by Fiona Walker
Ellis’s teeth were chattering. There were blankets and dog beds in the back of the van. He crawled inside, pulling two checked blankets around him, listening hard.
‘I’ll buy her off you. Fair and square.’
‘She’s not for sale. Granddad Norm says she’s the best of the lot.’
‘She doesn’t like you, Jed. She doesn’t want to hunt no more.’
‘Give her time. Not many dogs resist instinct. And she’s a fighter. I have to keep her on her own. She’d take a hind down.’
‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘What are you going to do? Shop me to your friends the Austens?’
‘If that’s what it takes to stop you hurting Pricey.’
‘Do that and your Ash is nicked. Shame, a war hero like him, but a lot lose it on Civvy Street, don’t they? Won’t be able to work as a nice personal trainer then, will he? Have to do security, bodyguarding maybe, protection. Dangerous work. Not home much.’
‘I know my husband. He’s no criminal.’
‘Your little boy’s growing up fast, isn’t he? Chip off the old block. His dad got in a lot of scrapes at that age. Near misses, you know.’
‘You threaten my child and I’ll tie you up by that bloody piercing, Jed.’
‘Now there’s an offer.’
Ellis snuggled further into the van, feeling tired now. He didn’t understand what they were talking about any more. Not dogs anyway. On they shouted. His mum was a good shouter. He was sure he could hear Pricey howling, picking up on her voice. He closed his eyes to listen. A moment later, he was asleep.
*
Petra and Charlie, who would secretly have preferred to stay at home so they could both drink, went to Le Mill as a Christmas treat, courtesy of her parents, faced with picking through small portions and even smaller talk. Squeezed between a raucous table of twenty and another of sixteen, they smiled gamely and politely at each other over their menus and wine choice, but rapidly descended into long silences as the thrill of making a decision was shrugged into inevitable disappointment. Stony sober Petra found it hard to hold her tongue as Charlie drank his way down a bottle of Chablis within the first half-hour and couldn’t stop his eyes checking out Carly, who was waitressing their table.
Embarrassed that someone she knew was witnessing their lacklustre attempt at marital bliss, Petra put on a big show when their plates were delivered and wine poured, sagging back into exhausted people-watching afterwards while Charlie talked about the Boxing Day shoot he was going on, highlight of his week ahead, Christmas paling into insignificance by comparison.
‘Neville Ogilvy’s going to be there. Now he is one big, swinging dick in the City, just bought a huge place over near Winchcombe. And Dave Goldstein – d’you remember him? Both crack shots. We had a day out last year on the Wyckford Estate. Huge mixed bag. Loads of partridge, a woodcock and three beaters I shot by accident.’
‘Ha-ha.’
‘Just checking you’re listening. Now Dave’s wife’s a good shot too...’
She supposed it could have been worse. He could have been passionate about golf.
‘Henry’s offered to stand me a round of golf at his club,’ he said, leaning across to scoop up two slices of the duck she was saving until last in her salad. ‘See how I like it.’
A gale was forecast. Petra still had fifty-eight presents to wrap. She was missing the Last Tango in Halifax Christmas special.
‘Everything all right for you?’ Carly took their plates.
‘Fabulous! Delicious!’
‘I’ll get you dessert menus.’
Charlie looked across at her cynically.
‘We could just go home?’ he suggested, already hard-eyed and horny from chasing down the Chablis with a very good Burgundy.
Sober and distinctly unstirred, Petra needed a bit more revving up. ‘Where’s your spirit of adventure? I expect pudding, Arabica coffee and a romantic walk to the Hare’s Ladder.’
‘Is that a pub?’ he asked hopefully.
‘It’s a waterfall.’
‘It’s minus eight out there.’
‘Two puddings, then.’
‘Are you sure you should, darling?’ His eyes nudged towards her thighs.
‘Do you want sex later?’
He gave a Terry-Thomas growl.
‘Then I want two puddings.’
