The next day I was booked to see Lily Jago and her shihtzu, Jennifer Aniston. I read the e-mail again. ‘Not allowed to take her to work any more…she’s clearly having a nervous breakdown…wreaking havoc at home…can’t cope…Help!!!!’ It sounded like a pretty straightforward case of separation anxiety. The appointment was at half past four. So I pushed away the negativity which had paralysed me for the previous twenty-four hours and forced myself to work. I spent the morning writing a flyer to send to local vets. I also called the Camden New Journal to see whether they might be interested in doing a short piece about me—anything to get the clients rolling in. I wrote my follow-up report to send to the Greens about their Irish setter, then Clare, the producer of Animal Crackers, rang. She wanted to arrange the next filming schedule and told me that the new series had just got a good advance preview in TV Life!. I went down to the shop and bought it, and there was a photo of the presenter, Kate Laurie, with a Shetland pony, and, inset, a small one of me.
We love our pets, but do we drive them crazy? it asked. That’s what Kate Laurie will be finding out in the new series of Animal Crackers with help from our resident ‘pet psychiatrist’, Miranda Sweet. It had a five star rating and was described as ‘compulsive viewing’. I felt pleased and relieved. I idly flicked through the rest of the magazine and suddenly saw Alexander’s face. It loomed out of the ‘Hot New Talent’ slot on page eight. I caught my breath. He looked heartbreakingly handsome in his eighteenth-century naval uniform. Alexander Darke in the new swashbuckling drama, Land Ahoy!, announced the caption. A shard of glass pierced my heart.
Alexander Darke possesses a beguiling blend of old-fashioned charm and courtesy, the piece began. Unused to being interviewed, he responds to questions with polite enquiries of his own. But he will have to get used to the media spotlight, for, after twelve years of ‘treading water more than boards’, as he modestly puts it, Land Ahoy! is set to make him a star. It was obvious that the journalist had fancied him. She rhapsodized about his Byronic looks…like a young Richard Chamberlain, and his athletic physique. I felt another sharp pang. This gorgeous Darke horse seems inspired casting as the brave yet unemotional seafaring man, she gushed. Well, the ‘Darke horse’ part of it was certainly true. Land Ahoy!’s female lead is the luscious Tilly Bishop, 25, who recently starred in the hit romantic comedy, Reality Cheque. I felt sick.
By now it had gone three, so I settled Herman, and walked over the railway bridge to the tube. I got the train to Embankment, then another to Sloane Square, then strolled down the King’s Road. Daisy had warned me what to expect about Lily Jago. ‘She’s a chronic drama queen,’ she’d said. I knew that Lily was a fanatical animal lover because she’d recently got into trouble for refusing to employ a Korean girl on the basis that she came from a country where they eat dogs. Lily had been taken to a tribunal, the publishers of Moi! had been fined, and it had been splashed all over the press. She’d only kept her job because she’d lifted the magazine’s circulation by fifty-six per cent in the previous year.
‘Thank God you’re here!’ she breathed as she opened the front door of her flat in Glebe Place. There were feathers in her hair. ‘It’s been absolute hell!’ I went inside, and saw that the avian trail led all the way down the hall to the sitting room. ‘Just look what the little monster has done!’
The shih-tzu sat on the sofa, amidst the wreckage of two eviscerated cushions, indignation and distress in her bulgy brown eyes.
‘I came back ten minutes ago to find this, this…devastation!’ Lily wailed. This wasn’t really devastation. I’ve seen houses where the dog has shredded the wallpaper. ‘The little vandal! I just don’t know what to do!’ I got Lily to calm down, then asked her when the problems had started.
‘A month ago,’ she replied. ‘You see, Moi! was taken over,’ she explained, as she lit a cheroot with a trembling hand. ‘And the new proprietor won’t allow animals at work. Not so much as a goldfish!’ she added irritably. She tossed back her head and a twin plume of blue smoke streamed from her elegant nose. ‘So I now have no option but to leave Jennifer at home. But the point is she’s not used to it, because for the past two years she’s always come in with me. For a while she was even editing her own section.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. She had a dogs’ beauty problem page. Anyway, she’s obviously missing office life, so I suppose that’s why she’s being beastly.’
‘I don’t think that’s it at all.’
‘I think she’s doing it to get back at me,’ said Lily, her eyes narrowing as she drew on the cheroot again. ‘For leaving her on her own.’
I sighed. This, sadly, is a common misconception. ‘Miss Jago,’ I began wearily.
She waved an elegant hand at me. ‘Call me Lily.’
‘Lily,’ I tried again. ‘Let me reassure you that dogs are quite incapable of forming the abstract concept of “revenge”. This is a classic case of separation anxiety. It’s not that she’s “missing the office”, or “trying to get her own back”. It’s simply that being alone gives her terrible stress.’
‘Well, she does have a walker who comes to take her out at lunchtimes, not least so that she can, you know—’ Lily lowered her voice ‘—wash her hands.’
‘Hmm. I see. But, apart from that, she’s on her own for what, three or four hours at a stretch?’ Lily nodded guiltily. ‘Well, that’s quite a long time.’
‘I’ve no choice!’ I stood up. Lily looked alarmed. ‘Christ, you’re not going are you?’
‘No. I’m not. I’d like you to show me your leaving routine. I’d like you to pretend that it’s the morning, and you’re about to go off to work.’
‘You mean, act it out?’
‘Yes. The whole works. Putting on your coat, getting your bag, saying goodbye to Jennifer, and locking the door. Please make it as realistic as you can and pretend that I’m not here.’
She looked at me sceptically. ‘Ok-ay.’
I followed Lily to the gleaming steel and black granite kitchen where she filled Jennifer’s bowl—it looked like porcelain—with Dogobix. Then, Jennifer following her, grunting, down the long, cream-carpeted hallway, Lily picked up her jacket and bag. Jennifer’s body suddenly stiffened with apprehension.
‘Ok-ay dar-ling,’ Lily sang. ‘It’s time for Mummy to go to work now.’ Jennifer began to whine. ‘No, sweetie, don’t cry, Mummy’s got to go to work so that she can buy you all sorts of lovely things. Like that Gucci collar you want—remember? And that Theo Fennell silver bowl? So I’m just…going out…’ Jennifer was racing crazily round Lily’s feet, whimpering and hyperventilating, ‘…for a lit-tle while.’ By now Jennifer was screaming like a banshee as Lily and I backed out through the front door. She turned the key, then bent down and opened the letter-box. ‘Bye-bye, my sweet little darling,’ she called through it, ‘bye-bye, my love,’ then she straightened up. She looked at me, and her face suddenly crumpled like an empty crisp packet. ‘Oh God—I just can’t bear it!’ She unlocked the door again, scooped Jennifer up in her arms, and kissed her flattened little face several times.
