19
E ssie brings over the kitchen scales to weigh the pups. It’s incredible, the rate they grow; she can’t get over it. Janey won’t get over losing the kitchen scales either; she’ll keep missing them and forgetting to buy new ones.
The pups are squirming and wriggling, and one of them, the largest, white and grey, with the tiniest, most beauteous, gorgeous pointed ears starting to show, is moving around on its tiny paws, clumsily bumping into things.
Essie has bought some puppy milk and has put out a bowl shaped like a doughnut that the baby is trying to get to, to lap at.
She cannot resist picking him up, one hand under his warm little belly.
He eeps and Felicity looks up, but she is only mildly concerned, because it’s Essie, and soon the baby has its snout burrowed in the milk trough, absolutely delighted.
‘That will take the pressure off you, eh, old girl,’ says Essie to Felicity, whose nipples look swollen and sore.
Felicity does her huge tail-thump, and gracefully accepts a snack from Essie, who is revelling in being able to give a dog as many snacks as she wants.
A sunbeam comes through the window and illuminates them all, warm and soft, and Essie feels something bubbling, and it might be .
. . well . . . happiness, of a sort. She must prepare that job application, though.
Alasdair turns up, and is full of animal know-how ina frankly rather annoying way. He and Dwight exchange nods.
*
‘We’re naming them,’ says Essie, holding up the bag of differently coloured soft Velcro collars they got at the pet shop.
Al frowns. ‘You shouldn’t get too attached.’
‘No, that’s the Velcro,’ says Essie. ‘We just need to tell them apart. And stop thinking you’re the animal expert.’
‘That’s right – how could having a degree in animal husbandry make me any kind of expert?’
‘Shut it.’
‘Well, maybe give them fairly basic names to start with,’ says Al.
‘We could name them alphabetically,’ says Essie, picking up the two smallest bitches.
‘How about Argyll?’ says Dwight.
‘Not bad,’ says Al, as Essie snaps a pink collar on Argyll and a yellow one on . . . Bute, she decides.
‘Good choice for this one; she has a massive butt.’
It is true: Bute is all Westie at the back and scrawny wolfhound at the front. She looks like two different dogs who’ve been caught up in an evil experiment.
Al holds up the next two, a bitch and a dog. ‘Caithness and Dingwall!’
‘Dingwall?’’ Essie pats the tiny creature. ‘That’s not a very pretty name.’
‘Dingwall is lovely!’
Caithness gets orange, Dingwall gets purple.
‘Eriskay . . . ’ Al picks up another dog.
‘I think Eriskay is more of a girl’s name,’ says Essie.
‘I thought you were a bit more up-to-date than that,’ says Al. ‘Are you assigning gender to that pup?’ He gives a grin of satisfaction as Essie is forced to agree. ‘And Freuchie,’ he says, pointing to the last one.
‘Where’s Freuchie? I haven’t ever heard of that made-up place.’
‘It’s where the Scottish Deer Centre is!’
‘Wait a minute,’ says Essie, her face confused. ‘They have a place you can go and see more deer ? Are we trying to get rid of the things or are we trying to encourage them? Make your mind up.’
Eriskay gets the blue, even though it is incredibly gender-essentialist, points out Essie, and Freuchie gets the green, and Al and Dwight head out for lunch without Essie, who has job application prep and is going to stay behind and do it, and not play with the dogs.
Freuchie is the only one who looks remotely normal, like a lovely white cuddly Westie, just on a vast scale.
All the others, Al has pointed out cruelly, look as if they’ve broken out of the Island of Dr Moreau.
Essie looks up Mergers and Acquisitions specialist, and tries to think like a Mergers and Acquisitions specialist. She isn’t sure how much time passes, but it’s hard to concentrate, as the puppies scramble around and Felicity stretches out in a sunbeam.
‘Teeny weeny dogs,’ she suddenly finds herself singing.
‘In a loft somewhere . . . teeny weeny dogs . . . who will grow a lot of hair . . . teeny weeny dogs . . . like to sleep all day . . . teeny weeny dogs . . . who were born in the hay.’ Technically they were born on a mattress, but it doesn’t really matter.
