of emotions.
‘Is there a reward?’ he asked, stopping me in my tracks.
‘Er, I . . . I don’t know,’ I stuttered.
‘Well, is there or not?’
‘Does it matter?’ I said, suddenly indignant. ‘Have you any information or not?’
‘Well, it all depends on how much the reward is.’
I took the phone away from my ear and stared at it aghast, horrified that the safe return of my beloved dog was reliant on how much I paid. Wasn’t this akin to kidnapping and demanding a ransom?
My head wrestled in vain to win the tug of war with my heart. It was a poorly fought battle.
‘A thousand pounds,’ I said, suddenly aware of how much I wanted Tyson back. The ache was so profound that I would pay five times more. I wonder if he heard it in my voice.
‘Whoa,’ the voice said. ‘You really like this dog, huh?’ I stayed silent whilst he conducted a muffled conversation at his end. ‘We’ll think about it and let you know tomorrow.’
The call abruptly ended as I cried, ‘I’ll give you five thousand!’ into the dead air.
17
My sleep was interspersed with vivid sightings of Tyson. He was around every corner, running through every meadow. I could hear myself laughing as he bounded towards me, my arms outstretched ready to embrace him, but as he leapt up into them, a car came from nowhere and mowed him down. My own screaming woke me up.
‘Ssh, it’s okay, it’s just a bad dream,’ whispered Thomas as he wrapped his strong arms around me. My heart was racing, and my breathing came in short sharp pants as I struggled to get myself back around the right way.
‘It’s okay,’ he repeated over and over, and for a few moments I believed him, but then came the sudden rush of reality as the harsh facts presented themselves.
‘But it’s not,’ I cried. ‘It’s not okay.’
‘I’ll deal with it tomorrow,’ he said. ‘If that man’s got Tyson, I promise we’ll get him back.’
‘And if he hasn’t?’
‘I’ll get him back,’ is the last thing I remember him saying, before I dozed off again.
He was gone by the time I woke up, my hand instinctively reaching down to the floor beside the bed, giving Tyson the sign that it was okay to jump up. I waited momentarily for my face to be licked or the unmistakable swish of an excitable tail going from side to side. It felt like I’d been punched when I remembered he wasn’t there. My body ached with yearning and I thought, as I so often do, about the passage of time. How so much can happen in twenty-four hours – in one hour – one minute. That’s all it takes for your whole world to turn on its axis. In just a moment, everything can change, and your life will never be the same again.
That’s how it had felt when my dad died suddenly. He’d uncharacteristically taken the day before off work, and we’d gone out on the boat – just the two of us. It was the most perfect day; the sun scorched in a bright blue sky and the light breeze worked in our favour as we sailed my namesake out onto the Solent. We had anchored off the coast of the Isle of Wight and called a tender to take us to one of Dad’s restaurants.
‘How are you, my friend?’ asked the head chef, Antonio, as he kissed Dad on both cheeks.
‘Very good,’ Dad had replied, his accent so much more Italian whenever he spoke to a fellow countryman. ‘I couldn’t be better.’
‘And my, how you’ve grown,’ Antonio said to me. ‘I remember you when you were down here.’ I’d smiled as he’d held a hand out a few inches from the floor. ‘What are you now? Fifteen, Sixteen?’
‘Thirteen,’ I’d giggled, secretly pleased that he thought I looked older.
‘Bellisima!’ he said. ‘And Mrs Russo? Is she not with you?’
‘No, it’s just me and this one today,’ Dad had said, ruffling my head as if I was three. I flattened my hair self-consciously. ‘Father and daughter time.’
If I had been cross with him for treating me like a child, it didn’t last long, as he poured the tiniest amount of white wine into one of the glasses set on the table.
‘Don’t tell your mother,’ he’d said, winking.
I remember the sun shining and Dad offering to swap seats because he had sunglasses and I didn’t. I remember the starched white tablecloths and the smell of olive oil and garlic as