by Matt Dunn
“Oh, Jules, I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for? We haven’t split up or anything.”
“That’s what I’m sorry about!” Priya lets out a slightly over-the-top laugh, then, with a super-friendly “Hey, Doug!” she kneels down to scratch the wrinkles on the top of my head, following it up with an impressed-sounding “Big stretch!” when I perform my usual warm-up move. “And?”
“And nothing. He was just passing by. Called in for a quick...”
Priya holds a hand up as if she’s going for a high five. “If you’re about to add an i and an e to the end of that last word, then that’s way too much information!” she says.
“Visit, I was going to say.”
“Right.” Priya gives me a final pet, then hauls herself back to her feet. “Not had an argument, have you?”
“Just a difference of opinion. That’s all.”
“Do I want to know?”
“Don’t you always?”
“Sorry, Jules. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. And I’m afraid Luke is never going to leave his...”
“P!” It’s Julie’s turn to do the high-five thing. “I don’t want to hear it.”
Priya gives me a look as if she and I are in on a secret, then she nods at the wineglasses, so Julie pours them both a drink, then empties a packet of Kettle Chips into a large bowl, which she sets down on the sofa between them. I take up my usual position on the rug in front of the sofa and stare expectantly up at the bowl. Julie picks up the TV remote, stabs at a couple of buttons, unmutes the volume, and the familiar Game of Thrones theme tune blasts out into the room.
“Winter is coming,” she says, in a funny voice, and Priya frowns.
“We still talking about you and Luke?” she says, and Julie does that openmouthed thing that’s supposed to indicate both disbelief and displeasure.
“Priya, just drop it, will you?”
“Okay, okay.” Priya takes a huge gulp from her wineglass. “It’s just...”
“He will leave her. He promised. He said it again tonight. He just has to get all his ducks in a row, and...”
“That’s ducks with a d instead of an f, right?”
Priya’s very quick-witted. She comes out with a lot of this kind of thing, and possibly despite herself, Julie smiles.
“P, please. Not all of us have it as easy as you and Sanj, you know?”
Sanj is Priya’s husband, and the point Julie’s making is that Priya didn’t have to lift (or even swipe right with) a finger to find Sanj. Their parents introduced them, and it’s why Julie quite often tells Priya she doesn’t have “a leg to stand on” when commenting on her and Luke. Although to her credit, Priya won’t be put off.
“Maybe so,” she says. “But just tell me this—how long are you going to give him?”
Julie helps herself to a chip, and while I hope I might be getting one too, she’s too preoccupied with Priya’s question to think of me.
“As long as it takes.”
“And what if it takes forever? You want a family, right? Kids?”
Julie chews thoughtfully. “Eventually,” she says, in the same way you might say “obviously,” and Priya leaves a dramatic pause before tapping the face of her watch.
“It won’t take that long,” Julie says, sounding a little less confident than before.
“But what if it does? How many more excuses can he come up with?”
“He’s promised me. Told me we’re going to grow old together.”
Priya shudders. “I’m suddenly seeing Luke as this funny little wrinkled thing, sitting next to you on the sofa, alternately snoring and farting, and you’ve already got one of those!”
For some reason, Priya nods down at me, then she smiles sympathetically. “He either wants to be with you, or he wants to be with her. He can’t have you both. That’s not how it works. Although...”
Julie reaches for the remote and stabs at the mute button. “Although what?” she says, though in a tone that suggests that—despite killing the volume on Game of Thrones—she doesn’t really want to hear Priya’s answer.
“It’s exactly what he’s got right now.”
“Priya...”
“Two women, two shags...”
“He doesn’t sleep with her anymore.”
Priya throws her head back and roars with laughter—to me, it looks like she’s putting it on a bit, but it has the desired effect. Assuming the desired effect is to make Julie annoyed.
“He doesn’t,” she insists, crossly. “He told me.”
“And you believe him?”
Julie nods, and Priya narrows her eyes in an I-don’t-believe-you kind of way, then she takes a sip of wine. She’s good at this stuff—sees everything in black-and-white, much like I do. Although of course with me, that’s genetic, given how dogs are color-blind.
“What does he tell her, do you think?”
“About?”
“How does he justify them not doing it?” Priya passes a chip to me, and I wolf it down almost without chewing to avoid missing anything.
“He... Well...” Julie stares at the screen, where either a fight or some weird sexual encounter is taking place—often on Game of Thrones it’s hard to tell the difference. “Priya, can we please talk about something else?”
“No, we can’t!” says Priya, suddenly angry. “I get that he’s charming, and good-looking, and how it can be flattering to have a married man paying you attention, but Luke is leading you on, Jules, and the quicker you realize that and kick him out, the better. Otherwise you’re just going to be sitting around wasting your time, listening to excuse after excuse from him as to why now isn’t the right time for him to leave his wife, while he gets to have his cake and eat it and all you get out of it is the occasional shag. And if you’re not careful, you might wake up one day and find yourself all alone, like that mad lady who lives next door with nothing but a creepy cat for company.”
