‘Juliet!’ She was beaming as if they were old friends.
Juliet tried a cautious smile, but felt herself retract, like a crab pulling itself inside its shell. I don’t want to talk to anyone, she thought. Isn’t it obvious from my face?
‘I’m so glad I saw you. I was hoping you’d be around. Hector! Hector, stop that right now. Oh, you are a one for the pretty girls!’
When Juliet looked down and saw the lascivious dachshund sniffing Coco’s ample rear end, the penny dropped. It was . . . She had to cudgel her brains not to think, Mrs Hector . . . Barbara Taylor.
‘I just thought, spotting you there, it’d be a good idea for you to take him for a bit of a trial first, before you have him next week. Make sure you two get on. And if you could get him walking a bit more obediently, I’d be ever so grateful.’
How was she meant to do that? Juliet wasn’t sure what she could say. She wanted to point out that she was no expert, but did Barbara honestly think she was? Was this another of her mother’s interferences?
‘As it happens, I’ve got to nip into town now,’ Barbara went on. ‘I was going to leave him up at the rescue-centre crèche for the morning, but since I’ve bumped into you, maybe you could have him instead? Just for an hour or so, time for a w-a-l-k.’
‘I’m not—’
‘I’ve got your number, haven’t I? I’ll give you a ring when I’m done and we can meet up!’
Juliet guessed that Barbara Taylor had a large family. She delivered all these instructions in a manner that sounded like they were only suggestions but actually didn’t leave any room for discussion. And somehow, Juliet’s fall-back Angry Widow persona wasn’t coming through. How annoying – just when she could have done with it.
‘I don’t live in town,’ she said weakly. ‘I’ve just brought the dogs in for a walk, and I wasn’t planning to be out long . . .’
‘No problem! Whizz him round the dog trail and I’ll be back in no time. Be good, Hector! Bye now!’
Juliet found herself standing by the coffee stand with three leads, one cooling coffee, her change and, now, a pile of poo to clear up.
‘Do you need a hand?’ asked the coffee girl kindly.
The only advantage Juliet could see in walking three dogs at once was that at least no one was coming anywhere near her with the dog world’s answer to Russell Brand at the end of an extendable lead.
It was bad enough trying to find a pace that suited Coco on one hand and Minton and Hector on the other, but finding a way of walking them so Hector wasn’t constantly doing the dog equivalent of bottom-pinching at Coco – and any other passing bitch – was harder.
‘Get away from her,’ said Juliet, yanking Hector back from a Yorkshire terrier. ‘She’s not your type. I’m sorry,’ she added to the owner. ‘Sorry!’
‘Hello, Hector,’ said the owner, and walked on with a sympathetic smile.
‘You are showing me up,’ hissed Juliet. ‘Get a hold of yourself.’
Hector strutted on regardless, his beard bristling with confidence.
They were out of the paint-box flowerbeds of the municipal gardens now, heading up the path towards the forest behind. Every so often yellow signs steered them between the different trails on offer, and red dog-poo bins gave a not-so-subtle reminder of who the woods really belonged to.
Minton loved Coneygreen Woods; they were riddled with squirrels and rabbits, and Juliet knew that if she let him off, he’d be gone in a flash. Hector, too, strained at his extending lead, wriggling under bushes on his short legs.
This had been a favourite Sunday walk for her and Ben, a leisurely stroll around Coneygreen, Ben testing her on her tree knowledge and letting Minton dig to his heart’s content, then back down into town for sausage sandwiches at the Wild Dog Café, where you could bring man’s best friend inside while you had brunch.
Juliet’s feet had taken the path up the hill automatically, and she hadn’t thought about where she’d end up until she was there: right in front of the viewing point that looked down on the corrugated streets and Victorian chimney clusters of Longhampton. The one nightclub, Majestic, where she and Ben had snuck in as underage teenagers, next to the self-important arch of the railway station. The half-demolished church bombed in the war that they’d done a project on at school, the old Masonic Hall that was supposedly haunted. The viewing platform was the place where they’d always stopped mid-walk and pointed all this familiar stuff out, the same every time.
