The Puppy That Came for Christmas (21 page)

It seemed to take me weeks to get the house and garden spotless for the social worker's visit to talk about becoming foster parents, and the stress began to get to me as I worked like crazy making each room beautiful by turn. Ian worked from home the day before to give me moral support, but by that time I was feeling very fraught and his presence actually did the opposite. He said something in a funny tone of voice, and though I managed not to cry in front of him, I went straight out into the garden, burst into tears and cried so much that I couldn't talk to my mum when she phoned. Ian had to explain to her, and then to Jamie, who rang to find out why I hadn't come to class, that I was feeling a little fragile. Jamie told Ian to buy me a big cake, which finally stopped the flood and made me laugh. Jamie loved cake—it was his answer to most of life's problems.

I began to calm down.

“It makes me feel so hopelessly sad when you're mean to me,” I told Ian, though I could tell from his face he had absolutely no idea what he'd done wrong. I wasn't even sure myself.

I carried on gardening outside for most of the day so he couldn't upset me more.

 

The next morning, I had a surprise visit from an old friend, Narinder, whom I hadn't seen in more than ten years. Freddy, for some reason, was wildly excited to see her and she did very well—for a cat person—confronted with a huge bouncy puppy.

I hadn't known before her visit, but Narinder and her husband had tried to conceive for fifteen years without success. Then she'd had a massive heart attack. It was so touch and go that her family had been asked to come to the hospital to say their farewells, but she pulled through.

“After that we decided we were fine with just the two of us and our cats,” Narinder said.

I told her about the social worker's impending visit. One of Narinder's sisters was going to be starting fostering training after a tough initial interview, and her mother privately fostered a boy with autism every other weekend to give his parents a break.

“She loves it,” Narinder said. “He's like the grandchild she's never had and is never likely to have—at least not a birth grandchild.”

Ian arrived home, smart and responsible in his suit, just before the doorbell rang for the second time that day.

“Oh, you have a dog,” said Hazel the social worker primly when she saw the toy bones and teddies piled neatly in the corner. She was using the sort of voice usually reserved for cockroaches, or an infestation of moths.

“He's just a puppy,” I said reassuringly.

Freddy bounded into view and she took two steps back.

“He's huge! I thought you meant a little puppy,” she said. “I don't really like dogs,” she added, somewhat unnecessarily.

I shut Freddy in the kitchen, but he got upset and started to bark, so I put him on his lead and he lay at my feet staring at Hazel, who'd sat in his favorite spot on the sofa. It was new, and he'd taken to sleeping upon it, his head resting on the arm. He tried to join her once or twice, but I held his lead close very tightly.

Hazel kept on shifting awkwardly, rearranging herself and her things, and glancing over at Freddy, which made us very uncomfortable too. She shuffled her papers, and opened and shut her folder while we tried to tell her about our experiences of working with kids with learning difficulties, and about both being Camp America counselors at different times. Ian had also just started reading with kids at a local primary school during his lunch hour, through a work corporate social responsibility scheme.

“Are you interested in fostering teenagers?” asked Hazel.

I looked at Ian. Although we knew some lovely teenagers, it wasn't something we'd really considered and I didn't think we'd be much good at it. Even with his dog-sized intelligence and capacity for mischief, Freddy walked all over us, so I was pretty sure it'd be a breeze for a teenager to do the same.

“It'd probably be best to take two children,” said Hazel. “Siblings, I mean.”

Now it was Ian's turn to look over at me.

“Maybe you should just try us with one first,” he smiled nervously.

 

I showed her around the house, feeling very proud of how beautiful it looked, explaining how I'd like to keep my office, where I wrote, if at all possible. I showed her some of the picture books I'd written, feeling sure that this would clinch the deal—that we'd simply scream out “YOUNG CHILDREN” to her. Freddy, still on his lead, had calmed down and was being a good boy; I was radiating stressed-out vibes and Golden Retrievers are very intuitive.

“I'm not sure you could fit two kids in the back bedroom, unless you put the bunks around like that . . .” Hazel's voice trailed off as she mentally measured out the space. “Maybe an older child in here and then a baby in with you in the master bedroom. Listen, I can't say more now. I'll talk to my manager when she comes in on Friday.”

She'd clearly had enough of Freddy and left. We had a celebratory glass of Cava, though we weren't sure exactly what we were celebrating, if we were celebrating, or even if she'd heard anything we'd said.

“She didn't seem to listen to our experience of working with kids with learning difficulties,” I said. We'd thought that being interested in fostering children with special needs would strengthen our case.

“She definitely didn't pay any attention when we said we only wanted one child,” said Ian.

The whole meeting had put a sour cast on the idea of fostering. In the space of an hour it had changed in my mind from a rich and personally fulfilling social service to something fraught with hazards. Hazel had repeatedly mentioned how many children had very challenging behaviors, and had said to Ian that even though a baby might seem easier to look after, foster parents usually had to allow the birth parents access every day, which might mean that an adult with drink, drug or mental health problems would be coming round to our house. I didn't like the thought of that at all.

