In the end, he snapped a blurry photo of the dog, put it in a few different Facebook lost and found pets groups with minimal details, and added that the dog was safe and had a new home now if no one claimed him. He was crossing his fingers that no one came looking.

He was well aware of the likelihood that his sudden attachment to this dog was a knee-jerk reaction to everything that was happening with Charlotte. I’m probably substituting this dog for the imagined baby I’m handing over, he thought to himself. Which was ridiculous, because it wasn’t as though he’d been pining for a child in his life prior to Charlotte asking him for this favour.

Or maybe the dog was a procrastination technique. Something else to concentrate on so he wasn’t staring at an empty Word document.

Or maybe that was all bullshit and he just liked the damned dog.

‘All right,’ Darren said now, patting the dog’s head. ‘If you’re not going to play, I’m giving up and playing with this instead.’ He picked up his Xbox controller and turned on the console, then reached for his headset on the coffee table. Hopefully one of his mates might be online for a game of Call of Duty.

He was about to put the headset on when he noticed the mangled microphone.

‘You bloody didn’t?’ He looked down at the dog who immediately turned away as though pretending he wasn’t paying attention.

‘Oy, did you chew this? You know how much this headset cost me?’

The dog continued to look the other way.

‘Fuuuuuck,’ said Darren, tossing the headset back onto the coffee table. ‘Now what am I supposed to do with my night?’

The dog stood up, walked over to him and rested his head on Darren’s knee.

‘All right,’ Darren said. ‘Apology accepted. I guess I’ll try and do some writing instead.’

CHRISTMAS EVE

Had the woman’s husband been thrown from the car? Out of the corner of his eye, the man saw lights and he turned to look back down the freeway. Headlights were approaching. Help. He couldn’t do all of this on his own. He hadn’t even looked at the other cars yet.

‘Stay there,’ he said completely needlessly to the barely conscious woman. ‘I’ll be right back.’

He turned away from the car and took a few swift steps towards the side of the road and then started waving his arms, trying to flag the next car down. He wasn’t going to let another one fly by without helping.

Thankfully, the car slowed and then pulled over sharply. He jogged over as another man started to get out of his car.

‘Thanks for stopping. This is bad. It’s really bad. And I’m an idiot and left my phone in my car. Can you call triple zero?’