‘A kid that age shouldn’t be drinking this crap,’ she said, pouring it on the ground and then kicking the can away, and I smiled for the first time that day.
The shots went back to Leman Street.
We went back to West End Central.
Peter Fenn died on his way to the hospital.
The search team tore his neat little two-bedroom shrine to Nazi Germany to pieces.
And they still did not find those grenades.
31
‘So is Stan going to die?’ Scout said.
She was home for the weekend. And I think to both of us the loft in Smithfield still felt like Scout’s home.
We stood in the doorway of my bedroom, watching Stan as he huddled in his basket where I had placed it by the side of the bed. He was unmoving but his eyes were open and shining, and he appeared to be waiting for whatever happened next.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Something bit him when we were on the Heath and his body reacted against it.’
‘Anaphylactic shock,’ Scout said. ‘I saw it online. What does Christian say?’
Scout and I both trusted Christian. Our local vet had looked after Stan since our dog was a capering puppy, wild-eyed with joy and agog with wonder at the world, stunned by the scents of the meat market, relieving himself with gay abandon in every corner of our loft. These are the things that you remember when you think your time with a dog is coming to the end.
‘Christian says rest, water and a bland diet,’ I said. ‘Although right now he’s not eating anything at all. Give him time, Christian says.’
Scout sat on the floor with her dog and she ran her hands through his fur. Stan lifted his head as if to acknowledge her presence, his black diamond eyes settling on her face before he curled up again.
‘Can’t you put him in your bed?’ Scout said.
‘The bed’s too high for him if he needs a drink of water.’ In the distance I could hear the sounds of a summer day in the city. ‘I was going to take you rowing on the Serpentine today. But I don’t like to leave him when he is like this.’
‘Me neither,’ Scout said.
So we stayed home all day. Me and Scout and Stan.
The sun crossed the sky and we did not stir from our loft. As the hot, lazy day drifted by, Stan’s condition did not change but our sadness seemed to lift a little.
There were visitors.
Scout’s friend Mia was delivered by her mother and the two girls sat side by side on the floor, drawing for hours. Mrs Murphy came round to see Scout and check on Stan. Smiths of Smithfield sent up sandwiches.
In the afternoon Stan made a guest appearance in the main space of the loft when I carried him wrapped in a blanket to his favourite sofa. He still didn’t move but he seemed to be happy surrounded by all the familiar faces. Stan’s love for people, especially children, was gleaming in those eyes.
And then my ex-wife came to collect Scout and the day fell apart.
Anne was dressed for the gym and she was pressed for time, throwing anxious glances at her iPhone.
‘How was the rowing?’ she said. ‘I bet Hyde Park was crowded, wasn’t it? Come on, Scout. Get your things.’
‘We stayed home,’ Scout said. ‘And we took care of Stan.’
‘All day long? On a beautiful day like today, you stayed inside this loft with a sick dog?’
She made it sound like a crime against nature.
‘Yes,’ Scout said, her voice getting smaller.
Now Anne was looking at me, struggling to hold her temper.
‘Unbelievable,’ she said. ‘One day of the week you get her and she spends it locked up in here with a flea-bitten mutt.’
She cast a contemptuous glance at Stan, bundled up on the sofa.
The dog blinked, looking sorry for himself.
Scout gave him a brief peck on the forehead and I was never more proud of her.
‘Don’t kiss the bloody thing,’ Anne said.
‘He’s not a bloody thing,’ Scout said, finding her voice. ‘He’s Stan and he’s a living, human creature!’
Not quite human, of course.
But I took her point.
Anne’s iPhone came alive in her fist. She listened, sighed, held the phone away from her.
‘Just stick it in the bloody microwave, Oliver!’ she bawled.
I was glad that Mrs Murphy and Mia had gone home. I did not want them to see this angry woman in her gym kit who did not comprehend how loving a dog could break your heart.
‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Stan is very ill.’
But why should she understand? Stan had come into our life after Anne had left it. When she was on her leafy suburban street where nothing bad ever happened, with a new man and a new home and a new baby growing inside her, I had attempted to replace the hole in Scout’s life – and my life – with a puppy.
Something Scout and I loved had been lost forever and we did our best to replace it with something that would love us with the unconditional, unchanging love that we both missed and craved.
And it had worked. We were a rescue family.
And the dog saved us.
Anne touched her daughter’s hair.
‘Don’t be sad, darling. They don’t live forever, do they? We’ll get you a hamster or – I don’t know – a goldfish. I’m sure you can get them online.’
‘I don’t want a hamster.’
Scout was struggling to put on the new rucksack I had bought her and Anne instinctively helped her, the gesture of a woman who was used to being around much smaller children.
I wanted to explain what was happening here. I wanted to tell Anne that love and illness and death are never small things, that they can never be treated with contempt and disdain. Not even in a hamster. And certainly not in a dog.
I wanted to tell her something that she seemed yet to learn – that there is always a price to pay for loving something or someone.
But I did not have the words.
I did not know where to begin.
Because I realised that I did not know this woman collecting my daughter. We were strangers now.
No, it was worse than that.
We did not even like each other.
Married for a while, I thought. Divorced forever.
‘You have to understand,’ I said. ‘Stan is part of our family.’
‘No,’ my ex-wife told me. ‘Scout has a new family now.’
Then they were gone but I felt closer to my daughter than ever.
We choose to love, I thought. We choose to open our hearts and pay the price of having them smashed to pieces.
And it is worth it, I thought.
The bill is always worth it, even if it cripples us, even if it scars us, even if it kills us.
I was sitting on the sofa with the new issue of Boxing Monthly and my sick, sleeping dog when my doorbell rang.
It was close to midnight. The neighbourhood was jumping. But nobody should have been ringing my doorbell at this hour.
I went to the door and looked on the monitor that showed the street.
Edie Wren was standing outside my front door.
And somehow I was not surprised.
It was as if I had been waiting for this moment for years.
I buzzed her up.
We stood there looking at each other for a moment and then it was as if we made up our minds at exactly the same time.
She crossed the threshold and she came to my arms and our mouths found each other and they fit, they fit in a way that very few mouths will ever fit your mouth in the course of a lifetime.
Then I held her against me, filled with wonder, and she was warm from the day and the heat was rising in me and I wanted to kiss her again right now.
My green-eyed girl.
‘Max?’
‘What?’
‘I know how we can sleep tonight,’ Edie said.
32
We walked into MIR-1 and TDC Joy Adams was sitting on a workstation looking up at Scarlet Bush.
Edie jabbed a finger at the journalist.