The Puppy That Came for Christmas Read online

  However much I tried to talk to him about donor eggs, he seemed not to want to consider it.

  “It wouldn’t be our baby,” he said. “And I want it to be our baby with your eggs—not some woman’s we don’t even know.”

  I didn’t agree with him, but he was adamant.

  I crossed my fingers as we pulled into the IVF clinic car park, hoping that something would go right for us for a change.

  The doctor at the clinic introduced himself as Peter Bromovich. He had a streak of mud on the shin of his trousers, food marks on his waistcoat, and a thick, unkempt beard, but he looked sympathetic and welcoming. I mentioned my bad results, and he said they may have been affected by the Clomid.

  “What are you hoping to get out of the clinic?” he asked.

  “I’d just like to know how good my eggs are,” I replied, “to know if there’s any chance of us ever having a baby of our own.”

  “We’ll scan you on day five of your next cycle,” he said, “but you must stop taking the Clomid now.” Perhaps he saw the hope in my eye.

  “I must be honest with you, the chances of a woman your age becoming pregnant using her own eggs is very slim—about one percent.”

  One in every hundred—that didn’t sound too bad to me. Definitely worth a try.

  “And that is pregnancy, not a live birth, which is obviously much lower. But if you opt for donor eggs, we could expect up to a thirty-five to forty percent success rate,” he continued.

  “I’ve no doubt there’s one perfectly healthy egg inside you,” he said. “And one day—in thirty years or so—we’ll have something that will be able to extract that perfect egg, but at the moment we don’t have the technology. Even if on the scan you produce a dozen or so eggs, which I think is unlikely, there’s no guarantee that the eggs are good enough to produce a healthy baby.”

  Ian asked about the statistics again. He looked really worried.

  “You seem concerned,” said Dr. Bromovich.

  “It’s just . . . the chances using her own eggs seem so small, and there’s so much to go wrong,” said Ian. He turned to me. “If it doesn’t work,” he said, “you’d be so upset. I don’t think you’d be able to handle it.”

  Standing there, in the clinic, on the edge of something very big, I didn’t agree with him. In my mind, I protested: I’m a tough old thing! But as I continued to turn the problem over and over I started to change my mind. Suppose I did get pregnant, and then the baby growing inside of me died. I’d be OK, eventually, I thought, but the baby wouldn’t. It would be awful. And Ian looked so upset and concerned. I swallowed hard.

  “I think we should at least have the scan to see what’s going on in there,” I said.

  “OK,” said Doctor Bromovich, smiling gently. “You’ll have to have some blood tests—HIV and hepatitis—first, and we have to charge for them. But seeing as we’re waiting for your next cycle anyway, why don’t you get them done through your hospital and bring us the certificates when you come for the scan?”

  He showed us out, introducing us on the way to Jeannette, the nurse who’d perform the scan for me. She was a lovely, calm woman, and I immediately felt in safe hands.

  Driving home with the top down, I found I was already thinking about fostering seriously, and particularly about short-term fostering—where we’d get to look after kids in very short-term need, whose parents were in hospital, for example. If we tried fostering children for a weekend or a week, then it wouldn’t be too hard to give them back and if we found we liked it we could go for longer-term fostering, maybe even adoption. Being over forty we were too old to be allowed to adopt a baby. But we would be allowed to foster one. Maybe if we were fostering a baby they’d let us keep it; I’d read about that happening on the Internet. I really wanted to have a baby. I wanted to hold a baby in my arms. In my head I knew exactly what I wanted to happen. We’d foster a baby and then its mum wouldn’t want it back. And we’d get to keep it.

  If I’m honest, I realized even then that Ian wasn’t quite as keen on the fostering idea as I was, but if he didn’t want us to use donor eggs then he was going to have to let us try fostering or adoption instead. Fostering seemed the logical first step and the process at the start was the same.

  “I bet as soon as we stop thinking about having our own baby and go down the fostering and adoption route I’ll end up getting pregnant,” I joked.

