The Puppy That Came for Christmas Page 3

  While he waited, Ian made a big fuss of Queenie, who lapped up his attention, rolling onto her back to have her stomach rubbed.

  “Funny that,” Jamie said. “She doesn’t usually like strangers—especially not men—apart from me and Frankie, of course.” He smiled and nodded his head. Ian had passed the approval test.

  Barbara’s coach from Stockport had arrived early, so she was waiting, smoking a cigarette, when we pulled up at the station. She was a wrinkled sickly looking woman, so tiny that you wouldn’t expect her presence to be so disruptive. Ian still had trouble telling me about—or even remembering—the worst bits of his upbringing, and it was only under special circumstances that he would see her at all. As the coach driver pulled a large suitcase from the hold, she lit another cigarette. Ian hated smoking—perhaps because when he was little she’d spent all her kids’ dinner money on cigarettes and sent them to school hungry—and had said to her before she came that if she smoked in the house he’d send her packing. I took the suitcase and put it in the boot. It was as light as anything; she couldn’t have much in it.

  Ian’s mum and dad hadn’t been good parents and now expected him to sort out all their problems—financial or otherwise—for them, but all I had been able to see, when he’d finally taken me to Stockport to meet them for the first time just before we got engaged, were two sick old people who tried as hard as they could to be nice to me. At first, I’d wondered why Ian hadn’t cut all ties with his family or stayed to start a new life in America where he’d lived for a few years, and I felt if he could still be civil to them then I certainly could. A long while later he told me that he had thought about not telling me about his parents when we’d first met, and pretending they were dead. I’m glad he didn’t. I was the only girlfriend that he’d ever taken to meet his family.

  At home, Barbara admired the house, what she called the “woman’s touch” I’d brought to her son’s bachelor pad, but mainly she sat in the garden, drinking cups of tea and smoking. I took pity on her and sat with her awhile. She said she was trying to give up, and she seemed sincere. With her long auburn hair, she reminded me a bit of my sweet grandmother, and I tried my best to be pleasant to her, despite Ian’s obvious antipathy and mistrust. We’d told my mum that we were trying for a child, and all the complications that were now arriving with it, but had said nothing to his family. I broke the news to her and found her surprisingly sympathetic.

  “You’re like me, maternal—you’ll make a lovely mother,” she said.

  I sincerely hoped this was true in the way she’d intended it to be, and not true to Ian’s experiences.

  Barbara patted my hand. “It’ll be your turn soon.”

  I was pleasantly surprised that things were going so smoothly. However, at some point while talking, she swapped her cup of tea for a glass of wine, then an empty glass for a full one, and the bottle was soon finished. As she wobbled off to bed, she said to me that she’d accompany me to the hospital in the morning, where I was having my monthly hormone check. As I agreed and said goodnight, I saw Ian, across the room, raise his eyebrows and, when she’d gone upstairs, sigh with relief.

  In the morning, Barbara didn’t appear the worse for wear, and it was nice having her along with me at the hospital. I didn’t like going much; there was a lot of waiting around, and the blood tests were often painful. Sometimes, too, I had to go to the Obstetrics and Gynecology department, which was always difficult. I was glad I wasn’t going there with Barbara. It was hard seeing the pregnant women and thinking that’ll be me one day—hopefully soon. Sometimes women would come out of the treatment rooms crying.

  The monthly tests were precautions to check how the Clomid was working, and that it wasn’t overstimulating my body. I took Clomid on days three to seven of my cycle to increase the process of egg maturation in the ovaries, then, on day twenty-one, the hospital took blood to measure my progesterone levels and performed scans to make sure no complications were occurring.

  Aside from the big risks, there were also side effects. I had mood swings, nausea and occasional vomiting and, less often, breast tenderness, headaches and general fatigue. I also gained some weight, but thankfully my body responded well to a low—50 mg—dose of the drug. This month, as with the previous month, the doctor was pleased with my progress. Taking well to the drug was only the first step, but it was an important one.

