The doorbell rang again, twice.
‘Come on, Tanze. It’s not going to be anything bad. Look, put Norman on the lead and bring him with you.’
Silence.
Out of sight, she let her head drop down and wiped her eyes in the crook of her arm. She couldn’t ignore it: Tanzie was getting worse, not better. In the last fortnight she had taken to sleeping in Jess’s bed. She no longer woke, crying, but crept across the hallway in the small hours and simply climbed in, so that Jess woke beside her with no idea of how long she had been there. She hadn’t had the heart to tell her not to, but the counsellor said pointedly that she was a little old to do that indefinitely.
‘Tanze?’
Nothing. The doorbell rang a third time, impatient now.
Jess waited, her ears trained on the silence. She was going to have to go down and do it herself.
‘Hold on,’ she called wearily. She began to peel off her rubber gloves, and then she stopped as she heard the footfall in the hallway. The lumbering, wheezing sound of Norman being tugged along. Tanzie’s sweet voice entreating him to come with her, a tone she only used with him these days.
And then the front door opening. Her satisfaction at the sound was tempered by the sudden realization that she should have told Tanzie to tell Aileen to go away. Given half a chance she would be in with her black bag on wheels and straight past her, settling herself on the sofa and her ‘bargains’ spread out on the living-room floor.
But it wasn’t Aileen’s voice she heard.
‘Hey, Norman.’
Jess froze.
‘Whoa. What happened to his face?’
‘He only has one eye now.’ Tanzie’s voice.
Jess tiptoed to the top of the stairs. She could see his feet. His Converse trainers. Her heart began to thump.
‘Did he have some kind of accident?’
‘He saved me. From the Fishers.’
‘He what?’
And then Tanzie’s voice – her mouth opening and the words coming out in a rush. ‘The Fishers tried to get me in a car and Norman bust through the fence to save me but he got hit by a car and we had no money but all these people sent money to us because of what Nicky wrote and then the vet let us off half the bill because he said he’d never met such a brave dog.’
Her daughter. Talking as if she wouldn’t stop.
Jess took one step down, and then another.
‘He nearly died,’ Tanzie said. ‘He nearly died and the vet didn’t even want to give him an operation because he was so sick with infernal injuries and he thought we should just let him go. But Mum said she didn’t want to and that we should give him a chance. And then Nicky wrote this blog about how everything had gone wrong and some people just sent him money. Well, lots of people sent little bits of money. For no reason. And we had enough to save him. So Norman saved me and people we don’t even know saved him, which is sort of cool. But he only has one eye now and he gets really tired because he’s still in recovery and he doesn’t do very much.’
She could see him now. He had crouched down, and was stroking Norman’s head. And she stared at him as if she couldn’t tear her eyes away: the dark hair, the way his shoulders fitted his T-shirt. That grey T-shirt. Something rose up in her and a muffled half-sob came out so that she had to press her arm against her mouth. And then he looked up at her daughter from his low position and his face was deadly serious. ‘Are you okay, Tanzie?’
She lifted a hand and twisted a lock of her hair, as if deciding how much to tell him. ‘Sort of.’
‘Oh, sweetheart.’
Tanzie hesitated, her toe rotating on the floor behind her, and then she simply stepped forward and walked into his open arms. He closed them around her, as if he had been waiting for just that thing, letting her rest her head against his shoulder and they just stayed there, her wrapped in his arms, in the hallway. Jess watched him close his eyes, and she had to take one step back up to where she couldn’t be seen because she was afraid if he saw her she wouldn’t be able to stop crying.
‘Well, you know, I knew,’ he said finally, when he pulled back, and his voice was oddly determined. ‘I knew there was something special about this dog. I could see it.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes. You and him. A team. Anyone with any sense could see it. And you know what? He looks pretty cool with one eye. He looks kind of tough. Nobody’s going to mess with Norman.’
Jess didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to go downstairs because she couldn’t bear him to look at her the way he did before. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t go down and she couldn’t move.
‘Mum told us why you don’t come round any more.’
‘She did?’
‘It was because she took your money.’
A painfully long silence.
‘She said she made a big mistake and she didn’t want us to do the same thing.’ Another silence. ‘Have you come to get it back?’
‘No. That’s not why I’ve come at all.’ He looked behind him. ‘Is she here?’
There was no avoiding it. Jess took one step down. And then another, her hand on the banister. She stood on the stairs with her rubber gloves on and waited as his eyes lifted to hers. And what he said next was the last thing she had expected him to say. ‘We need to get Tanzie to Basingstoke.’
‘What?’
‘The Olympiad. There was a mistake with the paper last time. And they’re resitting it. Today.’
Tanzie turned and looked up the stairs at her, frowning, as confused as Jess was. And then she looked as if a light-bulb had just gone on in her head. ‘Was it question one?’ she said.
He nodded.
‘I knew it!’ And she smiled, an abrupt, brilliant smile. ‘I knew there was something wrong with it!’
‘They want her to resit the whole paper?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘But that’s impossible.’
‘Not in Scotland. Basingstoke. It’s doable.’
She didn’t know what to say. She thought of all the ways in which she had destroyed her daughter’s confidence by pushing her to the Olympiad the previous time. She thought of her mad schemes, of how much hurt and damage their single trip had caused. ‘I don’t know …’
He was still balanced on his haunches. He reached out a hand and touched Tanzie’s arm. ‘You want to give it a go?’
Jess could see her uncertainty. Tanzie’s grip on Norman’s collar tightened. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. ‘You don’t have to, Tanze,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter one bit if you’d rather not.’