Waiting for Doggo (11 page)

I should have known she’d lose faith in me before too long; she’s always searching for something new, or somebody new, to believe in. Well, she found Kamael, her guardian angel, and then she latched on to Wayne Kelsey. I hope they’re happy together, all three of them, I really do. I am, it occurs to me, finally coming to terms with the fact that our relationship is well and truly over.

It’s fine. No one died. Everyone’s alive and well. Okay, not Grandpa – he’s alive and rather poorly – but even his slow decline has to be accepted as one of those things that life throws at us. Mum was wrong: Alzheimer’s isn’t to blame. How can you blame something that acts with no malice, which is simply buried away in the genetic code of a person like a ticking bomb?

And does it really matter whether Grandpa spoke the truth or not, whether or not Mum lied to me from her poolside perch in Morocco last night? I’m alive. It’s enough. It’s more than enough. No, it’s a miracle. Not in any religious sense of the word. I lost my faith a good while back. I mean, the major religions can’t all be right, and given that they’re so manifestly wrong about where we’ve come from, I’m not sure we should take too seriously anything they have to say about where we’re going. I’m pretty sure, however, that I don’t want to spend all of eternity in a place inherited by the meek.

Feeling myself drifting off message, I take a few deep breaths, exhaling slowly through pursed lips.

Edie, I think. Ah, Edie – smart, fun, beautiful Edie. So what if she’s having an affair with Tristan? Who am I to judge her, them? Maybe he’s married to an awful woman who demeans him the moment he crosses the threshold at the end of every day, who berates him for being a bad father, who maliciously chips away at his sense of self-worth. And what of Edie’s boyfriend, Douglas? I know he’s a sports nut who plays rugby all winter then switches seamlessly to cricket for the summer months. He trains two evenings a week and is often away at weekends. Who wouldn’t feel neglected, unappreciated, ignored?

Maybe Tristan is destined to find true happiness with Edie the second time around, as my mother did with Nigel. I’m certainly not entitled to set myself up as some kind of moral authority, not after leaping into bed with the sister of my only-just-ex-girlfriend.

Satisfied with the place my mini meditation has transported me to, I open my eyes to find Doggo now sitting right in front of me. I reach out a hand and stroke him. He tilts his head so that his ears also get a good going-over.

‘I’m sorry, Doggo, I haven’t been myself.’ Something in his big liquid eyes suggests that I’m not telling him anything he doesn’t already know. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

Our morning routine is for me to grab a double macchiato from the Portuguese café up the road, which I sip en route to Athlone Gardens, where Doggo sniffs around a bit before taking his morning dump. We then double back to Ladbroke Grove, where I ditch my coffee cup and his bagged shit in the litter bin beside the bus stop. We’ve honed our timing to perfection; we rarely have to wait more than two minutes for the bus.

The voice, which I ignore at first, comes from the block of council flats that doesn’t so much front Athlone Gardens as occupy a chunk of it.

‘Oi, you with the dog. Yeah, you. What’s your game?’

A large man with a shaven head is peering down at me from a second-floor balcony. Still in his pyjamas, he’s smoking a cigarette.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You live here?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘Quasimodo?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The dog, you doughnut.’

‘Er, no, he doesn’t.’

‘So what makes you think you can bring it here to shit?’

I’m about to reply, quite reasonably, that it’s a public park, but I don’t get a chance to.

‘You want me to come round your place and have my dog shit on your doorstep?’

‘I always bag it.’

‘Yeah? So will I. Twice a day. Just like you.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Wot?’

‘I’m sorry. If it upsets you, I’ll stop.’

‘Wot?’

He’s obviously itching for an argument, but I’m damned if I’m going to let him haul me down off my karmic cloud. Clara comes to my aid in the form of one of her favourite phrases. I raise my hand high and call, ‘Love and light.’

The man falls strangely still, then his hand slowly rises to return the gesture. It’s a beautiful moment … until the hand swivels, the fingers folding back so that only the middle one remains, perfectly upright.

‘I got my eye on you, weirdo.’

The story draws a smile from Edie, but not much more.

She has been a bit subdued all week, and I think I know the reason why. The aftermath is always tough for us creatives. The moment the account is won, our job is effectively done. We may have landed the fish, but it’s for others to gut it, fillet it and cook it. At best, our opinion will be sought from time to time by planning, design and production, but it’s poor consolation after the buzz of victory, which fades all too fast.

