Chapter Four
Ella clawed her way back to consciousness from sleep, her heart pounding, a mournful howl echoing in her ears. What the . . . ?
She lay in the unfamiliar room, her chest about to explode.
The scent of lavender tickled her nose. Magda had hung heart-shaped pouches of the dried flower heads on either side of the brass bedstead.
A radiator creaked and ticked, the noise heightened by the pitch black darkness of the room and the silence outside.
This cocoon-like feeling of nothingness unnerved her.
Where was the rumble of traffic, the rattle of the windows when buses lumbered past, drunks shrieking at kicking-out time and the constant cry of sirens in the distance? This wasn’t natural.
Even though sleep had been elusive for weeks, bedtime had become the highlight of the day. Ella looked forward to that time in bed where all the bad things in life ceased and she could go back to life how it was before.
Awoooo. Aw Aw Awoooo.
Damn dog. Another heart-rending wail hit the air. Ella closed her eyes tighter, hoping it would stop.
It didn’t. After five minutes of the sort of howling which would have put the hound of the Baskervilles to shame, she grabbed her dressing gown and stomped down the stairs.
She’d shut the dog in the kitchen with its bed by the radiator, so at least it would have some residual warmth. She had no idea if that was what you were supposed to do. Did dogs feel the cold? When she opened the door the dog was there, tail wagging, looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
‘It’s the middle of the night,’ she hissed. ‘Go to sleep.’
She walked over to its bed and pointed. ‘Bed.’ She vaguely remembered seeing something on TV about alpha dogs and showing who was boss, so she said it in a fierce, I-mean-business tone which apparently worked because the dog clambered into the bed, curled up and looked up at her, with an innocent expression as if to say, Who me? Making that noise? Never.
Praise. That was another thing Ella vaguely remembered or did you do that with children? The familiar pang gripped her stomach. Children. She didn’t know much about them either but people learned, didn’t they? ‘Good girl.’ The dog lowered its head onto its paws.
See, this dog-owning lark was a piece of cake. Easy.
‘Right, goodnight.’ Ella snapped out the light and with relief climbed back up the narrow staircase to her bedroom. Had she just said goodnight to a dog? Seriously, she was losing it.
The minute, to the very second, that her toes were nicely toasty and her body snuggly under the cocoon of the heavy-weight feather duvet, the howling started again.
She buried her head under the pillows hoping they would silence the dog’s cries, but to no avail.
Dratted animal sounded heart-broken. Getting out of the nice warm bed was purgatory.
‘You’re having a laugh,’ she growled, but the dog just grinned. Definite latent signs of smiling on its happy little face. ‘Bed, now.’ The dog slunk back to bed, climbed in again, and lowered its head, those crazy eyebrows lifting and separating with puzzlement.
She shut the door firmly.
‘Vets On Call, Devon Ashcroft speaking.’ There surely should be some law that when a phone rang before six in the morning, coffee was automatically dispensed.
He rubbed his eyes and looked at the digital clock’s numerals glowing orange in the dark.
Four a.m. calls were bitches, rousing you from that deep deep sleep.
At least he’d managed a straight five hours in his own bed. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Hi, thank God, Dr Ash— are you a doctor? Do you call vets doctors? Or is that just for people?’
He smiled to himself, amused in spite of the ridiculously early hour. ‘I’m fine with Mr Ashcroft.’
‘But you are a proper vet.’
The woman sounded anxious, but he was used to that at this time of day.
‘Yes. How can I help?’
‘I just don’t know what to do. I’ve ended up with this dog . . . it’s not mine . . . and I think there’s something terribly wrong with it.’
‘OK. Can you describe the symptoms?’
‘Symptoms?’
‘Yes, does it appear in pain? Has it vomited? Had diarrhoea? When did it last eat?’
‘Pain, definitely pain. It won’t stop howling.’
‘OK. Are there any other signs of pain? Is it writhing, moving about as if it were in pain?’
‘No, it’s fine when it stops howling.’
‘So the howling is intermittent? How long has it been howling?’
‘Off and on since about ten o’clock last night.’
‘And does anything appear to trigger it?’
‘The minute I go up to bed.’ She let out an indignant huff down his ear.
‘Pardon?’
‘Whenever I leave it on its own in the kitchen and try to go to bed, it starts again. I’m absolutely shattered.’
Devon took in a deep breath, wanting to shake his head, hoping he’d heard wrong.
‘When you go up to bed? When you leave the dog? On its own?’
‘Yes.’
