‘Excuse me.’ An older woman looked nervously at Yasmin. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.’
Irene, filing returned books onto a nearby shelf, twitched her pointy ears and tutted.
‘I was wondering if you did classes?’
‘Yes.’ Yasmin nodded. ‘I’ve just started with the ReadUp programme. It is very helpful.’
‘No.’ The woman shook her head. ‘I meant dog-training classes.’
‘Oh?’
‘Only, my dog won’t walk nicely on the lead. He pulls so hard he sounds as if he’s choking on his collar, and it’s agony on my bad back. I’d love to know how to stop him yanking all the time.’
Yasmin smiled. ‘It sounds as though you could benefit from a one-to-one training session. If you give me your number I can let you know the next available slot.’
The woman hesitated.
‘I provide a free initial consultation. And we very rarely need a second.’
The woman sagged with relief. ‘Thank you. I would be so grateful.’
Once details had been exchanged, and the woman left, Yasmin turned back to me and Trev, a grin on her face. ‘A new venture!’
‘Yasmin, I’m not sure you can just set yourself up as a dog trainer.’
She shrugged. ‘I think I just did.’
‘It’s not much of a business if you don’t charge anything.’ Trev shook his head. ‘My niece paid a couple of hundred quid to sort her nervous lurcher.’
Yasmin stuck her hands on tiny hips. ‘Did she look like she can spare two hundred pounds on a professional dog trainer?’
‘Well, that’s beside the point,’ Trev said, frowning.
‘Precisely.’ Yasmin’s voice had risen again. ‘This isn’t about her. A dog needs help. Do you think I should sit back and let an innocent creature suffer, because their incompetent owner can’t afford to learn how to correct her mistakes? It’s not as though I’m starving and need the money.’
Trev scratched one of the eyeholes of his skull tattoo. ‘Well, when you put it like that…’
‘This is as much for my benefit as for hers,’ she went on. ‘I will not sleep, knowing a poor dog is suffering. I might even pay her to let me fix the problem.’
‘I don’t think that’s going to be necessary,’ I added. Yasmin might not be starving, but she definitely could do with the money. However, I did wonder whether it was wise, or even legal, to charge when she didn’t have any formal training. There might be insurance or a licence required. ‘She sounded pretty keen to have the training.’
‘That’s about right,’ Yasmin practically bellowed as she marched to the door. ‘It’s not the dog who needs the training. It’s virtually never the dog.’ She paused to yank open the door, her eyes roaming the room until they found Irene. ‘It’s the people who need to learn how to behave.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Irene huffed as Yasmin allowed the door to swing shut behind her.
Halfway through Trev’s session, a woman entered the library with a double buggy containing a screaming baby and a toddler. Shooing two older boys ahead of her into the tiny children’s section, she collapsed on one of the preschool-sized seating blocks, sat the toddler in front of the forlorn crate of toys and proceeded to start breastfeeding the baby.
Within moments the toddler had tipped the crate over, the toys clattering across the wooden floorboards. One of the boys was robotically pulling off every single book from the ‘confident readers’ shelf and his brother, who looked to be around seven or eight, had started spinning on his back in the middle of the spilt toys, sending them skidding under bookcases and off into the adults’ section.
The mum started pleading with her kids to choose a story, tidy up the mess, stop Holly chewing a book, please stop yelling, and please, please behave themselves so she could read them a story.
To give her credit, Irene waited a good five minutes before clonking over. Trev paused, his finger still pressed underneath the word he’d been attempting to sound out in his workbook, and wrinkled his forehead. ‘This ain’t going to end well.’
Irene cleared her throat a few times, but given that the woman was too busy trying to persuade her children to stop ransacking the place while pinned to a seat with a nursing baby, she was hardly likely to notice a couple of irritated coughs.
‘Excuse me!’ Irene barked eventually, causing the boys to momentarily pause in their wrestle over a fire engine before resuming with increased vigour. ‘I have previously been clear that if you can’t keep your children’s behaviour under control, then you must leave. This is your final warning.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ the mum replied, tears welling up as her cheeks burnt with shame. She slid off the seat, causing the baby to let out a squawk, and tried to prise the soggy book from Holly’s hand.
Irene twisted her head, eyes scrunched in disgust. ‘Please cover yourself! While I am obliged to permit you to feed your baby here, I must ask you to do it in a dignified manner. Have you no self-respect?’
‘What do you think?’ the woman asked, her voice breaking. She huddled on the floor, tucking her baby in closer so that it could resume feeding. Her head drooped, hair obscuring her face.
One of the boys opened a picture book and began to slowly tear a strip from one of the pages.
‘Harry!’
‘That will need to be paid for!’ Irene shrieked. ‘Stop it at once!’
Holly dropped her mangled book in shock and after a moment’s stunned silence began to howl. I glanced at Trev, aware that we still had seven minutes on the clock.
‘Go on.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the ruckus. ‘I’m sure you’ll make the time up next week.’
Hurrying across to the children’s section, I ducked past Irene and practically threw myself onto the floor beside the toddler.
‘Hey, what’s this?’ I asked, grabbing the nearest toy, which happened to be a grubby plastic ice cream, and looking at it as if I’d discovered a trove of buried treasure. ‘Oooh, tasty! A lovely ice cream on a hot day. Yummy!’ I yelled over the sound of the younger boy screeching like a monkey as he climbed the shelf behind me, the other impersonating a police siren as he began racing up and down. I moved the chew-marked plastic as close to my mouth as I dared and pretended to give it a lick. ‘Mmm!’
The girl looked at me, her cries dying away as she focused on this bizarre stranger who’d appeared out of nowhere. ‘Would you like a try?’ I beamed, thrusting the ice cream into her hand before spinning around and grabbing the boy as he slipped off the shelf.
‘I know a good book about monkeys,’ I told him, as he wriggled out of my grip. ‘If you can find it before the book-exploding countdown, I’ll read it to you.’
‘What?’ The boy squinted at me suspiciously.
‘Ten, nine, eight…’ I began, trying to sound ominous, while pointing at the messy pile of books urgently.