I let Choupi off his lead, knowing that he’d run up and give her a good licking. I figured that some dog-love was exactly what she needed and, by the time I’d reached the bench, she was no longer crying, but instead laughing as she tried to push the dog away.
‘Your dog…’ she said, as she struggled. ‘Your dog is out of control!’
‘Choupi! Heel!’ I shouted, then, ‘Sorry, he doesn’t seem to listen to me at all.’
‘Rob!’ she said, shocked to discover it was me. She continued to wrestle with the dog.
I clipped the lead onto Choupi’s collar and dragged him away. ‘Sorry about that,’ I said again.
‘He’s made my face all wet,’ Dawn said, wiping away what I knew were, in reality, tears.
I slid in beside her on the bench and asked, ‘So what’s up?’ I’d meant it in the English sense, as inwhat’s wrong, but Dawn thought or chose to think I’d meantwhat’s new?
‘Nothing much,’ she replied. ‘Other than being licked to death by your dog.’
‘Not my dog,’ I said, raising my palms. I took a ball from my pocket and threw it across the green to gain a few seconds of calm. ‘I’m just walking him for some friends who are away on holiday.’
‘Oh,’ Dawn said. ‘Right. I was struggling to imagine you with a poodle.’
‘And yet,’ I said, ‘if I was gonna have a dog, I’d want this one. I love him to bits. But anyway, what’s going on with you? You looked like you might be a bit upset?’
‘Oh?’ Dawn said. ‘Upset? Me? Nah!’ It was a half-hearted sort of denial, one that seemed to say,Let’s pretend I wasn’t, OK?
She turned to look across the green at Choupi, who’d abandoned the ball in favour of some pigeons he was chasing around. I suspected she was struggling not to cry all over again.
‘Tell me,’ I said, placing one hand on her shoulder. ‘I can take it.’
She sighed and looked back at me, smiling weakly. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just a bit of bad news. It’s nothing. Really. I’m all over the place at the moment. Girly stuff.’
‘Choupi! Here!’ I shouted. He’d started harassing an Alsatian being walked by a man who looked too old and frail to control him. ‘So come on!’ I urged. ‘Tell me. I’m good with people’s problems. Everyone says so.’
Dawn smiled half-heartedly. ‘Mum actually said that about you.’
‘She’s OK, is she? Your mum?’
Dawn nodded. ‘She’s fine. Mad as ever, but…’
‘Then it must be Billy,’ I said. I hadn’t wanted to say his name, but I couldn’t think of another way to find out. ‘I’m assuming you’re still together?’
That started her crying all over again, and a glimmer of hope rose up in me.
‘He’s gone,’ she said, struggling to speak, and, evil git that I am, I felt ecstatic. ‘I just went round there and he’s gone.’
I took her to Andy’s house for coffee. It was near the park and I had to take Choupi back there anyway. It was a sunny day, so we sat in his tiny back garden while Choupi went sniffing around the edges, just in case something might have changed radically during our walk.
Between sips, Dawn explained how she’d been going to Billy’s place for over a month. She always told stories in a very literal step-by-step sort of way. ‘So I said this… and he said that…’ She never missed out a step.
There had never been anyone at home, she explained. She’d phoned the house in the evenings too, but no one had answered.
Until today, that is, when she’d arrived to find Billy’s mother in the garden.
They’d been away at their holiday home in France, Dawn explained, using a silly posh voice when she saidholiday home. Dawn had asked Billy’s mum if he’d come back with them and if she could see him, and Billy’s mother had laughed because Dawn had got the wrong end of the stick. Billy hadn’t been on holiday with them at all.Billywas back at college in Manchester.
‘College?’ I repeated.
‘I know. He never told me he was at college,’ Dawn said. ‘Can you imagine that? He’s in his third year, apparently. Doing Architecture.’
‘So he always knew he was going back at the end of the summer?’