‘And where is the dog?’
‘What, now?’
‘No, when you leave it to go upstairs?’
‘In the kitchen.’
‘And is that where it normally sleeps?’
‘I’ve no idea. I told you I’m just dog-sitting. Its owner’s away. Every time I drop off to sleep it starts howling again. There’s got to be something wrong with it.’
Devon slumped back against the pillow, resisting the urge to put voice to the words God give me strength. He was a professional. The woman was an idiot. ‘So the dog’s not howling continuously?’ He tried to keep his voice level.
‘No, only when I leave it on its own.’
Devon gripped the phone tighter. ‘So more like crying? Like a child might, if it were frightened of a new situation? Lonely perhaps? Left on its own?’
‘It’s a dog.’ She sounded cross and indignant now.
‘Yes, but funnily enough they have feelings . . . ’ Devon could feel his jaw tighten and his back teeth meet as he ground out the words, ‘which for obvious reasons they can’t voice, so they might, I don’t know, howl or bark or whine.’
‘Well, how I am supposed to know that? I don’t speak Dog. What am I supposed to do?’
Devon closed his eyes and counted to ten.
‘Are you still there?’
‘I’m still here.’ He’d been told you should smile even if people couldn’t see you to ensure you conveyed the right tone.
‘Do you think you could come out and see it? Check it’s all right? Do vets make house calls?’
‘We do when it’s an emergency.’ Devon snapped. ‘However, I think you’ll find that this is perfectly normal behaviour. The dog is obviously lonely and scared. They’re social animals. In the wild they live in packs – howling is their way of connecting with other dogs. You need to reassure it.’
‘Right and how I am supposed to do that? Read it a bedtime story?’
‘Keep coming back, so that it knows you are there. Reassure it. Be firm. It may take a few days but after that you’ll find that he’ll get used to the new routine. You need to impose a good routine. It’s a bit like having a baby, really. They can’t talk either.’
There was a resounding silence down the line. For a minute he thought she’d gone.
‘A few days?’ The plaintive, wailed words made him adjust the phone to a position away from his ear. ‘I can’t sleep through that racket. How do people do it? I’ve hardly had a wink of sleep.’
‘Welcome to my world.’ Damn, the words just slipped out.
The woman hung up.
Thank God neither Dad nor Bets had heard that exchange. He was crap at this community vet stuff.
Warm breath fanned over Ella’s face and she turned, her heart leaping. Patrick. Sighing, she snuggled closer, her eyelids fluttering, until something at the back of her mind stirred in mild alarm.
‘Aaaagh.’ Catapulted into consciousness, she was greeted by a foul smell and a wet lick right across her left cheek. She sat bolt upright, almost falling off the sofa. ‘That was gross. You horrible creature.’
The dog, totally unrepentant, placed its rump firmly on the floor beside the sofa, tail thumping happily.
Ella squinted at the digital display on the television.
She’d ended up dragging the dog’s bed in here, hoping the damn creature would go to sleep and she could sneak off upstairs.
Fat chance. Her back felt crimped and stiff after a night on Magda’s two-seater sofa.
‘Half past bloody six!’ She glared at the damn dog.
‘You’re having a laugh.’ She slumped back onto the cushions, letting tiredness pull at her eyelids, only to find Tess snuffling and nosing at her hand.
‘Leave me alone; it’s far too early.’ Outside, the birds were creating an absolute racket. Who knew they could make such a din?
Nudge, nudge, nudge. The shiny black nose was like a woodpecker, determined to drill through until it received the attention it wanted.
‘What do you want?’
The dog whined.
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake.’ Ella grabbed her robe. The dog jumped to attention, its tail switching back and forth at warp speed, and trotted eager-beaver behind her to the kitchen.
Keeping her eyes blearily half closed, she shoved the dog into the kitchen and shut the door.
When she woke again it was nearly nine. From the other side of the kitchen door, the dog whined softly.
In need of coffee, she headed to the kitchen.
As soon as she opened the door the dog whined again, shriller this time, running backwards and forwards to the back door.
Ella might not speak Dog, as she’d told that horrible, unhelpful vet, but even she could pick up on that signal.
Crossing to the back door, she let the dog out.
It went straight to the shrubs in the bed on the right and crouched for a pee on a par with Niagara.
Ella winced. Oops, maybe she should have let it out earlier.
She left it to an excited exploration of the garden, sniffing eagerly at every leaf and branch within nose distance.
Honestly, you’d have thought the garden was uncharted territory and it had never been out there before in its life.