Priya pauses for breath, and I swallow so loudly it makes a sound, my reverie following Priya’s reference to cake dissipating almost instantaneously at the mention of the word cat. Surely Priya’s joking? There’s no way I’m going to let something so duplicitous into the house, no matter how desperate Julie is.
Fortunately, my embarrassingly-loud gulp seems to have gone unnoticed. Instead, Priya sees how devastated Julie looks, and all the fight seems to go out of her.
“Sorry, Jules,” she says, leaning across to give Julie a hug. “I just worry about you. That’s all.”
“There’s no need. Honestly.”
“No?” Priya doesn’t sound convinced, nor does Julie, and to be frank, neither am I.
“No! It’s just...complicated.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“Huh?”
“Watch.” Priya helps herself to another chip from the bowl, then holds it out to me, just out of reach, and though I regard it hungrily I decide not to debase myself by begging. “Just find someone who looks at you the way Doug is looking at this Kettle Chip.”
“That is how Luke looks at me.”
Priya shakes her head. “Doug looks at this chip like he thinks it’s the only one in the world for him. It’s all he’s focused on, the most important thing in his life right now. Luke... He’s always going to be thinking about the other bag—no pun intended—he’s got at home. And possibly another one in the shop he’s got his eye on too.”
“That’s not true! It’s just Luke says it would devastate her if he left just like that.”
“But it’s devastating you all the time he doesn’t! Besides, put yourself in her shoes. Would you really want someone who doesn’t love you to be hanging around?”
“He does love her. He’s just not ‘in love’ with her.”
“I’d argue he’s not ‘in love’ with you either. Especially if he
treats you like this.”
“He is!”
“How do you know?”
“He tells me. All the time.”
“He tells you he’s going to leave her all the time too, and that doesn’t seem to be happening.”
“Yes, well,” says Julie, which seems to mean the exact opposite, and also signifies the end of the conversation, given how she’s suddenly snatched up the TV remote and is stabbing at the volume button, thus rendering any further discussion impossible.
Priya sighs, and, with a resigned “Here you go, Doug,” she feeds me the chip she’s been using to demonstrate her point.
I take it gently from her fingers, careful not to make too much of a mess as I crunch it, and as the two of them turn their attention back to the television, I collapse down onto the rug, more than a little troubled by what Priya’s said. Because the truth is, like Julie’s pointed out, it is complicated. Even I can see that. And yet, what Julie can’t see is that it’s in Luke’s interest to keep it that way.
Later that night, when I’m having difficulty sleeping, I realize something—however remote the possibility is that Julie and Luke might end up together, the alternative might just be the cat thing. And neither of those options are anything to look forward to.
Then something else occurs to me, something important. I am, in fact, what’s known as a rescue dog. My previous owner was very old. Housebound, practically, so what on earth she was doing with me was anyone’s guess. Because she was very old, walks consisted of my being let out into a small back “yard,” which couldn’t have measured much more than that. And as for food—well, perhaps you might not be so quick to judge my current, voracious eating habits if you knew that back then, I had to take my chances whenever I could—something dropped from the stove, or, on the few occasions my human remembered, from a generic bag of value dog food from the local corner shop.
Long story short, one morning, my original human didn’t wake up, and it took three days for anyone to notice. You’d have thought I killed her, given the home they sent me to after that. But at least I got fed there regularly, was walked a few times a day; had all my basic needs met, until the day Julie and Julie’s dad Jim took me somewhere much better. A real home. Julie’s home.
At the time, it never occurred to me there was a grander life out there than the one I had. I didn’t realize the situation I was in wasn’t healthy. Had no idea I needed to be rescued. A little, I suspect, like Julie feels right now.
And the utterly simple, yet mind-blowing revelation I have about being a “rescue” dog is this.
There’s no reason it can’t work both ways.
3
Today is something called a Saturday, which is good, because a) Luke never seems to grace us with his presence on either a Saturday or a Sunday, and b) Julie doesn’t go to work on a Saturday, which usually means the two of us take a morning walk to the café in the park.
Having said that, the morning’s almost over, and Julie’s not up yet.
Priya headed home early last night after their little altercation, so Julie finished off the bottle of wine on her own, and then did the same with the second one before stumbling into bed, which I’m suspecting might mean no walk to the café today. Or anywhere, if I’m honest.
After half an hour of patiently waiting by her bedroom door, I’m starting to fear Julie might not be getting up at all. I’m a pug, so my bladder isn’t exactly capacious, and I’m faced with the dilemma of what to do: my options are to scratch on the bottom of the door, bark frantically, or go for a combination of the two. Which—given that I’m too short to use the bathroom—is what I decide to do.
After a minute or so, a bleary-eyed Julie cracks the door open. I’m guessing she hasn’t slept too well, given the state of her hair and the pillow lines imprinted across her left cheek.
“Sorry, Doug,” she says, as she plods miserably through the kitchen and opens the back door. “You’ll have to go in the garden if you’re desperate.”
I give her another look, and consider going to stand pointedly under where she keeps my leash hanging in the hall. After all, going in the garden means I might not get a proper walk until much later, if at all. But I’m busting, so instead I run out through the doorway, find the nearest bush that looks like it needs watering, and do what I have to, then trot back inside and take up my usual position by my food bowl.
