Henry the Queen's Corgi

by Georgie Crawley

  ‘Okay, stop right there,’ Amy snapped. Surely the best thing about not being married to Jim any more was that she didn’t have to answer to him. Or anyone else, for that matter. She was her own person, she got to make her own decisions, her own future – and she definitely didn’t have to put up with being spoken to like that. ‘First of all: if I’m mad with you? Jim, you walked out on nearly twenty years of marriage so you could be the ultimate cliché and run off with your secretary. Trust me, I’m not going to stop being mad with you for a hell of a long time yet.’ She kept her voice down, aware that Claire was somewhere in the house. But that wasn’t going to stop her telling the truth.

  Amy took a breath, pleased to see that Jim had stepped back, and looked suitably guilty as she brushed past him into the house.

  ‘Secondly, it was your decision to spend Christmas skiing with said secretary.’ Amy slipped her coat off her shoulders and slung it over the end of the bannister, instead of hanging it up on the coat rack. That had always driven Jim crazy. ‘I told you that if you wanted to spend Christmas with your kids, that we’d make it work here. You chose to go away.’

  ‘Bonnie said—’

  ‘Bonnie isn’t part of this family.’ Not yet, anyway. She suspected eventually she’d be Jack and Claire’s stepmother, and Amy would have to learn to get along with her. But for now, she wasn’t part of this argument. This was still about their family, for the time being ‘And I’m not done talking.’

  ‘Right. Sorry,’ he said looking shamefaced.

  ‘Thirdly, I’m not bringing the kids into anything. I told Jack to be here tonight – and I certainly didn’t tell him that he could go out.’

  Not that she was hugely surprised that he’d wanted to. Jack had been very clear about his feelings for his father, over the last couple of months.

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  They stared at each other for a long moment, weighing up the meaning of that. Amy couldn’t help but take in the changes in Jim since he’d left. She’d known something was different for months before it happened. It wasn’t just the secretive phone calls, or the extra work trips away. It had been the changes in him – the way he dressed, the care he took over shaving or styling his hair. A sudden interest in country music that had never existed before.

  She’d known, Amy admitted to herself at last. She’d known he was having an affair, and she hadn’t confronted him about it, not because she was scared to lose him, but because it was easier for their family if she just turned a blind eye and kept things together.

  But sometimes easier wasn’t better, she realised. Sometimes, you needed the big changes to move forward. To find a better future.

  She just wondered what other changes she’d be called on to make.

  ‘So, Jack played us,’ Jim said, eventually.

  ‘He played you,’ Amy corrected him. ‘If you’d called me to check—’

  ‘I did call!’

  ‘Before or after Jack walked out the door?’ Amy placed her hands on her hips and waited for the answer she already knew.

  ‘After.’ Jim scowled. ‘He didn’t really wait for me to give permission.’

  Amy sighed. ‘He’s seventeen, Jim. He’s almost an adult. Another nine months and he’ll be off to university, and soon enough it’ll be up to him if he even wants to see us at all. If you want to keep him in your life, you have to give him a reason.’

  ‘I’m his father!’ Jim protested. ‘Isn’t that reason enough?’

  Not when you don’t act like it. Not when you abandoned him. Not when you tore our family apart …

  Amy shook her head. She couldn’t think like that.

  She knew, deep down, that Jack and Claire would both be better off with Jim in their lives. He was, it turned out, a rubbish husband – but he’d always been a good dad.

  Until now.

  ‘You really have to go skiing?’ she asked. ‘I think it would mean a lot to them to have you here, this first Christmas.’

  ‘It’s all booked,’ Jim said, weakly. ‘And Bonnie’s so excited about it.’

  ‘It’s your choice,’ Amy repeated. At the very least, she could make him take responsibility for his actions. ‘Where’s Claire?’

  ‘She ran off upstairs when Jack and I were arguing.’

  ‘So, what, about an hour ago?’ Amy guessed.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

  ‘Did you at least feed them dinner?’

