He prepares to leave.

Oh dear. Did I really make Miss Hahn cry the other day? On the beach?

We attempt to shake hands but this is rendered impossible by the ten pounds and the rabbit. So instead he kind of … he sort of curtseys.

Once he’s gone I sit down for a minute to try and gather my thoughts together. After about ten or so seconds the white noise diminishes. Well thank God for that! But then another sound neatly replaces it. Barking. Yes – barking! – followed by a series of profuse apologies. A woman’s voice. Then Mr Pemberton – Rusty – saying, ‘It’s fine. It’s absolutely fine. It isn’t deep. I actually … I … I sort of expected it, to be perfectly honest.’

13

Miss Carla Hahn

Poor old Rogue is no more. Which is terribly sad. But worse still is the knowledge that I – yes, me! – am going to be chiefly responsible for burying the body. Tatteh is too busy focusing on the onerous task of preparing a brief funeral oration and gathering together Rogue’s favourite toys to be buried alongside him (I note that several of these are items I have given to Tatteh myself – among them a Clarks’ sandal, a Johnson’s cashmere scarf and a little, plastic flamingo which I bought to commemorate the arrival of a lone bird of that species on Pett Pools in 1978, 1979 or some time thereabouts).

I have a fork and a spade, but the ground is pretty hard. And space is limited because numerous other dog corpses have been deposited here in years past. Upwards of thirty and counting, I’d have thought.

And Rogue was so huge! The sheer depth required to cover his bulk, and the terrible likelihood that if he isn’t buried deep enough the foxes will dig him up again haunt me as I work. I have bound up the thumb which aches horribly. In fact I am unwinding my makeshift bandage (consisting of a mesh washing-up cloth) and attempting to reapply it when Clifford Bickerton comes charging into the garden.

‘I saw your bike out front as I was driving past,’ he puffs. ‘Your dad says you dislocated your thumb.’

‘Rogue had a heart attack,’ I explain. ‘I was climbing over the side gate and my pesky belt got snagged on a piece of wood …’

Rusty takes off his work coat, folds it over his arm in order to put it down and grab the spade and commence digging, but as he does so a clementine (satsuma? Tangerine?) falls out of the pocket and rolls into my partly dug hole.

I stiffen.

‘Then after I’d been hanging there a while,’ I continue (more halting, now), ‘some big goose … some … some Smart Alec happens along and … and without warning … they untied my trousers. I fell head first on to the gravel below. Dislocated my thumb. Then they buggered off.’

‘Bloody hell!’

Rusty looks shocked, then ruminative (not quite the reaction I’d have expected). His eyes briefly de-focus.