Page 39 of One Summer

‘Oh god, I’m so sorry,’ I say, feeling my eyes widen in horror. ‘In a crash?’

For the love of god, why have I asked this? How incredibly nosy can one woman be? Where is Ted with his incessant barking when I need him?

Answer: Ted is sitting at the waterline looking at the horizon, while some small seabirds pootle about in front of him. He’s as peaceful as a Buddhist monk. Not a wuff in him.

‘Breast cancer,’ Joshua says.

‘Shit, I’m so sorry.’

The pause here is truly awful. More of an ensuing silence than a pause, it turns out, because neither of us has anything else to say.

I look over to Ted for help. Having taken his fill of the view, I watch as he stands and arches his back in a particular manner.

‘Oh, I’d better go,’ I say, motioning to Ted and airily flapping a poo bag.

‘Gotcha,’ Joshua says, nodding in solidarity.

‘Worst part about having a dog,’ I say, as if I’m experienced at having a dog and therefore know such things.

He shakes his head. ‘Nah, you’re wrong – the worst part is when they die.’

He reaches out to touch my baseball cap and spins it slowly to the front so that my face is shaded.

‘Your nose is burning,’ he says.

My hand immediately goes to cover my nose, as if it might fall off any second, and I accidentally poke myself in the eye with the plastic poo bag, which I’ve forgotten I was carrying, but he doesn’t notice. He’s already jogging off up the beach, leaving me to scoop Ted’s poop and recover from the heart flutters and general mortification.

This surfer dude is the most attractive man I have ever met, and every time I try to talk to him, an animal manages to ruin my game.

Another neoprene-hooded surfer emerges from the sea, and I pause, breath bated, waiting for Ted to lose his shit and start barking at him.

Not a peep. Not a low growl. Not even a hard stare.

‘So you play favourites?’ I say, and I’d swear on my life that Ted gives me a nod.

Thirty-Four

Welcome

The shop window has a large sign saying, WELL-BEHAVED CHILDREN AND DOGS WELCOME, and Ted pulls to go in, as if eager to spend his pocket money. The entranceway to the shop is crowded with large cages containing beach balls, neon pairs of jelly shoes in the full range of baby-to-adult sizes, toy cricket sets and foam body boards that look as if they’ll last for about three waves before breaking and being dumped in the beach bins.

When I squeeze past and make it into the shop itself, I look around for milk and dog food, but only see an array of stuffed toys, along with lightly melted sticks of rock, which make my fillings ache just looking at them. Weaving my way past Loor-branded mugs, coasters and fridge magnets, I wander down an aisle of frozen pizzas and microwavable French fries, when I find a tiny refrigerator stocked with single pints of milk.

There are only three left.

I drink a lot of milk, and my first impulse is to take them all, because I know I’ll get through them in forty-eight hours, but on the other hand, what if some other parched soul comes in looking for milk for their evening cocoa and they find an empty shelf?

I’ll just take two of them, I decide, and make sure I don’t have any evening bowls of cereal. But what if two parched souls come in wanting milk? I can’t take two-thirds of the island’s milk supply.

I put down my second carton of milk and take just one up to the till, grabbing a box of dog kibble on the way, which Ted stares at as if mesmerised.

There’s nobody around, so I ding the little silver bell on the counter.

Nothing.

I turn to look around behind me – because maybe the cashier is stocking shelves in some remote corner of this crowded shop of tat – and I almost bump faces with a woman who is standing six inches behind me, so close that I can’t quite believe our noses aren’t touching.

‘Whoa,’ I say.

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