“At the moment we’re all feeling sad because we’re seeing it as a choice between Shukes, which we love, and a future, unknown house which we can’t love or even like yet because we don’t know who or where he is.”
So, this feels like the right moment to explain that Mum is quite a bit weirder than you might so far have gathered. In her lexicon (thank you, English language and literature A-level syllabus, which I looked at for just long enough to know that I had no desire to read the rest), houses are always “him,” and so are cars. They’re not just objects to be called “it.” Houses, like dogs, are at the same level of emotional significance as humans in Mum’s world, and every bit as eligible for meaningful, loving relationships of a family kind. Also, it’s impossible for them to let you down in a hurtful way, as peoplesometimes do.
I kept listening as Mum explained to Champ that once we’d found our new house, fallen madly in love with it, and knew deep in our bones that it was destined to be a member of our family, then we’d all feel much less sad about leaving Shukes. Which, by the way, was called Cowslip Cottage when Mum and Dad bought it. Mum liked the name, but wanted to choose one herself for what she thought then would be her “forever home.” And, since she and Dad had viewed it as part of an open house, when, according to her, the place was so full of the taken-off shoes of potential buyers that it looked ridiculous—“Like the cottage of the shoemaker in ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker’”—she’d suggested the name Shoe Cottage.
Dad wasn’t against this suggestion, though he thought it unlikely that Mum would get away with changing the name of a three-hundred-year-old cottage in Swaffham Tilney without incurring some wrath from certain quarters. Mum said she didn’t care, and in the end she was lucky: saved by Corinne Sullivan, who was rumored to be the village’s wealthiest resident. Corinne did two things that grabbed everyone’s attention at around the same time that Mum and Dad bought Shukes: First, she mentioned and defended her philanthropy policy to the wrong people, and then she let weeds grow high against her garden wall and made no effort to remove them. (As if that weren’t enough on the notoriety-creating front, Corinne later contributed to a third happening—the book-club debacle—that really stole the show and meant that suddenly neighbors who had previously been friendly to one another were pretending not to see each other on the street and in the village pub inorder to avoid contentious clashes.)
Anyway, it was thanks to Corinne hogging all the village disapproval that Mum knew she was in the clear with regard to Shukes’s name; I heard her saying so to Champ, and also that she’d have been ready to stand firm if she’d had to, because Shoe Cottage was definitely the name he was meant to have, once he became a Lambert.
One night, soon after Mum and Dad had exchanged contracts on our new house, the Hayloft, I heard Mum say to Champ: “I’ll never say I’m sorry we bought Shukes, because I’ve loved him so, so much and I always will. But, honestly? If I’d known Granddad was going to die only two months after we moved here, I’d have thought, ‘No, wait. Don’t buy a house with only a front garden and no enclosed back garden, however much you love it—because now you can get a dog, and this kind of garden arrangement isn’t safe for a dog.’”
By “Granddad,” Mum meant her own dad—Champ’s non-furry granddad. Correctly or not, Mum believed having a dog was impossible while he was alive. My view on that is: It would very much have depended on that dog’s temperament and trainability.
“And then I’d never have fallen in love with Shukes because we wouldn’t have gone to view him,” Mum went on while Champ licked his front paw. “We’d have prioritized dog suitability over everything else. Poor Furbert—he never got to have his ideal garden the way you will, Champy.”
I thought to myself,Oh, for Ricky’s sake!(I mostly sayRickyinstead ofGodnow. It started to feel right after I’d been doing “Praise Ricky, Thank Ricky” every day for a few months.)For Ricky’s sake, Mum, I fumed silently,why don’t you question some ofyour wildly incorrect underlying assumptions once in a while?
Here’s what I know: There is nothing unsuitable for dogs about Shukes. His garden is stunning, with the added interest that comes from being able to watch people walking past and coming in and out of their houses. You wouldn’t believe some of the conversations and fights I’ve overheard in that front garden over the years. What if dogs actually prefer the excitement of some human drama to a boringly serene, enclosed back garden where you hear no neighborly gossip at all? Mum ought to have realized she was being silly, because she’d had not one but two dogs since she’d lived at Shukes, neither of whom had suffered a single unfortunate consequence or unpleasant moment as a result of not always being able to be outside exactly whenever they wanted to be. Spending some time inside the house is fine sometimes too. A mixture of out and in is perfect for any and every dog.
