Oh God, no, please, help, they’ll be killed.’
If there was one thing Cassie hadn’t banked on, it was the possibility that things could go horribly wrong with her aunt’s babies. She felt panic rising in her chest.
‘Napoleon!’ projected a booming woman’s voice. ‘Desist at once. You’re embarrassing me and, what’s more, you’re embarrassing yourself!’
Cassie opened her mouth to intervene when, from nowhere, a massive dark shape filled her field of vision. She felt an almighty thump in her solar plexus, which knocked the wind clean out of her. Next thing, she was lying flat as a plank, staring up at the wintery sky. Scraggy blades of grass framed her face as everything felt very peaceful. A deliciously cool feeling was spreading along the back of her head and neck, and she’d the distinct feeling of water trickling into one of her ears.
‘Woman down!’ bellowed the hearty voice as Cassie realised her hat had flown off and she was lying on her back, partially sunk in mud. A group of ladies and a tall figure in a balaclava were staring down at her.
‘Thor, bad boy!’ admonished the tall figure to a crestfallen Great Dane who, Cassie now registered, was wearing a Superman outfit complete with little cape. The figure, evidently male, held out his hand to her.
‘I’m really sorry. Thor’s not vicious, he’s just super excited to see a new person.’
Cassie registered that she was staring into blue-grey eyes with surprisingly long eyelashes.
‘Wait,’ projected the hearty lady. ‘Step back, sir.’ As she said that, she kneeled down in the mud and produced a safety pin from the pocket of her waxed coat.
‘Don’t move a muscle, dear. I’m a trained army nurse.’ She proceeded to jab the pin into Cassie’s hands and lower legs, causing her to yowl with pain. ‘There’s no obvious spinal damage anyhow,’ she pronounced rather terrifyingly.
