* * *
We barely saw Jaz at all that day. Oliver felt it was very important that she have her own space—I tried not to compare that too directly to what he’d said about Spud—so we stayed out of her room and just called from the corridor at lunchtime to see if she wanted anything. From her silence, we assumed that she didn’t.
Although I was still feeling a little bit shaken up about the whole there-is-an-actual-human-with-complex-needs-depending-on-us-to-fulfil-those-needs thing, it was competing for headspace with the whole I-need-to-organise-a-very-cool-and-appropriately-alternative-music-festival-or-I’ll-lose-my-job thing, and because apparently today was one of my pretending-to-be-a-professional days, the job thing won out.
So I sent the obligatory follow-up emails and the enquiry emails and the follow-up phone calls that had to come after the enquiry emails, and by five I’d at least got confirmation from the three mediocre wedding bands I’d been trying to book. Admittedly, in two out of three cases, the confirmation had confirmed that they didn’t want to play my festival for shit-beetles, but Harvest Moon had been willing to do it. Although apparently they’d changed their name to Stardew now.
“Well,” I said, putting a half a tick next tobook bandsin my mental list of things that needed doing, “that’s nearly a win, isn’t it, Spud?”
Spud said…Spud said nothing. Because Spud wasn’t there.
“Spud?”
We’d left the pen door open because Spud was pretty well socialised by now, but on days I was home, he usually stayed in the study anyway for pack animal reasons. I got up from my desk and started searching.
“Spud?”
The patio doors were closed, and I couldn’t see him in the garden, but I went out anyway just in case he’d developed some previously unknown doggy superpower and slipped through the keyhole or something.
“Spud!” I called out loudly enough that I was probably causing a minor nuisance to the neighbours.
An unwelcome face appeared over the fence into Next Door’s Garden. “Lost your dog?”
“No,” I lied unconvincingly.
“Yes, you have,” replied Next Door’s Kid with mocking triumph. “You’re such a dickhead that your dog ran away, and you’re too much of a dickhead to admit it.”
I tried very, very hard to be the adult in the room. But I wasn’t actually in a room and didn’t feel much like an adult. “Up yours,” I replied, extremely adultly.
“Up my what?”
I suddenly remembered that I was talking to a child and therefore couldn’t explain either what I expected him to put things up or what I expected him to put up it. “Your…yours,” I finished. It wasn’t my finest hour.
“My yours?”
“Yes.” I turned around to go back into the house.
“You going to call me a bum-face again?” asked Next Door’s Kid as I walked maturely away.
I ignored him.
“Bum-face,” he yelled, and then laughed his Gatling gun laugh.
Inside, I locked the doors carefully behind me and continuedthe search. Assuming the doggy-superpower scenario was off the table—which, let’s be clear, it should have been from the start—Spud had to be in the house somewhere.
I started on the ground floor, hoping he’d not found a way to get into the fridge or something, which, again, seemed unlikely, assuming ordinary dog parameters. When that failed, I went upstairs, calling for him as I went.
Finally I heard a muffled “Ruff.”
“Spud?” I stood mid-corridor and called out again.
“Ruff.” The sound was coming from Jaz’s room.
I approached cautiously and knocked on the door. “Jaz?”
No answer.
“Is Spud in there with you?”
