I couldn’t take it in at first. I’d been staying at Mum and Dad’s for a few days so I could do a practice run at the hairdresser’s, sort out the champagne at the cash and carry, and do a thousand other wedding related jobs. Cole was supposed to have that whole week off work so he could collect the wedding cake and pick up his suit and see to the last minute arrangements at the reception venue, but instead he’d put his name down for some standby shifts. He’d been offered the chance of long-haul work, and he’d taken it.
He said he wasn’t coming back for the wedding, he was sorry, he’d never forgive himself, blah, blah, blah. And that was it. The poor seamstress was still only halfway through cutting my hem and I was shaking uncontrollably and sobbing my heart out.
When a wedding’s cancelled, it’s not like in the films where, once there’s been an appropriate amount of crying, they cut straight to the getting-on-with-her-life montage and she soon learns what a lucky escape she’s had. In real life there’s actually a bunch of admin to do. It’s a bit like when somebody passes away; you want to lie on the floor and just cry forever but there’s relentlessly grim paperwork to be done and a thousand arrangements to be made. I knew I’d have all this stuff to sort out, and fast, including deciding what to do with my lovely dress, which I’d never walk down the aisle in but I’d still have to pay for.
In spite of all this, even when I was panicked and distraught, there was one little bit of comfort waiting for me at home: Barney.
Cole had simply flown off that morning, leaving him alone at our house. That’s what I thought anyway. I couldn’t get that wedding dress off quickly enough. I threw my clothes on and we all rushed out to pick him up, me howling in Mum’s back seat all the way to Manchester.
Barney was never happy being left alone for too long; he’d get lonely and bored and chew things, furniture mainly. He’d been like that since the day I found him, or rather, the day we found each other.
I’d spotted him in a rescue centre advert in the local paper. The vet thought he might be about ten weeks old, but nobody could be certain. I knew instantly that he wasmydog. I’d been so lonely after moving to the Love Shack. I’d just finished my teaching degree and was struggling to find full time work and Cole wasalwaysflying – that, I’d quickly realised, was the major downside of being engaged to a glamorous, handsome airline pilot; that and his falling in love with air hostesses. Somehow Barney’s big brown eyes behind the kennel bars had been irresistible and I brought him home that weekend.
When Cole got back from his run of Malaysian stop-overs there was this rolling, tumbling, sofa chewing ball of fluff piddling on his pristine white carpets. Loving Barney hadn’t come as easily to Cole as it had for me but the little guy grew on him after a while, and we gave him a lovely life; walking holidays in Cornwall and sausages for tea every now and then, and Frisbee-chasing and…
Well, anyway, when we got to the house Barney wasn’t there. There was a ‘For Sale’ sign outside and Cole had had the locks changed. All my stuff was in boxes in the garage. So his sudden change of heart about the wedding hadn’t been so sudden after all. And for years I’d dopily handed over my wages and never questioned why Cole was so resistant to the idea of a joint mortgage. He’d orchestrated the perfect, consequence-free coward’s escape.
I rang Cole’s mum and, of course, the old bat wouldn’t pick up. We went to her house and she wouldn’t answer the door, even though I could hear Barney barking from the kitchen extension at the sound of the doorbell.
I was frantic, but there was nothing else to do but go back to Mum and Dad’s and wait. I rang her a zillion times a day for three days, until eventually she answered. She said that Cole had given her instructions to look after Barney and that was what she was doing, now that he was from a ‘broken home’. She said Barney was perfectly happy and I was to leave them in peace until me and Cole sorted it all out when he got back.
I begged her to let me come and collect him but she was having none of it. I knew I couldn’t bring Barney to Mum and Dad’s anyway because of Dad’s allergies, and Nari’s flat was a no-pet rental, and I couldn’t evenget intomy own house, so I gave in and asked Patricia to at least let me pop round and visit him and – this is what still kills me – she said she didn’t want me ‘toing and froing’, especially knowing the state I was in, in case it confused or frightened poor Barney.
I know I should have put up a fight, and I suppose I could have called the police and reported her for dognapping or something – although it’s nottechnicallytheft if it’s your son’s dog and he’s left him in your care, is it? And there was part of me that knew she was right. Iwasin a terrible state, and I couldn’t exactly care for Barney, I had nowhere to take him. Some of the other teachers at school, the ones I count as friends, would have taken him, I realise now, but at the time I couldn’t bring myself to impose on their precious school holidays with their own families and pets. So I’d swallowed down the bitterness and my longing to scratch his big fuzzy noggin, and I waited, thinking Cole would have to come back and face the music sometime soon.
There was some small comfort in Patricia looking after him though. Like so many impossible old battleaxes, Patricia loves dogs better than any other creatures on earth – well, apart from Cole, her golden boy, of course. Everybody knew that Barney would be well cared for, spoiled rotten even, and it was only supposed to be a short-term arrangement. That very day I started looking for a rental property with a landlord who’d let me keep a pet – harder than you’d think on my wages.
Anyway, I still had what was supposed to be my wedding day to get through, and me and Nari had decided to spend that weekend in the hotel where the reception was supposed to be, so I couldn’t really get much done in those first few heartbroken days. I simply resigned myself to the fact that Barney was Patricia’s houseguest for a while and I’d just have to pine for him until Cole got home and I could confront the bastard. But eight days later, and still with no sign of Cole, Barney got ill.
It must have been a broken heart that did it, that, and all the sudden changes in his routine, and him not understanding how much I wanted him… Oh, here come the tears again! I can’t think about it without sobbing. Every single time it floors me like a kick in the stomach.
It was a seizure, apparently, while he was out for his walk with Patricia. It was very sudden and very severe.
I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Patricia didn’t call for two days and by then his body had been taken away by the vet, and it was all just too late.
I’ll never forgive Cole, or his mother, but mostly I can’t forgive myself for just surrendering like that, for giving Barney up, but I reallydidthink he’d be coming back to live with me once I’d sorted out the mess Cole had left us in.
‘You couldn’t have known that was going to happen. You arenotto blame.’
Stellan’s voice reaches me through the grief just as I feel him shifting onto the bale beside me and wrapping me in his arms.
By now I’m a snotty, red-eyed mess and I can’t stop the tears.
‘I’m sorry, Stellan,’ I say with an unattractive snort that has him reaching into his pocket for a pack of tissues. ‘I’ve barely spoken about Barney since he died. Something about being here with all these huskies just…’
‘You never get over losing your best friend,’ Stellan says.
His voice is low and close to my ear and I feel overwhelmed by tiredness at its lullaby cadence. I could sleep here in his arms with the sounds of the dogs snuffling and playing all around us, but I check myself. Haven’t I only just resolved to hold back, to play it cool until Boxing Day when I fly home? I don’t need any more complicated feelings to contend with.
‘Stellan,’ I say, extricating myself from his arms. ‘I should be getting back now.’
‘Not until your tears are dry,’ he says, leaning into the enclosure and reaching for one of Kanerva’s sleeping pups. ‘Here, a hug from little Toivo will help.’ He smiles as he gently places the fluffy, warm bundle on my lap.
And he’s right, it does help. I spend a long time just stroking Toivo’s lovely fur and whispering to him as he snores contentedly while Stellan sees to the dogs’ next feed and starts locking up the shed and turning off some lights.
When he’s ready to leave he comes over and sits by my side again, close enough so that the thick layers of our snowsuits over our thighs almost touch, and he hands me a key.
‘Here, this is for you. You’re right, I will have a lot of work to do over Christmas, so I won’t always be around, but listen, there’s usually someone here at the sheds, often it’s me, but just in case, this key means you can visit the pups for a hug any time you need one, OK?’