Katie nodded and sat beside the fat woman without the animal as the red-faced receptionist punched the phone through to her boss. Katie closed her eyes. Where was he now, her Sam? Waiting for them at home, or gone for another walk around the block?

‘Mrs Hunt?’

She opened her eyes. It was the vet, poking the top half of his body round his surgery door, in his white coat and holding a clipboard.

‘Yo!’

‘Would you like to come in for a second, please?’

Oh no. Not Bart. Please no doggie deaths, she prayed. It would kill Billy right now. But what else could it mean? They usually just led the dog out, gave you your bill, and you never even saw the guy who’d done whatever it was just cost you a small fortune. This time she was going in to see him. Not good.

In his room there was a parrot in a big cage sitting on his table like an ornament instead of a patient. The fat woman’s pet, she guessed. No Bart.

‘Where is he? Is he dead?’ Her voice was steady. Her hands were not. She put them in her pockets to stop them trembling. The vet shook his head. There was nowhere to sit so he didn’t offer.

‘No. No, he’s okay, Mrs Hunt. He’s sedated.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Nothing, physically. We sedated him because we thought he might harm himself.’

She looked at him quizzically, bewildered. The vet pursed his lips. ‘I can’t find what’s up with him other than a psychological disorder. Now that means you can either risk taking him home and living with the consequences of that, or … and I only suggest this because of the nature of his disorder, you have him put to sleep.’

Katie was dumbfounded. ‘What do you mean, psychological disorder? What’s he been doing, for Christ sakes?’

The vet ran a hand over his mouth, banging the clipboard against his thigh with the other hand. ‘Eh, he seems to want to tear his own heart out.’

Katie’s mouth fell open. ‘Bart?’

‘Can’t describe it any other way. To put it in layman’s terms, I think your dog’s flipped.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Through here.’

He pushed open the door to a corridor-like room lined with big cages. There were a few animals yapping and mewing and sleeping, and there was Bart in the middle, lying in his favourite pose, like a sphinx. He saw her and got up drunkenly but excitedly. His curly erect tail wagged like it was going to fall off and he tried to jump up to her, laying his big paws on the cage.

‘Bart, my sweet thing! What’s up, boy?’ She knelt to the wire. He tried to lick her through it. She put a loving finger through the wire to his tongue, and turned to the vet. ‘He seems okay now.’