Page 57

Chapter 57

February 2011

On her first morning at 25 Library Terrace, Tess stirs early, before the wintry dawn has lightened the sky.

Barely awake, she reaches automatically with her right hand for her phone, realising as she does so that not only is the phone missing but the room smells different from the house in Craiglockhart.

Halfway down the bed lies the warm lump that is Baxter.

He had started off lying obediently in his new basket, but despite her instructions, he has ended up on the bed beside her.

She has no idea what time it is.

Her alarm clock, along with her banking, her Instagram feed, endless amounts of fitness data and the weather app, are all gone.

She lies quietly; another day without a smartphone stretches ahead of her.

She rolls over carefully, but it’s too late; Baxter’s ears twitch and his head rises from the folds of the duvet and that’s it, the day has begun.

They play a game of chicken, each trying to pretend they are still asleep, but eventually he stretches, and nuzzles her arm.

Last night she fed him with biscuits, and there’s a handful left in the top pocket of her rucksack, but it has occurred to her that Baxter is not a vegetarian, and the tinned food he usually eats is not likely to be acceptable here.

She gets out of bed and pulls a baggy sweater on over her pyjamas before opening the bedroom door.

Baxter sweeps past her, all four paws in the air, racing for the stairs.

‘BAXTER!’ she hisses in a stage whisper, grabbing the bag of biscuits from her rucksack.

He stops suddenly on the top step.

‘Sit!’

She holds on tightly to the bag and sees his nose twitch.

He sits.

‘Heel,’ she says, and he waits for her to start walking down the stairs, his nose in the air, following the smell from the biscuit bag.

The door between the scullery and the kitchen is locked.

Tess walks around the kitchen looking for the key and eventually spots it hanging on a nail next to a narrow wooden staircase.

She unlocks the door to the scullery, fills Baxter’s steel bowl with fresh water at the old sink, and opens the back door, surprised to find it unlocked.

She slips her walking boots on and tucks the laces in without tying them.

There has been a frost overnight, but there’s no sign of any return of the huge snowfall they had in December.

The insides of her boots are cold against her bare feet.

‘Stay!’

She walks slowly up the garden, dropping a trail of biscuits into the grass behind her.

Baxter waits.

‘Find!’

He bounds from biscuit to biscuit, and ends up sitting at her feet, his tail swiping from side to side.

She rubs his ears and they walk around the garden together for a few minutes.

‘We’d better go in. You’ll get cold, and I need to find you some proper food.

’

Georgia is waiting for them in the kitchen.

‘I’ve put the kettle on for CT1,’ she says.

‘CT1?’

‘Cup of Tea One. I need at least two and preferably three before I’m any use at all.

’

Tess hesitates. ‘I need to speak to you about food for Baxter. I assume you’ll not be wanting tins of dog food in the house.

’

‘Yes.’ Georgia shakes her head.

‘I mean no.’ She sighs.

‘I told you I was no good until I’ve drunk CT2, at the very least.’

‘Sorry. It’s just that he’s hungry and I’ll need to go and get him something to eat.

’

‘No tinned food, please. But there’s a vet on the main road, I’m sure they’ll have something suitable.

’ Georgia looks at Baxter.

‘And after that perhaps you can order some for him online?’

‘I could.’ Tess struggles to explain.

‘But I can’t do computers at the moment.

’

‘Not at all?’

Tess shakes her head.

‘Part of the no phone thing, I suppose?’

‘Sorry. I’m a bit of a mess.

’

‘Well, maybe in a few weeks you’ll feel better about that.

I always include food in the rent but I’m not sure I want to extend that to dog food.

I think you should pay for that yourself.

If you can decide what you want, I’ll order it online for you and you can pay me at the end of the month.

’

Tess smiles. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much. I need to take him out for a bit of a walk. I’ll just throw some clothes on and I’ll call in at the vet on the way back.

’ She glances up at the kitchen clock.

‘They probably open at eight or maybe half past. Do you, or do we, need anything while I’m out?

’

Georgia shakes her head.

‘No, thanks. Fully stocked and ready for a siege here. You can leave him with me while you get your coat, if you like. No point in dragging him up and down the stairs.’

But Baxter, ever hopeful of more biscuits, is having none of it, and follows Tess up the stairs and back down again with great determination.

They leave by the back door, Baxter wearing his new bright green harness.

Outside in the street Tess instinctively feels for the clip-on fitness tracker she keeps in the pocket of her fleece and pulls it out to examine it.

The battery has been flat for days and there seems little point in carrying it if she isn’t going to store the data and analyse it and compare it to last week, last month, last year, and look at her weight and compare that with the step count and plan the next week ahead and .

.?. she holds it gingerly between her finger and thumb as though it is contaminated in some way.

How long has she been using it?

She tries to remember.

September, the birthday before last. Sixteen months?

Seventeen? It was her birthday present from Patrick, bought on a trip to New York, just after it was launched.

All those steps counted, notes compared as she tried to beat his daily total, and then feeling like a complete slacker when he out-stepped her.

And what did any of it mean now anyway?

She takes a firmer hold of Baxter’s lead, and sets off for Blackford Pond and the hills behind it.

As she turns the corner, she pauses briefly and discards the tracker on the waist-high wall of a random house.

Baxter is already tugging on the lead, and is ready to get up to his belly in leaves and mud.

He doesn’t care about the number of steps he takes, and now, neither does she.