I’ve been in a bit of a funk too, and we’ve been shooting a lot of pool. It’s the glue that binds the creative department together. Colleagues cum rivals, we play as we work, in a spirit of good-natured competitiveness. Megan and Seth are currently top of the box league, followed by Eric and Josh from design (whose graphics skills have earned them honorary membership of the creative club), then Clive and Connor, with Edie and me in the bottom spot. New to the game, Edie is still infuriated that she’s holding us back. She won’t be for long, not at the rate she’s practising in her lunch hours. She also confessed to me the other day that she’s found a pub with a pool table near her flat so she can hone her game away from work with Douglas.

It’s a determination that verges on obsession, and it lays her open to Megan’s mockery. Megan excels at mockery. She dresses it up as playful joshing, but you can’t help feeling there’s a splinter of genuine hostility buried away in there somewhere. It’s the same with her smile, which is big and freely given but also mildly unsettling, because her eyes never quite seem to be smiling too. I’m pretty sure she hates having us around and isn’t going to change her mind any time soon. We haven’t set out to challenge her hold over her ragtag posse of slightly hopeless young men, but our refusal to play along with her mother-hen antics inevitably calls her authority into question. I’m guessing that’s how she sees it.

If I’m aware of Seth perking up every time he finds himself in Edie’s presence, then so is Megan. She’s a watcher. I’m coming round to Seth, partly out of pity that he gets to sit in an office all day with Megan, but mainly because he’s sweet with Doggo, chatting away to him like he’s a human being: ‘Doggo, you’ll never guess what, the weirdest thing happened to me at the weekend …’ I have a sneaking suspicion it’s his way of letting Edie know a bit more about who he is, what makes him tick. ‘Hey, Doggo, I was at the Gaga concert at the O2 last night with a bunch of friends …’

Clive and Connor, I’ve decided, are a couple of bona fide oddballs, best avoided, which isn’t hard. They like to keep themselves to themselves, their door closed, the music loud (to drown out the sound of their constant bickering). They’re like a couple of foul-mouthed old fishwives, even when they’re playing pool.

‘Not that one. I put it there to cover the pocket.’

‘You were trying to pot it and missed, you English twat!’

‘Even if you’re right, which you aren’t, because you’re a thick-as-shite bog-Irish eejit, it’s still the wrong bloody shot.’

Et cetera. Ad nauseam. Patrick’s theory is that they’re in love with each other but haven’t got round to admitting they’re gay. Then again, it took Patrick almost thirty years to admit it to himself, so the notion of repressed homosexuality maybe figures larger in his thinking than it should.

Patrick has come to life since he clinched the SWOSH! account for the agency, and has been showering us with gifts as well as gratitude. Edie and I both went home the other night with bottles of vintage Dom Perignon champagne, Doggo with a silver disc (engraved with his name and my mobile number) dangling from a brand-new leather collar. The name tag has settled the debate – Doggo is Doggo – although I don’t suppose he was ever really going to be anything else.

I look for him now but he’s not on his sofa. Odds are he’s with Anna, the sweet young thing who replaced Edie on reception. She spoils him something rotten.

An email lands in my inbox. I glance at my laptop and freeze. It’s from Clara. My mind swiftly makes the calculation (as it has many times before): just after 9 p.m. in New Zealand. I check my watch: twenty minutes to go before our meeting with Tristan. Maybe I should wait until afterwards. But what if she isn’t there later? I open the email.

I’m ready to talk now x

I stare at the words. Is that really all she can offer after everything she’s put me through? Is it a joke? Five words and one kiss? I know I should sit on it for a few minutes, allow myself to calm down, but my fingers take on a life of their own.

That’s great! I’m close too. Just give me another decade
.

I glance over at Edie while I’m waiting for the reply. She catches my look. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ I reply.

PING.

You’re hurting and I understand
.

I wasn’t before, but I am now. An unwelcome image blows into my mind: Clara sitting in the living room of Wayne Kelsey’s no doubt ridiculously hip pad, loved up, glass of Sauvignon Blanc at her elbow, tapping away, closing a chapter in her life with a few lazy words. Not even one whiff of apology.

