Everybody Died, So I Got a Dog

by Emily Dean

  Within a few weeks he was scampering with excitement as we approached the wrought-iron gates of Highgate’s Waterlow Park, rushing towards poodles and St Bernards as I weighed up whether their owners were the ‘hello, what’s this boy called?’ type or the ‘Mortimer! Get away from there immediately!’ variety.

  ‘I had no idea that dog walking involved so much talking to strangers,’ said the comic, Lee Mack, with comedic grumpiness, when he guested on my podcast. He wasn’t a dog owner. You could tell this because when the dog we’d borrowed for the day did a poo, Lee’s response was, ‘Call the police.’

  But I knew what he meant about the whole talking thing. It had taken me by surprise initially, too. I’d met a whole new crew since I’d been out walking Ray.

  There was Jane the model booker who owned Willow the poodle. Like me, she was inclined towards the ‘life’s too short not to give your dog a blueberry facial’ school of thought. Groups of girls wearing my old school uniform gathered round to cuddle Ray as I told them ye olde tales of calculators and boys calling you on landlines. There were familiar faces I nodded to, like the elderly couple with their own Shih Tzus, Minty and Salty. ‘They’re older so they’re better behaved,’ they informed me a bit haughtily. And the man who owned Cloud the Bichon Frisé. Cloud had been named after her hairdo, I assumed, a spectacularly fluffed out white bubble perm that made her look a bit like an astronaut’s wife.

  It was strange finding myself suddenly engaging with people in my own neighbourhood that I had probably walked past scores of times before, carrying the ingrained territorial hostility of a Londoner. Too cool and suspicious to talk to anyone outside of my heavily vetted social circle.

  ‘Dogs can be transitional objects,’ Sue told me when I recounted how grateful I’d been to have Ray with me recently when someone was being slightly spiky.

  So I realised Ray was serving the purpose of that toy we clung to in childhood, the one that helped us cope with sleeping with the lights off.

  Dogs perform that useful function for us a lot, socially (also, see babies), acting as diversions during tense family interactions, easing introductions, being used as pawns in rows: ‘Daddy’s loud shouty voice frightened you, DIDN’T IT?’

  But dogs also help us to cast off our prickly defensiveness towards strangers. I’m biased, but I can honestly say that something about Ray’s fluffiness and daft face inspired childlike joy. Businessmen’s grimaces turned into grins, mums with screaming children fell gratefully upon his distracting cuteness. ‘Look at the doggy, darling!’ Groups of teenage boys broke off from their expletive-laden taunting of each other to say, ‘That ain’t even a dog, man, what is it even tho? Like Star Wars shit?’

  Ray allowed me to see people at their most benign and nurturing – he was an antidote to anger. Even the man at the late-night shop down the road, who greeted the regular stream of loud drunken patrons with a guilty-till-proven-innocent suspicion, beamed when we walked in to buy Coke Zeros. ‘I hate dogs. But this boy? This boy special,’ he said, throwing a Calippo ice lolly into a bag gratis for him.

  I felt grateful that Rach and I had both stayed in the area close to Holly Village even as adults. It was significant now, that connection to our past, in a way I never could have realised it would be.

  Sometimes I strolled with Ray past the little hut near the park’s tennis courts, remembering Rach and me sharing cigarettes with teenage boys. Or I’d take him for a wander down to the park’s café, Lauderdale House, former home of King Charles II’s mistress, Nell Gwynne. My dad had often told Rach and me stories about her when he walked us up to our primary school – his job after Mum announced that she didn’t do walks (or mornings). He particularly liked to quote Nell’s response when a baying crowd called her a Catholic whore. ‘Pray, good people, be civil. I am the Protestant whore!’ he would cry into the suburban morning air, as passing families narrowed their eyes in disapproval and Rach and I died with shame.

  Ray and I passed the grassy slope that had acted as a makeshift toboggan run during snowy winters, where Rach would bravely descend the drop on a National Portrait Gallery tea tray. It had featured Holbein’s Henry VIII, his face still just about visible beneath the red wine stains, fag burns and coffee rings.