‘Teeny weeny dogs . . . will grow big or small . . . teeny weeny dogs . . . we don’t know because your mum is big but your dad we don’t know at all .
. . teeny weeny dogs . . . you are squeaky and wee .
. . teeny weeny dogs . . . I can’t believe that your mum . . . licks your pee . . . ’
She starts as she hears a sudden noise behind her. She glances around, and it’s Dwight. She doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there and is mortified that he’s been listening to her ridiculous singing.
‘Oh, uh, hi,’ she says, carefully putting Bute down and scrambling to her feet. She’s wearing her oldest jeans, for dog-cuddling purposes, and brushes them down hastily.
Dwight, it has to be said, had rather enjoyed the girl, the sunlight in her hair, her voice sweeter than she knew, crooning a little song to the dogs.
It looked oddly timeless, in the old cottage there.
He was not a particularly sentimental man, except when listening to Wichita Lineman and thinking about his dad after a few Jack Daniels, but. Well.
‘No, go on,’ he says quickly. ‘I liked the verse about the dog licking the pee.’
He comes over, carefully lets Felicity sniff his hand.
‘Aye, they’re something, eh. Did they get bigger again?’
‘Dingwall’s on the move.’
‘I can’t believe you gave them all names. Which one is on the move?’
Essie indicates Dingwall, who is still snuffling around the milk bowl, not quite managing to figure out how to get his head over the top of it, but very excited to find a drip.
‘Alrighty, then,’ says Dwight, picking him up. ‘You are obviously the strongest and the smartest. You are going to be mine.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you mean, what do I mean? I’m taking this hound.’ The pup was one closed pair of eyes and a vast black button nose in a scraggy ruff of black, white and grey. ‘I’ll call him Smokey.’
‘Well, one, he’s called Dingwall, and two, you can’t just take a dog. They’re not objects.’
‘I’m afraid he was born on my property so I think that makes him mine. And someone’s gotta take them.’
‘It’s “got to”,’ says Essie. ‘You’re not American.’
‘Git down then, my boy Smokey.’ Dwight is ignoring her and playing with the dog, getting him to bite on his finger.
‘Well, that’s not good for him,’ grumbles Essie. ‘I think you’ll have to ask that schoolhouse guy anyway. They’re technically his dogs.’
Without stopping playing with his finger around the puppy, who is squeaking with happiness, Dwight fumbles out his phone and calls Lowell, who actually picks up. Boomer, thinks Essie instinctively.
‘Hey, man, it’s Dwight,’ says Dwight on speaker.
‘Hi, there,’ says Lowell, sounding harassed.
‘Hey, I’m going to take one of your pups, okay?’
‘Oh, my God, that’s wonderful, that’s brilliant news. Thanks so much, Dwight. You won’t regret it.’
He is still being grateful as Dwight hangs up – smugly, thinks Essie. ‘Yeah, I think he’s okay with it,’ drawls Dwight, looking annoying.
‘Well, you can’t take him from his mother for another four weeks,’ says Essie.
‘Oh, he’ll be ready before then, won’t you?’
He leans down until the tiny creature is nose to nose with him. The pup sticks out its tongue experimentally and gets Dwight on the nose.
‘Then you and me are going to go get ourselves into some trouble,’ says Dwight, hypnotised by the tiny creature.
‘If you’re so great with dogs, why haven’t you got one already?’ says Essie.
‘Weirdly, dogs and North Sea oil platforms aren’t a very common mix,’ says Dwight, without looking up.
Then his phone rings and he sighs. ‘Right, I gotta get down the builder’s yard.
Do not let anyone else have this dog, you understand?
This is my dog and his name is Smokey.’ He taps the purple Velcro collar the pup is wearing.
‘I mean it: don’t swap him out; he’s the best dog. Don’t you go taking him.’
‘I shan’t take your stupid “best dog”,’ says Essie, rolling her eyes.
Dwight takes a bunch of photos from different angles, clearly just in case. ‘Right,’ he says. Then he frowns. ‘What colour house paint should I get?’
Essie looks at him. ‘You haven’t thought of this?’
He shrugs. ‘Neh.’