*
Ellis hadn’t woken when the dog was put into the van, despite having his face washed enthusiastically and a back wriggle against him. Deep in his unconscious, dreaming mind, she was familiar and protective. Nor did he wake as the engine started and the van rumbled out of the estate and onto the Broadbourne road, swinging onto the track by the millstream and following it as far as the little wooded parking spot dog-walkers used by day and doggers by night. It was only when the doors were pulled open and Pricey snarled that he started, eyes snapping open.
‘Come on, you bitch.’
She bared her teeth viciously at the shadow in the door. Another shadow joined it, another car engine approached, dogs barking.
The rumble in her throat was low, deadly serious.
Ellis was frightened.
‘Come here!’ The shadow pointed something at the dog. There was a shrill beep and a little red light glowed near Ellis’s face, where Pricey’s neck was, a box on her collar. The next moment she’d dropped to the van floor with a yelp.
Ellis pulled the blanket over his head. A torch beam crossed the back, glowing through the rough woollen weave. Then Pricey had gone, the doors banging shut.
He waited for what seemed ages, the voices fading, the cold setting in.
Whimpering, he felt even more cold and scared. He couldn’t open the van doors from the inside. There was a sliding glass panel behind where the driver sat, open just a fraction. His fingers were small enough to thread into it and tug until the glass panel slid aside enough for him to crawl through, taking his ’Splorer Stick with him.
*
Carly was helping Petra and Charlie into their coats when Babette, the maître d’, beckoned her over urgently.
‘Thank you again,’ gushed Petra. On a two-pudding high, adorably Christmassy and sentimental, she’d left Carly a big tip and now hugged her farewell. ‘You must bring your little one to ride our Shetland after Christmas.’
‘Yeah, thanks, gorgeous,’ Charlie smouldered, making Carly back away quickly.
Babette handed her the phone, signalling that it was important.
At the other end of the line, Janine was talking so fast she didn’t make any sense at first. Something about Ellis and Ash, all in a breathless rush: ‘I didn’t know he should have been home with the other two – I thought he was at a mate’s or still at his nan’s. Then Ash got home, and your phone’s on voicemail so we couldn’t check with you, then we had a beer and he was on the Xbox and we was chatting and, ohmygod, Carl, he must have been missing hours. When did you go? Half five? It’s nearly ten! Oh, shit, poor little mite.’
‘Ellis is missing?’ She felt ice cold.
‘Yes! Yes!’
‘Where’s Ash?’
‘Out looking.’
‘Has he got his phone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Call him and tell him to find Jed, yeah? FIND JED!’
‘I told you he’s out with the dog. A load of them was meeting up near Hare’s Ladder, Carl. Don’t you go there. He’s with the boys from... Carl? Carl?’
She was already running out of the door.
*
Ellis knew he’d be safe while he had his ’Splorer Stick. It was magical, his mum said. He could hear voices up ahead, hushed and urgent, men with dogs. Ellis liked dogs.
It was really dark, but the moon was big and white above the trees, making the snow seem whiter, and if he focused hard he could just see the path. The ground was slippery, rock hard. His breath clouded in front of him. He needed the stick to feel his way.
The men were across to the left, a big dark dip in the ground
between him and them. He prodded it, found a solid surface and stepped onto it.
He could see torches now, bright ones sweeping through the trees. They must be looking for him. His mum and dad were always telling him not to run off, and they’d be searching, just the same as he wanted to find them. He called: ‘Here! I’m here!’
Something started cracking beneath his feet. They felt cold and wet. As he stepped around, trainers glowing, trying to find dry ground, he looked down and saw water bubbling up through broken ice.
*
‘Ellis!’ Carly ran along the path, stumbling and slipping, her breath coming out in great hoarse racks making shouting his name a pathetic wheezing breath. ‘Ellis! Ellis!’
She passed the vans and off-roaders parked together, tucked tightly away in the clearing with tell-tale stealth.
‘Ellis!’
The path blackened in the woods, making her fall more, her arms and legs lacerated with thorns, the ground a skating rink. ‘Ellis!’
A small, distant cry: ‘Mum. It’s breaking, Mum.’
‘Where are you? Ellis! Ellis!’ She stood still, turned, listened, trying not to breathe, her heartbeat deafening in her ears.
‘Mum!’
‘Ellis! Where are you?’
