Page 61 of One Summer

What, I think, slowly, an absolute dick.

Fifty-Two

Strike

I run the shower as scaldingly hot as I can bear, which helps me to calm down a bit. Then I tackle the next bit of the binder, which is mostly substrate changing and poop scooping. A mere handful of the snakes strike at me as I’m doing their cleaning, which I consider a pretty good result, especially as only one made contact and it didn’t even draw blood. The striking animals seem to be the ones due soonest for a feed, so maybe they mistook my fingers for mice. I take one of the red dot stickers Frank left me, and place them on their drawers, so I remember for next time to be extra careful.

When all the snakes are in clean surroundings and topped up with fresh drinking water, I take myself out for a walk and hope I’ll bump into someone to talk to, because as much as I’ve always considered myself a solitary sort of person, my new life is already feeling pretty lonely, and I’m only on day two.

Turning away from the beach, in case I run into my annoying neighbour, I take Ted for an early walk to an area of wasteland, which, a sign tells me, has been given Loor development funding as a skatepark for local kids who don’t have much to do in the winter. Tourists can use it too, the sign tells me, but it’s not advertised on any of the Loor promotional literature. So I presume holidaymakers only come if they happen to be in this area of the island and spot it.

Ted runs ahead at a slow trot, stopping every now and then to sniff when a particular scent takes his fancy. When we reach the skatepark, he stops and looks at me hopefully.

‘What do you want, Ted?’

He turns and looks very deliberately at the skatepark.

Is he one of those miraculous dogs who can ride a skateboard? The ones you see on TikTok who seem to love every minute of their ride? But no, those dogs only skate on the flat, not in hugely steep, concrete bowls. Ted wouldn’t have the body strength to get a skateboard up to speed and, anyway, he can see I don’t have one with me.

I put my hand in my pocket to retrieve my phone to snap a picture of him with his quizzical expression on display, but I seem to have left it at home. Ted leaps in a circle as soon as he sees me touch my pocket.

My fingers touch his miniature tennis ball. Message received – this is what Ted wants: for me to throw his ball.

Using all my strength – and the technique I learned during the two weeks that I was part of my high school cricket team – I throw his ball towards the first ramp.

He brings it back, drops it at my feet and flashes me his most winsome underbite.

I throw it again – even harder this time – and it bounces across several small ramps and over a wall into the main section of the skatepark. He chases it and disappears into thin air.

Ted does not reappear.

I call his name a few times but there is no Ted.

Ted is gone.

Fifty-Three

Rescue

I run up the side of the ramps until I reach the furthest one, where his ball bounced over the wall.

There he is, six feet below me, tiny tennis ball in his mouth, on a ramp so steep that only the truly fearless would try to skate it. It’s a ‘bowl’ arrangement of slopes with an almost vertical incline the whole way around.

‘Come on, Ted, come up!’

I know even as I say it that the request is futile. Maybe a greyhound could leap up from this concrete prison, a large lurcher perhaps, possibly even a tall springer spaniel, but a miniature Shih Tzu who stands eight inches tall at the withers? Not likely.

He deposits his ball at his feet, perhaps so that his mouth is clear for deep breathing, and gives it his best shot.

His claws do not make traction on the smooth concrete and, though he tries, he fails to progress more than two feet. What goes up, must come down, and Ted slides back down every time.

He looks at me so reproachfully that my heart breaks a little. Still, I give it one last go in my best motivational speaker voice and Ted gives it his best burst of athleticism, but there’s nothing for it: I have to get down there too.

I sit on the top lip of the ramp and slide myself down.

Ted greets me joyfully, doing what I’ve started to think of as his happy dance – a sort of stylised trot that you see dressage horses performing in Olympic competitions. I bend down to pick him up and he immediately licks me on the forehead.

Reaching up on tiptoes, I deposit him on the top of the skate ramp, and he opens his mouth, showing me all his teeth, not just the underbite. If I believed dogs could grin, I’d believe it of Ted now.

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