Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts (25 page)

And then George did something that would have swung the balance anyway. In one easy move, he picked Rachel up and carried her through to the sitting room, and Dot’s enormous velvet sofa.

Down the hill, on the other side of Longhampton, Johnny was kissing Natalie’s neck and winding his arms around her, snaking inside the soft t-shirt she wore in bed. She’d had it since school and it was paper-thin, and sexy in an innocent way. He much preferred it to her new range of seduction nightwear, which made him feel as if he was making love in the window of Ann Summers.

Natalie stiffened under his touch, and he smiled, knowing he’d hit the magic spot on the back of her neck, the point that made her wriggle and sigh, the opening bars of something more passionate.

Encouraged by her reaction, he did it again, this time with more urgency, but she batted his hands away and lifted her head up off the pillow.

‘What?’ said Johnny, caught off stride.

‘Can you hear that?’ she hissed.

‘Hear what?’ He strained his ears and made out a now-familiar sound – a long, sorrowful groan, more like a dying man than a sulky dog. ‘Oh, that.’

‘Don’t sound so annoyed.’ She turned on her side so she was facing him, their bodies still tantalisingly close together under the warm duvet. ‘He’s crying.’

Johnny eyed the tempting swell of Natalie’s breasts under the t-shirt, and her nipples hardening against the thin cotton, and moved his hand to her hip, unwilling to give up so quickly. Untimetabled sex was something of a rarity.

‘Nat, I know he’s crying.’ He smoothed his hand over the sweeping curve of her waist. ‘He knows exactly what he’s doing. You can’t keep going down to him. Didn’t Megan tell you – he’s going to do this. He’s testing us.’

She turned back and they lay nose-to-nose in the dark, listening to the horrible groaning noise echoing through the house. It sounded like someone playing a double bass in boxing gloves.

‘That’s not crying,’ whispered Natalie. ‘He sounds like he’s in some kind of pain. Do you think he’s hurt himself on something in the kitchen?’

‘It’s the same noise as he was making last night. And the night before that.’

‘Is it? Oh! Did you let him out before you came up? Maybe he needs the loo.’

Johnny groaned and rolled onto his back. ‘What about me?’

‘What about you what? You don’t need to ask to use the loo, Johnny. Feel free.’

‘Nat.’ He pulled her hand so she rolled on top of him, and then gripped her round the buttocks, squeezing her to him in a way she normally found irresistible. She could feel how aroused he was, surely. ‘Let me take your mind off the dog. What was it you read on the internet? The more sex you have, the better your chances are of—’

‘I ovulated days ago,’ said Natalie, a wry smile twisting up the corner of her mouth. ‘Your sperm would have to have a Tardis to make a baby this month.’

Johnny flinched. ‘Maybe I didn’t want to make a baby. Maybe I just wanted to make love to you.’

Downstairs Bertie added an extra quaver to his plaintive howl. It sounded almost supernaturally awful.

‘I can’t stand it, I’m sorry.’ Natalie squirmed free, threw back the covers and leaped out of bed. ‘I’m going to go down there before the neighbours call the RSPCA.’

Johnny watched in acute frustration as she hunted around for her dressing gown, her long slim legs gleaming in the pale light from the clock radio.

Was that it now? If it wasn’t a green day, it wasn’t worth it? He felt hurt. Even if she was joking, which he hoped she was, it still showed there was a timetable in her head, even when she was pretending to be spontaneous.

He sank back into the pillows. Frantic sex on demand for half the month, nothing for the rest of it, and the dog putting up this dying routine until he was allowed on the bed – and then no sex at all?

Johnny jumped as Natalie leaned over him and kissed his nose. ‘Don’t sulk,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in a second. And just think – it’s all good practice for sleepless nights with the baby.’

‘If we ever have a baby,’ he muttered, but only once Natalie was out of the room.

Natalie padded downstairs in her slippers, knowing she was breaking all the rules in the book by giving in to Bertie’s howling, but at the same time, telling herself – as the same book said – she was powerless to resist a ‘where are yooooouuu?’ pack-locating howl developed over hundreds of years.