She heard the ice cracking first, a splash, a scream. It might have been her own. She ran in the direction of the noise, legs tightly netted in undergrowth, trying to high-step and fight through brambles and brash as high as her waist. ‘Ellis!’
Then she heard the dog, its panting breaths, solid body crashing through the woods to her left beyond the hollow. It was running her way. A man shouted, a small red light flashed. The dog yelped, dropped and rolled over as though shot. It scrambled up and ran on. More shouting. The light flashed again. It barely broke stride this time, making a flying leap and disappearing into the hollow. A skittering of feet, more splashing, a cry. ‘Help. Pricey!’
‘Ellis!’
He was in water.
Carly waded through the brash, her shirt and skirt shredded now, kicking her way out to a steep bank at the far side. She pulled off her shoes and slid down it, hearing a motorbike screaming along the path beside her.
Her foot went straight through the ice. She pulled it out. Balanced on the bank, she peered into the gloom and saw movement in the centre of the black pond, the dog trying to swim through the ice towards her, a boy clinging to her back.
Not pausing to think, Carly dived in.
Christ, it was cold. Colder than cold. She could barely feel her arms to pull herself along. Her legs were flailing in frozen silt, ice shards trying to cut her throat. She’d made it about six feet into the pond and couldn’t move, her body just shaking in horrible, paralysed inertia.
With great effort, she forced it on, focusing on Ellis, not caring if she lived or died as long as she saved him. All she had to do was save him. Her mind was freezing too, her vision so black. Keep going. Pricey was pulling him towards her, sinking right below the surface with the effort. She was a big dog, a strong dog now, but the water was freezing her senses too.
Carly reached out, almost able to touch him.
‘Carly!’ Ash’s voice, somewhere higher up behind her.
‘Here!’ Why was no sound coming out? ‘Here!’
The dog disappeared under the surface again, Ellis almost slipping in too. She plunged onwards.
‘Carly!’
The dog burst up, copper eyes blinking, bright as coins in the moonlight. She let out a bark, deep and demanding. And again.
Ash came crashing through the brash towards the pond.
Carly felt a freezing cold little arm beneath her fingers, sobbed with relief as she gripped it, pulling Ellis to her, turning onto her back with him on her chest and kicking back towards the bank with the fragments of strength she had left. A great splash behind her and she was lifted out in one deft movement, still clinging so tightly to her son she worried she’d broken his arm.
On the bank, Ash ripped off his coat and wrapped it around them both, his hand first on her face and then Ellis’s, checking they were conscious and breathing. Carly’s teeth were chattering too much to speak, but she waved him away and crouched over their son too.
Ellis wasn’t breathing.
‘It’s all right, little man. I’ve got your back.’
Ash was applying CPR before she could even start to think what to do, counting and compressing, then breathing into Ellis’s mouth.
She took his little hand. It was still gripped tight round his ’Splorer Stick.
He gave a faint moan, the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. Then another and a splutter. Then he said, ‘Pricey.’
Carly dropped her face to his small, cold hand, hot tears against it. The dog. She hadn’t got out. As Ash knelt back, Carly gathered their son into a tight hug, feeling the tears start to shake through him.
‘The dog,’ she told Ash. ‘She saved his life. She’s still in there.’
He shook his head. ‘She’ll be gone, Carly.’
She swallowed blades. She remembered seeing it on television. People who had drowned in frozen water were brought round hours later. Surely the same was true for dogs.
‘We’ve got to get her out.’
‘No, Carl.’
‘Yes.’ She tried to pass Ellis to him and stand up, her legs refusing to work at first. ‘I’m getting her out.’
‘Stay there! I’ll do it.’ He settled Ellis back against her, pulling the coat tighter round them, looming over her as he pulled off his sweater. ‘Take your wet shirt off and put this on. There’s a phone in the coat. Call an ambulance.’ He gazed across the pond at the field beyond the trees where the lampers had moved to the far corner, not bothering to come after the dog or follow the shouts. ‘And call the police too. I don’t believe I’m bloody doing this.’
Then, with a crack and a splash, he waded back in.