Juliet looked over the town now, but none of this meant half so much now Ben wasn’t here to say it to. All those memories like cobwebs, so delicate and now so easily lost. If she forgot, who was there to remind her?
She gritted her teeth and made herself look, picking out the details anyway. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she carried on; a couple of months earlier, this would have been completely impossible. She was making tiny steps forward. Maybe the Grief Hour was achieving something.
Then she realised the leads had gone slack in her hand.
Coco sat by her feet, either out of obedience or laziness, but Minton and Hector were nowhere to be seen. In a panic, Juliet pressed the rewind button on Minton’s long line and it went tense – which meant somewhere far, far away he was doing a comedy recoil – but Hector’s didn’t.
Hector’s lead spun back, and at the end of it was a collar. He’d broken loose.
‘Shit.’ Juliet looked around for something to tie Coco to, then thought better of it. Losing Coco to Longhampton’s first recorded dog thief would just put the tin lid on things.
‘Come on,’ she said, tugging her to her feet. ‘We’ve got to look for that stupid sausage dog.’
Minton had gone missing in these woods before, and Juliet remembered the stomach-churning panic that had set in after twenty minutes’ fruitless yelling. They were dense woods with plenty of rabbit holes for little dogs to wedge themselves in. In fact, weren’t dachshunds designed to go down rabbit holes? Hector looked the type to dive in first without thinking about an exit strategy. Her heart sank.
‘Hector? Hector! Minton, come here!’
Juliet was trotting and pulling on Minton’s lead at the same time. Several feet away, his white rear end emerged from a thick outcrop of bracken, followed, after a quick wriggle, by his cross face. Leaves were stuck in his harness, like a badly camouflaged soldier.
‘Where’s Hector?’ she demanded, irrationally. ‘Where’s he gone?’
It was at times like these that she wished she’d trained Minton to do something more useful than just bring her the remote control.
‘Hector!’ she yelled. Blood was pumping in her temples, squeezing her brain, and panic had set in, sharpened by the disproportionate fury that laced many minor situations recently.
How had this happened? Why was she now faced with this embarrassing, stressful—
‘Get off! Get off!’
Juliet stopped and listened. Someone was yelling up ahead.
And there was yapping too. Two lots of yapping, one the deep yap of an amorous dachshund.
‘Off!’
‘Oh, bollocks,’ breathed Juliet, and broke into a run. The path wound round to the right and steepened, with trees on either side, and it wasn’t until she turned the corner, breathless, that she saw a man grabbing a black-and-white cocker spaniel and practically holding it above his head, while Hector danced about on his hind legs, pawing the man’s trousers.
‘Hector! Come here right now!’ Juliet sprinted the final few metres and reached out with the collar. As she did, she slipped on some loose leaves and lurched to the ground, knocking the man off balance. He staggered, already weaving under the weight of his own dog, and they both landed in the bracken with a crash.
Minton and Coco, still attached to Juliet’s wrist by the leads, followed.
Juliet lay motionless for a couple of seconds, while the barking reverberated around the trees. There had been times in the past eight months when she’d stepped out of her own head, watching her dist
ress as if it was a television drama, and now she wished she could do the same. Only she couldn’t. She was definitely feeling every ounce of mortification going, even if her body was still impervious to physical pain.
The man started scrambling to his feet, and she felt obliged to do the same, though she could have lain there a bit longer, working out what to say. Apologies rushed out of her, on autopilot because she didn’t feel like apologising deep down. She felt like roaring and crashing around like a giant, hurling Hector over the trees, followed by Barbara Taylor, for putting her in this position.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she gabbled. ‘Really sorry. He’s not my dog. He must have slipped his collar.’
‘Why wasn’t it on tighter?’ the man demanded.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t put it on. I’m just walking him . . . Come here, Hector!’ Juliet grabbed the dachshund by the scruff of his neck and clamped him between her knees to get his collar on.
‘If you can’t control him, then he should be in some kind of harness,’ the man continued. He was well spoken but obviously angry. ‘Did you see what he was trying to do to my dog, for God’s sake! That’s tantamount to assault.’
‘Is she in season?’ Juliet was struggling to stay polite, even though she knew she was in the wrong. ‘Should she even be out?’