It was nature. And anyway, he was still settling in. Bertie had been through a lot in his short life. Plenty of time to get tough once he knew they weren’t going to abandon him too.

She opened the kitchen door, and immediately the howling ceased, and the Basset hound rocketed into her arms, wagging his tail so hard he seemed to be jointed in the middle.

How can you resist so much love, Natalie wondered, bending
down so she could hug his warm, wrinkly body to her.

‘Hello, Bertie!’ she murmured into his neck, revelling in the adoring snuffles he was lavishing on any exposed skin. His coat had a biscuity smell that she was just getting used to. Megan had warned her that ‘hounds stink’ and had washed him before he left, but even with air fresheners in every room, you could still tell exactly where he was.

Natalie didn’t mind. She could forgive Bertie anything when he gazed up at her like he was now, brimming over with love and gratitude for his new home, new attention, new start.

He made her heart brim over too. At least now she felt as if all her maternal longing was going somewhere, touching another life and making it better.

‘Oh, you daft dog! You’ve got your bed all rucked up!’ In his distress at being left to sleep alone in a top-of-the-range leather basket, Bertie had dragged the cushion out, and left it near the door. Natalie bent down to tuck it all back in, and when she turned back, Bertie had vanished.

She looked round for a second or two, confused, then heard the tell-tale clatter of claws on hardwood flooring. Natalie darted out of the kitchen, just in time to see the white tip of Bertie’s tail vanishing up the stairs.

She set off after him. He wasn’t supposed to go upstairs – it was bad for his back. Not to mention their superiority as pack leaders.

‘Nat, is that . . .? Ooouf! Bloody hell!’

That would be Bertie landing on the bed, she guessed, with a wry smile. It turned out that having legs like a piano stool’s wasn’t any obstacle to reaching up to grab titbits off the kitchen counter, or springing onto the sofa.

Natalie entered the bedroom to see Bertie lounging regally on top of the white duvet, regarding her with adoring, if still tragic, eyes. She still couldn’t get used to his doleful face. Even when, as now, he’d got exactly what he wanted.

‘You let him upstairs!’ Johnny’s muffled voice was coming from somewhere beneath the dog. ‘I thought you said they weren’t meant to go upstairs? In your big book of rules?’

‘I know.’ She glared at Bertie who gazed back sadly. ‘It’s bad for your back, Bertie. And you might fall off and hurt yourself.’

Bertie said nothing.

She slipped into the bed, and the dog filled the gap between them before she could cuddle Johnny to her. Bertie stretched out his long neck onto the pillow so he lay between them like a bolster, his long brown ears splayed on each side.

Not very hygienic, thought Natalie, but so lovable she couldn’t bear to move him. He obviously hadn’t had many pillows in his life up until now.

‘Just this once,’ she told him. ‘Tomorrow night, you sleep in the kitchen.’

‘And tonight he snores in our faces.’

‘He won’t snore,’ said Natalie, just as Bertie stretched out his legs and punched her in the face. She pushed them away. ‘Or rather, he won’t snore much worse than you do.’

‘All right for you to say that. You don’t have work to go to. You’re a lady of leisure.’ Johnny wriggled so his head was visible over Bertie’s. His hair was tousled and his face had a sleepy crossness that was almost as cute, in its own way, as Bertie’s.

‘Well, in that case do you want to waste more precious hours listening to him crying downstairs?’

‘No,’ said Johnny and rolled back onto his back, grabbing what duvet there was left underneath Bertie. ‘But I can’t cope with two duvet hogs.’

Next to him, Bertie exhaled with supreme satisfaction.

Zoe was listening to the sound of puppy breathing too, but she wasn’t asleep.

She couldn’t sleep, which was why she was sitting on her sofa in her fleecy dressing gown at two-thirty in the morning, her hands cupped around a mug of cold coffee while she watched Toffee’s soft stomach rise and fall in his basket by the fireplace. It would have been nice to have him on her knee, but Zoe was trying really hard to follow the rules Megan had given her.

