in the gloaming.
The windows of most of the cottages are lit up, some with curtains drawn, others still open. I watch families inside, brief glimpses of kids running around, flickering television sets, one window steamed up as someone works in the kitchen.
I’m not sure if our cottage is one of the ones I can see or if it is further afield. I can just about make out a path running down the side of the terrace and the shapes of a few more buildings beyond.
I decide we can explore later – but first I need to figure out how to unpack the roofbox. It occurred to me about an hour ago that I have possibly made something of a tactical error with the roofbox. When I was putting the stuff in it, I had to stand on a foot stool so I could manage.
Obviously, I didn’t bring the foot stool with me, and as I haven’t grown on the journey, I’m still about inches too small to reach. It’s a tricky one – and I suppose I’ll just have to hope they have foot stools in Dorset, or perhaps tall people. At least we are here.
I pull open the front and rear car doors, and the detritus of the journey tumbles out of every footwell – carrier bags full of tissues, muffin wrappers and apple cores, old drinks cups from McDonald’s, soft bananas with blackened skin, a torn leaflet about English Heritage, and finally, groggily, two grouchy children. I gather the litter up to put in the bin and pull open the boot so that poor Jimbo can clamber out and stretch his old legs.
Except Jimbo, of course, decides that after being cooped up in the car for far too long, he isn’t old at all. In fact he’s decided that he’s basically a puppy and sprints off over the grass like a gazelle on cocaine, springing and leaping and arcing through the dim evening sky.
He gallops in circles around and around on the grass, the solar lights highlighting the black gleam of his coat and reflecting off his eyes so he looks slightly demonic. He woofs and growls with sheer delight as he pursues his own tail and claws at the ground with his paws.
The kids start to laugh and I have to join in. I may be exhausted and frazzled and burned out, but the sound of my children giggling is enough to revitalise me even more effectively than a spa break and a bucket of chilled prosecco.
They’re both at such awkward ages – half-baked humans, not quite grown up, not quite babies – that giggling isn’t something that often occurs in our house. Lizzie’s out with her friends more and more and Nate spends a lot of time in his room playing X Box Live. They bounce between needing me and not needing me, and in Lizzie’s case between liking me and despising me. Even without the whole dead dad thing, I suspect it would have been a difficult time for us all.
Our laughter and the dog’s playful gnashing, are pretty much the only sounds I can hear. It’s almost alarmingly quiet at the Rockery. The families are all inside, living their barely glimpsed lives. There’s no traffic at all. No loud music coming from loud cars, distant sirens screeching, or trains or trams rattling past. None of the usual urban noises we’re all used to. Just the delicate twittering of birds at dusk, singing their last hurrah before bed time.
Jimbo jumps to his feet and his ears go on alert. We might think it’s quiet, and he might be about a thousand in dog years, but he can clearly hear something we can’t. His head swivels around, grey muzzle pointing towards the cottages, and he is suddenly galvanised into the fastest run I’ve seen from him in months.
He gallops away towards the path by the terrace, his inky fur starting to fade into the darkening light, his red collar just about still visible. I run after him and feel my now-frizzy curly brown hair billowing out behind me.
I catch up just at the point where the path stretches off between the buildings. There are a few more solar lights peeking out of the bedding plants here, so I can see exactly what has attracted his attention, and exactly why he’s stopped long enough for me to reach him.
Jimbo currently has his nose buried in the crotch of a man who appears to be only wearing a white towel, tied around his waist. There’s a lot more of him on display than I’ve seen of a man in real life for quite a while, and I’m glad it’s not light enough for him to properly see my bright-red face – a combination of being too hot, running when I’m about as naturally athletic as an asthmatic tortoise and being a bit embarrassed.
He’s tall, with wide shoulders that look on the brawny side. Like I imagine a blacksmith would look if I’d ever met one. Not many of those knocking round Manchester, funnily enough. His hair looks like it’s probably dark brown, a bit too long, and it’s dripping water all over his shoulders. I conclude from this, and from the fact that I can now see the swimming pool complex behind him, that he’s been for a dip.
It’s pleasantly warm now, even as evening falls, and I can see how that would be an attractive proposition. I quite fancy jumping into a pool and washing off the cares of the day myself. But first I have to try and drag my perverted old Labrador’s face out of a strange man’s nether regions.
I’m not quite sure how to go about it and am fearful that if I make a grab for Jimbo, I might accidentally dislodge the towel as well – which would be very rude indeed.
‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry,’ I mumble, trying to get hold of Jimbo’s collar so I can tug him back from his erotic encounter. ‘Jimbo!’
Jimbo has not only found the speed of a much younger dog today, he’s also found the disobedience levels of a puppy and he fights me every inch. He’s way too interested in having a good sniff.
So I tug and mutter apologies, and try to ignore the dog’s disturbing snuffling noises as he buries his nose even further into the white towel. I also become aware that the kids have followed and are now sniggering away behind me. I realise that this really must all look very, very funny to someone who isn’t, you know, me.
The man is taking this canine sexual assault extremely well and eventually he simply leans down, takes Jimbo’s muzzle in one large hand and pulls it firmly away. He keeps hold of it and then kneels down in front of him, so he’s on eye level. He lets go of Jimbo’s mouth and starts scratching behind his floppy black ears, making his furry head twist around in ecstasy.
All the time, the man murmurs ‘good lad’-type noises, while also gazing into the pooch’s eyes and exercising some kind of Jedi mind-control trick that keeps him relatively still. For a few moments at least.
Jimbo suddenly darts forward to give the man’s face a very thorough tongue bath, then plops himself down at his feet. Within seconds, he’s snoring, curled up in an exhausted ball.
The dog whisperer stands up, holding on to the towel at his waist, although I have thankfully noticed the band of a pair of swimming trunks peeking out.
‘How old is he?’ the man asks, looking down at Jimbo, who is, I see, not lying at his feet – he’s actually lying on his feet.
‘Almost thirteen,’ I say, ‘and I’m so sorry.’
I am feeling suddenly very tired and very sad. The absurdity of my situation flashes across my mind: I have uprooted my children, myself and my very elderly dog on some kind of wild-goose chase, pursuing God knows what. Happiness? Progress? A break from the underlying misery that seems to have been wrapped around my heart every day since David died?
Well, whatever it is, I’m not pursuing it fast enough – all I’m finding is exhaustion, grumpy kids, senile dogs and a caffeine overload. That and chronic embarrassment as I apologise to a mostly naked man, in the dark, in a place I’ve never even visited before – a place I’ve unilaterally decided to make our