Julie’s checking her messages on her phone, and it looks like she’s struggling to focus on the screen, so it takes her a while to realize I’m peering expectantly up at her.
“Sorry, Doug,” she says again, then she opens the cupboard by the door, retrieves my packet of dog food, and presents it to me, like a sommelier might do with a bottle of wine on Frasier. “The usual?”
It’s Julie’s favorite joke—one she repeats every morning, and something that never fails to bring a smile to her face, though this morning it seems a little forced, so I just wag what passes for my tail and stare at the empty bowl to encourage her to start pouring. In truth, it isn’t my preferred brand—Julie only started buying it because it has a picture of a pug on the front, which is weird, because the stuff she eats for breakfast comes out of a box with a picture of a chicken on it.
But then, and annoyingly before Julie can feed me, the doorbell rings, and the way she drops the packet on the kitchen table, rushes down the hall—pausing only to check her reflection in the mirror—then throws the door open, tells me that despite the fact that it’s a Saturday, she thinks it might be Luke. But the “Hello, love,” I hear from the man standing there evidently isn’t coming from the person she really wants it to be from, as Julie replies with a hesitant, “Dad...,” then bursts into tears.
I peer up at her, my confusion temporarily overshadowing my hunger. This isn’t a common reaction to Julie’s dad. Everyone loves Julie’s dad. I love Julie’s dad, in particular, though perhaps I shouldn’t, since he’s the one who gave me this ridiculous name. Though in his defense, Julie’s dad is something called Scottish, and being Scottish means you speak differently to most people round where we live. In particular, Scottish people pronounce the word dog like “dug.”
Julie’s dad takes one look at Julie, then he gives her a hug, and simply says, “Whatshisname?” and Julie sniffs loudly, then shakes her head and hurries into the bathroom.
He gives me a look, and I return it in spades. Julie’s dad always seems to be able to work out exactly what’s going on. He’s “on the ball,” as he’d probably describe it. Has all his marbles, apparently. This jars a little with what I know about him, I have to say, because I heard Priya tell Sanj a while back that Julie’s dad lost Julie’s mum a year or so before I came along. Which seems somewhat out of character, given how great Julie’s dad is with directions.
“Hey, Doug,” he says. “Have you had your breakfast yet?” he adds, crouching down to my level, an action accompanied by a loud, double-kneed pop. Then he spots my dog food on the table just as I telepathically shout, “No!” so he hauls himself upright with the usual accompanying groan, picks up the packet, and shakes a rather generous helping into my bowl.
Fortunately, when Julie emerges from the bathroom, she’s still too upset to notice how much I’m eating. Julie’s dad gives her another hug, then he says, “I’ll put the kettle on,” and Julie sniffs again.
“Thanks, Dad,” she says, then she sits herself down at the kitchen table while he does as promised.
“Did you want to tell me what happened?”
Julie shakes her head, which I understand means no, though she then proceeds to do the exact opposite.
“Just Priya lecturing me about you-know-who last night.”
Julie’s dad finds a mug in one of the kitchen cupboards. “And the two of you had an argument?” he says, depositing a tea bag into the mug.
Julie nods. “Yeah. Well, no. Not really. But she...said some things.”<
br />
“And did they upset you because they weren’t true? Or because they were?”
Julie gives her dad a look. “She thinks I’m going to end up like Miss Harris.”
“You’ll have to refresh my memory, love.”
“The woman who lives next door. On her own. Or rather, with her cat.”
Julie’s dad looks a little confused, perhaps because living with a cat is the same as living on your own. “But you’re a dog person,” he says, which reassures me a little, until Julie says, “That’s not the point!” and starts crying again.
I’d go over to comfort her, but Julie’s dad gets there before me. “Never mind, love,” he says. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”
“Then why would she say it?” says Julie, between sobs.
“Priya cares about you, is all.” The kettle clicks off, so Julie’s dad pours boiling water into the mug, and gives the tea the briefest of stirs. “We all do. Don’t we, Doug?”
I look up and pause my chewing for a moment. This is one of the things I like about Julie’s dad—he always involves me in the conversation. And Julie seems to like it too, because for the first time this morning, her smile appears genuine.
Julie’s dad takes his time fishing the tea bag out of Julie’s mug, then he deposits it in the bin, and splashes in a drop of milk. “Besides,” he says, eventually. “There’s nothing wrong with living on your own.”
I’m guessing he’s meant it as a reference to his own situation, but the way Julie’s eyes have widened suggests she’s taken it personally.
“You think it too, don’t you?”
“Think what, love?” says Julie’s dad, though it’s clear he knows exactly what “what” is.
“That Priya’s right.”
“About?” says Julie’s dad, in the vain hope Julie might mean something less likely to end in tears.
“About how I’m going to end up as one of those old spinsters, living alone, relying on a cat for company.”
“That’s never going to happen,” says Julie’s dad, placing the steaming hot mug of tea down in front of her, even turning the handle round so Julie can pick it up more easily. “A catch like you?”