  We picked up Freddy on the way and arrived home as the sun was setting over the garden. That evening, on his laptop, Ian found the details of our local adoption and fostering service. The website warned that it could take up to a year to become a foster carer, but that was no reason to rule it out: nothing we’d done had been quick, and at least with fostering there was no biological clock ticking against us. I was watching television with Freddy and feeling sleepy when Ian came over.

  “I’ve e-mailed them,” he said. “They’ll send us forms in five to ten days.”

  18

  It was a blowy October morning, and I was braving a horizontal drizzle to try getting Freddy into the car. Freddy, though, wasn’t budging. He didn’t mind the rain at all and wasn’t getting on with the front seat of my old Citroën anymore, so he was happy to stand in the road. His tail wagged slightly as he sniffed the air. At four and a half months old, he was too big to get up onto the high seat comfortably, or to perch there while the car was in motion. He had his car harness, but he certainly didn’t need a pink princess bolster seat—he was liable to obstruct my view as it was. The previous week, he’d stumbled and fallen when jumping up to the seat, and now he was exercising his big-dog’s prerogative and refusing even to try.

  Given that we had an appointment to meet Jamie in town for a Helper Dogs progress meeting, it was all a bit embarrassing. Jamie was spending the day meeting each of his dogs and going on a walkabout around town to gauge how their training was going and to make plans for them to move on, but his star pupil, his first appointment of the day, was being decidedly disobedient and was threatening to scupper the schedule. Car-seat issues aside, Freddy was still learning fast, and I wasn’t anticipating good news from Jamie—good news, in my book, being that I could keep Freddy for a while longer.

  Ian, although at home, was on a conference call and so wasn’t able to help me get the mutt in the motor. I called Jo, but she wasn’t at home. I looked at my watch: it was a quarter to nine, fifteen minutes until my appointment. I was the first of the day and didn’t want to make Jamie late from the start. It wouldn’t go down well. I phoned another Helper Dogs puppy parent, Len, who lived nearby and who hurried around to help. Five minutes later he was packing Freddy safely into the car—the BMW, not the Citroën. We’d had a brainwave and decided to coax him into the other car. I’d protected the leather seat with a blanket, and Freddy had found the low-slung, luxurious convertible much more to his taste, as well as easier to get into. No way was I putting the top down to indulge him further, though. I was already wet enough as it was.

  In no time at all, I was sitting in the convertible, Freddy looming beside me, starting the engine and ready to go.

  “Thanks, Len,”

  “No problem,” he smiled. “I think sometimes dogs get themselves in a bit of a state—like children—and they need to be jollied out of it.”

  Jo hadn’t arrived yet, but there wasn’t time to wait for her. I drove off to the very dodgy-looking (but free) car park Liz had suggested we use, in our very expensive, never-to-be-left-in-a-dodgy-car-park car.

  Jamie’s Helper Dogs Transit van was waiting outside the car park—prevented from entering by the low barrier—as we arrived, so I parked up quickly and opened the passenger door for Freddy, like a chauffeur. Jamie put Freddy’s lead on, cajoled him out and walked Freddy around a bit of scrub grass and said, “Busy, busy.”

  Freddy duly obliged, and then we were off. The river was flooded at the bottom of the grass, bringing all sorts of unexpected distractions, but Freddy walked incredibly well on the lead. He stopped and s
at at each road curb and pedestrian crossing, and waited until Jamie said it was time to cross. He moved out of the way when people wanted to pass us. And he didn’t have any “accidents” where he wasn’t supposed to.

  I was proud of my little puppy boy.

  “What a good boy,” Jamie said. “You’ve done a really good job with him, Meg.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t me.” I shook my head. “It was all him.” I was feeling tearful anyway, but all of a sudden I also felt guilty that I hadn’t taken Freddy to more classes, or to more nice places on long walks, with nice dogs. Unexpectedly, I also thought back to when, as a rangy pup, he’d been attacked by the bearlike St. Bernard. A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye.

