Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

She asked him where he was stopping and he said Nowhere much, and a while later, when they were leaving the wet centre, leaning out into the night like they were walking into a storm, holding each other up and slipping on the dry ground, she said I’m stopping with this bloke up the way, he don’t like going out but he’s a decent bloke so he won’t mind if you stop there for a bit as well. And when he got there he was too drunk to be surprised that it was Robert’s flat they were falling into.

It all comes round again, in the end.

Robert didn’t look surprised to see him. It had been years though hadn’t it. Maybe it took them a moment to recognise each other. If they even did. How long had it been. It had been years. It was hard to remember. There were too many. Could have been seven or eight or nine years, could have been two or three. Too many, gaps.

Didn’t say much when Steve said hello. He’d got himself a dog as well by then, Penny, and all three of them watched Penny and H sniffing around each other for a minute, like Little and Large, growling and snapping and then calming down. H sniffing around for crumbs on the floor. Steve sat on the floor because there was only the one chair by then. Heather fell over in the corner and closed her eyes, and just before she fell asleep she said Eh now you two I’m still watching you two now. Meaning with her third eye, with that faded blue and green tattoo.

Told the same joke most nights from what Steve could tell. Weren’t even that funny. Gave him the creeps.

Weren’t quite true when Heather said she’d been in a band. Was more like she’d been with a band. Or like they’d been with her.

When they woke up in the morning, the three of them, with H and Penny barking in the hallway and banging against the door to be let out, Robert looked over at Steve and pushed his hat up out of his eyes and said What was your name again mate? Don’t I know you from somewhere?

These, gaps.

Here’s something, he said. I’ll tell you what. This is important.

Steve waited all day for Robert to remember who he was, and then he forgot about it. It had been a long time ago. They’d both, what was it, they’d both moved on since then. Although Robert hadn’t moved far, about two or three feet by the look of it, and Steve was still drinking, was drinking again, and still going around the same places. But still, things had happened in the meantime. Steve had been away, for one. He’d been dry, and he’d been away, and he’d come back and he wasn’t dry any more. Robert had put on weight, had more or less doubled in size it looked like, like he must have stayed put in that chair the whole time since Steve had seen him. Like he’d run out of the energy or something.

Robert had seen Laura, it turned out. That was something else. Just turned up at the door one night. With a backpack and a tie-dye headscarf and some story about hating her mum and never wanting to go home. She hates me too, she’d said, I know she does, she don’t want me around no more, she can’t be bothered, she’s all bloody wrapped up with Paul and she aint got time for me no more, she’s always bloody moaning about what I do all the time, staying out late and going over my mate’s and smoking and all that bollocks, she’s such a bloody hypocrite I bloody well hate her.

Said all that to Heather. Standing in the darkened kitchen with her backpack at her feet, glancing through to the lounge where her dad and two other men lay slumped on the floor, and eventually she said Like are they all right or what?

Heather had been drunk when Laura had arrived. But not as drunk as the others, and not so drunk that she didn’t ask who was there before she answered the door. Says she knew it was Laura as soon as she saw her. Even though she didn’t look all that much like him, then. She’d done her best to look older and rougher but she hadn’t done enough. She’d ripped her jeans, and scuffed her boots, and pierced her nose. But so what. Her fingernails were still clean, her hair was tied back, her skin was pink and soft and unmarked by bruises or scars or tattoos. She’d brushed her teeth that morning, and every morning and evening before that. Didn’t have any missing from what Heather could see.

Reckon she thought she’d come to the wrong flat when she saw me stood there, Heather said, when she told Steve about it. State of me. Bless her though, she was all geared up for this grand reunion and her old man was crashed out cold on the floor. Must have been a bit disappointing.

Who you calling disappointing? Robert asked, and Heather looked at him, and the three of them tore into laughter.

Robert’s laugh the loudest of all, the wheeze and whistle of it filling the room.

Laura in the kitchen telling Heather how much her mum hated her, the only light coming from the orange streetlamps in the carpark outside, her face shadowed and urgent and her eyes beginning to shine, and when she’d finished Heather said How old are you now love?

She put her hands in her back pockets and said I’m fifteen, have you got any fags?

Laura rolling a cigarette with Heather’s tobacco, her long white fingers fumbling with the thin paper and once she’d licked it shut those same clean fingers picking the strands of tobacco from her tongue. Looking around for an ashtray. Heather pointing out all the fag-ends lying trodden into the floor, and saying I wouldn’t bother sweetheart it’s too late for that.

He waited years for them to come back, and when one of them did he was too drunk to see it.

Should have told her to go home right then. But she wouldn’t have listened. Fifteen and on the road for the first time, she wouldn’t have listened to no one.

The clock ticking round and the echo of it scraping through the floor. The light fittings cold and dark.

She woke early. The next morning this was. Laura woke early, and she waited. She’d waited long enough. She sat up in the corner of the room with her arms folded around her knees, and she looked at the old home she could barely remember. She could have changed her mind then. Could have stood and packed away her sleeping bag and walked back out the door while her dad and all those other people were sleeping. She near enough did. She should have done, should she. But she didn’t want to prove her mum right. She wanted to see what would happen. She wanted some breakfast, and she’d already run out of money.

He woke up, and saw her looking at him. It was confusing. Who was it. Thought it was Yvonne for a minute, looking as young as when they’d first met, come back to set things straight. And then he realised. It gave him something like a pain in the chest, a pain which near enough swelled and sucked in air as he looked at her and realised just what he’d missed and just how much he’d failed, at this precise fucking moment, to be what she wanted him to be. He had no idea what to say. She looked at him.

He got the rest of us up and told us to leave. That was something. Never told us to leave before so we knew something was up. All of us looking at her like, what, sullenly or something. Grumbling and muttering while we went off outside. Peered through the filthy dark glass of the front door but we couldn’t see nothing or hear nothing and we had better things to get off and do. See it all clearly now.

Hello Dad, she said, finally, and it seemed like such a lame thing to say that she laughed. He didn’t know what to do. He stood in the doorway to the hall. He smiled, awkwardly, and it looked like someone squinting against the early morning light.

He took his hat off and rolled it into his hands, squeezing it.

He said, Look at you.

What.

When did.

Does your mum know you’re here?

She shook her head. He turned and walked into the kitchen, hesitated, came back into the lounge, walked through to what had once been the main bedroom.