Page 13 of Carry Me Home

It puts its head on its paws. The gaze says it plainly: Pathetic.

I should eat something. There’s leftover pasta in the fridge from Mum’s latest delivery – she still brings food up every few days, as though I might forget to feed myself without supervision. I should heat it up, eat at the table like a functioning adult, maybe read something that isn’t about canine dermatology.

I call Nina.

She picks up on the second ring. I don’t think about that.

‘Is someone dead?’

‘What?’

‘You’re calling. On the phone. Like an actual phone call. I assumed catastrophe.’

‘I call you all the time.’

‘You text me all the time. You call me when something’s happened. Remember when Dot’s roof collapsed? You called.’

‘Dot’s roof was a genuine emergency.’

‘You called me when the Harbourmaster’s cat got stuck in the lifeboat winch.’ I breathe so deep at the sound of her voice that my breath echoes around the walls. One dog ear goes up. Judging.

‘That was also—’ I stop. ‘That was a complicated extraction. I needed moral support.’

‘You needed someone to laugh at you. Which I did. Extensively.’ I can hear her moving on the other end, a cupboard shutting, a mug being set down on a counter. She’s never still when she talks. Never has been. ‘So what’s the emergency that Tom Darcy has called and not texted about a Scotch egg?’

‘Another genuine emergency.’ My grin is miles wide. ‘I found a dog.’

Silence. Then, lower, breathless maybe, although that could be my wild imagination. ‘You found a dog.’

‘On the coast path, yesterday, while I was driving back from the Treloars’ farm. It was stuck in the gorse.’

‘Stuck how? And why didn’t Meg and Hayley mention this earlier when they were here?’

A twist in my stomach. ‘Meg and Hayley dropped by?’ Light, neutral. Definitely not pathetic.

‘Yes, and ate all the scones, but did not mention a stuck dog, which I’m pretty sure should have been top of the agenda.’

Did they tell you how pathetic I’ve been without you?

Did they tell you I made an excuse not to come?

‘Properly stuck,’ I say. ‘Wedged in and panicking. It was the most pathetic sight I’ve seen, and you know how I am with pathetic. I can’t survive it.’ I look at the dog. The dog looks back at me, and there’s a definite flicker of embarrassment. ‘It’s a terrier cross, I think. No chip, no collar, no one’s claimed it yet. I mean, I haven’t been far, but there are no posters up looking for a missing dog. It’s sprained its leg, but it’s healing. Couple of weeks and it’ll be fine.’

‘And it’s with you now? You’ve taken it upstairs into the flat?’ There’s a rustle as she finally sits, and I can visualise her tucking her legs up, mug of steaming tea balanced on the arm of the sofa.

‘It’s on my sofa now. Looking at me like I’m the one who’s trespassing.’

She laughs. I close my eyes, just for a second. Just the reflex of a muscle I’ve stopped trying to train out.

‘Describe it to me,’ she says, her voice a spark of life I haven’t heard in weeks. Since before she left. Since before a lot of things.

‘Small. Five kilos, might be six once it’s been fed properly. Brown and white, with a wiry coat, one ear that stands up and one that flops down. It’s got these eyebrows⁠—’

‘Dogs don’t have eyebrows.’

‘This one does. They’re very expressive and right now they’re communicating profound judgement about my life choices.’ I settle back into the armchair, phone pressed to my ear. The leather is cracked and soft, older than I am – another thing of Dad’s. ‘It also has a beard. A small, dignified beard. Like a nineteenth-century philosopher who’s fallen on hard times.’

‘I need a photo immediately.’