Chapter 9
Had Alice not volunteered to adopt a bear cub called Bear, she didn’t know when she would have left her childhood home. Maybe she would have never returned to London, and to the real, cruel world. But her determination to give Bear a home again, some stability, meant she found herself back at her own front door only a day after the funeral. Only this time she was holding in her arms a wriggling fluff-bag.
Bear shifted in her arms, sitting his bum on her hands and his front paws on her shoulders, and licked at her face while she tried to pass instructions to Bahira.
‘It’s the key on the end, with the red dot . . . that one . . . that goes in the top lock . . . it sometimes jams. Ugh, stop it, Bear. Flick the key to the right first then turn left, that’s it.Bear.’ She turned her head and the dog’s tongue went in her ear instead.
Bahira laughed and eventually got the door open. Once all three of them were inside, with the door shut, Alice put Bear down. He stood for a moment on his little fat legs, before skittering through into her living room.
And now, here in her flat as he tottered from room to room, stuffing his nose into everything he could find, giving her belongings exploratory chews and peering under bits of furniture, Alice hoped with everything in her that he was finding it an adventure.
Bahira and she took turns going back and forth to the car and keeping the puppy in the house. They carted in a large, flat dog bed as big as a single mattress (way too big for this dog, surely?), food and water bowls plus one and a halfbigbags of food, mountains of practical things like towels and poop bags and pills prescribed by the vet, bagfuls of toys in crunchy, squeaky, ropey vibrancy, two harnesses, three leads, a metal crate (‘though I think he refused to ever set even one paw in there’ Jill’s mum had said).
Once everything was inside, Bear nosed through it all, sticking his whole head into open bags and pulling things out onto the carpet.
‘Shall I stay for a while and help you unpack?’ asked Bahira.
‘No, you head home to your family, we’ll be fine.’
Alice bid Bahira goodbye, but in actual fact, she didn’t know where to start. When she’d left this flat she’d had no idea she’d be bringing a dog back to live with her.
When she’d left this flat, Jill had still been alive. She hadn’t been back here since before heading to the concert. Her make-up was still scattered on the mantelpiece under the mirror, the electric blue liquid liner she’d felt so Coachella wearing was just lying there, waiting for her to come home. And she could have so easily never come home.
If she’d never come home, would this make-up still be sitting here? Or would someone have cleared her flat by now, avoiding paying an extra month’s rent, which in London wasn’t cheap? And would each item she owned be carefully considered, or would things like this blue eyeliner, which had no meaning for anybody – it didn’t even hold a place in Alice’s heart – just be swept into the bin?
Alice picked up the eyeliner and dropped it into the bin.
Was Jill’s house empty? Probably not – she had owned her house; there would be no rush.
Alice wondered if she should have offered to go over and help clear the house, but even thinking it caused a pain so deep in her heart that she couldn’t imagine ever being able to find the strength to do that.
How horrible a friend she was to put her own pain over that of Jill’s family, who also didn’t want to clear their daughter’s, their sister’s, home where everything –everything– would remind them of her.
‘I’m tired,’ Alice said to Bear, looking at the mess in the living room. She was running on empty, and she couldn’t, she just couldn’t, face the pile of things quite yet. ‘I just need an hour or two, okay?’
She pushed his bed up against the wall in the living room, threw a couple of toys on the floor, and filled a big bowl of water which she left in the kitchen. Then she went to her room, Bear sticking close behind her.
The clothes she’d left strewn on her bed – discarded shorts from the morning of the concert, a top she’d nearly worn that day before changing her mind at the last minute, a couple of potential handbags that hadn’t made the cut – had been folded neatly and placed on a chair, the bed cover neatened and the water glass from her nightstand washed and dried and put back upside down. Her dad had come into the city a few days after it happened to pack a rucksack full of her things. He’d packed a few clothes, pulled a book off her bookshelf – it was one she’d already read but it was a sweet thought – a tub of night cream, a hairbrush, a lip balm and a cuddly rabbit. He must have straightened it out for her.
‘Bear, you’re going to like my dad. He’s kind.’
She climbed onto her bed and Bear trotted around the edge of it, looking for a way up. She watched him, assuming he’d just lie on the floor in a moment, but when he stretched his front paws up onto her mattress, wriggled his legs to try and haul himself up and whined at her, she helped him up.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘You can come here with me. I promise I’ll look after you now.’
Alice lay down on top of the covers, and Bear sank down right next to her, shuffling his back into her and going straight to sleep. She looked down at his tufty head, the colour of Bourneville chocolate but with flecks of burgundy, and a splash of white on the back of his neck. Above his eyes were two thumbprint sized ‘eyebrows’ in a rich amber colour that twitched when he opened an eye to see her peeping at him. His snout was white and freckled with dark brown and ginger dots, and still somewhat squashed in like an accordion. He stretched his legs, which also marbled from chocolate to caramel to the cream on his too-big paws, and his chest was a puff of pearly white fur.
She reached her fingers across and stroked his little head oh so gently, and he closed his eyes. ‘You sleep now, puppy, I’m going to keep you safe.’
