Page 37 of The Good Boy

“Like a date,” Rory says, his head popping up over my shoulder.

“Hardly!” I say with a laugh.

“Like neighbors,” Miles adds, his eye widening at the very thought.

“Just two neighbors and a man-dog...”

“Walking across the road together,” Miles finishes.

“Okay,” Rory says. “It’s just that they said onThis Morningthat when two people finish each other’s sentences they are...”

“Very hungry and probably would like some steak,” I finish for him, opening my door before he can offer any more sage advice.

“That does appeal,” Rory says as he bolts in.

“So, I’ll see you tomorrow evening, six-thirty.” I nod.

“Yes,” Miles agrees. As he opens his door Matilda rushes out, wrapping herself around his ankles and purring. I get a glimpse of him picking her up and burying his face in her soft belly fur as he closes the door. I suppose there is a small chance that cat people are people too. Or even—and I would never say this to Rory—that cats aren’t totally horrible either. Small, but definitely a chance.

Rory is not hard to feed. He is delighted by almost every taste sensation I put in front of him, lemon candy notwithstanding. The problem is that he is impossible to make full. I don’t know why it bothers me more than it did when he was a dog. Maybe because when he had four paws I could look him in the eye and say, “No more cheese for you, sir. The vet says we have to watch your weight. Don’t give me those eyes—it’s for your own good.” But now that he is human, and doing his best to keep his cool in a strange body and a world that he has never experienced this way before, it is much harder.

Also, because since we finished our steaks I have hoovereddown an entire tub of posh ice cream in one sitting. You see, sometime in the past I discovered that really going to town on a ton of carbohydrate or sugar or ideally both is a surefire way to calm and sometimes even quiet the constantly chattering thoughts that tear around and around my brain on a mad loop. Kelly tells me that this is me self-medicating; I say that it’s self-soothing and that’s a totally different, probably quite healthy thing.

Anyway, scoffing down Häagen-Dazs while limiting Rory’s food makes me feel like a bit of a hypocrite.

The thing is, I’d planned for me and Rory to be together, just us two, until one of us popped our clogs. And, yes, I’d assumed, that it would most likely be him that bought the farm first.

Now I’m confronted with the real possibility that we have fifty years left together, and at the same time as I love that thought it also terrifies me. What if I have condemned Rory to a long life wishing he could just go back to when he was happy and carefree? And he has to spend every day with the person who’s to blame?

Or what if... what if Rory ends up left all alone with no one to look after him? Alone and confused in a world that wasn’t made for him.

This calls for another tub of ice cream. This time I get two spoons.

“What shall we do now?” Rory asks a little later, jumping up and down like he’s on an invisible pogo stick.

“Well, it’s nearly midnight and I am about to slip into a carbs coma, so I was thinking bedtime?” It occurs to me that if Nanna Maria is right and there is no way back, then I will probably have to buy Rory a human bed and clear out the box room of all thethings that I can’t bring myself to throw away but also don’t want to look at. It’s a good job we are out of ice cream.

“Yeah, but I’m not tired,” Rory says enthusiastically. “I know—let’s put on the music and do that dancing, or, or, or go out to the dancing place and do that dancing and get a kebab on the way home as a snack, or just get a kebab?”

“I know what the problem is,” I say, hitting my forehead with the heel of my hand.

“What, what is the problem?” Rory asks me, looking around him like a problem might be something cat-shaped. “And how did it get in?”

“You haven’t had a proper walk since all this started.”

“Yeah!” Rory says. “Let’s go down to the beach—the tide is out and it will be awesome!”

“How do you know the tide will be out?” I ask him, checking on my phone, which confirms he is right.

“I don’t know—I just know,” he says. “There’s sort of a pattern that doesn’t repeat but it goes in a...” He makes a looping motion with his hand. “So, if you keep that in your head you can sort of see where it is, and anyway, can we go? Can we go? Can we go?”

“Okay,” I say, marveling at his hidden talents, which it seems are more than just howling to the theme tune fromEastEnders. “Let’s go out.”

Who needs the blissful oblivion of a carb coma anyway?

The tide is far out on North Bay, leaving long stretches of wet sand shimmering invitingly, gilded by the light of the full moon. It’s quieter here than it would be even at this hour on South Bay,where the music will still be pumping, the chips will still be frying, and young love will be blossoming up against the outside wall of the King Richard III pub.

On North Bay everything is closed. All you can hear is the rush and receding of waves. All you can see is the ruin of the castle perched high on the headland overlooking us all, and the faint lights of a cargo ship far out at sea that seems to hover like an alien craft above the lost horizon.

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