  I had sometimes felt a sting of pain when I visited this park the year before, after my family had all finally gone. Frustrated at the sense of a past without any surviving witnesses. But it felt different now that Ray was with me, the centre of the new world I had shaped for myself. As if I could dip into my family highlights rather than dwell in the dark moments of drama.

  I had asked Sue why, even long before those losses, I had spent my whole life feeling inescapably swathed in gloom walking past any place that held memories.

  She told me, ‘You grew up thinking you weren’t a person in your own right. That you were solely here to perform, to serve others. You didn’t feel like you existed outside of your experiences. So when the experience is gone, it leaves a big hole inside.’

  This made sense to me. When I was younger I had attempted to fill that hole with hedonistic nights out and fleeting encounters with men who became entertaining punchlines. I pretended I was giddy with the thrill of it all, serving up anecdotes about endless walks of shame in alien postcodes. I knew people who genuinely seemed able to throw themselves into these adventures, emerging unscathed from the experience. But I always felt sad and vulnerable afterwards. So I got through it all by buckling on my armour, made out of stolen traits from the kick-ass heroines I idolised. All perfectly admirable feminist role models – providing you took the bits you wanted and balanced them out with some sense of your own authentic character. It didn’t occur to me that it was possible to be strong while admitting that sometimes you felt frightened. That you could say no, and call out bad behaviour and still be kind. That forgiveness didn’t mean weakness. That you could have boundaries without being brittle. Love people for being imperfect. Be funny without being malicious. Live the life you wanted. That it was okay just to be you.

  ‘I feel as though I’m slowly filling the hole up, Sue. Is it possible that one day it won’t be there anymore?’

  ‘We’re getting there, Emily. I’m very proud of you. And Rachael would be, too. I know that.’

  ‘I know this might be crossing a professional line – but am I allowed to hug you?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was Ray’s first blind date. His suitor was a slightly older man with impressive life experience, a handsome bachelor but not a commitment phobe – and charming despite the slight hint of a belly and wonky set of lower teeth. I refused to entertain the thought that this match might not work out. Ray simply had to fall in love with Giggle.

  Adam and I decided that it was best to do it on neutral territory, so they could have what dog experts refer to rather un-romantically as a ‘brief sniff and move on’. We settled on the shady paths of Highgate Woods, where Rach had often taken Giggle for walks.

  I headed past the play area, the scene of the most humiliating incident in my entire childhood. I must have been around ten years old when a stray dog grabbed my skirt by its hem and ripped it clean off, before disappearing into the woods with it dangling from its jaws. I had stood frozen to the spot in my striped knickers, hands crossed against my lower half, staring aghast at Rach. As at least thirty children collapsed with uncontrollable hysteria, booking my place in local history as ‘the girl whose skirt was ripped off by a dog’. I smiled, looking at the shame monument, the Harold’s arrow moment of my Bayeux tapestry with Rach.

  I can’t lie – the meeting with Giggle was not exactly the neat movie ending I’d fantasised about. They didn’t run off into the open fields like twin canine souls as an orchestra performed ‘Just the Two of Us’. Ray shivered by my legs while Adam tried to stop Giggle from crushing him with his over-enthusiasm. Giggle was also slightly thrown by the breathless rapture Ray’s cuteness was inspiring in Mimi and her friends. He looked like a bewildered Love Island c
ontestant struggling to cope with a bikini-clad newbie sashaying in to the villa. But Ray’s curiosity slowly triumphed over his wariness, and a tentative sniffing session ensued.

  ‘See, they’re just getting used to each other,’ said Mimi sensibly.

  I took pictures on my phone, capturing the moment. I owed a huge debt of gratitude to this little chug with the funny teeth. Giggle had helped us through those chaotic first few months of grief. He had also shown me the sense of companionship and love that dogs can provide. There wouldn’t have been a Ray if there hadn’t been a Giggle.

  ‘Does Ray love me more than everyone else?’ asked Bertie, keen to establish the exact pecking order of this new social dynamic.

