‘To be honest, I’d agree with you,’ he said. ‘More evocative. Although I always felt that Anne had the best grasp of character out of the Brontë sisters.’
‘Exactly,’ I said, surprised beyond measure to be having this kind of conversation with a man in his sixties on top of Briar’s Hill. Unfortunately, there were more pressing matters at hand than debating nineteenth-century literary greats and I glanced at the dogless lead in my hand with a look of consternation.
David looked down at Pilot. ‘Off you go then boy,’ he said, giving the slightest of gestures with his hand. ‘See what you can find.’
I started calling Orinoco’s name in my nicest friendly dog-sitter voice (not the one I was using previously, which had a much more Cruella De Vil puppy-farm tone to it). Pilot trotted off calmly in the direction of some murky undergrowth. After a few minutes of calling I stopped, dispirited.
‘What am I going to do if I really have lost him?’ I said, panicking slightly. I was just imagining Farah’s face as I brokethe news that her precious dog (well, her stepson’s precious dog) had gone missing.
‘Orin-o-co!’ David called again, and it must have been some kind of dog-whisperer voice, or maybe it was the rustle of treats from his pocket, or maybe it was Pilot sending out special good boy vibes… Either way, who should come bounding out of the undergrowth with a dead pigeon in his mouth but the hound himself, the cock-a-hoop cockapoo.
‘Oh, god,’ I said, staring at the lolling head of the pigeon as David bent to grab hold of Orinoco’s collar.
‘Suspect that was dead already,’ said David. ‘Drop!’
Orinoco obliged and David nudged the pigeon with his fingertips. ‘Yep,’ he said, straightening back up. ‘Cold as a stone. That’s been dead a few hours, despite this lad here claiming him as a prize.’ He gave Orinoco a little rub behind the ears and clipped the lead back onto his collar before handing it back to me. ‘There we go.’
‘Thank you so much for helping me,’ I said, relief oozing from every pore in my sweaty face. ‘You’re an absolute lifesaver. I’d never have got him back if it wasn’t for you and Pilot. I’m so grateful.’
And then it hit me. ‘Oh, my god! What is thatsmell?!’
‘That’ll be fox poo,’ David said grimly. ‘They love rolling in it. Bit of baby shampoo and warm water will sort it out.’
‘Urrggh.’ I made a noise halfway between retching and crying. ‘That is disgusting!’
He nodded. ‘It’s one of the joys of dog ownership I’m afraid. Anyway…’ He pointed in the direction of where he’d appeared earlier. ‘I’ll be off now. That’s enough excitement for one day. I’d keep him on the lead until you get home.’
‘I will. And thank you so much,’ I said.
‘No bother.’ He waved cheerfully as he limped off with his dog.
I looked down at Orinoco, his tongue lolling happily out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Actually, itwasa bother,’ I said sternly.
He licked my hand apologetically and then bounced up to plant two muddy paws on my jeans.
‘You are a bit stupid, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘But I understand that you mean well.’
His adoring expression was fooling no one so we made our way out of the thicket and back home, where I spent two hours chasing him around the garden with a hose and a bottle of Timotei. The cats looked on warily from the upstairs windows and occasionally I broke off halfway through the chase to stare up at them and mouth a silent apology. Margaret was having none of it. The disdain was palpable through eight millimetres of double-glazing two storeys up.
Eventually I caught up with Orinoco and managed to partially hose him down. We both ended up freezing cold, soaking wet, and smelling dreadful. The whole palaver had taken up five hours of my day and by the time I had dried him off, shut him in the kitchen, showered and thrown my clothes into the wash I realised I had sacrificed most of my working day to this canine. How anybody managed to have a life and a dog was beyond me.
However, the advantage of my job is that the hours are extremely flexible and as I opened up my laptop (in the kitchen so I could oversee any possible damage Orinoco was about to inflict on the table legs) I was fairly confident that I could get a couple of hours’ work complete before needing to start on dinner.
There were four new emails in my inbox. One from Layla’s university finance department outlining the direct debit schedule for her accommodation (first instalment was three thousand pounds, just before Christmas – lovely, thanks), one from a budget airline we’d used for a family holiday seven years ago stating, ‘We haven’t seen you for a while Hairnet Harper!How about a trip to your dream destination?’ (chance would be a fine thing), one from Chaldon village hall committee asking for new members (could not think of anything worse), and one from the pharmaceutical company who employed me entitled ‘Incorporating cutting edge technology into our workforce strategy’. This sounded benign and harmless enough, but a tiny alarm bell went off in my head as I opened up the message.
There was the usual deluge of meaningless jargon that I had come to expect from them, but hidden amongst the ‘shared vision’, ‘dynamic streamlining’, ‘efficiency savings’ and ‘maximising new opportunities’ was a more worrying message that became clear as I neared the final sentence. ‘…As a result of the re-structuring programme and the embracing of new technologies we will no longer be requiring your editorial services.’
I was being replaced with AI and was therefore out of a job.
Fuck.
Chapter Ten
At least I had something to talk to Joe about that evening – just a shame it was so depressing. The trouble was that we needed my income, meagre as it was, to supplement Layla’s living costs. University accommodation was expensive, and we had agreed to try and pay for it ourselves rather than saddling her with even more postgraduate debt on top of paying back her tuition fees. Even if she had taken the full student loan available to her it wouldn’t have covered the cost of her halls of residence, let alone any living expenses. And I wanted her to have a great time at university. I didn’t want her to have to find a part-time job while she was there, on top of the supermarket work she would be doing during the holidays.
I could tell the news worried Joe too, even though he tried his best to hide it.
‘Could you look for another contract?’ he asked, as Orinoco whirled around his heels. ‘Or maybe increase the freelance stuff? Jesus Christ, this dog is a lunatic!’
