A mixture of anticipation and dread drives my steps across the shiny black tarmac driveway, flanked by fake grass verges. This preposterous house is grotesque in its affectations. I’m standing outside the pen, there it is, the cage I dreamed of, and there he is, his face pressed to the wall.

‘Herbie?’ He lifts his head, an ear twitches, then he falls back into his tightly curled position, back to the world. ‘Herbie, it’s me, it’s really me.’ How am I going to get him out of here? There’s a padlock. What kind of people padlock a guard dog into a cage? Then I realise he’s probably only ever let out when they go out. What sort of people—?

I sprint back to the car, open the boot and find the secateurs I bought on a whim in a garden-centre sale last year, when I’d had a fantasy about doing something ‘normal’, like pruning my wild rose bushes. They’re still in the bag I bought them in, along with the gardening gloves that I slip on. A delicious thrill shivers through me. Now I’m the character I was never cast as: the badass criminal.

Back at the cage, I falter a moment. Will this backlash on me? Even if it does, this dog is not going through a moment more of suffering because of me. I focus intently on cutting though the wire mesh; I’d use my teeth if I had to. I cut and cut until eventually one section tears and I make a hole. Herbie is whimpering loudly. ‘Alright, old boy, it’s only me.’ He looks straight at me and I’m sucked into a vortex of such sadness I wonder if I’ll ever surface again. ‘Darling boy.’ He stands, legs unsteady, tail involuntarily moving in a jagged circle as if it’s forgotten how to wag. I hear voices at the door. The hole is big enough to clamber through and I crouch in the dark beside my boy, his big head suddenly in my lap. I cradle him: ‘Shhh.’

Herbie, it’s ok, Yaya’s back, it really is the real Yaya!

The voices say their thank yous, marvellous round today, adios, adieu, till next time. ‘Come on, ole boy.’ We need to get out of here before the electric gates lock us in. I try to push Herbie’s bulk through the hole but he seems dazed. I go first. ‘Come, Herbie.’ I pull the edges of the circle and then like some magically trained circus animal he jumps through the hoop and the two of us run towards the car.

Herbie is panicked, his breathing fast and high, his big lolling tongue trying to grab on to the air to cool him down. I should have brought him a bowl of water. Cast my mind back to the pen: was there any food or water? I imagine throwing a firework soaked in kerosene through the letter box, leaving a poo-bomb on the doorstep, scratching the shiny midnight-blue BMW with this year’s reg.