Nicola Barker - Love Your Enemies

Nobody replied. He sighed. ‘He’s in the kitchen.’

The four visitors exchanged significant glances and then turned towards the doorway. Hetty said quietly, ‘This is for the best, Ant. You know it makes sense.’

Anthony could feel a warm tickling in his nose, a now familiar sensation which felt like tears were being wept inside his brain, hot, internal tears which were searching frantically for all available exit routes. He knew it would end in ugliness.

He listened as the small group walked without speaking down the hallway and towards the kitchen door. When he heard the door being opened, he sprang stealthily to his feet and tip-toed after his unsuspecting predecessors in his soft leather moccasins. As he made his silent way down the hallway, he listened out for what was being said. First of all he heard Hetty’s high and slightly nasal intonations saying, ‘I can’t see him. He must be inside his indoor kennel. Get down, Michael and have a look.’ He heard Michael’s stiff hip-bones clicking as he bent down on his hands and knees, then Michael’s voice. ‘There’s a lot of hair in there. I think that’s him at the back. Come on, Silver, come on!’

The group began calling and cooing and making silly kissing noises to try and encourage the dog to come out. In fact, the dog was not in the kennel at all, only a white, synthetic-fur rug.

Anthony restrained his keen impulse to keep looking in at them, and instead quickly slammed the door shut and turned the key, which he had furtively moved to the other side of the door at the start of their visit. He grinned to himself and rubbed his hands together.

Hetty was the first to react. Hearing the loud slamming noise and the key turning, she ran to the back door of the kitchen — which led into Anthony’s very large and grand back garden — and tried to get it open. It appeared to have been effectively blockaded from the outside. Gasping with horror she turned and ran towards the door that Anthony had just locked, and tried the handle. All means of exit had been thoroughly curtailed.

Michael — still on his knees and looking slightly ridiculous — cautioned Hetty against trying the windows. He said, ‘Remember, Sarah had the house windows alarmed after the break-in last summer. Let’s not cause a scene, it could be embarrassing. Humour him.’

Anthony heard these words of reason and shook his head disapprovingly. As he made his way back down the hallway and towards the large white box by the front door that housed the alarm mechanism he muttered under his breath, ‘Michael Pillow; always was the brains of the bunch.’

He opened the box, and felt around in his pocket for a tissue. He was a tissue man, never had time for handkerchiefs. He located a large man-sized blue tissue, slightly crumpled, and ripped it into two big pieces, then moulded them carefully and placed one piece in either ear. When he had completed this process he looked rather like a fancy fish with impressive, sprouty, decorative blue gill-shields sticking out on either side of his head. After finishing this task, he reached into the box and set off the alarm. Despite his makeshift earplugs, the high volume of noise made him wince. Nevertheless, he closed the box and marched resolutely towards the front door.

Outside in her white Mercedes, Sarah was sitting staring keenly out of her open window. She frowned when she heard the alarm go off, then let out a furious and unladylike grunt when she saw Anthony emerging from the house, ears stoppered and tissues waving on either side of his head. As he drew closer, she locked the doors and pressed the switch to wind up her window. Anthony broke into a trot to try and impede this process, and as he increased speed his bulk shuddered like a big, bold jelly in a bag. He stuck his hand into the top of the window and then screamed as the pane of glass continued to rise and then to violently crush his fingers. This short scream caused a flicker of joy to cross Sarah’s now somewhat disgruntled visage. Unfortunately, the scream also triggered the temperamental mechanism in Anthony’s brain which controlled the regular flow of blood around his anatomy. This switch turned on to nose-bleed mode and the blood poured forth from Anthony’s unsuspecting nostrils like a fountain of bright red ink, interspersed with the occasional darker, blacker clot.

Sarah screwed her face up fastidiously. She shouted, ‘Get away from my car, Anthony. Don’t bleed on my car!’

From inside the car her voice sounded round and hollow, as though it came from underwater. Anthony, his hand still caught and bruising inside Sarah’s window, shook his head. The blood spun from side to side in tiny spurts like the end of a troublesome garden hose. He said, ‘I didn’t have these nose-bleeds before, you know. The doctor said that they are stress-related. The living-room carpet will never be the same, nor the counterpane on our bed either.’

Sarah smiled grimly. ‘The counterpane on your bed, Anthony, not mine.’

He launched his bulk on to the front of Sarah’s car (his freedom of movement somewhat restricted by his trapped hand), and rubbed his streaming nose vigorously around on the large white bonnet, bloodying it, marking it, painting it like a crazed expressionist with his nose-brush. Sarah screamed shrilly and pressed the dashboard button responsible for cleaning the front windows. Ineffective soapy jets shot skywards from the base of the windscreen and disappeared uselessly over the roof of the car. When Anthony had finished, the effect created on the bonnet was of a particularly gruesome hit and run accident.

At this moment, alerted by the alarm, the police arrived. A young-looking officer glared at Sarah and tapped in a businesslike way at the window on the passenger side. She smiled hollowly but professionally and reached over to open it. The policeman peered inside at her. ‘Mrs Bland, have you violated the court order again? If so …’ She shook her head, and her sweet blonde bob lurched around her heart-shaped face like a heavy drinker at closing time. Her face was demure, but her skin had been gravelly since adolescence. She always made-up very heavily. She said, ‘I haven’t been near the house.’

Anthony, at this stage, had sunk to his knees on the road next to the car, his hand still trapped. He howled, ‘Officer, I want to file another assault charge. Please encourage her to free my fingers.’

Sarah obliged without being asked again. Anthony clambered to his feet and pointed melodramatically towards the house with a blood-slicked finger, ‘I’ve rounded up some human detritus for you, officer. Pet-stealers, malcontents all.’

The police officer glanced regretfully at his watch. He’d bargained on an early lunch.

In the back garden, Silver started barking like a hound from hell.

Anthony Bland was the fortunate owner of one of Britain’s première dog-food companies. Sarah Bland was a petcare and grooming specialist. Her main initial involvement with Anthony (before matrimony) was as his dog’s hairdresser and chiropodist. She owned an exclusive grooming parlour in Chelsea called Paws for Thought. Her speciality was Afghans, which she bred and showed all over the country. Early on in their relationship Sarah and Anthony had developed an exceptionally fine and exclusive dog shampoo together, which was soon to be sold across the country in pet shops and large supermarket chains.

Together they had worked to make Silver’s Scraps the bestselling and most desirable high-quality canine food in the western hemisphere. Silver, Anthony’s Afghan, nurtured and plucked and preened and directed by Sarah (she was to publicity what wax is to a candle) was a household name, was, in fact, Sarah’s bread and butter in reputation terms. Although Silver was Anthony’s dog, Sarah had dedicated the six years of their marriage to cutting his toenails and brushing his hair. He was her motto, her talisman, her mascot. He was to Sarah what a tin is to a can of beans, whereas Anthony was (to all intents and purposes) what an excess of hormones are to an adolescent; intrinsic but irritating.