  Jim looked affronted. ‘Of course I did! I haven’t totally forgotten how to be a parent in the last six weeks, you know.’

  Amy didn’t grace that with a reply.

  Trudging up the stairs, she called out for her daughter, but got no answer. As she reached her bedroom door, she found it ajar, and nudged it open enough to peer through the gap.

  ‘Claire?’

  ‘What?’ The response came from under a pile of blankets on the bed. Amy could just make out the torchlight through the sheets, and Sookie, curled up on the pillow.

  Amy perched on the edge of the bed, and peeled back the covers enough to find Claire’s face. Sookie, obviously sensing she was no longer needed, hopped down and headed for the door.

  ‘What are you reading?’ Amy asked, nodding at the book in Claire’s hand.

  She held it up so her mum could see the cover. The Lost Puppy.

  ‘Been a long time since we read that one together.’ It had been Claire’s favourite book in the world when she was six. They’d read it over and over again for months. Now, at twice that age, she was obviously finding comfort in it again.

  And thinking about Henry, Amy was willing to bet.

  ‘Do you think Henry will ever find his way home? Like Rusty does in the book?’ Claire’s voice was small, lost. It made her sound about six again. Amy missed those days, when both her kids were small enough for her to hold them in her arms and imagine she’d never have to let them go.

  ‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’ Leaning over, Amy kissed the top of her daughter’s head and plucked the book from her hands. Comfort reading or not, she had a feeling it wasn’t helping tonight. ‘But I hope so. And we’ll keep doing everything we can to get him home.’

  ‘But nothing we try seems to be working,’ Claire whined.

  She was right. Having faith that Henry would find his way home was all well and good. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t help things along …

  ‘Come on,’ Amy said. ‘Let’s go downstairs and talk with your dad. Maybe he can think of some new things for us to try to help find Henry.’

  If nothing else, at least he could start earning his keep as a father again, while she got out that Christmas tree. And maybe by the time they were done, Jack would be home – and they could start mending that bridge, too.

  ‘We need a new plan,’ Amy announced, as she and Claire walked into the kitchen. ‘A plan to find Henry.’

  ‘What sort of thing were you thinking of?’ Jim asked, looking uncertain.

  Amy shrugged, trying to resist the urge to roll her eyes at her ex-husband. ‘That’s what I was hoping you’d be able to help with. I told you, we’ve notified the authorities, we’re checking in regularly, we’ve made sure everyone who is anyone knows that he’s microchipped and missing … I don’t know what else we can do.’

  ‘But there has to be something,’ Claire said, looking much more like her almost teenager self again, rather than the scared little girl she’d been ten minutes before. ‘Because what we’ve done so far isn’t working. We need something that does work.’

  ‘Well … if he was lost around here, I guess we’d put up missing posters and such, right?’ Jim said.

  ‘Are you suggesting we go pin a poster to the gates of Buckingham Palace?’ Amy asked, eyebrows raised. ‘Because I believe that sort of thing is discouraged by the guards …’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ Jim said. ‘But there has to be something similar we can do. Like, online.’

  ‘A Facebook hunt?’ Claire sug
gested. ‘Like a picture of him, saying when and where we lost him, and asking anyone who was there that day to think if they might have seen him?’

  ‘A Hunt for Henry.’ Jim clicked his fingers. ‘Exactly!’

  ‘But you’ll have to set it up,’ Claire said. ‘I’m not old enough for Facebook. Apparently.’ She rolled her eyes in Amy’s direction as she said it.

  ‘And I don’t have an account any more.’ Amy didn’t look at Jim. She didn’t want him to know that he was the reason she’d deleted it. She couldn’t bear seeing everyone else’s perfect Christmases – perfect lives – while hers was falling apart around her. And she really didn’t want to see scenes from Jim’s new life, every time he hung out with one of their mutual friends. That sort of thing was better off unknown.

  ‘Fine. Bring me your laptop?’ Jim asked Claire, who dashed off to fetch it from her room.