‘Do you even have an account?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you have a business account with the builder’s merchant?’
Dwight shrugged. ‘I’m sure it will be fine.’
‘It will not be fine!’ Essie looks around at the wind blowing through the cracks in the warped window frames, the missing tiles on the roof. ‘And paint is the last thing you should be thinking of! Where’s the builder’s yard?’ she says.
‘Caithness.’
She frowns and looks at her watch, which is stupid, because she has absolutely nothing planned for the rest of the day that won’t be trying to spot Connor in the background of other people’s house parties from the weekend, when she’s sat in the house all day listening to her mother complain about her neck as if, oh, my God, that shit even mattered or would ever happen to her.
‘I’ll come with you. You can show me your budget. I can’t bear watching you bugger this up. It’s not fair on Smokey.’
Dwight nods as if he can see the sense in this. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I mean, I haven’t got a budget, so . . . ’
‘Have you seriously never ever watched a single property show?’
Dwight shrugs. ‘Nope,’ he says. ‘On the rigs we watch . . . ’ He looks faintly embarrassed. ‘Other things. Shark films and that.’
‘You watch shark films out at sea?’
He shrugs. ‘Don’t you watch, like, bank heist films?’
‘Sometimes,’ says Essie. ‘That’s not the kind of bank I work in, though. Hang on, let me get my laptop from next door.’
‘Can I bring Smokey?’
‘ No !’
*
When his car pulls up in front of the house, Essie is pondering whether to change.
After all, it’s not a date; she is perfectly happily coupled up.
It’s just her first chance to escape the village in weeks, but on the other hand she is in her scruffiest clothes.
She knows for sure he’s the kind of person who will notice if she changes, and will probably make a remark about it.
But she is so desperate to get out, to do something that isn’t just obsessing over her life and watching, terrified, as rents increase week on week.
Janey is back, admiring her new hair in the mirror, which Essie doesn’t notice and charges past. Janey tries to keep her face completely straight, as if the idea of Essie going out in the afternoon with Boot-Scooting Dwight McFlynn is a perfectly normal situation she had always expected her beloved daughter to be part of.
‘Stop that!’ she hollers from the doorstep, as Dwight honks the horn. Everyone is used to Dwight’s ridiculously shiny black Dodge Viper car that is his absolute pride and joy, bought as a shell and meticulously fixed up week by week.
Janey comes out and Dwight steps out of the car. He’s wearing black cowboy boots and supertight black jeans, ostensibly to go with the car.
‘How’s the roadster?’ she asks, smiling. ‘Still getting three miles to the gallon?’
Dwight smiles in his good-natured way. ‘Why yes, ma’am, yes I am.’ He looks at the little doll’s house, with its pretty pale green front door and Crittall windows. ‘I like your house,’ he declares, as if surprised.
‘Glad to hear it,’ says Janey.
‘She says I have to think about things like windows and that.’
‘Who’s she, the cat’s mother?’
‘Essie. She knows her sh . . . her stuff.’
‘Does she?’ says Janey, genuinely pleased. ‘Oh good!’
Essie clatters down the narrow stairs, looking pretty and apprehensive, particularly, it seems, about what her mum might have been saying while she was getting changed. Then she sees the car.
‘Oh, my God,’ she says. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘It’s the “That Don’t Impress Me Much” car!’ says Janey, but neither of them is old enough to really remember Shania Twain, so it goes right over their heads and she finds herself muttering, ‘Okay, so you got a car’ to herself.
‘Does the horn play La Cucaracha?’
‘That’s a great idea,’ says Dwight. ‘I’ll get right on that.’
‘No!’ says Essie. She gets in. It’s incredibly low-slung and she has to basically dip and shimmy to manage it, even as Dwight holds the door open for her. The car is a left-hand drive.
‘You could have pointed that out before I crawled in,’ says Essie.
Dwight gives a slow look at Janey. ‘I figured you wanted to drive.’
Janey smiles at the pair of them. ‘Have fun,’ she says. ‘I’ll check on Felicity.’
Well, well, well, she thinks, heading back in as her phone starts to ring, feeling genuinely optimistic.