  “Hey, hey,” said Jamie, “you did just fine. You did really well! He has the potential to make someone a great Helper Dog, thanks to you, and I’ll be recommending him for advanced training as soon as he turns six months old.” He smiled at me kindly before finishing: “Only you’re gonna have difficulty letting him go, aren’t you?”

  Later, we met up with some of the other trainee Helper Dogs and puppy parents for coffee.

  “Pants!” Jo said, bursting into the small coffee shop.

  I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “I’m sorry about Freddy,” I burbled. “I just couldn’t get him in the car. But then Len came and helped and I managed to put him in the convertible instead, and then I was late for Jamie and I thought I should just—”

  But Jo wasn’t listening. “I came around to see what was what, and your Ian was wearing his pants when I rang the doorbell!” she said.

  I laughed for the first time that day. “They’re not his pants—they’re his loungey shorts, for when he’s relaxing at home.”

  Jo sighed. “Well, I suppose I should be pleased that he’d got anything on at all,” she said. “All I can say is there was an awful lot of flesh, Meg. An awful lot of flesh!”

  At the end of the morning Jo took Freddy home in her car—a hatchback that Freddy jumped into with only a little encouragement. She’d parked on a side road, and drove me around to the dodgy car park to pick up my car. Thank goodness the convertible was still there and hadn’t been damaged.

  When I got home I told Ian what Jo had said.

  “But they’re my loungey shorts,” he replied.

  Then I told him what Jamie had said.

  “Not Mr. Pup-Pup,” Ian sighed as he stroked Freddy. “You can’t leave us yet.”

  “What will we do? Do we want to be puppy parents or do we . . .”

  “It’s time we had one of our own,” Ian said. “We need a forever puppy.”

  Though I’d consciously been skirting around the issue, locking my hopes and dreams into a little treasure chest at the back of my mind, I’d come to realize the same thing. Puppy parenting had been the best thing for us, the most amazing way to spend the first year of our married lives, but the wrench to give Freddy up was going to be so hard—too hard for us, maybe. It didn’t get any easier with the second pup, loving them and letting them go, and nor did I think it would be the third, or the thirtieth, time. How could it be? Every puppy was so different, so vulnerable, so in need of loving: how could we not love them entirely?

  Some people were able to love them and give them up for the good of the Helper Dogs’ partners who needed them so much. I admired their ability to sublimate their own feelings and needs in favor of others time after time after time. I wished that I could keep on supplying beautiful well-trained puppies to Helper Dogs, creating a large extended family of dogs with grateful partners. But it was simply too painful for me: we simply weren’t like them.

  Maybe if our lives were different. Maybe if we were stronger people we could keep on doing it, helping Jamie and all the people who benefited from Helper Dogs. But for now all we wanted was a puppy of our own.

  I began to dread telling Jamie that we didn’t want to be puppy parents again. He was always so desperate for more puppy parents, and here we were thinking of letting him down. We probably weren’t the best parents by a long way—far too lenient, and inexperienced—but we were sending good, bright puppies out into the world, puppies that would become loyal and faithful friends to their disabled partners. Both of our puppies had made it through to advanced training, which many puppies didn’t do.

  Then there was the question of my friends, who all seemed to be connected to Helper Dogs in some way and who’d all been so kind, and supported me every step of the way as Ian and I had tried to conceive. I didn’t want to lose them, or for them to think we were abandoning them. Leaving Helper Dogs seemed like the best and most natural thing to do, but it also brought up conflicting emotions.

  A week later, Marion phoned to tell us that Sugar was pregnant and we drove the forty minutes to the smallholding where she lived so we could meet the mother of our forever puppy.

  Marion, a middle-aged lady with dark curly hair and rosy cheeks, greeted us warmly at the door, releasing a waft of freshly baked scones coming from her kitchen. Close behind Marion and desperate to be introduced were her three adult Golden Retrievers: grandmother Cinnamon, mother Spice and daughter Sugar.

  “I usually only breed once from each bitch and then keep one of the daughters,” Marion said.

  Sugar was a doe-eyed beauty, large for a Golden Retriever, but with a very gentle temperament.

  “Which sex puppy did you say you wanted?” Marion asked over tea and scones.