Fingers still steel hard, Carly dialled 999. So much for healing hands. She couldn’t even feel them, struggling to hold the phone steady enough to her ear to hear. At last the message was conveyed, the location given as best she knew it. She clutched the phone to her mouth and Ellis to her chest, rocking and listening, rocking and listening. A splash here, a crash there, Ash cursing, then a whoosh as he went right under to search.
Ellis’s tears were abating. His teeth were chattering like hers now. ‘Where’s Pricey?’
‘Dad’s looking, love.’
‘Want Pricey.’ He took her hand and held it against his face, and she realised that her fingers were warm once more. Not just warm, they were hot.
There was another loud whoosh, a grunt and a curse, then wading and scrabbling, feet on the bank, the big black shadow of a man covered with pond weed clutching the big black shadow of a dog covered with it too.
‘I expect you want me to give her bloody mouth-to-mouth as well, do you?’
‘Too right we do.’
‘Make her wake up, Dad.’
He laid her down beside Carly, who cupped her hands around Pricey’s cold domed head.
‘Here goes nothing.’
As Ash crouched down to start compressing her chest, the dog let out a great roar of a splutter, her big lungs pumping out, coughing and sneezing and heaving until she stood shakily up and crashed closer to Carly and Ellis.
‘Guess she didn’t want to be kissed.’ Ash laughed.
‘I do.’ Carly reached up to his face. ‘God, but I love you, Ash Turner.’
57
With two days to Christmas, the grocery deliveries were coming thick and fast to the village, vans parked in drives and on verges unloading plastic Tesco and Waitrose crates, posh hampers, cheap booze, and Amazon couriers wandering around with boxes, looking for houses with names, not numbers.
Among the dog-walkers on Plum Run, Christmas spirit was building fast, smiles widening, good will radiating. The thaw had set in. Although much of the landscape had started to reclaim its browns, golds and greens, the snowmen were still
standing. Some joker had dressed up the Old Vicarage’s gate eagles in dark glasses and Santa hats.
In the Orchard Estate, the illuminations were switched on twenty-four seven, old rivals staging stand-offs between icicles, nets, inflatables, ropes and projections. Carly and Ash’s modest fibre-optic tree at number three Quince Drive was letting the side down a bit, but none of the Turners minded their understatement, given the heroism of the rescue that had just taken place. The family was reunited after a night of high drama, with one new member in situ, so thoroughly excited that she’d already broken the coffee-table, the cat-flap and the kitchen bin, and threatened to eat three guinea pigs. Ash was tolerating her for now, although his temper was blackened by the messages he’d stumbled upon on his wife’s phone the night before, declarations of love – as well as Liberal Democratic allegiance and bisexuality – from someone called ‘Gunn’ and, more disturbing still, a dick shot of almost unnatural proportions bearing the family crest.
Like a Christmas e-card, mystery man JD’s glorious appendage had now been shared via picture text among a great many ladies of the village, and he was gaining legendary status. Having left for the Isle of Wight, Pip was none the wiser that the man with whom she’d discussed tea-break KitKats had just been sent home on a charge of Trespass with Equipment Specifically Intended for Trapping and Killing Animals.
‘She couldn’t wait to race off first thing this morning – Gunny’s already in decline,’ Petra told Ronnie, as they walked to Eyngate through the ancient parkland that had once belonged to Ronnie’s distant cousins. Petra was getting better at keeping up – walking with Ronnie burned more calories than working out at the gym, she’d decided – although the topic of conversation soon made her miserable.
‘I’m going away myself in a couple of days.’
‘Visiting friends?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
Petra’s face fell when she learned that Ronnie was leaving for Germany straight after Christmas, her stay there open-ended.
‘You can’t go! I’ll pine. You only just got here.’
‘I was only ever stopping off here. I did try to tell you that.’ Her chin lifted, the thick bell of blonde hair swinging. ‘I’m taking the stallion back to the stud that bred him to stand there again. There’s a Dutch dealer who wants to give me my job back. I can make ten times the money out there than I can here, and that’s my legacy for my grandchildren. The stud is my father’s and I’m going to leave it in very good hands. You wait. By the time you’ve written all your lovely trilogy, I expect it to be in the black.’