‘What’s going on?’ Zoe asked.
‘It’s my dog it’s my dog it’s my dog!’ Jake was laughing and crying simultaneously. ‘I haven’t seen her in years and years, and I missed her, and she’s back.’ With his knees deep in the snow and the dog licking the tears from his face, he looked up at Zoe, smiling. ‘She’s back.’
Zoe squatted down by the dog and her husband. ‘Jake… are you sure it’s your dog?’
‘Sadie, meet Zoe. Zoe, meet Sadie. I can’t believe this day! I can’t!’
The dog licked Zoe’s face, and then went back to Jake. Zoe wanted to share in the happiness, but she didn’t believe it. Though she was thrilled to see this new sign of life, she was not a dog lover and had no experience of canines.
‘Jake, how can you be certain it’s your dog?’
Jake laughed. ‘Can you hear that, Sadie? Can you hear that? Darling, if you have a dog, you know it when you see it again. You know it.’
‘Okay. It just… looks like a lot of dogs to me.’
‘Listen to her, Sadie! She says you look like any ol’ dog! Sweetheart, if I didn’t see you in years and years I’d still know you. It’s the same thing.’
‘Okay. I just… you’re not fooling yourself because you want her to be Sadie, right?’
‘Here! Without looking, I know she has a scar in the inside fold of her left ear. She got a nasty cut from some barbed wire one time. Come over here.’ He held the dog still and pulled back her ear. Zoe peered hard at the pink fleshy exposed part of the inside of the ear. It was true there was a little scar there. Or perhaps it was a shadow. Maybe it was a scar, she thought.
‘Phew!’
‘This is so wonderful,’ Jake said. He got up out of the snow and hugged his wife. ‘Come on, let’s take her back to the hotel.’
With the dog trotting happily at Jake’s heels, they all made their way back to the hotel.
‘Do you think the management allow dogs?’ Zoe said.
Now they didn’t even bother leaving their equipment in the ski lockers; they just left everything in the carpeted lobby, along with their skis boots, gauntlets and coats. Jake went through to the kitchen to find something for the dog. He glanced at the steak still gleaming fresh on the block with the chopped vegetables; then he decided against.
‘No old steak for you, Sadie!’
Instead he walked into the freezer and took a steak from the rack. He defrosted it in the microwave and fried it in a skillet. He let it cool before putting it on a plate and offering it to the dog. Sadie wagged her tail and licked her lips, but she turned her nose up at the steak.
‘No good, girl? What they been feeding you on here?’ He wondered why Sadie wasn’t eating. Any dog would devour a piece of steak regardless of its state of hunger. Jake hunkered down and grabbed Sadie’s head just behind each flappy pouch of an ear. He wanted to smell her breath to see what she’d been eating. Thinking he was playing, Sadie licked him. He got a blast of her breath but it smelled of nothing. He tried to remember the smell of a dog’s breath.
Fishy, he thought, even when she hadn’t been eating fish; and mealy, like biscuit; and earthy like the soil after rain; and like yellow meadow grass; and pond-water; and… stop. He told himself to stop. He told himself to stop because this process of remembering made him bring to mind all the things he would never scent or savour ever again in his life other than in memory; and even though memory could restore them momentarily, that thought was bitter-sweet.
He grabbed the dog again, and she licked him, and this time he scented on her warm breath all the things he had just remembered. He walked out of the kitchen and the dog followed him.
He found Zoe in their hotel room.
‘Can we have Sadie in the room with us?’
‘I’d welcome Sadie’s fleas if she had some right now. It’s just great to see another living thing.’
‘Well, I guess she’s another dead thing, actually. I mean, I buried her, in the back garden, years ago. Buried her under a plum tree that had never fruited. Next season and ever after there was tons of fruit on that tree.’
‘Nutrients.’
‘Or a way of coming back to say hello? Shall I tell you something? I didn’t cry when my dad died, but I blubbed like a baby when I buried Sadie. Does that make me a bad person?’
‘A bad person?’
‘I felt more for my dog. Some people would say there’s something wrong there.’
‘You didn’t care much for what “some people” said when you were alive. Why would you now you’re dead? Heck, it doesn’t feel right saying that, but you know what I mean. Your father never showed affection. That’s what you told me.’
He went to the window and looked out at the darkness creeping over the unimpeachable white that lay on the ground like marzipan on a wedding cake. ‘Cold as the snow. Food on the table, clothes on your back, a serviceable education and never a hug. Never once.’
‘A different generation, Jake.’ ‘Well, they got that wrong. If I had a kid I’d—’
‘You’d what?’
He turned back to the dog. ‘Come here, girl!’
Zoe almost framed a word. But couldn’t.
That evening, before preparing for bed, Jake set a blanket down for Sadie so that she could make her den against the wall. Sadie threw herself on the blanket as if she’d always slept there. She lay with her head between her front paws, looking up at them with button eyes. Jake went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. As Zoe pulled back the duvet cover, something happened.
The lights dimmed for a moment, flickered and went out. After a couple of seconds of darkness, they blinked back on again.
Jake came out of the bathroom, holding his toothbrush. ‘What was that?’
‘The lights went out.’
‘I know that. What I mean is why?’
Zoe just stared at him.
‘Did they go out all over the resort?’
‘No idea.’
‘Do you think it was just our room? Or just our hotel?’
She shook her head.
‘I wonder what it means,’ he said.
Sadie was up on all fours, gazing at him. She barked, once.
‘Does it have to mean anything?’ Zoe asked.
Jake went to the window. ‘The lights are still on out there.’
‘Come to bed.’
‘I wonder what happened.’
‘Come to bed.’
7
In the morning Zoe got out of bed, slipped on her towelling robe and went off in search of breakfast. She wanted to make things as normal as possible for Jake, and a tray of toast, bacon, coffee and juice with a flower filched from the lobby might just do the trick. And that was something: the fresh flowers in their crystal vases seemed in no more danger of wilting than the food in the kitchen. She padded down the carpeted hall and summoned the lift.
The lift door opened and when she pressed the button for the ground floor the chime echoed around her. She’d thought hard about how to make things normal. It was the only way to hang on to sanity. She wanted to hit the ski slopes again. Jake seemed more concerned than she was about the terms of their existence. He’d wondered out loud if they were scheduled to be in this place for eternity. If they were, he’d said, there might be a few more things they would like to do besides skiing.
Zoe had agreed to that. She was just wondering what those ‘few more things’ might be exactly, in a ski resort, when the lift arrived at the lobby and the doors opened. Zoe gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth.
The lobby was filled with people. They were noisy, animated, chattering and they thronged the reception area. They were mostly dressed in ski gear, but there were others, too, waiting in line at the reception desk, shuffling forwards with suitcases.