  “A little girl,” I said immediately.

  Otherwise, we’d be comparing Freddy and the new puppy to each other. A different sex would mean she’d be accepted on her own merit.

  Freddy was very excited to see us when we came back and very interested in the new doggy smells we brought with us.

  We talked about our new puppy some more when we went to bed and were sure Freddy couldn’t hear us.

  “It’ll be strange being able to name the puppy ourselves rather than calling it what Helper Dogs want to.”

  “We’ll call it Trafford,” Ian said.

  “Trafford?”

  “Yes, and one day she’ll be Old Trafford.”

  I’d heard this Trafford idea before. Ian had suggested we should call our child by that name.

  “It works for either sex,” he’d said enthusiastically.

  To me, it seemed much more fitting for a dog than a baby, and only marginally less silly than eating shepherd’s pie every time Manchester United played (Ian thought it brought them good luck).

  “OK—Trafford it is.”

  I fell asleep dreaming about our own puppy, our forever puppy, who’d stay with us until she was a very old lady. We’d never had a dog that stayed with us past their six-month birthday before. What a treat it would be.

  19

  All through Freddy’s puppyhood, Helper Dogs had let us know every now and then how Emma was doing. In the first update, about a month after she left, we found out she was staying with a family with children, so she could experience a more boisterous, noisy life where she wasn’t the center of attention. She had managed very well, and even resisted chasing after balls or trying to help remove socks and shoes during football practice. She’d have been good with our kids, if we’d had any, I thought when I read that the children she was with loved her, and that she was very gentle and patient with them. The truth of the matter was that she was good with everyone, and had become a firm favorite at the old people’s home Jo used to take her to when she was looking after her for me.

  It helped to assuage my guilt somewhat to hear that she was learning and developing, meeting new friends. I wanted her to be happy. I didn’t want her to miss us, even though I missed her terribly. In my blackest moments I’d wonder if she thought she’d done something wrong that had made us give her up. Did she worry that her new people wouldn’t love her enough to keep her either?

  Even when Freddy was tiny and taking up every conscious moment, as well as intruding into my dreams and waking me up in the night, there was
still time for me to worry about how our first puppy was doing as she made her way in the world, and to secretly ask for her forgiveness and understanding for having given her up.

  After a few months, we heard Emma had been placed with Mike, a PE teacher in his early thirties who’d broken his neck in a motorcycle accident and sometimes used crutches but, on bad days, used a wheelchair. Often the information was very brief and came buried within e-mails about lots of the puppies. One simply said: “Emma and Mike’s love affair continues.”

  Then we received the letter inviting us to Emma’s graduation.

  “She’s passed!” I told Ian on the phone. “She’s going to be a fully fledged Helper Dog.”

  Best of all, we were invited to the ceremony, which was to take place in the mansion at Helper Dogs HQ in Hertfordshire. We took Freddy with us.

  Coffee and cakes for people and bowls of water for the dogs were waiting inside the mansion when we arrived, and we met lots of Helper Dogs and their owners before finding a place at the back of the very full graduation hall beside a man called Kev and his Helper Dog, a crazy Labradoodle called Scamp, with whom Freddy had played boisterously in one of the fenced-off grass areas before we went into the mansion.

  “I think they paired me with him because I’m the only one who can keep up with him!” Kev joked, as he expertly maneuvered his extra-light sports wheelchair over the grass, but it was easy to see that Kev and Scamp totally adored each other.

  With only five minutes to go before the ceremony started, I still hadn’t seen Emma, and if I wasn’t already nervous enough, I started to become anxious. Sometimes, if the Helper Dog’s partner was ill, or found it too difficult to travel, then the dog didn’t come to the center and their graduation was delayed to the next ceremony. Often this happened at very short notice. I hoped that this hadn’t occurred with Emma. Then we saw her, with a man who must have been Mike, walking from the back of the room down the center aisle and taking a seat near the front. She was much bigger than when we had her, a real adult, and her coat had darkened. She didn’t take her eyes from Mike once.