  ‘Do you think it will help?’ Amy asked, moving across the kitchen to flip on the kettle. This sounded like the kind of endeavour that would be made easier with tea. And maybe another of those mince pies, if Jack had left any. ‘The Facebook thing, I mean.’

  Jim shrugged. ‘Gotta be worth a shot, right? And besides …’ He glanced out into the hallway, obviously making sure that Claire wasn’t hanging around to listen. ‘It’ll make her feel better, just knowing we’re doing something.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Amy said, surprised. ‘The most frustrating thing is how little we can do except wait.’

  ‘Well, you always were a very patient person.’ Jim gave her a small half-smile, and Amy realised that might have been the nicest thing either of them had said to the other in months.

  ‘I just hope he comes home. I miss him.’ It felt weird to admit that. When they’d been together, Henry had always been Jim’s dog, not hers. Something that he and Jack shared. She and Claire had had Sookie instead.

  But it seemed that Henry had wormed his way into all their hearts. And without him … the house felt even less like home than it had since Jim left.

  ‘I hope so too,’ Jim said, seeming a bit upset for the first time about Henry being missing.

  Claire came racing back through the door with her laptop, and Amy turned her attention back to the kettle and mince pies, while they got it set up. Placing cups of tea and sweet treats on the kitchen table, she left them to it while she went and dug the fake tree out of the garage and dragged it through to the lounge.

  It didn’t take too long to set up, thankfully. In the bag she’d stashed with it, Amy found a selection of discount baubles she’d picked up at the same time, and a small string of fairy lights. They weren’t much, but once they were all on the tree at least the lounge started to look a little bit festive.

  By the time she made it back through to the kitchen, the tea and the mince pies were long gone – and there was a Hunt for Henry Facebook page up and running. Amy grabbed the packet of mince pies and replenished the plate.

  ‘It looks great,’ she said, leaning over Claire’s shoulder to take a look at the webpage. Claire had included a lovely photo of Henry from last Christmas, wearing a paper crown and the fancy red collar she’d picked out for his present in the pet supplies shop. Just looking at it made Amy miss his furry little face all over again.

  ‘Claire did all the hard work,’ Jim said. ‘I just provided the log in.’

  ‘So, what do we do now?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Wait, mostly.’ Jim gave a small shrug. ‘These things can take a while to pick up. We’ll just need to keep an eye on it over the next few days. See if we get any responses – sightings, messages and so on.’

  ‘I’m going to keep watching it now,’ Claire said. ‘I need to know how many hits we get.’ She reached for a second mince pie. ‘How many likes, how many shares. The more people who see this post, the better. I mean, people visit Buckingham Palace from all over the world, right? So we need this post to get shared far and wide. Someone must have seen something.’

  Amy and Jim exchanged a look. They might have focused Claire’s attention on taking action, but Amy sincerely hoped that they hadn’t raised her hopes for nothing.

  At that moment, the front door slammed open, crashing against the telephone table in the way Jack knew she hated. Still, she bit her tongue. They were going for family unity tonight – and she knew her son. The harder she nagged, the further he’d pull away. In the grand scheme of things, one slammed door wasn’t important.

  His relationship with his father was.

  ‘Jack, you’re home,’ she said, as he appeared in the kitchen door, hovering half in, half out of the room, the way he always did when he knew he was in trouble. ‘I didn’t know you’d be going out tonight.’

  She saw Jack glance over at his father, saw their gazes meet.

  Please, Jim. Just this once, play along. Of course, if she’d ever had any telepathic powers with her husband, they might not be in this mess in the first place.

  Or maybe they’d have just been in it a lot sooner.

  To her relief, Jim held his tongue. Later, she and Jack would be having a talk – a talk about respect, about playing parents off against each other, and about making time for family.

  For now, she just wanted him to actually make time for family.

  ‘Uh, Toby called and asked me over to help him with something,’ Jack said. Then he caught sight of the laptop screen Claire was still staring at. ‘Hey, what’s that?’

