A Girl’s Best Friend by Jules Wake (4)

Ella clawed her way back to consciousness from sleep, her heart pounding, a mournful howl echoing in her ears. What the . . . ?

She lay in the unfamiliar room, her chest about to explode. The scent of lavender tickled her nose. Magda had hung heartshaped pouches of the dried flower heads on either side of the brass bedstead. A radiator creaked and ticked, the noise heightened by the pitch black darkness of the room and the silence outside. This cocoon-like feeling of nothingness unnerved her. Where was the rumble of traffic, the rattle of the windows when buses lumbered past, drunks shrieking at kicking-out time and the constant cry of sirens in the distance? This wasn’t natural.

Even though sleep had been elusive for weeks, bedtime had become the highlight of the day. Ella looked forward to that time in bed where all the bad things in life ceased and she could go back to life how it was before.

Awoooo. Aw Aw Awoooo.

Damn dog. Another heart-rending wail hit the air. Ella closed her eyes tighter, hoping it would stop.

It didn’t. After five minutes of the sort of howling which would have put the hound of the Baskervilles to shame, she grabbed her dressing gown and stomped down the stairs.

She’d shut the dog in the kitchen with its bed by the radiator, so at least it would have some residual warmth. She had no idea if that was what you were supposed to do. Did dogs feel the cold? When she opened the door the dog was there, tail wagging, looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

‘It’s the middle of the night,’ she hissed. ‘Go to sleep.’

She walked over to its bed and pointed. ‘Bed.’ She vaguely remembered seeing something on TV about alpha dogs and showing who was boss, so she said it in a fierce, I-mean-business tone which apparently worked because the dog clambered into the bed, curled up and looked up at her, with an innocent expression as if to say, Who me? Making that noise? Never.

Praise. That was another thing Ella vaguely remembered or did you do that with children? The familiar pang gripped her stomach. Children. She didn’t know much about them either but people learned, didn’t they? ‘Good girl.’ The dog lowered its head onto its paws.

See, this dog-owning lark was a piece of cake. Easy.

‘Right, goodnight.’ Ella snapped out the light and with relief climbed back up the narrow staircase to her bedroom. Had she just said goodnight to a dog? Seriously, she was losing it.

The minute, to the very second, that her toes were nicely toasty and her body snuggly under the cocoon of the heavyweight feather duvet, the howling started again. She buried her head under the pillows hoping they would silence the dog’s cries, but to no avail. Dratted animal sounded heart-broken. Getting out of the nice warm bed was purgatory.

‘You’re having a laugh,’ she growled, but the dog just grinned. Definite latent signs of smiling on its happy little face. ‘Bed, now.’ The dog slunk back to bed, climbed in again, and lowered its head, those crazy eyebrows lifting and separating with puzzlement.

She shut the door firmly.

‘Vets On Call, Devon Ashcroft speaking.’ There surely should be some law that when a phone rang before six in the morning, coffee was automatically dispensed. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the digital clock’s numerals glowing orange in the dark. Four a.m. calls were bitches, rousing you from that deep deep sleep. At least he’d managed a straight five hours in his own bed. ‘How can I help you?’

‘Hi, thank God, Dr Ash— are you a doctor? Do you call vets doctors? Or is that just for people?’

He smiled to himself, amused in spite of the ridiculously early hour. ‘I’m fine with Mr Ashcroft.’

‘But you are a proper vet.’

The woman sounded anxious, but he was used to that at this time of day.

‘Yes. How can I help?’

‘I just don’t know what to do. I’ve ended up with this dog . . . it’s not mine . . . and I think there’s something terribly wrong with it.’

‘OK. Can you describe the symptoms?’

‘Symptoms?’

‘Yes, does it appear in pain? Has it vomited? Had diarrhoea? When did it last eat?’

‘Pain, definitely pain. It won’t stop howling.’

‘OK. Are there any other signs of pain? Is it writhing, moving about as if it were in pain?’

‘No, it’s fine when it stops howling.’

‘So the howling is intermittent? How long has it been howling?’

‘Off and on since about ten o’clock last night.’

‘And does anything appear to trigger it?’

‘The minute I go up to bed.’ She let out an indignant huff down his ear.

‘Pardon?’

‘Whenever I leave it on its own in the kitchen and try to go to bed, it starts again. I’m absolutely shattered.’

Devon took in a deep breath, wanting to shake his head, hoping he’d heard wrong.

‘When you go up to bed? When you leave the dog? On its own?’

‘Yes.’

‘And where is the dog?’

‘What, now?’

‘No, when you leave it to go upstairs?’

‘In the kitchen.’

‘And is that where it normally sleeps?’

‘I’ve no idea. I told you I’m just dog-sitting. Its owner’s away. Every time I drop off to sleep it starts howling again. There’s got to be something wrong with it.’

Devon slumped back against the pillow, resisting the urge to put voice to the words God give me strength. He was a professional. The woman was an idiot. ‘So the dog’s not howling continuously?’ He tried to keep his voice level.

