He adopts his harmless smile and blinks at her, myopically. Chucks his new black spaniel friend behind the ear and lets it go. ‘Molly!’ she shouts. The dog, ignoring her, circles the bench on which Thomas sits a single time, sniffing the ground in the hope that he might have dropped a titbit, then comes back and sits at his feet, gazing up, expectantly.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Thomas. He puts his hands pointedly in his lap and says to the woman, ‘It’s just a bit of kidney. Nothing harmful.’
‘Molly!’ she shouts again. The dog ignores her. Its eyes plead until he sees the whites at their edges. ‘Yes, but she’s on an all-natural diet, you see,’ she informs him, staying ten feet away, as though she is nervous of getting closer.
The common is full of sunbathers and picnickers and joggers and drinkers, the way it has been all summer long. On a day like this, when a twenty-foot gap from your nearest neighbour feels like luxury, she stands no chance at all of coming to harm unless she eats a hotdog from the unlicensed wheelie-cart, but there’s a type of woman who revels in their sense of vulnerability, he’s noticed. Somehow the thought that someone could want to harm them makes them feel special.
‘Nothing more natural than a nice bit of kidney,’ he says, and smiles his most endearing smile.
The toddler starts to approach and she yanks on its harness reins and hauls it backwards, presses it, unwillingly, against her thighs.
‘It’s not preserved or anything,’ he says. ‘It’s just kidney. I’m clearing out the freezer. Didn’t want it to go to waste.’
The woman snorts. ‘Molly eats chicken breast and rice and vegetables,’ she says. ‘Not offal.’
‘No dairy?’ he teases, and she looks horrified. Then he sees her suspect that he might be taking the mick, and looks affronted.
‘Anyway, please don’t feed her,’ she says again, trying to wrest back the control. Hello, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, he thinks. Even your dog is special. ‘Would you like someone else feeding your dog?’
Thomas considers the question, thinks that he probably wouldn’t mind that much, then thinks that this might well be the wrong answer, so settles for apologising again. ‘She’s a lovely dog,’ he tells her. ‘Ever so friendly.’
She accepts the compliment without much grace. ‘Come on, Molly!’
Thomas shoos the dog away, and it sulks over until it is close enough for her to clip its lead to its collar. She jerks the lead a couple of times, irritably, then starts to walk off towards Station Road. The toddler stays for a moment, chewing Peppa Pig’s crusty ear and staring at him. He can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl, but doesn’t suppose it matters either way. It will quickly learn to be whatever Mama wants it to be, if it has any sense of self-preservation. He gives it a four-finger wave and it turns on its heels as its mother gives another tug on its reins.
Thomas sits back and extends his arms along the back of bench. Turns his face to the azure sky and enjoys the late afternoon. Never mind. There’ll be another one along in a moment. It’s Northbourne Common. All the dogs of Northbourne have come to love Thomas over the past few days. He’s the man with the treats. The special titbits, carefully selected from the choicest of cuts. He can’t believe he didn’t think of this before.
As he has predicted, he doesn’t have to wait long. The post-work passeggiata is in full swing and the park is a sea of dogs. He tosses a sliver of heart in the path of a Jack Russell, a choice slice of liver beneath the questing nose of a Weimeraner.
The Egyptians believed that the dead needed their internal organs with them, if they were to survive the afterlife. Once they were removed from the bodies, they were stored in canopic jars, preserved in herbs and honey and sealed with resin, and stored close at hand for when they were needed. Thomas is a man of the age of science. He knows that his girls are going nowhere. And the Ancient Egyptians didn’t have blenders, or refrigerators with freezer compartments.
At first, he thought that this new method of disposal might be a nuisance – the weekly defrost-and-blend ritual had seemed so convenient. But he’s discovered that it’s quite the opposite. He really enjoys his sojourns in the park. It gets him out of the house, into the fresh air, provides a seemingly endless opportunity for social moments. The flat has been feeling oppressively small for the past few days, especially now he’s started to fall out of love with Marianne. He doesn’t like the sense of reproach about her peeling skin. Feels like he’s being judged and found wanting. It’s not my fault, he thinks, resentfully. It’s this bloody weather. Drying everything out. Just look at the lawns in this park: it’s like the Gobi desert.
His hand brushes a hard edge of cold metal and he looks to see what it is. It’s a little plaque, brass, screwed firmly to the cross-strut. ‘In loving memory of John and Lizzie Brewer,’ it reads. ‘1922-96, 1924-2005. They loved this park.’
That’s sweet, he thinks, running his finger over the lettering, while at the same moment a suffocating feeling of melancholy washes through him. That was all I ever wanted, he thinks, a bit of love, a bit of lifelong companionship. It can’t be that hard. You just have to look at all the nonentities strolling hand-in-hand to see that. Why did it never happen to me? Every bench in this park has a plaque like that, put up by their children, mostly, or their widows or the friends who mourn them. Who’s going to do that for me?
He shakes his head like the dogs he’s been feeding, to shrug off the mood. Gets up and goes for a stroll past the bandstand, to leave it behind. There’s a coffee stand there, and its owners have erected a small collection of tin tables and chairs in among the benches. It’s where a lot of park regulars go, to meet and greet and pass the time of day. Thomas doesn’t count as a regular, yet; he’s only been coming here a few days. But he has hopes. One day, he’s sure, someone will smile in recognition and give him the friendly nod.
A pair of dog walkers chats at the coffee stand, adding sweetener to their drinks, while their charges – three Scotties, a Pom, two pugs and a Dalmatian – mill about at the extreme end of multi-leads and sniff about at the base of a waste-bin. A perfect opportunity, right there. He potters over and empties the remainder of his bag in among them, enjoys the pleasure with which they wolf down the unexpected goodies, the shining eyes that turn towards him in search of more.
He squats down and scratches behind the Pom’s neck ruff. It licks its lips and gives him a huge, foxy grin and he rewards it with a final piece of well-chopped tripe. It snarfs it up with a tail-wag so violent it almost loses it feet, and pants hopefully at him as he stands up once more. Thomas likes dogs. So trusting, so loyal. He sometimes thinks that, had he had another life – one where landlords allowed pets, for instance – he might not have had need of his girlfriends at all.
‘Sorry, poppet,’ he tells the friendly Pom. ‘That’s the lot for today. See you tomorrow, maybe?’
He walks back through the sunshine on the path to home. He feels no great need to dawdle. He’ll be taking a walk every day this week. The freezer compartment is full to bursting, and he suspects that he might soon need to free up some room.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
She thinks it through and decides to go in the daytime. A teenager carrying a television through the streets in the dark is asking for a stop-and-search, whereas you can walk around with pretty much anything while the shops are open. She once carted a bike, with its lock still on, all the way from Twickenham to Kingston, and nobody even batted an eyelid. For sure, a casual-looking girl with no obvious signs of drug abuse carting a flat-screen under her arm will be fine.