Blue Skies Over Wildflower Lock (The Wildflower Lock)

Chapter 31

Yvonne stood next to Daisy, the pair of them staring at the dog in absolute silence. The same way they had been doing for the last three minutes.

‘Are you sure?’ Yvonne finally said, asking the same question she had asked when Daisy had first called her outside.

Daisy studied the dog again. Not that she needed to. Three white feet, with the left back one reddish-brown. And those Vs. And that was before you got started on its obsession with stones. There was absolutely no mistaking it.

‘I’m positive. It’s definitely him.’

She had already opened up the map on her phone and calculated how long it would have taken him to go across land from their previous mooring. As the crow flies, it really wasn’t that far. Easily doable and in far less time than it took them to wind around the narrow bends of the river. What Daisy wanted to know was why? Had he really followed her? That didn’t make sense, did it? All she had done was throw a few stones. He couldn’t have built up that much of an attachment to her in that time, could he?

Yvonne crouched down and made a kissing noise. Immediately, the dog started barking.

‘Okay, it definitely sounds like it’s him too,’ Yvonne said.

Ignoring his barking, she picked up the stone and threw it down the jetty. As the dog bolted after it, she turned to Daisy.

‘There’s no collar, so either he slipped out from someone’s house, or he’s a stray.’

‘So what do we do?’ Daisy asked. ‘There’s no one around here.’

She looked at the dog again. At first impressions, he seemed relatively healthy, but on closer inspection, she wasn’t so sure. His back legs were notably thin and there were several mats in his fur. There was also a distinct smell of marshland rising from his coat.

‘If I’m honest,’ Yvonne said, possibly noticing the same things as Daisy, ‘I think the first thing we need to do is give him a bath.’

Daisy had never bathed a dog before. It wasn’t that she didn’t like them. She loved them. For years, she had begged her mother to let them have one. Terrier, Great Dane, she didn’t care. Any dog would have done, but with her mother’s work in restaurants, and the long hours, it hadn’t been possible. When she moved in on her own, the idea had crossed her mind again, but her landlord had been less than keen, and given how cheaply he’d kept the rent, she’d not wanted to do anything to upset him. Now, having a cafe on the boat hardly seemed like a fitting place to have a dog either, which was why, rather than inviting him into the September Rose, she filled a large bucket with warm water and sat outside the stern.

‘You’re very well-behaved, aren’t you,’ Daisy said as she used the soapy water to wash the mud off his legs. She was almost certain human soap wasn’t the best thing for a dog, but it was either that or leave his fur to get even more matted, so she continued to work away. The dog was entirely nonplussed. If anything, it seemed to like the attention. ‘Where’s your human? You must have a human somewhere, don’t you? You’re far too lovely not to have a human.’

It was hard not to make comparisons between cleaning the mud off the dog and the way Daisy had needed to clean herself off after the marsh orchid incident. As had frequently happened over the last couple of days, Daisy’s mind wandered to her smartly dressed rescuer.

Everything about him had been an enigma. Where had he been going dressed like that so early in the morning? And jogging, too. Why had he not insisted she pay for his dry cleaning or checked if there was anyone Daisy could have rung to make sure she was okay? There were so many questions she wanted to ask him, and yet given how she didn’t even get his name, or offer him a proper thank you, she didn’t see how that would ever happen.

Daisy’s mind was still lost in that marshland when, without warning, the dog reached forward and left a slobbering wet lick along Daisy’s cheek. She squealed in shock.

‘No, that’s horrible!’ Still, she couldn’t help but laugh, causing the animal’s tail to beat against the stern.

When he was washed, she dried him off with a towel she kept for drying the outside of the boat after the rain. And if she’d ever had any doubt that it was the same dog, it was gone. It was definitely him, but the questions of how and why remained.

‘Should we ring someone?’ Daisy asked as they sat down to eat their dinner. ‘There has to be a lost dog helpline or someone we can contact.’

When the dog was washed and dried, Daisy had left him outside while she got on with cooking the meal, though as the aroma of roast chicken thighs floated into the air, she had been struck with a pang of guilt. The smell was enough to make her salivate; she could only imagine what it would be like for an animal that had walked five hours, possibly non-stop, to get here. Now he was staring at them through the window as they ate.

‘I’m sure there is, but I doubt they’ll come out this far this late in the day,’ Yvonne replied. ‘Honestly, I think we let him be, for tonight at least. He’ll probably make his way home soon enough. If he’s still here in the morning, I guess we’ll have to rethink it then.’

Daisy nodded as she stared at the animal. Whether he’d picked his place outside the window so that he could see her or the chicken, she wasn’t sure, but every time he caught her looking at him, he wagged his tail like that was all he wanted in the world. With her meal half-finished, she looked at the chicken on her plate. Guilt twisted within her. Perhaps he had followed her because he was starving. If he was, like Yvonne had said, a stray, then it was possible he hadn’t eaten for days. For a second, she considered picking off a couple of pieces of meat and throwing them out the window for him. But what good would that do in the long run? He might hang around even longer and not return home to his owner. Assuming he had one. So she drew the curtains and began to paint.

Normally, Daisy knew what she was going to paint when she started to sketch, but this time, it was only when the image began to take form that she realised what it was. The elongated snout, the floppy ears. For the second time in as many days, she was drawing her new friend. But this differed greatly from her first painting of him. With the outline drawn, Daisy looked at her palette. Normally, she would have gone for realistic tones, perhaps slightly brighter here and there, but immensely detailed, with every whisker and hairline drawn in. This time, however, she decided to paint as if she were her father, splashing colour onto the page with raw abandon and making each stroke brighter and more vibrant than the last. Where the dog had brown-red fur, she gave him vivid orange. Where his eyes were a hazy green, she gave him a blazing emerald that shone out from the page. Purples and pinks. Golds and blues. All appeared on the patchwork of his body. It was only when she finished that she sat back and observed it. A smile rose on her lips.

‘Well, Dad?’ she asked aloud. ‘What do you think?’