‘I’m coping,’ Bahira said. ‘It’s weird not seeing Jill, though. It’s just getting to the stage where it’s been longer than usual not to have seen her, you know?’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘The rest of us should meet up though, soon,’ Bahira persisted.
‘Sure.’
‘Okay, I’ll let you go, but let’s keep in touch.’
It wasn’t that Alice didn’t like Bahira, or Kemi or Theresa. She liked them a lot. But she just wasn’t ready to hang out with her friends without their heartbeat: Jill.
‘Right, I’m taking you to puppy training,’ Alice told Bear, as she nursed her wound which he’d just clamped onto with his spiky teeth. It had started with him nibbling her jumper when she’d reached to stroke him. He hadn’t let go, and got all worked up, his nibbling getting harder and more persistent until she had to untangle herself from the mess and step away. He bounced up and tried to catch her with his teeth.
She picked up her laptop and sat on the sofa, annoyance streaming through her, her patience wearing down. ‘You’re making this harder. You’re supposed to be on my side, but you’re making everything so hard.’
Bear side-eyed her from the floor, his head tilted to the side and one of her soggy socks in his mouth.
‘That’s right, we’re going to school. Both of us. You, to learn how to be a civilised member of society, and me to learn how to actually be a dog owner.’ He pushed her with his paw while he pulled on her other sock, trying to remove it from her foot. ‘I don’t know, maybe you’ve always been secretly annoying. I think you put on the butter-wouldn’t-melt face just for visitors.’
Alice typed ‘dog training classes London’ into Google, and clicked on the first link that came up, opening the vibrant yellow and purple page of the Dogs Trust. ‘“Dog School London,”’ she read aloud. ‘“Teaches owners how to give their dogs skills for happy lives.” Did you hear that Bear? Do you think they might have some skills for me to learn too?’ She continued flicking around the site, finding useful snippets about good places for dog walks, tips on recall off the lead, profiles of the trainers, all things that kept her mind occupied, if just for a little while.
‘It’s a five-week course,’ she whispered to Bear, who had settled his head down on her foot now and was drifting to sleep, his too-long legs stretched out in front of him and his nostrils twitching softly. ‘Five weeks until we’re all better.’
She knew she was talking rubbish, but as she clicked on the ‘enquire now’ button and filled in details about herself and Bear, she felt a sense of purpose. Something to aim towards, for Bear’s sake, beyond just being. Just surviving.
Alice didn’t even realise until later that night, while she was lying awake, that she’d just made a plan. A plan that involved leaving the house and being around other people. Well, how about that?
