He looked up at me like he wanted something. Like he was a child and I was his mother.
‘No, Dog,’ I muttered. I refused to use his name.
‘I am not your mother.’
I’m not sure which one of us I was trying to convince. My voice was husky, like I’d swallowed a cigarette. This was the first thing I’d said out-loud all day. He had a mad glint in his eye, more like a cartoon dog than a real one. I wrapped my cardigan more tightly over my breasts as I imagined the dog launching itself at one of my nipples. He was on the edge, I could see that clearly enough; I think we both were. My fingers had gone white at the tips from clutching my cardigan so tightly. My nipples had not been launched at for many months, voluntarily or otherwise, and I wasn’t sure it was appropriate.
There was to be no nipple launching today. I got up.
He followed me into the living room, a bemused expression on his face. He lay at my feet, his eyes still on my breasts as if he were thinking up a new strategy, his tongue perilously close to my ivory, three-pile carpet. It was the same ivory, three-pile carpet I’d had fitted the week before Mark left me. I saw no reason to have it replaced even if it did remind me that I was alone every time I looked down. Maybe I liked being alone. Anyway, I wasn’t alone, not entirely. I could see a large ball of saliva bobbing on a string at the end of the dog’s tongue, taunting me, almost reaching those delicate, off-white fibres before being sucked back in at the last moment. There was a tension in the room as I watched that ball of saliva edging towards the carpet. It was like Russian roulette. I’m not sure how long we stayed like that, our eyes locked in mutual distrust, but it could have been days.
When Mark told me he was leaving I’d immediately pointed at the carpet, as if to say, but I’ve only just had it fitted, give it a chance! I knew deep down he missed the old threadbare rug but we were grown ups now, it was important we embraced things like fitted furnishings. I’d explained this to him before. When I’d pointed at the carpet, speechless, he looked down, following my quivering finger, but he didn’t seem to understand. He looked back at me and I could see he thought I was just a mad woman pointing, my face straining with the effort, my teeth clenched. I noticed he’d not taken his shoes off as the note left by the door clearly requested. The exclamation marks were jolly, I thought, the underlining merely to emphasise the point. I knew then it was over. His Doc Martens made inch-thick imprints, like islands, on the soft, creamy pile I lovingly soaped each evening; delicately brushing the fibres so that they all pointed the same way, their faces angled towards the window like a field of tiny sunflowers. The islands left a trail, like in snow, of his route out of my life, through the kitchen and out the back door, which coincidentally, had also been his route into my life. The irony wasn’t lost on me. His trampling, his careless stomping all over my magnolia, part-polyester heart had set my cleaning schedule back weeks. There was blood everywhere. It was some time later that I was left with the dog.
I wondered if I should take him for a walk, I’d heard that that’s what people did with dogs. I was people. I struggled out of my armchair, my bottom reluctant to leave the carefully crafted mould in the seat – they had become good friends since I’d lost my job – and I walked out the back door. Predictably, god he was so predictable, he followed. Could you be any more predictable, Dog? I thought.
‘Could you be any more predictable, Dog?’ I said aloud. It was time I started being more vocal.
He didn’t appear to be listening, he was eating a pansy from next door’s front lawn. The petals poked out of his mouth like a pair of delicately painted rouge lips, his pout that of a 1920′s Parisian show girl. I wondered if he was hungry. I’d refused to buy dog food on principle and had been feeding him baby food from a job lot of jars I’d found in the fridge, my end-goal being to eventually get him to feed himself by sucking it through a straw. I’d seen Pets Win Prizes, there could have been some money in it for us. Mark must have put the jars in the fridge when he was going through his ‘baby phase’ and it seemed a shame to waste them. Besides, I wasn’t made of money. The dog liked to nestle in my lap in front of the television in the evenings as I ladled each grainy-coloured dollop of slop into his gaping jaws. We would often watch Holby City, my choice, and then Police, Camera, Action, his choice, and spoon on the sofa, the dog in front so he could still see the screen. He went mad over the sirens.
I could see the neighbour’s face poking through the net curtains so I gave the dog a kick up the backside to move him along. After my foot had made impact he heaved suddenly and a pansy-coloured lump of sick appeared on the paving stone in front of us, sitting there looking up at us guiltily in all its shiny, pink and green glory. Dog, too, looked guilty. Maybe he wasn’t hungry, just bulimic, I reconsidered. I’d read about John Prescott, you couldn’t always tell just by looking at someone. I made a mental note not to waste so much of the baby food on him that night; I have little sympathy for those with self-inflicted illnesses. Ignoring the steaming pile in front of us, I laced my fingers around Dog’s collar and dragged him forward, his long claws scraping noisily along the ground making a scene in front of the neighbours.
‘Stop making a scene in front of the neighbours.’ I hissed into his ear.
He began a light trot. When reminded he had a strange awareness of social etiquette and we continued down the street. We came up to the crossroads. Not a crossroad in our lives, though sometimes it felt that way, just one on the street. We went straight over and stopped. It was purely a coincidence that our walk had taken us past Mark’s new love nest with his floozy, Carol, and purely an accident that I let Dog do his business on their front lawn.
I heard a tapping sound and looked up. Mark was at the window waving like a maniac. I waved back. He looked angry but also ruggedly handsome. I wondered if Carol had been feeding him steroids and wondered why I had never thought of that. Dog instinctively hurried along and I followed, hands in my pockets like a common criminal, whistling jauntily.
