“No, I did not. I never said anything of the sort. You all assumed it. All I said was: ‘We’re going to West Acres kennels; you can stay there.’ I thought you’d know I meant stay in the house. It neveroccurred to me that you’d think I was planning to put you in with the dogs. I was about to correct the misunderstanding, after Mark said, ‘I’m not sleeping in a kennel,’ and then it occurred to me that it’d be way funnier to let you believe it for a while.”
“I’m not being separated from Champ,” says Sally.
“That’s fine,” says Corinne. “Champ can sleep with you all in the big bedroom. Right, Jill?”
Jill’s smile looks a little strained, Sally notices. “Is that okay?” she asks her. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” says Corinne. “I’ve already told Niall and Jill I’ll pay for a deep clean once you’ve gone. Jill doesn’t normally like dogs being in the house, so she’s doing us a special favor.”
“You really don’t need to,” Sally tells Jill. “If you’ve got a spare kennel, I’ll happily sleep in there with Champ.”
“Don’t be silly.” Jill backs away slightly. “It’s fine. Champ is welcome in the house.” She bends down to stroke him. “Hello, handsome boy! Are you going to be our guest for a bit? That’ll be fun!”
“Can we go and check out the room?” Tobes asks. “I feel a movie night coming on.”
“You could watchThe Wizard of Oz,” Jill suggests.
“Why?” says Ree. “We’re not, like, eight.”
Jill looks put out. “I just thought…The Wizard of Ozis all about Dorothy wanting to save her dog from evil Elvira Gulch.”
Is that true? Sally wonders. She only remembers the music: the Tin Man singing “Just because I’m presumin’ I could be kinda human if I only had a heart.” And “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” obviously. DoesThe Wizard of Ozhave a happy ending? She wants to ask Jill but doesn’t, in case she gets an answer she doesn’t like.She can picture Dorothy waking up at the end and saying, “There’s no place like home,” but she can’t remember what happens to Toto, the endangered dog. How can she have forgotten that?
Sally realizes she’s standing still, not following the others in the direction of the house. She starts to walk, but something pulls her back. Corinne.
“What?” says Sally. Champ, at the end of the lead she’s holding, lies down again, confused about whether he’s supposed to be going or staying put.
“I want to give you something, while no one’s looking. Here.” Corinne pulls a small, dark object out of her pocket and hands it to Sally. It’s a credit card. Or a debit, maybe. “You couldn’t reach this card’s limit if you tried, so no need to worry about that,” says Corinne. “Pin number’s three seven nine two. Don’t tell anyone you’ve got it—Mark, I mean, mainly—and feel free to use it if and when you need to. Okay?”
“Are you serious?” The name on the card is Corinne Antonia Sullivan. “Corinne, this isn’t right. You’ve been extraordinarily generous, but I can’t just spend—”
“You can, though. Okay, look, I wouldn’t normally say this, but…guess how much money I’ve made since we left Swaffham Tilney, from doingnothing? Go on, guess. Or should I tell you? Two hundred and eighty-three grand. My money just sits there making more money for me, all the time. It’s wild! Like, seriously the most miraculous thing in the world. Well, sometimes it goes down as dramatically as it can go up—we don’t love those times—but…you take my point?”
Sally holds up the card. “Any money I spend on this, I’m paying you back. Those are the only terms I’ll agree to.”
“Fine, if you insist.” Corinne shrugs.
“Anyway, I won’t need to. I’ve got money in my account. Ten grand. Though God knows how long that’ll last once I lose my job, which I’m bound to.” Sally tastes a sourness in her mouth as she says this.
“You won’t lose your job,” Corinne tells her. “I can sort it out with Quy Mill, I have no doubt.”
“But, Corinne—”
“Look, Sally, all that matters for now is saving Champ, right? Making sure the authorities don’t get their hands on him. We can worry about your job later if we need to.” Corinne wrinkles her nose. “You definitely want to carry on working there, right? You like…going there and doing whatever you do? I only ask because I’m not a fan of jobs, you know. I’m really not. Bad things can happen to people with jobs.”
Sally frowns. “Worse things happen to those without them, surely—those who want and can’t get them?”
Corinne raises her eyes and makes a tearing-her-hair-out gesture with both hands. “If even a third of those people would stop wanting jobs and want something different and better for themselves instead…” She sighs. “What would you do if you could do anything, anything at all, and you could guarantee it would work out brilliantly?”
“Apart from making sure Champ, Ree, and Tobes were safe forever, you mean?”
“Safe forever is a terrible ambition, but…okay, yeah. Apart from that.”
“My dream has always been to be a famous writer. To write books.”
“Cool!” Corinne perks up. “What kind?”
Sally shakes her head. “I think that’s why I’ve never tried to do it. Any ideas I had always seemed silly. I’d tell someone and they’d go, ‘That sounds crap; who’d want to read that?’ so I never bothered.”