  I was oddly fascinated by her question. It’s one we start asking in childhood and go on to ask every day in adulthood, in slightly more artfully concealed ways. And the only answer we want is ‘yes, it is you I love the most.’ We throw ourselves into a space where our happiness relies on others. (Remember that bit where I told you I’d tried not to get irritatingly evangelical? I don’t always manage it.)

  I didn’t tell Bertie any of this. It wouldn’t have been an especially measured response to an amusing burst of six-year-old guilelessness. But for once I didn’t just award her the prize of most cherished above all, as I once would have done.

  ‘Ray loves all of us equally. He loves Mimi and me and Daddy and Giggle. He loves us all in different, wonderful ways. We all share his love. Isn’t that nice?’ I replied.

  ‘Aw, that is SO nice,’ she said with a slightly forced smile. ‘But I really do think he does still love me a little bit the most.’

  Look, we’re all a work in progress.

  Next on our list of doggy play dates were Katherine Ryan’s three dogs, Dalai, Manny and Meg. We had discovered that by some weird coincidence, her Shih Tzu, Meg, had the same mother as Ray – the soap storyline none of us saw coming.

  Dogs, as pack animals, don’t really have any sense of biological recognition. So I wasn’t expecting the reunion to go viral. But it was weird to see an almost obsessive display of devoted affection between them. Ray raced around after Meg, attacking her face with love bites and looking distraught if she left the room. Katherine’s daughter, Violet, documented their relationship with endless photos, placing heart emojis and ‘RAY RAY LOVES MEG!!’ captions all over them.

  ‘Do they know they are brother and sister, I wonder?’ I asked Violet as they curled up together in the corner, looking like they were about to break the internet.

  ‘I really think they do,’ she said, of this live-action version of Frozen for dogs.

  People kept telling me to take Ray to puppy classes (usually in slightly insistent tones after he’d peed on their carpet). I had resisted so far – I was worried that sensible ladies in fleeces would shout at me for giving Ray a girly hairstyle. And then there would be all those awkward dynamics that play out when strangers are thrown together over an unlikely commonality. But given that not too long ago I had chosen to enter a roomful of strangers wearing a label saying ‘UNLOVEABLE’, I couldn’t hide behind that reason anymore.

  I learned a very important lesson before I even set foot inside the class. Not everyone getting a dog was using it to deal with a load of unresolved childhood drama. Some people? They were literally just getting a dog.

  The dog owners were milling around outside the class, indulging in the usual stilted getting-to-know-you formalities. Ray spotted a Cavapoo and gleefully lunged towards it. Its owner looked a bit like Anna Wintour, trench-coated and immaculate. She pulled angrily on the dog’s expensive leather lead, as he inched towards Ray.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous!’ I said, bending down to stroke the Cavapoo. He pawed at my shins.

  ‘Get DOWN!’ Trench coat yelled at him. ‘He is absolutely NOT allowed to leap up like that. It’s the whole point of being here,’ she sighed, thrusting sunglasses up on to her head to fix her dog with a death stare.

  Lesson two. Not all dog owners were chatty, patient, open souls.

  Inside, fortunately things were slightly less daunting. Louise, the trainer who had helped Ray with his agoraphobia and ran these classes, was here, wearing pink Converse and lime-green socks. I chatted to a couple with a dachshund named Peanut, and felt relieved that for once, Ray wouldn’t have the shortest legs in the room (and neither would I). There was a girl with her boyfriend and their tiny chihuahua, and a cheery couple with a Labradoodle.

  I was the only person who had come alone. I had to fight some reflexive discomfort over that. But I reminded myself that we were not in that world anymore. We tried to do things differently in this new place I’d moved to – my fancy new postcode called ‘the present’.

  We went round, rehab style, introducing our puppies and giving their ages. ‘Ten weeks old,’ one man said proudly. ‘Twelve weeks old,’ revealed a young couple. ‘Sixteen weeks!’ chuckled another owner. ‘The old man of the group.’

  Ray was not in increments of weeks anymore. He was eight months old. That made him thirty-two weeks. I’d brought a university graduate to a soft-play centre. I scanned quickly through the fact sheet I’d neglected to read. ‘We prefer that puppies older than six months don’t attend the classes,’ it said, in unavoidable capitals.