  That evening we ran out of wine and Barbara decided to try the mint-chocolate Baileys I’d been given for my birthday back in March and hadn’t got around to opening. I was sitting chatting to Ian, and she took the bottle outside with her while she was smoking. A while later Barbara came back inside and I was horrified when she spoke to see that she was frothing at the mouth. I asked her if she was OK. She slurred that she was, but that she thought she might be allergic to the minted Baileys. At the thought, she looked at the bottle, held it up and shook it. There was none left.

  “Mum, you’re drunk,” said Ian, slipping unhappily into an old and familiar role.

  He prised the bottle from her hand, took her to the bathroom to clean up and then helped her upstairs to bed. He came down some while later looking drained, and we hugged. A while later I went upstairs to check she was OK. Barbara heard me outside the door and shouted: “Come in, love!”

  I opened the door and peeped around. She was in bed with the lamp on and looked a little better.

  “I’ve had a vision,” she said. “You’re going to have a little girl.”

  Despite everything she’d done to Ian when he was little, everything she’d put us through that evening, and everything she’d drunk in the past two days, I wanted to believe her. I really, really wanted to believe in her vision. A little girl would be perfect.

  “And I saw a robin in your garden,” Barbara said softly. “Robins always bring good luck.”

  I shut the door, tiptoed back down the stairs and cried on Ian’s shoulder.

  I couldn’t sleep that night because I had stomach cramps, and the next morning I was devastated when I started to bleed. No chance of getting pregnant this month. I tried to put on a brave face in front of Barbara and didn’t tell her what had happened. Barbara remembered nothing about the allergic reaction, or her vision. She’d had a lovely night’s sleep, which is more than we’d managed. That afternoon, Ian and I took her back to the coach station, waved goodbye and started to get on with our life again.

  3

  It was a few weeks before Christmas, and I was trying my best to squeeze my broken-down old car into the crowded Helper Dogs car park. Getting out wasn’t a problem, though: I was usually the last to leave. I smiled at Frank as I walked into the training room. He smiled back. I tried to believe that he didn’t mind having such a clicker-klutz in his class, but I wasn’t convinced, fully aware as I now was that training the puppy was less than half the battle. Rusty was very pleased to see me too. I was an easy target—a free lunch.

  Across the room, Darcy, a usually mild-tempered, chocolate Labrador cross, barked aggressively at Zack, a young German Shepherd, and tried to lunge at him. Zack, probably terrified at going to a new class, barked and snarled back at Darcy.

  “Turn your dogs’ faces away!” Frank shouted at both owners.

  Darcy’s owner managed it but Zack’s didn’t. Frank was there in a flash. He took Zack’s lead from him.

  “You don’t pull them away with the lead, because the dog will just go in a circle and end up facing the other dog again, do you see?”

  The owner, red in the face with embarrassment, nodded. He looked like he really, really wished he hadn’t come to class today. I knew how he felt.

  Rusty sniffed at my pocket for treats.

  I found Zack and Darcy’s aggressive behavior frightening. How would I deal with some aggressive wild dog when walking my new puppy in the park? I definitely wasn’t going to grab its head and turn it around.

  I gave Rusty some more treats. Three, to be exact, and we hadn’t even started the class proper, more to comf
ort myself than him—he was an old hand, completely unfazed by the other dogs’ behavior. But he was very hungry. Hadn’t he eaten breakfast? Usually he was enthusiastic about treats, but today he was going wild. I was running out of treats fast. We had another packet, but they were over near Zack, whose owner was furiously practicing being calm. I didn’t want to disturb them.

  “Now we’ll practice following the stick,” Frank said.

  Rusty was excellent at stick-following, but I’d given him his last treat. The bag was empty.

  “Or actually, Meg, I’d like you to show everyone how good Rusty is at spinning,” Frank said.

  Rusty was good at that too. He would usually spin around with just a command from me and the tiniest twist of my finger.

