Apropos that…I often wish my whole family wasn’t so in thrall to Mum’s beguiling yarn about my death, and how I was callously manslaughtered by a litter vandal whom she will one day succeed in hunting down and punishing. She thinks it’s a tragedy that I moved up when I did, even though she’s in no doubt that I’m still with her and feels my presence by her side every day. (I make sure of that.)
It makes no sense to miss me at the same time as knowing I’m still here…until you realize that nearly everyone Mum has ever met believes moving up to Level 2 is the saddest thing that could possibly happen. She’s been groomed from an early age to believe that.
It’s a shame that those in Level 3 can’t get their “what-to-thinks” from those of us who have left it, since we see a much fuller picture. It blows my mind each time I remember that they don’t know about Everyone Gets Equal. (I’m sorry, but I can’t explain this one. We’d be here forever if I tried, and I’m not sure it can properly be understood in Level 3 anyway.)
As soon as I arrived at Level 2, I was shown who dropped the peach stone that moved me up. It was Tavia Foster, the ex-girlfriend of Conrad Kennedy from Bussow Court’s the Byre. Tavia wouldn’t normally have dreamed of dropping food remains on the street, but she was a wreck that day. She’d been in the middle of eating the peach at Conrad’s house when he’d told her it was all over betweenthem. She left in a hurry and was running through the village in great distress, and when the half-eaten peach dropped from her fingers, she didn’t notice, having forgotten she was holding it.
To my mind, this is entirely understandable. I keep trying to communicate to Mum that there’s no reason to hate either the stone-dropper or peaches, but I haven’t managed to get through to her yet on that front. The villain-victim-rescuer model is still her favorite shape of narrative, and she’s still clinging to her belief that there’s a peach-dropping baddie to be tracked down and destroyed.
The truth is, I’m not the victim of a peach stone; I’m the rescuer of Champ. And I needed to be in position, exactly where I was and where I am now, when the Gaveys launched their attack. Everything that happened unfolded exactly as it was always meant to.
I keep trying, gently, to guide Mum toward the conclusion that peaches are not to be hated or feared. My first attempt to transmit the message was far too clumsy; I managed to smuggle some peaches into her shopping at the big Tesco in Milton, with the help and hands of an oblivious elderly woman who was there at the same time. Mum acted as if someone had planted rat droppings in her trolley and removed the peaches as soon as she spotted them. I wanted to yell, “I love peaches! Peaches are delicious! Peaches are innocent!” but I didn’t want to cause a shake-up of all the levels by speaking out loud.
I suppose I should clarify, since I’ve just said the above… Yes, proper audible speaking is something I could do if I wanted to. All family-pet spirits could. The ramifications would be seismic if anyof us did, obviously, and so none of us will—not, at least, unless and until there’s a crisis to which it’s judged to be an appropriate response. I’ll admit, it was hard to hear, and to have to accept, that the Gaveys’ persecution of Champ was not viewed as such a crisis. One day, one or more of us will have to speak and be heard, but that day is at least ten years away, if the rumors are to be trusted.
It’s no wonder I was so thrilled by the emergence of the #InnocentChamp movement, in which tens of thousands of wonderful people raised their voices so decisively. The sudden and intense power of that tidal wave of support for Champ was something to behold and all the proof I’ll ever need that a huge outpouring of good can overcome the most corrosive evil.
Which brings me to Sarah Sergeant and her Bonnie-sacrificing plan. Sarah meant well, but to say I was relieved when Mum vetoed her proposal is an understatement. It would have been quite wrong to tarnish, publicly, the reputation of poor, innocent Bonnie. And, really, Corinne should have guessed Mum would never agree to save one dog by slandering another. I knew there were better ways to handle our problem—or rather, I was starting to know and to plot.
Corinne’s poise and confidence were undented by what Mum, Dad, Ree, and Tobes viewed as our temporary stumpedness. “It’s fine,” she kept saying, and I could tell she believed it. “I’m already working on an even better plan C—so good that by the time I’ve finished, we’re going to want to rechristen it plan A!”
I didn’t doubt her and wondered how similar her eventual plan might be to the one I was quietly assembling in my mind.
What I didn’t expect was any input from anyone else—notuntil a torrent of blasphemous swearing erupted from Ree. “Mum, everyone,” she said, once she’d stopped spluttering obscenities. “Listen. No, I mean, really listen. I’ve thought of something massive. I can’t believe it’s only just occurred to me.”
31
Wednesday 19 June 2024
Sally
“Think about Bonnie, Sarah Sergeant’s Welshie,” says Ree.
“Why?” Tobes is scathing. “That plan would never have worked anyway.”
“Shut up, will you? Mum! Remember the photos Sarah showed us? Can you picture them? Dad, can you?”
“But Bonnie looks nothing like Champ,” Toby goes on, undeterred by the attempt to silence him. “I mean, is she even a full Welshie? Didn’t look like one to me.”
“She is,” says Corinne. “Kennel Club registered and everything.”
“Well…” Tobes shrugs. “It still wouldn’t work. Tess Gavey would say, ‘No, that’s not the dog that bit me. That dog looks completely different.’ And then the police would look at Champ, and look at Bonnie, and go, ‘Oh, yeah—no resemblance whatsoever.’”
“Is it a boy/girl thing, the lack of resemblance?” Mark asks Corinne, who shrugs.
“If you could all justshut upfor a second?” Ree glares around the room. “Right. Thank you. Mum, listen. Bonnie—”
“No,” Sally says automatically.
“For God’s sake,” Ree growls. “You think you know what I’m going to say, but you don’t. I don’t want Bonnie getting offed by the feds any more than you do, okay? Hear me out. When Sarah showed you the photos of Bonnie, what was the first thing you thought?”
Sally thinks back. Eventually she says, “Sarah was talking about all Welshies looking alike, and I thought, ‘Not this one.’ I thought, ‘You couldn’t possibly have shown me a picture of a Welsh terrier that looks less like Champ.’”
“Right.” It’s the answer Ree wanted. “Exactly. Me too.” She looks and sounds like a lawyer who knows the last words out of the witness’s mouth have just won the case for her. “I thought the same. I knew you’d have said no anyway, even if Bonnie and Champ had been identical, facially—but they barely even looked like the same species. And I’d probably have thought no more about it if we hadn’t watched that movie a few days ago—the one with the scientist that either looked or didn’t look like Vinie Skinner, depending on your point of view.
“But wedidwatch the movie, and I remembered the argument we had about resemblances, and…you know how your mind just sometimes goes off in weird directions? Well, mine does—and I found myself wondering if Tess Gavey cared whether there was a resemblance or not between Champ and the dog who actually bit her. Like, did she get bitten by a different Welshie and think, ‘Aha, now I can frame Champ Lambert’? Or was the dog who attackedher a Jack Russell or a German shepherd? Did she think, ‘Who will ever be able to prove it wasn’t Champ, even though it was a dog that looked nothing like him?’”
“Wait…” Sally staggers to her feet. “Wait. Let me think.”
