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‘Back so soon?’ the receptionist said brightly, but with a rather wary look in her eye at my deranged appearance.

‘I forgot something,’ I said, searching the waiting-room until I found what I was looking for. My George Eliot was on the floor, under a chair, sandwiched between a Woman’s Journal and a Weekly News.

‘You take care as well now,’ I said to the receptionist as I left, but she didn’t look up.

Chick dropped me off at the end of Cleghorn Street. Even the plucky Cortina wasn’t going to make it back downtown on a night like this. The tail-lights of the car quickly disappeared into a wall of whiteness.

Terri had become a homemaker since I last saw her. The dingy flat in Cleghorn Street had been transformed into a cosy little love nest. Patchouli joss sticks burned on the mantelpiece, ‘Liege and Lief’ played on her Amstrad deck, a fire burned in the grate, church candles illuminated the dark and a boeuf Bourguignonne simmered in a well-behaved manner on the stove. Hank, the cause of all this domesticity, was stretched out on the mattress on the floor that served as Terri’s bed. The stale sheets on the bed had been replaced with fresh ones and Terri had purchased a piece of red dressmaker’s velvet to act as a princely counterpane for her new consort.

‘Kinda homey, huh?’ Terri said, putting wood that she’d found in a skip in the street onto the fire. She was wearing what looked like a crinoline and smelt of sandalwood soap and meat, an odd, rather unsettling mix that I felt must be for Hank’s benefit. She had even made sausage rolls (‘Jus-rol, it’s easy.’). The sausage rolls were dog bite-size and every so often she would lob one in Hank’s direction.

She perched on the edge of the mattress to consult a book called Cooking for Two, biting her lip with the effort of reading a recipe.

‘How about an Apple Betty for dessert?’ she asked, although I wasn’t sure if this question was addressed to me or to Hank. It wouldn’t be long before she was greeting him when he came home from work (‘Hi, honey’), waiting at the front door for him with a Martini and a kiss, her hair fixed and her make-up freshened and a big Mary Tyler Moore smile on her face.

I defrosted in front of the fire while we finished what was left of the Don Cortez that Terri had used to make the boeuf Bourguignonne and had started on a bottle of Piat d’Or that had been chilling outside on the windowsill. When Terri opened the window to retrieve the wine, flakes of snow flew inside and fell on us like cold confetti tossed by an unseen hand.

While we drank the icy wine, Terri paraded for my benefit the ‘dog stuff’ she had bought — a Welsh blanket (a woollen honeycomb in pink and green from Draffens) and, from the pet shop on Dock Street, a doeskin collar, a stitched leather lead, and a brown pottery feeding-bowl with DOG stencilled on the side. Perhaps Terri should get a matching one that said GIRL on it. She had also had a tag engraved with Hank’s name and address and I noticed that Hank had taken Terri’s surname rather than the other way round.

‘Hey, sweetie,’ she said and stroked the dog’s flank, burnished by the candle flame and firelight, as she spoke to him in a low murmur, painting him a picture of their future life together, the visits to the beach at Broughty Ferry, day trips to St Andrews, chasing rabbits in Tentsmuir Forest, the daily walk to Balgay Park and the good times they would have romping amidst the gravestones of the dead burghers of Dundee. Hank rolled over and groaned at the word ‘walk’.

When Terri went through to the scullery to check on supper I tried a low-voiced, experimental ‘Buddy?’ on Hank. The effect was startling and unwelcome — Hank leapt off the bed, tail wagging, and walked round and round me, sniffing me enthusiastically as if my body carried news from somewhere far away.

‘Hey, you guys are getting on great,’ Terri said generously when she came back and saw the dog raising a paw in elegant supplication, gazing into my eyes as if waiting for me to tell him something profound. I was just wondering if this was a good time to tell Terri about Hank’s other life as Buddy — although obviously there was never going to be a good time — when she dropped to her knees, hung her arms around his neck and said, ‘I can’t tell you how happy this fella’s made me. I haven’t felt this good since before Mom died.’ Oh dear.

I took advantage of Terri’s new personality and got her to help me finish my George Eliot essay. We were rather drunk by now and I think I was beginning to feel slightly delirious but nonetheless I struggled on until I’d finished (which is, after all, the only way to do it) — The schematic unity and integrity of Eliot’s vision must lead us to the conclusion that James’s comment that it is ‘a treasure house of detail’ is a flawed and, ultimately, prejudiced view of the novel and in fact reveals his aversion to the very concept of Middlemarch.

I was too tired to go home by then and ended up sleeping sardine-style with Terri and Hank. Despite being so tired I had a restless night, finally falling asleep to the sound of a milk-float engine and into a dream where I was trying to persuade a recalcitrant George Eliot to get into the back seat of the Cortina.

When I woke up the sky was the colour of old bone. I was on the cold side of the mattress. Terri was still fast asleep, her arms around her inamorato, nuzzling his neck. I crawled out of bed and wrapped myself in the Welsh blanket. I had a hangover that was mutating into some kind of brain disorder. I would have killed for a cup of tea but the power was off. As long as I lived, I vowed, I would never take electricity for granted again. I got dressed, pulled on my boots and put on my coat and got ready to leave.

Before I could, however, Hank woke up and started pawing at the door to be let out. As Terri looked as if she was having her first good night’s sleep in twenty-one years I said, ‘OK, Hank, buddy, let’s go,’ (a compromise form of address), and opened the door of the flat for him while I scrawled a note for Terri saying that I’d taken Hank for a walk because I supposed she would panic if she woke up and found him gone. Then I spent some time rummaging around for Hank’s new collar and lead, for George Eliot, as well as my bag, scarf and gloves, before eventually setting off down the stairs — all the leisurely while presuming that the door to the street would be locked as usual. When I got down to the close, however, I discovered the bottom door propped wide open to facilitate a flitting.

I pushed past a couple of removal men hefting a fridge and ran out into the street, treacherous with snow, and managed to catch a glimpse of Hank disappearing round the corner at the top of the street, tail whirling like a helicopter blade. By the time I got to the top of the street he had already crossed the incline of City Road, weaving his way through sliding cars, and was padding up Pentland Avenue, following some mysterious canine map in his head that led to Balgay Park. I trailed him all the way, shouting both his names at random, but he was too delirious with fresh air and open space to pay any attention. By the time I finally caught up with him at the entrance to the park I could hardly breathe, the freezing air in my lungs hurt so much.

Hank raced off before I could collar him, scampering like a puppy along a path leading up to the Mills Observatory. Being a naturally good-mannered animal, he paused every so often to allow me to catch up with him. The cold was raw and chafing, there was no sunshine to make the snow pleasant in any way, only a wintry greyness cast over everything, including the sleeping dead.

I followed Hank up to the Observatory and then down the slopes of the cemetery where the dead of Dundee — the whalers and spinners and shipwrights, the weavers and bonnetmakers, the sea-captains and the engineers — were all waiting patiently under the grass for a day that might never come. Was my father sleeping in a cemetery like this? Perhaps he lay in a pauper’s grave somewhere. Perhaps in a shallow grave of leaves and twigs. Picked clean by the little fish at the bottom of the sea. Or mere dust scattered to the wind?