Page 88 of The Good Boy

“Oh my god, you’re doggers?” one kid splutters, horrified and amused. “I thought you were supposed to do that stuff in cars! Not in a park where children play. We are children, you perv!”

“Doggers?” Rory looks at me and shrugs. “Yeah, I guess we are doggers. And the thing is we really need to do our dogging there tonight.” He points at the flat surface of the central stone. “It’s happening whether you are here or not. So if you don’t want to see any old people dogging, then you probably should move. Otherwise we’ll just have to dog round you.”

“I’m calling the police on you!” one of the girls yells, as the others scramble to their feet and begin to hurry away. Turns out nothing frightens a teenager like the thought of old people doing it.

“We’d better crack on,” I say. “Before we’re arrested for...” I look at Steve. “No one has to take their clothes off, do they?”

“Once upon a time that would have been the way”—Druid Steve nods seriously—“but you won’t catch me doing anything in Scarborough without a vest on. Not even in summer. Not even mystical rituals.”

He opens the bulkier of his two bin liners full of things.

“There are, however, ceremonial items to be worn. Firstly, Rory must dress as the animal he is to become.”

“I brought my lead,” Rory says, fastening it around his neck. I hope the cops don’t turn up now. He squeaks his pigeon. “And Diego, and a tennis ball.”

“Ideally we would have the skin of a golden retriever for you to wear,” Steve says, delving into his bin bag and producing an adult-sized dog onesie in yellow faux fur, which he hands to Rory. “But obviously that would be morally dubious to say the least, and besides, I’m a vegan, so I have substituted any animal products with suitable alternatives.”

“It’s a me costume!” Rory is delighted as he holds the onesie out to look at. “I love it!”

Miles and I turn our backs as Rory takes off his clothes and puts on the onesie. We can hear him mumbling happily to himself as he zips it up.

“This is weird,” I tell Miles.

“It is,” Miles says happily. “I must say, Genie, that I have done more interesting and weird things since you turned Rory into a dog than I have done in my entire previous life.”

“Really?” I say with a pleased little smile. “Wait, that is a compliment, right?”

“It is,” he assures me with a grin. “It really is fun knowing you.”

“Now for you two,” Steve calls to us, just as the romantic notions are in danger of making themselves known.

“You are a doe,” Steve tells me, handing me what looks like the top half of a deer skull complete with antlers, and a hairband to secure it in place. “You strap this on your head and wear this round your shoulders.” He hands me a faux fur throw from Dunelm, with the sale label still attached. “Don’t worry—I had the antlers 3D-printed. They are surprisingly comfortable to wear.”

“Sort of thing you might forget you’ve got on,” I say, attempting to position the antlers with little success.

“Here,” Miles says, coming to my aid. Standing before him, I lower my eyes as he secures the band at the nape of my neck, acutely aware of the nearness of him. The scent of his skin and the way his shoulders fill out that anorak. Trust me, no one is more surprised than me by the erotic charge of a portable mackintosh, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and in my case it’s showerproof.

Just as he is about to step away I dare to look up at him. For a moment our gazes are connected and I wonder if there has ever been a more ridiculous lovelorn moment in the whole of human history than me, just a girl wearing antlers, standing in front of a boy who is about to put a bird on his head.

“You are the crow,” Steve tells Miles, passing him a hat. Miles grins with delight as he puts it on, and my heart skips a beat. Because it is impossible not to fall in love with a man who will willingly wear a black beanie hat with a soft-toy crow, complete with yellow googly eyes, sewn onto it, in a probably doomed bid to return a man to dogkind. But Miles is willing to give it a shot, and that is exactly the quality I look for in a man.

“And you...” Steve is about to offer Nanna Maria a cow-shapedfur hat, but the look on her face makes him think better of it. “Actually, no need for you to wear anything. You bring your own mystic power to the circle.”

“Indeed I do,” Nanna Maria says with more mystery than the situation requires. “Indeed I do.”

“If you stand opposite me, Madam Maria,” Steve says, regarding my nan with naked admiration that might have something to do with her leopard-print velvet flares, “and Miles and Genie, if you stand opposite each other. Rory, you sit on the central stone, doggy-style.”

“Is this where we sacrifice him?” I joke.

“Genie...” Rory looks anxious and I break the circle to go and stroke his polyester fur. He really has taken to the onesie, and I can see why. It is comforting.

“Everything’s fine,” I reassure him. “Mad as a box of frogs but perfectly safe. Now you just concentrate on being a dog. As doggy as you possibly can, okay? We will do the rest.”

“I will,” Rory says, pulling his hood up. “But I can feel my dogness fading away, Genie. It gets more and more like my rabbit-chasing dream every day—sort of far away and fuzzy.”

“You’ve got this, boy,” I say, kissing his forehead.

“Ready?” Steve looks at each of us in turn as I return to my spot, and we nod. Then all of a sudden it does seem that the modern world is very far away. The busy town below us is all at once shrouded in mist, and the row of houses over the road recedes into darkness as if it were never there. Even the orange streetlights flicker and dim. Wispy clouds part to reveal the bright moon above, as Steve the druid begins the ceremony. Rory lifts his face to the stars and howls. It’s a deep, long, plaintive cry, and in every note I hear his hope, his longing and despair.

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