Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

Dorothy Waterhouse had hoped that they would be able to hold the whole thing outside, on the newly laid concrete slabs of the patio. Tracy’s mother lived in fear that their previously orderly acquaintances would be transformed into a rowdy crowd under the influence of Tracy’s father’s rum punch, the main ingredient of which was not rum but orange squash.

To her mother’s disgust it had rained of course and everyone was crushed, elbows like chicken wings, into the newly extended (but not enough) living room. The banality of the occasion was depressing ( The builders didn’t try and rip you off then?… In my day you stood still when a hearse passed you… Someone said number 21 had been sold to a Paki family .) Tracy filched a handful of cheese straws and escaped to the bathroom. Sent up a little prayer of thanks that she didn’t live here any more.

She put the toilet lid down and had a seat, munching her way through the cheese straws while she watched the rain streaming down the raindrop glass of the bathroom window. Wondered about that, raindrops on raindrop glass, seemed an excess of water in an already wet town. Heard the hollow word ‘orphanage’ in her brain. She could have given that kiddy a home. She should have taken him from that hospital bed, run away with him, given him the love he needed.

Tracy sighed and crammed the last bit of cheese straw into her mouth, brushed the flakes off her clothes and washed her hands. She had a sudden image of the cold, poky bathroom in the Lovell Park flat. There had been make-up scattered messily on a shelf. A plastic submarine lay beached in the grubby bathtub. Were Carol’s last thoughts for her son? She must have been afraid that he’d be killed as well. What chance does he have? Marilyn Nettles said.

In the kitchen her mother was unmoulding a temperamental charlotte russe. ‘Have to go out, Mum,’Tracy shouted down the hallway. She unhooked her lightweight summer mac from the hallstand and accelerated out of the house, her mother’s faint cries of protest following her down the garden path.

She traipsed through the rain, visiting every orphanage and care home in the book. None of them had heard of Michael Braithwaite, but, of course not, his name had been changed, according to Marilyn Nettles. She tried describing him, Little boy, four years old, mother murdered , but everywhere she went heads were shaken, doors were closed. Warrant card didn’t seem to help at all, positively hindered, in fact. It was ten o’clock at night when she finally got back to her own flat, soaked through to the bone. The party would be long over now, her mother would already have hoovered up every last crumb.

Linda Pallister had a Hillman Imp now, it seemed. Couldn’t drive it though because Tracy was standing in the road in front of it.

‘Tell me where he is, Linda. Tell me what he’s called.’

Linda rolled down the car window and said, ‘Go away, leave me alone or I’ll call the police.’

‘I am the police,’ Tracy said. ‘This uniform isn’t fancy-dress.’ Should have thumped her one. Should have pulled her fingernails out one by one until she told. But that was then.

Saturday

The next thing he knew was best described as nothing. Jackson was in the pitch dark, he was paralysed and the air around him was as noxious as the netherworld. He had already died once in his life but it hadn’t resembled this at all. The first time round, after the train crash, it had been the classic white corridor scenario, complete with his dead sister and a sense of euphoria. He had gone, briefly, to a heaven, a heaven which had almost undoubtedly manifested itself as a result of oxygen deprivation to his brain. This time round he had apparently taken the staircase that went down the other way.

He drifted off, came to again, and realized that he wasn’t in fact paralysed but was trussed, not so much a turkey as an Egyptian mummy. His ankles were tightly bound, his hands were tied behind his back and his mouth was taped up. To begin with it was painful, then it was excruciatingly painful and then after a time the pain was replaced with a numbness which was worse, somehow. His head hurt but no more than you would expect if you had been kicked and punched in it, that is to say, a lot. He would be lucky to escape without brain damage.

Perhaps he would be lucky to escape at all. He wriggled, awkwardly, like a particularly incompetent worm, until his head butted up against a hard surface. Slowly, he manoeuvred his way round what turned out to be a disturbingly claustrophobic space, not much bigger than a coffin. An oddly shaped sarcophagus filled with something stinking.

In the course of his squirming it eventually dawned on Jackson that he was sharing air with food refuse, an aroma of chop suey and the indefatigable scent of chips and fried fish. He was entombed in some kind of large, commercial waste bin along with the collective leftovers of several fat-based local restaurants. I heard a Fly buzz – when I died . That would be because there really was a fly in here with him, buzzing irritably with the knowledge that it, too, couldn’t get out.

There was a certain relief in the realization. At least he hadn’t gone mad, nor had he gone to hell or turned into a giant worm. He had simply been knocked on the head by a couple of hulking thugs and dumped in a garbage bin.

The relief didn’t last long. He couldn’t shout for help, he couldn’t move – writhing didn’t really count – and had no way of escaping. And where was the dog, it didn’t seem to be in here with him. Was it lying hurt or maimed somewhere? Dog in jeopardy.

Then something worse happened. Much worse. The heavy engine sound of an industrial vehicle. The snarling of slow gears, hydraulic arms rising and falling, the careless clattering and comradely exchanges that all signalled the arrival of an early morning bin lorry. He struggled furiously, trying to rock the bin, but to no avail at all. He tried kicking with his bound feet but could barely make an impact. Nothing more than a low, desperate moan escaped beyond the barrier of tape across his mouth.

There were other bins parked nearby, he heard them being wheeled away towards the lorry, heard them being lifted, emptied, returned. Two of them. His was about to be the third. He heard one binman say to another, ‘Did you see Top Gear last night?’ and the other one replying, ‘No, the wife watches Collier . I need to get Sky Plus. Collier ’s crap.’

Jackson could hear them, clear as a bell. He was inches away from them but incapable of attracting their attention. He had survived the Gulf, he had survived Northern Ireland and a devastating train crash and he was going to die like trash (exactly like trash, in fact), by being crushed to death in a bin lorry.

The wheelie-bin was suddenly jolted and he found himself being bumped and rumbled along towards his nemesis. Jackson in jeopardy.

This was it then.

The end.

Jackson caught the sound of a dog barking. Not just barking, yapping furiously, the kind of noise that drove people crazy if there was no let-up to it. There was no let-up. On and on, the dog barked. Yap, yap, yap. There was something familiar about it.

‘What is it?’ he heard one of the binmen say. ‘What are you trying to tell me, eh?’

‘What’s that you say, Skippy?’ another said, in a bad Australian accent. ‘Someone’s in trouble, d’you say?’

‘Me!’ Jackson roared silently.

Someone laughed and said, ‘Skippy’s a kangaroo, not a dog. It should be Lassie.’

‘This one’s a Laddie by the looks of him.’

He was going to die while all around him people were discussing the gender of a dog?