She waits a moment for her calls to reach somebody, but all around is silent, in the way that this place is always so silent. It’s one of the reasons why she is still here, fifty-five years after she was born in that huge, awful, beautiful, cold house, in her parents’ bed, a private midwife on hand, her birth leaving a bloodstain on the mattress that is still there to this day. It’s this—this silence. And she knows already that there is nobody else in the bluebell woods with her today; she knows that this dog has not eaten for at least a day, maybe longer; she knows that this dog is now her responsibility. She sighs and pulls a spare lead from her pocket and clips it to the dog’s collar.
“Well,” she says, leaning down to scratch him behind his ears, “I guess we need to take you home and get some food in you.”
She enters through the side door into the boot room, where she takes off all the dogs’ harnesses and leads, pulls off her own Wellingtons and puffa coat, pulls on the thick, fur-lined thermal socks she wears around the house, and then lets the dogs lead her into the kitchen, toward their bowls, which she fills from vats of incredibly expensive raw sludge she has delivered every month and stores in the freezer. She finds a smaller bowl for the new arrival, fills it with a few biscuits, and sets it down around the corner so that he is not disturbed.
She watches him eat and she looks at the time. Three fifty-eight. Still time to take him to the vet, find out if he’s chipped, find out who is missing him.
An old person, she imagines, maybe an old person who has died and nobody is aware. But she knows all the elderly people in the nearest village—and more than that, she knows all the dogs, and she has definitely never seen this dog before.
The local vet is called Hester. She is, uncharacteristically for a country vet, very sentimental about animals, and now she puts her nose up against the white dog’s snout and ruffles his ear.
“Poor baby,” she whispers up his nostrils. “Poor, poor stinky baby.”
Then she takes her scanner and runs it over his scrawny body and says, “Aha, bingo.”
On the screen of her computer, the dog’s details pop up.
“Well, hello, Hugo!”
“Hugo?” says Jane.
“Yes. Hugo Tucker to be precise. Of…” She scrolls through the details with a mouse. “Well, according to this, Hugo Tucker belongs to a Mr. Tucker who lives in London NW3.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” says Hester. “What on earth are you doing bang, slap in the middle of nowhere, Mr. Hugo Tucker?”
“Maybe he’s been stolen?”
“Quite likely. They do like nicking people’s dogs in London, don’t they? I keep reading about it. Or he’s been adopted, and the new owner didn’t reregister the chip? Anyway, let me give them a call.”
The call rings out after a while and Hester sighs and presses end. “Ah well,” she says. “I guess one of us will be taking him home tonight.”
“Wait,” says Jane. “My stepson Dexter lives near Hampstead. Let me take Hugo. I can go and see him while I’m there.”
“Well,” Hester says. “If you’re sure that’s OK?”
Jane nods.
Hester writes the address on a piece of paper and hands it to Jane, who puts it straight into her pocket without looking at it. “I’ll give him some fluids,” Hester says, “and then he should be good to go. Just keep me posted, will you?”
That night Hugo Tucker shares Jane’s bed with her. He settles quickly and neatly, squashed between Reggie and Bluto. It’s as if, Jane thinks, he’s always been here, and she decides that if she can’t find Mr. Tucker tomorrow in Hampstead, then Hugo can stay with her forever.
chapter two
The following morning, in leafy Belsize Park, Jane’s favorite stepchild, Dexter, opens the door to his apartment. His white-blond hair is scraped back off his face with a wide Lycra band and he is wearing an oversized sweatshirt, tiny shorts, and huge slippers in the form of a pair of sausage dogs. His face crumples at the sight of Hugo on the floor at Jane’s feet and he immediately drops to his haunches to greet him.
“Oh my God,” he says to the dog. “You are so beautiful!” He looks up at Jane with gentle eyes. “He’s so lovely! Don’t give him back!”
“I don’t want to,” says Jane. “But we have to. Shall I come in then?”
Dexter lives with his best friend in a high-ceilinged one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment paid for by his father, who is Jane’s second ex-husband, Tony. Dexter is Tony’s eldest child, just turned twenty-three, and despite a life of extreme privilege he is one of the sweetest, purest people that Jane has ever known. He was just eight when Jane married his father, a knock-kneed, skinny, scruffy boy with terrible eczema and a shock of wild white hair. They bonded over the family pet, a pug called Garibaldi that nobody else seemed to like, and have been close ever since.
The apartment is a tip; evidence of the night before lies everywhere. Empty shot glasses, makeup mirrors, stained tissues, a vodka bottle, a half-drunk bottle of prosecco, a sticky cocktail glass, and a carton of corner-shop pineapple juice.
“Let me just throw some clothes on,” says Dexter. “I won’t be long.”
Jane eyes the disarray and resists the urge to tidy it away. “What time did you get to bed last night?” she calls out to Dexter.
