With another sigh, the woman held out a hand. “Give me his lead and I’ll put him into the temporary cell until we’ve got a free kennel.”
Grace blinked at the raw-faced woman. She was going to put Stanley into acell?
Until now, she’d been telling herself not to jump to conclusions about these boarding kennels, based only on how things looked. She knew nothing about how such a place should be run, and while it might seem a bit dilapidated and the staff might appear brisk, that didn’t mean the animals weren’t being properly cared for.
But the very fact that this member of staff had said she’d put Stanley into acell, temporary or otherwise, made Grace’s blood run cold in her veins.
And the fact that the woman just wasn’t very nice—was, in fact, downright unpleasant and rude—only hastened the words that Grace couldn’t help uttering next.
“Um, could you just give us a minute?” she said.
Instead of passing Stanley’s lead into the impatient woman’s outstretched hand, she instead gave it a soft tug and led the dog back outside the building. Ryan, to his credit, didn’t ask any questions and followed swiftly in her wake.
Outside in the car park, Grace looked down at Stanley, who appeared as relieved as she was to be away from the awful woman they’d just met. The dog was already attempting to return to the car in a bid to complete his escape.
“We can’t leave Stanley here,” Grace said to Ryan, hardly daring to look the man in the eye because he must surely think she had a screw loose by this point. “These kennels aren’t very nice. In fact, they’re awful! And that woman we just met was ghastly, and she said she’d put Stanley into acellfor goodness’ sake, and?—”
“I completely agree,” Ryan interrupted her tirade, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “We can’t leave him here. I don’t like this place either. If I owned a dog and had to board it somewhere, this would be the last place I’d choose.And although Stanley isn’t my dog, I still don’t feel right about leaving him here.”
Grace had been preparing to have to debate the matter with him, and was relieved they were on the same page.
“So, what should we do?” Grace asked, glancing down at Stanley, who was still straining on his lead and angling towards her parked car.
The door of the dilapidated office unit swung open and the woman they’d just been speaking to strode outside.
“Are you leaving that dog here, or what?” she barked out, an irritated frown creasing her forehead.
“Er, no we’ve, uh… something’s come up and we have to go,” Grace said, and turned towards her car with Stanley galloping ahead of her, his little legs whirring beneath him.
“Thanks, though!” Ryan called out to the woman and gave a wave goodbye.
This only seemed to irritate her further. “Idiots!” she called out. “Wasting my time! Go on then, the pair of you can clear off!”
She disappeared back inside the squat office unit, slamming the heavy door behind her. Grace jumped into the driver’s seat and handed Stanley to Ryan before peeling out of the car park at speed.
A few seconds into their getaway, Grace risked a glance at Ryan. His eyes were twinkling and they both burst into laughter, although Grace had no idea what was amusing about any of this.
“I think we just kidnapped Stanley,” she said.
Ryan chucked some more and looked at the dog perched on his lap. “He doesn’t seem to mind.”
Stanley confirmed this assessment by letting out a happy bark and licking Ryan’s face.
“What should we do now?” Grace said, keeping an eye on the road as she wrestled with the thorny implications of the predicament she’d just landed herself in. “The dog wardenexpected us to drop Stanley off as agreed, and now we’ve just run off with him.”
“From the conversation you had with him earlier, it sounds like the warden’s service is pretty busy, so I doubt they’ll be sending out a search party any time soon to sort this out, so we’ve got time to come up with… some sort of plan.”
Grace couldn’t help wincing. “I’m sorry, Ryan. I didn’t mean to land you in this muddle. You only came along to lend a hand and instead I’ve made everything ten times more complicated by dashing off with Stanley instead of just handing him over to the kennels.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. We both agreed we didn’t like that place. It was cold and grubby and run down and I felt sorry for the dogs locked up in those grim kennels. If we’d left Stanley there, I wouldn’t have stopped worrying about the poor little guy. I’m going to be thinking enough about the dogs that were already there. Those concrete kennels were about as far from cosy and comfortable as it’s possible to get.”
Grace thought of the poor little whippet she’d seen, who’d been terrified when the food bowl had clattered to the ground, and the sweet collie who’d wanted only to be fussed over for a few seconds. The dogs weren’t being mistreated exactly, at least not from what she’d seen. But they hadn’t looked happy, either.
The clock on the car dashboard told her it was almost ten-fifteen. She was due at work in less than an hour, and yet she was still no closer to sorting out the Stanley situation.
This was quite a mess she’d got herself mixed up in. If only Stanley wasn’t so cute and sweet and lost, then none of this would have happened.
Grace pulled the car over into a layby at the side of the country road and let out a breath as she tried to gather her thoughts and formulate a plan.