The man straightened up and glared at her. ‘Damson’s spayed. He’s wasting his time. Seriously, behaviour like that . . . it’s going to get him reported. It’s outrageous.’
Juliet sank back on her heels as the anger abruptly left her. It did that.
She raked a hand through her hair and wished she was somewhere else. ‘I’m really sorry. I’m going to tell his owner to get him some bromide, or whatever they gave soldiers in the war. Hector, stop wriggling!’
Juliet added an extra shake – not hard, but the same shake Minton administered to his stuffed toys – and gripped his scruff. Hector seemed to respond, turning his dark-brown eyes up at her with new respect.
She looked at the man, who was calming his spaniel down, stroking her feathery ears and making dog-person soothing noises.
At least it was a man, and not some nice old dear she’d rugby-tackled into the bushes. Quite a handsome man too, she thought. He reminded her of the younger antiques-expert regular, the one who had all the grannies giggling into their pottery – tall and professional-looking with sandy-blond hair that flopped onto his face, and glasses. Intelligent hazel eyes behind the glasses, and a wry mouth that might smile at some point, but probably not in the next five minutes, going by his expression.
‘Have you ripped anything?’ she asked.
He looked down, inspecting his jacket and jeans. ‘No, I’m fine. Could have been worse. Could have landed in the brambles.’ He nodded towards the spiky bushes a few feet to their left.
‘Or in the poo bin.’ Juliet nodded towards the other side of the path. Actually, now she inspected the scene, it could have been a lot worse.
‘Indeed. And are you OK? You took much more of a crash than I did.’
When she looked back, the man was staring at her, clearly checking her out for damage. She put a hand to her head, in case she was covered in something embarrassing. ‘I’m fine.’
‘And the dogs?’
‘Oh, they’re fine, too.’ This was getting awkward now. Was this stiff questioning some kind of preliminary to insurance claims? She started attaching the leads to her various dogs. ‘I’ll have a word with Hector’s owner. You’re right – he needs to see the vet.’
Juliet bent down again and stroked the spaniel’s soft head. ‘Sorry, Damson. It won’t happen again. You shouldn’t have to suffer sex pests on your walk. Even if you are beautiful.’
She was expecting a snappy retort from her owner, but the man let out a short laugh. ‘Well, dogs are dogs. You can’t expect them to do dinner and a film. Hector, is it?’ The eyes behind the glasses weren’t so angry now. They were almost amused.
‘Yup. And Coco, and Minton. Minton’s mine. I’m just walking the other two.’
‘We were . . .’ He indicated up the hill. ‘Which way were you going?’
Juliet hesitated. Was he suggesting they walk together, or making sure she didn’t take her dogs in the same direction?
‘I’m heading back into town,’ she said. ‘I think it’s time Hector had an early bath.’
‘Right. Well, then.’ He pressed his lips together and nodded.
What am I meant to say? wondered Juliet. There was obviously a gap here for something. Compensation for Damson’s hurt feelings? A box of Bonios for pain and suffering?
‘Sorry again,’ she said. ‘Come on, you lot.’
It was only when Juliet was halfway down the hill that she realised that in proper dog-walker fashion, she’d introduced her dogs but not herself.
Juliet, Minton, Coco and a subdued Hector did several uneventful laps of the rose gardens before Barbara Taylor reappeared at the mobile coffee stand, laden down with bags. She’d clearly made the most of her dog-sitting time in Longhampton’s main square, particularly M&S.
‘Here,’ she said, before Juliet could start telling her what Hector had been up to. ‘Is ten pounds OK? It’s what I give them up at the dog crèche for half a day. I know I was gone a bit longer than I said.’
‘That’s . . .’ Juliet didn’t have a free hand, so Barbara tucked the note into her jacket pocket.
‘We didn’t discuss a rate for the days, did we?’ she went on. ‘I’d be happy to pay the same as I give Rachel, plus a little bit more because he’ll be getting one-on-one attention.’ She bent down and chucked Hector’s beard. ‘He’s a mummy’s boy, aren’t you?’