‘No, only when I leave it on its own.’

Devon gripped the phone tighter. ‘So more like crying? Like a child might, if it were frightened of a new situation? Lonely perhaps? Left on its own?’

‘It’s a dog.’ She sounded cross and indignant now.

‘Yes, but funnily enough they have feelings . . . ’ Devon could feel his jaw tighten and his back teeth meet as he ground out the words, ‘which for obvious reasons they can’t voice, so they might, I don’t know, howl or bark or whine.’

‘Well, how I am supposed to know that? I don’t speak Dog. What am I supposed to do?’

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 few days?’ 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 within nose 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 so she 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.

Aw, cripes. The poor thing must have been crossing its legs for hours. Remorse crept in. ‘OK, so maybe you’re not. Although you did keep me up all night. That sofa is not built for sleeping on.’

The rattle of the postbox made Ella turn, her foot twisting and slipping in the bowl. At the bottom of the path, the departing postman grinned and gave her a very cheery wave. What did he have to be so . . . Oh hell, standing right in front of the kitchen window, she’d just flashed him a full moon.

Heat rose like a tidal wave, turning her whole body beet red.

She’d been working for two hours and achieved sod all. Cuthbert, his brothers and sister, Catherine, looked like marauding rodent vandals instead of cute, winsome, mischievous mice with their own individual characters. At the moment the cast list could be Vampire Mouse, Zombie Mouse and Mouse Who’d Most Like To Do You Harm in the Middle of the Night. Ella lowered her head and banged it lightly on the table.

The dog appeared in the doorway, its head tilted as if trying to figure out what this strange woman was up to. ‘Don’t bother, mate,’ snapped Ella. ‘I’ve lost the plot completely.’ She looked back down at her drawing board. The light was wrong, that was it. With a huff of annoyance, she stood up. The dog bounced up, its tail batting at her legs.

‘Don’t get your hopes up. I’m busy.’

Maybe if she moved the drawing board to the right under the skylight, it might be better.

Ten minutes later after faffing about with the desk angle, the chair height and the positioning, she sat back down and picked up her pencil again. She held it poised over the paper, staring at her fingers. Cuthbert’s image wouldn’t come.

She threw down the pencil and stood up again. The dog, which had wandered off to the corner, suddenly darted back towards her, barrelling past a small side table and knocking it flying.

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

As the contents of the table tumbled down, sliding across the floor in a kaleidoscope pattern, the scent of lavender and rosemary perfumed the air. Stooping to gather up the scattered bags of herbs, another one of Magda’s more recent eccentricities, her foot nudged a navy blue shoebox-shaped package tied with a silver-grey ribbon. Across one corner, her name stood out, silver against the darker background.

For a second her heart lifted. A parcel.

The dog shadowed every footstep, nudging her legs as she carried the package back to the drawing table and put it in the middle of the stark white cartridge paper, her fingers smoothing along the ribbon.

‘I’ll take you out for a walk soon.’

A long-forgotten frisson of excitement sizzled in her fingertips. Memories surfaced, taking flight like butterflies. Peeling back gossamer-fine tissue paper to find a silver necklace edged with tiny dragonflies, opening up a box to reveal a pretty bracelet of twisted wire, amethyst and aquamarine crystals, unwrapping a filigree compact mirror and pulling a tiny framed paper silhouette of a tree against the moon from a gift bag. Magda had some secret intuition when it came to finding and giving the perfect gift. One you often had no idea you wanted. Her whimsical and thoughtful presents were things Ella would never have considered buying for herself but instantly fell in love with. The mirror was still in her bag. The necklace, bracelet and picture, which Patrick had quite liked, mainly because it was valuable, were all somewhere downstairs in one of the still-packed suitcases abandoned in Magda’s bedroom.

Gifts when you were a grown-up never had quite the same magic about them, not like this one shimmering with promise.

She tugged at the ends of the silver-grey bow, watching as the silk ribbon slithered free and pooled on the table. Lifting the lid, she parted the glitter-spangled tissue paper. A sheet of navy blue paper rested on top of the contents and like the one downstairs, contained a few brief lines in Magda’s slanting script.

With a shake of her head she put the piece of paper to one side. It was sweet of Magda and she appreciated the sentiment but it didn’t work like that. If only. She delved into the tissue paper and brought out several tubes of paint.

Nice thought, Magda. Sadly, she put everything back and firmly closed the lid, surprised by the little lump in her throat. It had been such a thoughtful gift, so typical of her godmother. And it was a terrible shame. Guilt tugged at her – Magda must have spent a fortune on all these Newton & Windsor tubes. There were some expensive pigments in there. She wasn’t to know that painting with watercolours was a bit naff.

Beside her the dog nudged her again.

‘OK,’ she snapped, decisively. ‘We’re going.’ Anything to get out of here and away from her stupid up and down emotions.