‘He gets a Bonio. I’ll decide what I get once I know how long it took. Now, stop laughing at me and tell me about your holiday.’
We spent the rest of the day painting the bedroom in a pale green while Drew and Nicky repaired the cupboard doors and then ripped up the carpet, sanding the floorboards before painting them a fresh white. Joan appeared shortly after lunchtime, and she joined in with the painting too. After an early morning walk in the woods followed by the excitement of meeting new people, Nesbit was mostly happy to watch from the dog crate I’d bought so that I could leave him home alone without risking him gnawing a tunnel to Ebenezer’s house.
With Steph’s summer playlist on at a neighbourly volume, the windows open to allow the paint smell out and the country air in, a picnic lunch and a giant coffee cake for afternoon tea, I’m not sure it could have been any better had my friends been replaced by a Dream Man.
Did I think about Mum? Yes. Often. Karina had decreased her texts to every other day, and while I knew that Mum was starting to cope without me, this was the longest I’d ever gone without talking to the person closest to me. I found myself wondering what she’d think of the paint colour I’d picked, or wanting to let her know how my promotion was going, to laugh about Irene Jenkins. I knew she’d be nonplussed about me having a dog, and I found myself having imaginary conversations with her in my head, trying to justify this new life I was leading, in some vain attempt to win her approval.
During the week, it was easier to ignore that part of my life, to shut it away and focus on the million other, nicer things I had to think about. But my friends being here was a reminder that I was Olivia Tennyson, with a history and an identity outside of End Cottage and Bigley library. I asked myself a hundred times that day whether it was time to see her, or to at least try another phone call. I asked Steph, once, and the force of her reaction was enough to ensure I didn’t ask again. But now I was moving into my beautiful new bedroom, it needed curtains and bedding. Before long, I would make a trip to the Buttonhole to use their sewing machine. And before then, I would have to decide whether or not to ask Mum to join me.
Once Steph and Drew had taken a flagging Nicky home via the promised McDonald’s drive-through, Joan and I finished off the last of the picnic and decided to take Nesbit on an evening walk, with the hope of increasing the likelihood of earning a red sticker.
‘Just a short one,’ I instructed her, clipping on his new lead. ‘We’ll do the loop along the edge of the forest, round the clearing with the picnic benches and then back. Puppies this age can’t manage a long walk yet.’
But Nesbit didn’t agree. After fifteen minutes of joyful investigating, at the point we were turning for home, he froze, head lifted, nose twitching. As Joan gave a tug on his lead to pull him around, he suddenly lunged forwards in the opposite direction, yanking the lead out of her hand. Before we had time to react, he’d disappeared into the undergrowth.
I said a word that you aren’t supposed to say in front of eleven-year-olds, before racing after him. Joan plunged through the bushes, but that was going to be impossible at my size, so I ran around, down another footpath that would hopefully meet him somewhere on the other side.
‘He’s gone that way!’ Joan panted when we reunited a minute later. ‘Quickly!’
Huffing, puffing, leaping over fallen branches and launching ourselves past overgrown brambles, we blundered after him for what felt like forever, but was in actuality about half a mile. Every so often we’d spot him in the distance, stopping to sniff the air before he scampered off again.
And then we saw the focus of his mission. Up ahead, Nesbit wiggled through a slat in a wooden fence, into the most stunning of settings – a wide, open field with a brook burbling along one boundary, in the centre of which was the kind of house that put my Dream Cottage firmly in its place.
While not huge, it was like something out of Grand Designs – a wall of windows that spanned two storeys, a wide wooden porch beneath a steel and glass balcony.
One of these super-modern bi-folding glass doors was open, and without pausing in his stride, we watched, horrified, as Nesbit sprinted up the solid porch steps and straight inside the house, leaving a trail of muddy footprints behind him.
Joan looked at me, eyes wide, mouth open, as if to say, You’re the adult here – do something! Horribly aware that she was right, the only thing I could think of to do was follow him. I clambered over the fence, pointlessly calling the name he hadn’t figured out was his yet, hurried across the lawn and into a stranger’s kitchen.
Oh my. The kitchen was as stunning as the outside of the house. A huge island took up one half of the room. Behind it was a wall with a smaller window, a Smeg fridge and open shelving. The other half contained a magnificent wooden table and chairs. The table was set with numerous places, and the centre space was filled with bowls of salad, bread and other food all covered in cling film.
And there, underneath the table, was a puppy wagging his tail in ecstasy, jaws firmly clamped around an enormous roast chicken.
To make things worse, on the other side of the kitchen, sitting politely on a dog bed, no crate necessary, were two familiar-looking collies.
Crap.
At that point, a thirty-something man in a shirt and smart trousers walked in holding a wine glass.
‘Hello, is someone there?’ he called out, before spotting me, frozen in agony just inside the doors.
He instantly frowned, which was understandable. ‘Can I help you?’
Crap crappity CRAP!
‘Um… my dog…’ My voice trailed away into a whisper.
The frown deepened.
There was nothing to be done but step further into the house, get on my hands and knees and scrabble under the table to grab hold of the worst dog in the world and drag him out of there.
Nesbit, of course, disagreed. He’d hunted down a treasure beyond his wildest dreams, and he wasn’t about to surrender it without a fight.
As I crawled in, he backed out, dragging the poor chicken with him. After a couple of feet, the leg he was holding broke off from the rest of the bird, and he turned and fled.
Further into the house.
The man yelled, ‘What the hell?’ and was calling for back-up before I could think about extricating myself from underneath the table.
‘Some woman’s dog just ran upstairs with our dinner!’ the man barked.
‘What?’ There was a chorus of exclamations and animated questions. I contemplating remaining underneath the table until everyone had gone away, but then one of the collies wandered over and gave a soft growl.