Devon closed his eyes and counted to ten.
‘Are you still there?’
‘I’m still here.’ He’d been told you should smile even if people couldn’t see you to ensure you conveyed the right tone.
‘Do you think you could come out and see it? Check it’s all right? Do vets make house calls?’
‘We do when it’s an emergency.’ Devon snapped. ‘However, I think you’ll find that this is perfectly normal behaviour. The dog is obviously lonely and scared. They’re social animals. In the wild they live in packs – howling is their way of connecting with other dogs. You need to reassure it.’
‘Right and how I am supposed to do that? Read it a bedtime story?’
‘Keep coming back, so that it knows you are there. Reassure it. Be firm. It may take a few days but after that you’ll find that he’ll get used to the new routine. You need to impose a good routine. It’s a bit like having a baby, really. They can’t talk either.’
There was a resounding silence down the line. For a minute he thought she’d gone.
‘A fewdays?’ The plaintive, wailed words made him adjust the phone to a position away from his ear. ‘I can’t sleep through that racket. How do people do it? I’ve hardly had a wink of sleep.’
‘Welcome to my world.’ Damn, the words just slipped out.
The woman hung up.
Thank God neither Dad nor Bets had heard that exchange. He was crap at this community vet stuff.
Warm breath fanned over Ella’s face and she turned, her heart leaping.Patrick. Sighing, she snuggled closer, her eyelids fluttering, until something at the back of her mind stirred in mild alarm.
‘Aaaagh.’ Catapulted into consciousness, she was greeted by a foul smell and a wet lick right across her left cheek. She sat bolt upright, almost falling off the sofa. ‘That was gross. You horrible creature.’
The dog, totally unrepentant, placed its rump firmly on the floor beside the sofa, tail thumping happily.
Ella squinted at the digital display on the television. She’d ended up dragging the dog’s bed in here, hoping the damn creature would go to sleep and she could sneak off upstairs. Fat chance. Her back felt crimped and stiff after a night on Magda’s two-seater sofa. ‘Half past bloody six!’ She glared at the damn dog. ‘You’re having a laugh.’ She slumped back onto the cushions, letting tiredness pull at her eyelids, only to find Tess snuffling and nosing at her hand.
‘Leave me alone; it’s far too early.’ Outside, the birds were creating an absolute racket. Who knew they could make such a din?
Nudge, nudge, nudge. The shiny black nose was like a woodpecker, determined to drill through until it received the attention it wanted.
‘What do you want?’
The dog whined.
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake.’ Ella grabbed her robe. The dog jumped to attention, its tail switching back and forth at warp speed, and trotted eager-beaver behind her to the kitchen.
Keeping her eyes blearily half closed, she shoved the dog into the kitchen and shut the door.
When she woke again it was nearly nine. From the other side of the kitchen door, the dog whined softly. In need of coffee, she headed to the kitchen. As soon as she opened the door the dog whined again, shriller this time, running backwards and forwards to the back door. Ella might not speak Dog, as she’d told that horrible, unhelpful vet, but even she could pick up on that signal.
Crossing to the back door, she let the dog out. It went straight to the shrubs in the bed on the right and crouched for a pee on a par with Niagara. Ella winced. Oops, maybe she should have let it out earlier. She left it to an excited exploration of the garden, sniffing eagerly at every leaf and branch withinnose distance. Honestly, you’d have thought the garden was uncharted territory and it had never been out there before in its life.
As she crossed the flagstone floor to put the kettle on, her foot squelched squarely in something lukewarm and slightly slimy. It oozed, with tenacious thoroughness, between each of her toes. ‘Bloody bloody bloody hell. Yuck. Yuck.’ Searching frantically for the kitchen roll, she hopped towards the kitchen sink, finally grabbing the floor cloth to wipe her foot. Flaming hell, the smell was disgusting. Her foot was covered in— ‘Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.’
Her skin itched, reinforcing the sensation of being unclean down to the very last pore of her being. Filling the kitchen sink, she rifled through the products under the sink. WD40. Ant Powder. Screen wash. Brass cleaner. Surely to God there was some disinfectant. Ecover rubbish. No! She needed heavy duty, kill-every-last-bug-on-the-planet stuff. Ah – thank God. Domestos!
She filled the sink with hot water and squeezed half the bottle of bleach into it. Dragging a chair across to the sink, she hopped up onto the chair on her good clean foot, and dropped the unclean one into the hot bleachy water. Ouch! Too hot but hopefully it would kill the thousand zillion germs. The chair wobbled frantically as she started to scrub. She found it far easier to stand upright on the draining board crouched over the sink, taking a nail brush and using it over every inch of skin.
The dog had finished its Marco Polo exploration of the garden and had now come in, Ella was convinced, to laugh at her. At that moment, she would have been hard pressed to deny that the dog had an amused expression on its face.
‘Don’t even speak to me, Dog.’ She growled. ‘God knows what’s in your poo. Toxi- something or other. What if I get dysentery or go blind?’ Her position wasn’t that comfortable soshe stood up, one foot on the drainer and the other in the bowl, but she was going to soak her foot in the water until she was absolutely convinced that every last germ had been zapped.
The splattered pile of dog mess on the tiled floor drew Ella’s gaze. ‘Look what you did.’ The dog did at least have the grace to lower its head. ‘Bad dog.’ Big brown eyes looked back. Her eyes slid across to the kitchen clock. Ten past nine.