Juliet squinted against the sun. ‘That’s not exactly how I’d describe him. Don’t you find him a little bit . . . frisky?’
‘Frisky?’ Barbara laughed. ‘He can be a naughty boy, but that’s why I love him.’
Hector let her ruffle his beard, as if butter wouldn’t melt.
Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt, thought Juliet. It was probably my fault for letting him out of my sight. She flashed him a look that said, ‘You’re on a warning, mate.’
‘He might be better on a harness,’ she said, thinking of some other dogs she’d seen on the way. ‘Might make him easier to control?’
‘Ooh, do you think? I’ll look into it,’ said Barbara, as if Juliet knew what she was talking about. ‘You’ve obviously got a knack with dogs! Look at these three.’
Minton, Coco and Hector were sitting in a neat line next to Juliet, not so much as sniffing at the coffee stand.
‘Come on, Hector,’ she said, taking his lead. ‘Let’s get you home. We’ll see you next week, Juliet! Bye now! Bye-bye, Minton!’
Juliet started to say, ‘Bye, Hector!’ but she stopped herself, just in time.
Coco and Minton gazed up at her, like two children overwhelmed with relief that the nightmare playmate has gone, but too polite to say.
‘Home,’ said Juliet. ‘We’re missing Time Team.’
She’d have to let them both up on the sofa with her, to make up for it.
Chapter 10
It was a Friday, and that meant no Coco. And that meant no need to get up.
Juliet hadn’t bothered to wake up properly when the alarm went off, and had instead rolled over, trying to get herself back into a nice dream about Ben. But even though she tried to conjure up scenes from their photo album, the images stayed stubbornly static, and when the doorbell rang again, she threw back the covers resentfully.
She grabbed her dressing gown from the back of the door and yanked it over her pyjamas, stamping down each step as the doorbell carried on ringing.
‘What?’ she demanded, as she pulled the door open, expecting to see her mother with Coco. ‘Can’t you just leave her with the— Oh.’
Lorcan was on the doorstep, in a Bad Company T-shirt that was the adult version of Roisin’s, with a couple of big plastic bags on the path next to him. His hair was even more dish
evelled than hers, as if he’d just rolled out of bed himself.
‘I’ve come to fix your shower.’
‘I don’t have a shower,’ said Juliet.
‘So I hear.’ Lorcan swept a hand towards the bags. ‘But you do now.’
‘Sorry, you’ve lost me.’
‘Your mam gave me a call, asked me how things were going with your building work. Don’t look so surprised – she took my card. She needs someone to have a look at her gutters.’
She does not, thought Juliet. Keith had been Diane’s first port of call for anything bigger than a broken light bulb for twenty years.
She made a mental note to take her mother up on that, but there was no point being rude to Lorcan.
‘And while we were chatting,’ he went on, bending down to tweak Minton’s ears, ‘she asked me if you’d got round to fitting a shower yet, and I said, no, I hadn’t seen one in there, and she said she’d stand you a bathroom upgrade.’ He pointed to the bag. ‘This one came into my possession, if you know what I mean.’ Lorcan pulled a ‘say no more’ face.
‘You mean it fell off the back of a lorry?’ asked Juliet. She folded her arms, aware that she was standing on her doorstep in her pyjamas. She didn’t even know what time it was, but Lorcan was showing no sign that there was anything amiss.
‘Indeed it did. But very carefully.’ His blue eyes twinkled, then he seemed to remember he had to knock off the charm with her. ‘Luckily for you and your lovely period house, it’s a good-quality brass shower system that’d go very nicely with your décor. As I can demonstrate to you. Perhaps over a cup of tea?’
He swept a hand towards the boxes, and Juliet knew this was the point in the conversation where she was supposed to let him in and ask if he’d eaten breakfast yet because she could always put some toast on, et cetera.
But some residual stubbornness kept her hand on the door frame. What happened to adult boundaries, she thought, childishly. Did Mum check with me before she told Lorcan to come round?
‘Um, I hadn’t really made any decisions about the bathroom. I was still thinking about what order to do all that work,’ she said. ‘It was quite a lot to take in. Thanks, by the way. Do I . . . owe you anything for your time?’