Page 98 of Carry Me Home

Chips – Biscuit – goes berserk. Tail wagging so hard his whole body convulses. He launches himself at the children, licking faces, whimpering with a joy so pure and uncomplicated it makes my chest cave in. He remembers them. He knows them. He’s been living in my café and sleeping on my bed and sitting on my feet, and the whole time he’s had a family somewhere who was looking for him.

‘We thought we’d never find him,’ the mum says. She’s crying. ‘We’ve been searching for months.’

‘I’m glad,’ I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone standing much further away. ‘I’m glad he’s going home.’

‘Thank you for looking after him. We can’t⁠—’

‘It was nothing.’ I crouch down. Biscuit bounds over, tail still going, tongue lolling. Happy. So happy. ‘Hey, boy.’

He licks my face. I bury my hands in his fur – wiry, warm texture I know as well as my own skin now. The weight of him pressing against my knees. The heartbeat under my palm.

‘Be good,’ I whisper into his ear, low enough that only he can hear. ‘Don’t eat anything you’re not supposed to. Don’t let anyone move your water bowl next to your food bowl. And—’ My voice breaks. I hold it together with my teeth. ‘And find someone’s feet to sit on. That’s important. That’s the most important thing you do.’

He licks my face again. He has no idea what I’m saying. He’s just glad everyone he loves is in the same room.

I straighten. Hand the lead to the dad.

‘He’s scared of the hoover,’ I say. ‘But he pretends he isn’t. He’ll stand his ground and tremble. Don’t laugh at him – he takes it personally.’

The mum smiles. ‘He’s been doing that since he was a puppy.’

Right. Of course. They know him. They’ve known him his whole life. I’ve known him for a few weeks.

I was just the person who kept him safe until his real family came back.

‘Well.’ I step back. ‘I should go.’

‘Nina.’ Tom says. He’s been by the reception desk, watching, staying out of the way. Now he moves towards me. ‘Let me walk you⁠—’

‘No.’ Not sharp this time. Just tired. I’ve run out of sharp. ‘I need to be on my own.’

He stops. Nods. Doesn’t push. A shadow crosses his face, a door closing over whatever he’s feeling. He’s been doing it for years and I never noticed. Until now.

I walk out. Through the waiting room, past the posters, the cat calendars, the smell of antiseptic. Into the afternoon sun, which is too bright, too warm, too much of everything.

I make it to the harbour wall before the tears come. Not the flat, not behind a closed door – the harbour wall, in full view of anyone who’s looking, and I don’t care. I sit on the warm stone and I press my hands over my face and I cry with the particular ugliness of a woman who has lost a dog and found a ring and broken something with someone and doesn’t know how to fix any of it.

A tourist gives me a wide berth. A gull lands nearby, assesses the situation, decides I’m not worth the trouble.

The crying doesn’t last long. It can’t – I’ve used up most of my reserves this week. What’s left is worse: the dry, hollow aftermath, where the tears are gone and the feeling stays.

The flat is quiet.

That’s the first thing. The quiet. No clicking of claws on the floor. No thump of tail. No warm body pressed against my legs at the counter, no weight at the foot of the bed, no small creature watching me with patient eyes that seem to understand more than a dog should.

Just silence. The kind that was here before Chips – before Biscuit – arrived, and that I’d forgotten existed because he filled it so completely.

I close the door. Lean against it. Let my bag drop.

The café below is closed. The fairy lights are off. The flat is dim and bare and still carries the ghost of last week’s clearing-out: the empty shelves where Peter’s books used to be, the cleaned surfaces, the spaces I made in the middle of the night with a cardboard box and a breaking heart.

I made room. And now the room is emptier than I ever intended.

Peter’s things are boxed. The dog is gone. Tom is leaving.

I slide down the door. The floor is cool and hard and Chips isn’t on it, and the absence of his weight against my legs is so specific, so precisely shaped, that I can feel the outline of where he should be. I put my hand on the empty floor and the tiles are cold.

I sit in the silence and I think about the night of the cinema – I think I’ve been very stupid, for a very long time – and I was right, but I wasn’t right enough.