Which means there was no problem that needed solving when Mum decided Shukes had to go on the market. I waited for someone to point this out to her, but no one did. It was insane; we all accepted without question that the home we loved, was, in Mum’s words, “obviously not ideal from a doggy point of view.”
No one said, “You’re overreacting because Furbert died—but that’s silly because he didn’t die as a result of getting stolen from our garden, did he? Or of a broken heart, because one day he fancied going outside and was told he couldn’t. He died, specifically, because a litter dropper (“ground vandals,” Mum calls them) dropped a peach stone on the pavement outside the church instead of putting it in a bin, and Furbert ate it, and it pierced his intestine and gave him sepsis.”
No one said any of that, or pointed out that there was no goodreason to move house. And yes, I could have, but I chose not to. I’m glad now that I didn’t, because as it turned out, there was a very good reason Shukes had to be put up for sale. There was the reason of the Gaveys. Whatever you want to call the force that steers all our lives, it knew that Lesley Gavey was about to decide that she wanted to move to Swaffham Tilney, and it knew what we—or rather Mum and Dad, as the homeowners—needed to do in order to help that move along, so that the war between the Lamberts and the Gaveys could begin.
8
Monday 17 June 2024
Sally
Sally turns left out of Bussow Court and starts to walk quickly—with aerobic intentions, anyone who sees her will think—toward the center of the village. She is shivering from the chill inside her, even though it’s warm and sunny. She’s brought nothing but her phone and is giving herself half an hour to accomplish this first step: Phase One, or the beginning of Phase One.
Thirty minutes will have to be enough. With Champ under threat, she’s not prepared to leave him alone for long—and by alone, she means with Mark, Ree, and Tobes. He needs her, his mum, by his side in case the danger escalates quickly. Which it might; Sally would put no heinous act past the Gaveys.
Leaving Champ behind at the Hayloft after he’d made it clear he wanted to go with her was one of the hardest things Sally has ever done. No choice, though. They need help urgently and he would have slowed her down, wanting to sniff every tuft of greenery they passed.
Where do you go for help of the sort Sally needs? She has no idea. Her best friends, Oonagh and Tash, live too far away, in Devon and Yorkshire. And both Sally’s mother and her sister, Vicky, would urge her to sit tight and let the police get to the bottom of it instead of doing anything rash. Both tend to trust that anyone in a position of power has best interests at heart beyond their own—like Sally’s dad when he was alive, for instance.
In any case, Mum and Vicky aren’t much nearer than Oonagh and Tash. Sally needs a helper who’s here in Swaffham Tilney, no more than a thirty-second sprint away—it’s impossible to think beyond that time frame and that distance—and who will advise her to trust no one. There’s a paradox in there somewhere, and Sally wonders if she’s the first to think of it: when the only person you’d consider trusting is someone who tells you not to trust anyone at all.
The best option for emergency help, she thinks as she marches along, is someone in the village whom she doesn’t know particularly well—nobody the police would think to interview as a priority, or ideally at all, if Sally and Champ were to disappear.
Are they about to disappear?
Yes. That has to be the next move. For the last few minutes, Sally has been aware of a thought growing inside her, colonizing ever more brain space like an opinionated, non-life-threatening (perhaps even Champ’s-life-saving) tumor. It’s a shock to her, because it’s so off-brand—she’s Sally Lambert, after all, Queen of Enjollification—but she can’t ignore it.
The thought, more pessimistic than anything she’d normally allow, is:Get out quick. Even if there’s a strong chance all will be well, assume it won’t be if you stay. Just get out. Go.
What if this is what Enjollification looks like when you’re presented with a terrible life circumstance that you can neither control nor wish out of existence? There’s a chance that Sally’s just doing what she always does: everything in her power to guarantee a happy ending and a happy right-now.
Yes, that’s it. That’s true.There’s nothing jolly about allowing even the tiniest possibility of this situation going the wrong way. What Sally needs is a plan to get her and Champ out—beyond the reach of Swaffham Tilney and its warped notion of justice to a safe hideaway where he can’t be found and…seized. (Even thinking the word makes her shudder.)
No need to involve the rest of the family, though Sally will of course make sure they get an explanation once she’s safely beyond the reach of any argument against her plan that any of them might want to put to her.
She passes the pond and the bus stop, the beginning of an idea starting to form in her mind…
Wait.