Boundaries, she kept saying. Puppies and kids need boundaries. Zoe wished she had Megan’s easy authority with either or, ideally, both.

At least he was asleep. It was typical that on the rare occasion she could drop off, safe in the knowledge that Toffee wasn’t trashing, chewing or peeing on something he shouldn’t, her head was buzzing with dilemmas that made it impossible for her to shut her eyes for more than a minute. Zoe had a lot to think about, all tangled up in her head like a knotted necklace and impossible to unravel.

Bill. She couldn’t stop thinking about Bill, for a start. It was ludicrous to have a crush on someone you’d just met but once he’d installed her on Rachel’s sofa, they’d basically spent the rest of the afternoon chatting – to prove she wasn’t concussed, of course. He’d talked as much as she had, with plenty of non-concussion-related eye contact, and dropped some tentative hints about meeting up again with the dogs, maybe for lunch. Zoe wished she could just enjoy the first shivery daydreams of what could be something new, but a cloud was hanging over her.

When she and Toffee had left, she’d realised that she hadn’t mentioned Spencer and Leo once. Should she make a clean breast of it about being divorced, with two boys? Or would telling him about the kids make it look like she was jumping the gun?

The longer she left it, the more of a glaring omission it was going to look when she did get round to telling him. And the insidious night-time voice couldn’t help reminding her how luxurious it felt to have that brief hour when she was just Zoe. Not Mum or anyone’s ex. Just her again, for the first time in years.

She pushed that to one side and took out the phone from under the cushion where she’d hidden it from herself.

It was Spencer’s mobile, the bribe David had given him just before he left, even though Zoe had protested he was far too young. Her fingers moved on the keys before she could stop herself and there they were again: the Alton Towers snaps of David having as much fun as money could buy with the boys. They were bad enough on their own, but several of them featured Jennifer too, grinning away in the background, clearly trying really hard to be their best mate.

She had very bad highlights. Zoe could tell they were expensive but cack-handed.

Stop looking, she told herself, but it was useless. It was like picking a scab. Now Zoe knew the images were there, she couldn’t stop herself. Leo seemed happy enough, but Spencer’s face was shadowed with a gloom she knew very well, when he was trying his best to go along with things like a big boy, but was still too young to hide his discomfort.

She forced herself to turn it off. David had taken those photos knowing she’d see them. The conniving sod had framed his new girlfriend with his old sons, knowing Spencer would show her, to remind her that she wasn’t part of this family unit any more.

Zoe put her hand to her mouth to stifle the painful sob that came out.

She didn’t love David any more. She didn’t want to be with him; Jennifer and her bad highlights were welcome to him. But she didn’t want to lose her boys, just because she was too nice to fight dirty, like David did.

She couldn’t bribe them. She couldn’t afford to. All she could do was love them, and how long was that going to hold up against weekends away, and puppies on demand?

Toffee stirred, hearing the noise, and raised his soft head above the plastic rim of his bed. He looked sleepy and adorable, with his nose and eyes wrinkled up against the faint light.

Zoe got up quietly, scooped the puppy out of his basket and brought him back onto the sofa, where she lay back with him in her arms. Instinctively, he snuggled into the crook of her neck and breathed his hot puppy breath into her ear.

‘Sometimes I think you’re the only simple thing in my life,’ she whispered. ‘You’re the only one who understands “no”. Even if you don’t always take any notice of me.’

Toffee licked Zoe’s ear. She felt better.

15

The next morning, Megan’s tea knock on the door came, as usual, at half past seven, only for once Rachel didn’t spring upright. Something invisible was anchoring her to the pillow and it wasn’t Gem.

It wasn’t the worst hangover she’d ever had, though the inside of her mouth felt parched and she wasn’t sure she should move her head without due consideration. It didn’t take much to lay her low these days. But despite the rough edges, Rachel felt a lingering sense of happiness, a flutter, almost, a bit like a birthday morning. What on earth had she got to be happy about?