And: ‘I need a few garlic mushrooms. A little wine. Thank you, dear.’
And: ‘Nachos. With jalapeno chillis and green olives. I want the biggest plate you’ve got.’
Mouth open and starving, Cliff watched her and shifted round in his seat, peering through the crowd as Liz made her way from corner to corner of the globe.
The manager caught up with her at the centre of the restaurant. He was about twenty-four, wearing a suit much too big for him, his hair plastered wetly back.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Taking advantage, dear.’ She beamed.
‘You what?’
‘Of the world’s every nook and cranny. That, I take it, is the point?’
‘I’ve watched you barge your way to the front of every —’
‘You must excuse me, but my food’s going cold.’
The manager marvelled briefly at the way this woman could hold simultaneously two laden trays and an argument. ‘It isn’t the done thing,’ he glowered, ‘that’s all.’
‘Isn’t it? People should be more adventurous with what they eat, shouldn’t they? You make it so easy for them.’ She could see Cliff bobbing anxiously on his plastic seat, worrying about her and not wanting to leave their table.
‘Would you mind?’ she asked the manager and passed him a tray to carry to her table.
As he followed he seemed to shrink even further into his suit, blushing furiously. The pensioners at nearby tables who were there mostly for the central heating, spinning out solitary cappuccinos, looked on with interest as Liz made him wait while she rummaged in her purse for a tip.
Walking away with his ten-pence piece, the manager seemed smaller than ever. Small enough to crawl and hide inside Liz’s Top Shop carrier.
I’m not scared of the Dog Man. It’s him who’s scared of me. But people won’t see that.
He does things for me. He’s good like that. When he likes, he can be a good dog. When he likes.
Ever since I was at school I wanted to have someone like the Dog Man. I don’t know why. At first I wanted a dog. But my stepmother wouldn’t. She never liked dogs. She and my stepdad wanted things clean. Everything was tidy. Dogs aren’t clean.
So when I got a house and a husband, I wanted a dog. We got puppies, one after the other. People said my house wasn’t clean. They said my daughter was neglected. I got so that I felt down.
My husband wasn’t anything really. He wasn’t like a dog; I couldn’t boss him about, lead him around by his collar. Not because he was big and tough. He wasn’t big and tough. He wasn’t weak, either. He wasn’t anything. He wouldn’t do as I said, he wouldn’t tell me what to do. He wouldn’t do anything. The only good times we had was getting the giro, buying Woodpecker on a Thursday night. Give the kids Coke. We’d buy three great big bottles the same time as the Woodpecker. Coke makes kids pissed like cider does grownups, makes them dizzy, their eyes shine. We used to laugh.
But my husband wasn’t anything. I couldn’t do anything with him.
And the puppies died. We couldn’t afford the injections. I’d get impatient to take them out for walks. They told me little germs got into the soft pads of the puppies’ feet when I took them out when they were too little. And they died. But in the olden days we didn’t have dog injections, did we? And the dogs didn’t die from walking then. We didn’t even have injections for people. And they tell me if the baby doesn’t have all her injections, then she will die as well. But I forget what she’s had. I forget about her sometimes, too. Some days she comes as a shock, when I go upstairs for a lie-down and I see her on the bed. She’s asleep a lot of the time.
What difference is there? I’m still stuck in the house. I can’t really go out, can I? But the Dog Man brings me what I need. He’s going to bring me a disguise so we can go out together. That’ll be fun.
I’ll go back to see the women, dressed up in my disguise. And they won’t know me. I’ll be like Meg off Crossroads, Elsie off Coronation Street, going back to where they used to live. Looking around and then going back to where they are now. Somewhere better. In disguise.
I love the Dog Man. He has no one else to love now and so he loves me. He says I’m strong. Strong like Meg and strong like Elsie. His own wife, he said, wasn’t very strong. And so he loves me.
I’m waiting for him now. He’s at work. He says he has a surprise for me. I hope it has something to do with my disguise. That would make everything perfect.
They had been given the thickest part of the forest. The closely packed soil of the natural paths had been sliced and cross-hatched into slush by rain and bicycle wheels. Penny trod heedlessly through puddles brown as coffee. She led Vince and Andy through the trees, pushing against bark and kicking through the undergrowth, her jeans soaked to the knees already. They were looking for a suitable starting point for their search. Vince had the feeling they had left it behind, left stones unturned. They were already failing in their mission. They were simply fannying about in a forest. And it was getting dark.
‘Aren’t you talking to me?’ he snapped at Andy, who was content to lag along behind. He hadn’t said anything since mildly remarking on the coincidence of their both being on the same body-hunt. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I’m a bit freaked by all this. It’s morbid, isn’t it?’ Andy hugged himself inside his leather jacket. ‘We might find anything.’
‘It’s a body-hunt. What do you want to find?’
Some distance ahead Penny had stopped short. She was at the mouth of a