If an overwhelming sense of relief that I don’t have to deal with your narcissistic New Age bullshit ever again counts as hurting, then yes, I’m suffering all the torments of hell.

Hardly in the live-and-let-live spirit of this morning’s meditation, it occurs to me.

This only confirms I did the right thing
.

Funny, that. When have you ever done the wrong thing?

I wait for her reply. When it doesn’t arrive, I start composing another email.

‘Come on, what’s up?’

I look across at Edie. ‘Nothing.’

‘You’re grunting.’

‘I’m not grunting. I don’t grunt.’

‘And you’ll break your keyboard if you keep typing like that.’

I come clean, show her the exchange. She reads it over my shoulder, her hands on the back of my chair. ‘Ouch,’ she says at one point, and when she’s done: ‘Well, I’m not hearing wedding bells.’

‘My fault? Her fault?’

‘Does it matter?’ When I don’t reply, she says, ‘You were tough, but she was cold as clay.’

‘There speaks the daughter of a potter.’

Edie smiles, wanders back to her desk. ‘She wants to meet you.’

‘Who?’

‘The potter.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, beats me too.’

That’s when Doggo scampers into the room with a letter in his mouth. He has grown much more intrepid recently, roaming freely about the place, and I assume at first that he’s nabbed the letter off someone’s desk. But Anna comes hurrying in behind him.

‘He did it! All I said was “Take this to Dan.”’

I’m surprised and touched. ‘He knows my name.’

‘He knows where the Choc Drops are,’ mutters Edie.

‘No, he knows my name too. Test him.’ Anna drifts off towards the sofa, and when I ask, ‘Where’s Anna?’ Doggo turns his head and looks at her.

‘You see! He’s super-smart.’

‘He’s been hiding his light under a bushel.’ Doggo still has the letter in his mouth. I swap it for a Choc Drop and wrestle him to the ground. ‘Who’s a brainy boy? Yes you are, my little Einstein.’

We roll around, him growling his I’m-only-just-okay-with-this growl.

Ralph’s kids are on half-term this week and he has flown off to Mallorca with them, leaving Tristan to hold the fort. For an intelligent guy, Tristan seems to have very little sense of his impact on others. Can’t he hear the mutterings in the ranks? He has expanded to fill the space vacated by Ralph with a touch too much eagerness for some people. There’s a new swagger about him, topped off with a dose of ingratiating smarm.

In a parody of self-importance, he even has his heels on his desk when Edie and I join him in his office. He’s perusing a file.

‘No rest for the wicked. This just came in.’

He skims the file across the desk towards us. It’s a brief for a longer-lasting hair colourant.

‘“Dye Another Day”,’ I toss out, joking.

‘That’s good,’ says Tristan. ‘Damn, that’s good!’

Which only goes to show how little he really knows about the business. First off, ‘dye’ has long been out of favour when it comes to hair, too harsh and chemical in its connotations. You dye clothes; you colour hair. Secondly, what client would want to associate their product with one of the worst ever Bond films?

When I mention this, Tristan looks affronted. ‘It’s my favourite Bond.’

‘Seriously?’

It can’t be. It’s got Madonna in it, not to mention the most absurd twist of all time, when beautiful fine-boned Toby Stephens turns out to be the genetically remastered North Korean nemesis from the opening sequence.

‘Actually, no,’ says Tristan. ‘
Licence to Kill
.’

That’s even lower down my list than
Die Another Day
, which at least had Bond doing what Bond does best – saving the world from another high-functioning psychopath. In
Licence to Kill
, Timothy Dalton goes rogue, running all over Florida to exact revenge on a Latin American drug lord.

‘It’s like a bad Stallone movie but with a bigger budget.’

Edie comes to Tristan’s defence. ‘It’s got a great opening sequence.’

She’s right, it does. She clearly knows her Bond films.

‘What’s your favourite?’ I ask her.

I figure she’ll go for Connery –
Goldfinger
, maybe, or
From Russia with Love
.

‘
Casino Royale
.’

Good choice. Daniel Craig’s first outing as 007, and still his best. Edie and I are quoting lines from the train scene at each other, the one where Bond first meets Vesper Lynd, when Tristan irritably draws the discussion to a close and dismisses us. ‘Actually, Dan, a quick word.’