  ‘It’s a “Hunt for Henry” page,’ Claire said, her eyes never leaving the screen. ‘Dad helped me set it up. It’s to try and find someone who might have seen what happened to Henry at the Palace last weekend.’

  ‘That’s … a good idea,’ Jack said, looking at Jim in surprise. ‘Any luck yet?’

  Claire shook her head. ‘But we’ve got ten shares already, and over fifty hits. Plus a few comments from Dad’s friends who work in London saying they’ll ask around locally if anyone has seen him.’

  ‘It’s a start,’ Jack said, reaching for a mince pie off the plate. ‘Hang on, let me share it in a few groups I know. See if that gets any traction. In fact, let’s add me as an administrator to the page – that way I can do more with it.’

  Soon they were working on it together: Jack on his phone, Claire still on the laptop. Jim caught her eye and smiled, and Amy couldn’t help but smile back.

  Maybe, just maybe, they’d all get through this.

  And maybe Henry would come home to share it with them.

  Day 5

  Wednesday 18th December

  HENRY

  I woke the next morning warm and cosy in a way I hadn’t been since I left the Walkers’ house. It took me a moment to figure out why, and by that time Candy was awake and yelping for me to get away from her.

  I rolled my eyes and hopped down, stretching out my back as I landed. Apparently I was fine company in the night, when she was scared and needed a friend, but not in the daylight hours when the other dogs might see.

  Well. She’d learn I am excellent company all the time, soon enough, I was sure.

  Another day in the Palace, and already I thought I knew what to expect. This was a place that ran on tradition, order and routine. Even for us dogs, the days proceeded in an order set down years ago, with very little variation.

  Which is why I was so disturbed when I couldn’t find Sarah after breakfast.

  I checked all the usual places, all the rooms she normally took care of, racing through the halls and the galleries hunting her down. I couldn’t even catch a whiff of her scent.

  I did come across some other new people, though, in one of the larger rooms, shifting furniture around and laying out new tables and chairs that hadn’t been there before. Obviously something was going on. Was Sarah caught up in it?

  Eventually, I tracked my friend down by pure chance – I met her coming the other way down a corridor I’d never explored before.

  ‘Henry!’ Sarah sounded delighted to see me, which is always gratifying. ‘I wondered if you’d find me t
his morning. It’s my day off.’

  A day off. When Amy had one of those, or Jim, they tended to be spent out of the house. But when the house in question was as big as Buckingham Palace, maybe Sarah didn’t feel the need to leave.

  ‘I thought I’d spend it catching up on a few things – like Christmas cards,’ she said, as I turned around to trot alongside her as she walked. ‘I’ve been writing them all morning. It’s funny, when you realise how many people you normally wish a Merry Christmas in person, and then try to write to them all. I ended up doing just one card for the village church, and another for the pub – otherwise I’d have been there all morning!’

  From the stack of envelopes in her hand, I could see she clearly hadn’t thinned out the list that much. It reminded me of when Claire was smaller, and Amy used to have to bribe her with chocolate to write cards to all the other children in her class at school. It always seemed a little ridiculous to me – all these pieces of card sent out into the world, and just as many coming back in. Amy would attach them to ribbons and hang them from the stairs – and I got into all sorts of trouble when I tried to play with them. Then in the New Year they’d all go out in the green bin anyway. What a waste.

  This year, most of the cards we’d received were still sitting in a pile on the kitchen counter – or at least, they had been when I left. And I hadn’t seen Amy writing any at all.

  ‘So now I’m off to the Post Office to post them,’ Sarah said, cheerfully, breaking through my memories. ‘Are you coming with me?’

  I stumbled to a stop.

  I wanted to, of course. Sarah was fast becoming my best friend – maybe only friend, if you discounted Candy last night – in Buckingham Palace. But Post Offices, I knew from queuing with Amy in previous years, were in shopping centres, or on the high street in the town. And while I might be allowed to roam anywhere I liked in the Palace, I’d seen no indication that I was allowed to go outside the grounds – in fact, Willow had made that quite clear. I didn’t want Sarah to get into trouble for taking me outside.