  ‘Emily? Do you want to introduce us to your dog?’ Louise smiled.

  ‘Absolutely! This is Raymond. He’s … five months old! Well, five and a teeny bit, actually! Just a few days over …’ I added, overcooking things needlessly, that old liar’s tell.

  But his dark secret allowed him to shine as the star pupil. As the other puppies misbehaved, Ray was a wise village elder. He looked slightly bewildered when I ‘taught him’ commands he had mastered some months back. ‘I’ve kind of worked out the whole “treat as reward” concept by now? Talk about entry level, love.’

  But the chaotic roomful of puppies made me look forward to the classes. Ray would waddle in, greeted like the well-loved sitcom character who receives whoops of approval from the studio audience.

  ‘Bye, Ray Ray, we’ll miss you!’ a female couple said as they waved, heading off with their Schnoodle after the final session. ‘Ray’s such an angel.’

  ‘Getting him is one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life,’ I said.

  For a second I reached for something funny to add, something self-deprecating and smart-mouthed that would hilariously dismantle the burst of sentiment.

  But I stopped myself. Because it was true.

  Chapter Sixteen

  My house was crawling with Polish men.

  Marek, Roland and Pavel were ripping out my old inherited bathroom and kitchen, painted in inoffensive neutral tones, to make way for my loud floor tiles and slightly in-your-face floral walls. I had also bought that pendant light that someone once declared to be ‘a bit two years ago’.

  I had approached this house renovation with the panic-stricken perfectionism of an oligarch’s wedding planner. My poor builders nodded patiently as I commanded them to re-do the cupboard. ‘It’s come out a bit “surgical neck brace” pink. I’m thinking more “antique ballet slippers”.’ Assuming they would somehow be fluent in the Rach and Em shopping shorthand.

  It was a revelation, just how satisfying it felt to create my own space from scratch. Those people who spent weekends piling plants and tap fittings into car boots had always been inhabitants of that other world as far as I was concerned. The proper adults, rather than the overgrown children like me. Ones whose shopping deliveries contained family-size packets of Andrex – not Prosecco and tooth-whitening kits. Homes were for dog families. Ray’s bowls now had a fixed comforting place in the kitchen, and he went berserk when the cupboard door was opened, the portal to his theme park, filled with treats and toys.

  ‘Raymond!’ cried Pavel as Ray scuttled around threatening to knock over a bucket of cement. ‘You will be like dog statue. Leave, shoo!’

  Marek, the youngest builder, smirked, replying to him in Polish as he sucked on end
less cigarettes.

  I had grown oddly fond of Marek’s enigmatic daily musings.

  ‘Isn’t my niece cute, Marek?’ I would say.

  ‘All children are cute,’ he replied.

  Or, ‘I telephone my uncle now, Emily.’

  ‘The one I met the other day, Marek?’

  ‘Different one.’

  ‘How many uncles have you got?’

  ‘Forty.’

  Or, ‘Marek, did you want this mug?’

  ‘It’s cup.’

  ‘Actually, it’s called a mug!’

  ‘Hmmm. We’ll see.’

  Getting the builders in to do up your house probably didn’t count as a hugely symbolic moment for most people. It was just something they quietly got on with throughout their lives, as circumstances demanded and money allowed.

  But it felt weighted with huge significance to me. I had never had the courage to put my own stamp on anything.

  The two homes I’d bought so far had come tastefully but neutrally pre-prepared, so that I didn’t have to disagree with the previous owner and their confident decisions about the best way to live. I would add the occasional print or a cushion that a colleague or interiors magazine had already given the seal of approval. People told me, ‘You have such great taste, Em!’ as I rushed to place flowers on the table and wiped toothpaste stains off the bathroom mirror so that they would leave with an impression of perfection. But I didn’t care how it looked when they left. Until now.

  I bought a huge French-style bed that made me feel like Marie Antoinette, and hung up the last Christmas present Rach bought me, a beautiful illustration of a peach, bought on one of her east London market visits.

  There was a baroque white frame in my living room that used to contain a picture of me laughing, at a movie premiere. I took it out. I swapped it with a letter I wrote at the age of six.