  “Twist, Rusty,” I said, and twirled my index finger around to show him what I wanted him to do.

  Rusty did it perfectly and then waited for his treat.

  “One more time,” Frank said. “Just use your voice this time.”

  “Twist, Rusty.” Please.

  Rusty was confused. Where was his treat? He was supposed to have a treat. He didn’t twist and tried barking at me instead.

  “Wait for Rusty to think it through and then ask him again,” Frank said.

  I waited. Rusty got even more desperate for his treats and jumped up at me to remind me.

  “Twist, Rusty.”

  I waited. The rest of the class and Frank waited. I knew Rusty wasn’t going to twist. He wasn’t going to do anything without a treat.

  Frank folded his arms and looked cross. I didn’t want Rusty to be in trouble because of me. I bit the bullet.

  “I’m out of treats,” I told Frank. “Would it be OK if I went past Zack to get the other ones?” I felt like Oliver Twist asking for more gruel. My classmates all found it very funny.

  Frank handed me the treats and then fortunately became distracted when Darcy started snarling at a small white Yorkshire Terrier.

  “Turn your dog’s face away from the other!” he barked.

  Rusty put out his paw. I tried not to give him another treat. He gave me a hard stare.

  A few days later we set off to see Ian’s family in Stockport for a pre-Christmas visit. I was wearing the warm coat I usually wore when I went to dog training, as Stockport could be freezing. Plus we were driving up in our convertible, and I did so like having the roof down, mid-December or not.

  We hadn’t gone far and were on a busy dual carriageway when I saw a very young German Shepherd puppy racing down a thin strip of path and scrub in front of us, its lead trailing behind it. At any second it could run into the road and be crushed.

  “Stop the car!” I shouted.

  Ian swerved into a lay-by and I jumped out.

  “Come on, here, puppy, what’s this?” I said in my “what’s this exciting thing I’ve got?” voice.

  The puppy trotted over. I reached into my pocket and found one of Rusty’s treats. It sniffed at it but then snuggled into me instead. I could feel its little heart beating very fast. The training hadn’t been a complete waste of time. I was getting better with dogs, more natural and more able to gain their trust. I could feel my confidence grow.

  Ian came over and knelt down beside us.

  “Hello, puppy,” he said. The puppy wagged its tail and licked his face.

  “It’s much too young to be out running down a busy road. Where are its owners?” I said. I was very angry; anything could have happened. “We’d make much better parents.”

  For a second Ian and I looked at each other, the same thought crossing our minds. This could be our puppy. Its owners were nowhere to be seen.

  I sighed. We both knew we couldn’t do it.

  Ian went back to the car and I walked up the grassy bank. A man in the distance was walking our way, but unhurried. He didn’t look like he was in the panic he should have been in.

  “Is this your dog?” I shouted. He didn’t reply but carried on walking toward us.

  “The wife would’ve killed me if I’d come back without it,” he said when he eventually reached me.

  I handed over the puppy’s lead and watched as the puppy bounced away with the man, before going back to the car. Ian gave me a long look before he eased the car back into the traffic flowing north.

  “Soon we’ll have our own,” he said.

  Meeting the puppy was the highlight of our weekend away. Soon couldn’t be soon enough.

  Even so, a shock ran through me when Jamie rang a few days after we got back.

  “Meg! Thank goodness you’re in,” Jamie’s familiar Scottish burr shouted down the phone. “There’s been a mix-up—the puppies have arrived early. I need you to come and pick yours up from the training center . . . now?”

  I looked at the piles of laminate flooring, still in plastic wrappers, waiting to be laid in the kitchen. Then there were the computer wires that hadn’t yet been boxed in. The gaps in the fence at the back of the garden. The million and one things I’d put on the list but hadn’t got around to. There was also the ski stuff at the bottom of the bed, in the shed and piling up in the hall ready for a Christmas ski break. We wouldn’t be going to the Alps, then. The house wasn’t ready yet—we weren’t ready yet—but we couldn’t turn it away. My heart was thumping like a fifteen-year-old going on a first date. Would the puppy like me? Please let it like me. I was going to be a first-time puppy parent. A puppy mum.

