Page 55 of The Good Boy

“That’s so wise, sweet, and sensitive,” Sally says, tilting her head. “Of course you only like boys.”

“Oh, I like girls too,” Rory says. “I like everyone. Except men with beards.”

“Anyway,” I say before this goes any further, “lunch break is over. We’d better get back to—”

But before I can finish my sentence Rory and the dogs take off once more, haring toward the treeline.

“Squirrel!” Rory shouts over his shoulder as he joins the chase.

“Off I go again!” Sally yells as she scrambles up.

“Shall we... not?” I say to Miles, flopping back onto the grass. He does the same. Very slowly I turn to look at him to find that he is looking at me. There is something in his eyes, something that makes me start to think something half formed and hopeful. But before I can get it straight in my head Rory crashes back down next to me, and he is very upset.

“We’ve got to go, Genie,” he says. “We’ve got to go now.”

“What?” I sit up, looking around. The dogs are all still playing over on the other side of the park, and a little way off there’s a man with a small Lab mix on a lead, jerking her to heel every few seconds even though she’s not pulling.

“It’s him,” Rory says, keeping his face down and his eyes averted. “It’s the man that had me before. I can’t let him see me, Genie.” I put an arm around Rory’s shoulders and feel him trembling in fear. “Don’t let him take me away again, Genie.”

“He’s got another dog?” I mutter, watching the man yank the poor animal on after she dared to stop and sniff for a second. I see that her tummy is swollen, she is expecting puppies, poor, poor girl. “Rory, are you sure it’s him?”

Rory just nods, trying to make himself smaller and smaller, cowering behind me.

“It’s okay, Rory,” Miles tells him. “He won’t recognize you now, and even if he did, he couldn’t hurt you. He is a weaselly little bully and you are a huge great muscle-bound giant. If anything, you’d scare him.”

Rory doesn’t seem to agree; his shoulders are hunched, his eyes are fixed on the ground. I’m reminded of when I first brought him home from the shelter. Even after weeks of care and therapy he was still so scared when I took him home. For the first few hours he wouldn’t even sit down; he’d just stand in the corner looking at me, panting with anxiety. That night we had both camped out in the living room, me on the sofa, him exhausted and as far away from me as he could get on the other side of the room. That horrible little man over there had frightened my Rory so much that it had taken months for him to trust me, months more for him to finally feel safe. And now he has another dog?

“I’m having a word with him,” I say, starting to climb to my feet.

“No, no, Genie, no.” Rory drags me back down. “Please. Please, can we just go away from him? Now?”

“I think Rory needs a safe space,” Miles says.

I look from Rory, who’s curled himself up into as small a shape as he can, his knees tucked under his chin, to the dog who trots alongside the man, her head and tail down. Miles is right.

“Come on, then,” I say reluctantly as I see the little dog vanish among the trees. “Time to go home.”

I make a promise to that little dog. As soon as I’ve got Rory sorted out, I’m going to find her and get her to a safe place too.

Chapter Twenty

“Some thingshave got to change,” I tell Rory as I let us into the house before we head off to take Kelly on her stakeout. “You can’t just go around chasing squirrels now that you are a six-foot-something man. You’ll get arrested by the RSPCA or something.”

“You don’t understand, Genie,” Rory tells me earnestly. “Squirrels might look cute, with their fluffy tails and chubby cheeks, but they are evil. And it is every dog’s sacred duty to protect mankind from the scourge of squirrels. We practically take an oath.”

He’s been much more like his old self, minus the tail and floppy ears, since we got away from the park. Like the minute he couldn’t see that horrible man, he forgot he existed. I hated seeing him like that, just as I hate that there are people in the world who seem to exist to make other humans or creatures feel afraid. I really hate the thought that Rory could turn the corner one day and be right back there in that same, terrified space again. I really wish I could change that for him, forever.

“Rory, are you fibbing about that oath?” I ask.

“I said ‘practically’!” he adds, offended.

“Well, I wish you felt the same about spiders.”

“I don’t like spiders—they’ve got way more legs than is reasonable,” Rory says. “The thing is, when I see a squirrel I feel thesame way that you do when someone jumps a queue in the store. It’s like a red mist comes down and all I want to do is violence.”

“That was one time,” I say, reflecting on my lifetime ban from the grocery store for aggravated assault with a home-baked baguette. “Anyway, you never even come close to catching one.”

“It’s like David Attenborough says about global warming,” Rory says. “It might seem impossible, but you can never give up.”

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