  A quarter of an hour later, at the center, I had Emma in my arms. She wriggled sleepily and gave a sniffle that melted my heart. Below, in the crate, her brother was shifting sleepily on the small piece of blanket that had been cut from the one they’d shared with their mum and the litter only a short time before.

  The puppies had been donated to Helper Dogs by Guide Dogs for the Blind. All the assistance-dogs charities, in fact, tried to help each other out and share spare dogs if a litter came unexpectedly. Each one had its preferred breeders, known for providing healthy dogs with good temperaments, and would have a standing order to take whole litters at a time. Then if, for some reason, they didn’t need the dogs, they were loath to see them go to waste and would contact another charity’s trainer. Good puppies cost £500 or more to buy but would cost ten times that to train, so it was crucial to start off with the best recruits possible.

  I could hardly believe I’d soon be taking Emma home. That she’d be mine and Ian’s to love and take care of, our own little puppy-girl.

  A cloud passed in front of the sun and Jamie shivered.

  “That’ll probably be the last of the sun for today. Let’s get the puppies inside. There’s a few bits and pieces I need to give you before you take Emma home.”

  In the staff room, with Emma back in the crate, Jamie started clipping sheets of paper into a folder.

  “You’ll need a Helper Dogs manual,” he said, holding a thick booklet up. “Make sure you study it. It has all you need to know in it. And report forms—these need to be done every week for the first few weeks and every month from then on.”

  “Right.”

  “They learn so much so fast—you’ll be amazed.”

  He handed me a bag of dog food.

  “This should last you until the next Helper Dogs meeting. Mix a little of this in with the brand her breeder’s been giving her when you give her her next meal, and then a little more of our food and a little less of the breeder’s food at each meal after that until she’s only having our food.”

  Helper Dogs provided all the basic food, but not treats, and they’d pay any vet’s bills. They also provided a crate for the puppy, and bedding.

  “And you’ll need a water bowl and a food bowl,” Jamie said, and went to find some. The Helper Dogs training center, being a regular dog-training center as well, had a range of dog items for sale.

  I looked at Emma’s brother, sleeping so peacefully next to her.

  “What’s going to happen to Emma’s brother?”

  “Coming home with me and Frank tonight and then his puppy parent,
Liz, will pick him up tomorrow.”

  “Seems a shame to split them up . . . I could—”

  Jamie looked horrified. “No, no, no—believe me, one puppy is enough for now!”

  Emma and her brother carried on sleeping. “And you’ll need to buy her a collar and lead—Helper Dogs will reimburse you. Make sure you buy a very soft one—the softest you can find.”

  He looked around, as if searching for something more to say or do, some more advice to impart to a novice puppy parent. Delaying the moment that I was both nervously waiting for and hoping would never come.

  “Right,” he decided abruptly. “That’s about it, then.”

  “I can take her home?”

  “You can take her home.”

  I put the assembled crate in the back of my car along with Emma’s comfort blanket and a toy, and then I carried Emma over to the car.

  “That’s it, there’s a good girl.”

  She was very calm, although her heart was beating very fast, and she didn’t wriggle as I put her into the crate.

  I turned into the main road and she started to cry. Immediately, I wanted to cry too. I couldn’t bear it. I’d have to stop but not yet: the road was too busy. I’d need to turn off, but where? The crying stopped. Emma had fallen asleep.

  Twenty minutes later, I pulled up outside our house and carried Emma up the garden path.

  “This is going to be your new home,” I told her, carrying her into the house, fragile and tiny in my arms. As soon as we got in, I took Emma out to the toilet area and she used it. For the next few weeks I was to take Emma to the toilet area after every meal, when she woke up from a sleep and when she’d been getting overexcited.