But I wasn't ready to give up yet. This had only been the initial fostering meeting and I so wanted to experience raising a child with Ian. Hazel might have been having an off day, and surely, I thought, it was their duty to paint the blackest of pictures in order to weed out people who shouldn't be fostering. If we fell at the first hurdle, then it was right that we shouldn't be allowed to raise a child—the most important job there is. Besides, I wasn't going to let a snooty social worker put me off. We'd already been through so much at the hospital and at the IVF clinic. We were tougher, far tougher, than that.

At our next Helper Dogs class I told the other puppy parents how it had gone. Liz said a friend of hers fostered teenage girls.

“They can be complete terrors,” she said. “They know exactly how to manipulate adults to get what they want, and there's not much a foster parent can do if they misbehave—you have no authority. The biggest punishment you can give is to take away their allowance, but you have to return it all as soon as they behave again.”

I looked at the dogs. Freddy was playing with Finn, Liz's latest puppy. Finn was a week younger than Freddy and had been donated by a farm. When Freddy and Finn got together it was like two teenage boys having a scrap, and they'd been told off by Jamie more than once for misbehaving. I didn't tell Liz, but I was pleased that someone like her—a far more experienced dog owner—sometimes had no control over her puppy either. Elvis, meanwhile, was lying in the corner looking idly at the wall. At ten months old, he was twice the age of all the other puppies in the class, and his inclusion was more or less token; Helper Dogs had accepted he wasn't made of quite the right stuff and were investigating other options for him.

Len piped up from the corner, where he was with his little puppy, Gertie. She was just with us on a temporary basis because her puppy parent over at the Peterborough satellite was having a family emergency.

“I have some friends who foster privately for an agency, and they reckon that the district next to ours has too many babies and not enough foster parents at the moment,” he said.

My ears pricked up.

“I'll give them your telephone number,” he said.

“You don't want a teenager, Meg,” said Jo. “You want a baby.”

I knew that she was right.

 

Later that week, Jamie rang to tell me the news I'd been dreading: Helper Dogs had decided Freddy's fate. He would be going to a new puppy parent, Rachel, who lived about an hour away in a big farmhouse with a Labradoodle called Gandalf. Gandalf was a little older than Freddy; it was felt that Freddy would benefit from not being the center of attention all the time. It was also a good idea to move them on, Jamie had told us, so that they didn't become too attached to one person, as Dylan had done, and therefore be unable to bond with their final, most important, owner—the Helper Dogs partner.

Labradoodles like Gandalf were also occasionally employed as Helper Dogs, though they could sometimes be a little harebrained. Goldendoodles tended to be calmer and were becoming more popular. The advanced trainers at Helper Dogs HQ, however, tended to favor Labradors, or Labrador mixes, as they adored food and worked very well for treats. Golden Retrievers were a bit more intuitive and sensitive, and were more likely not simply to follow orders and to think for themselves. This was both a good and bad thing: good when they used their intuition and sensitivity to do helpful things; bad when they decided they didn't want to do something. Golden Retrievers could be very stubborn.

I decided that to try to head off the heartache I'd felt when losing Emma—because it had really felt like a loss—I'd become more involved in Freddy's move. I asked Jamie to give me Rachel's details, and I gave her a ring to arrange a visit for me and Freddy, so that I'd have some idea of his new life after he left me. Talking to her gave me a lump in my throat, and even as I put the handset down I questioned my own actions: was I just stretching out the loss, instead of diminishing it?

Too late to worry now, I thought, as I typed her postcode into the car's GPS. Her house was deep in the countryside, but perhaps as a subconscious revolt—a sly attempt to sabotage my own good intentions and keep Freddy with me for a while longer—I hadn't really listened to her description of where it was or how to get there. Freddy was being unhelpful too. He'd got used to traveling in Ian's BMW and now really objected to the high, cramped seat in my car. He didn't want to get in, and I was having real trouble persuading him because I didn't want him to either. I wanted to lead him back into the house, lock the front door and never come out again. He could sense my tension and reluctance, and decided to be obstinate.

“Come on, Freddy, in you get,” I said, slapping the car seat to show him what I meant, knowing that he knew exactly what I wanted him to do. Freddy stood immobile, staring up at me.

“Come on.” I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice, but of course Freddy could hear it, and suspecting I was trying to lure him to the vet's, the grooming parlor or somewhere as yet unknown but equally anathema to dogs, he now really didn't want to get in the car at all.

“Get in!” I said firmly, and, deciding to employ both carrot and stick at the same time, pulled a treat from my pocket and jiggled it in front of him. It was some sort of tripe stick, manufactured from unspeakable animal parts, and therefore one of his favorites. Reluctantly, begrudgingly, he deigned to climb in.

“I hope you're not tricking me,” his expression said. “I don't like this car, I don't like the vibes you're giving off and I'm only doing this because you're my mum and I trust you.” Which, of course, made me feel even worse.

I felt like crying, and not just for Freddy, but for Emma as well. Even now, if I so wanted, I could easily torment myself by thinking about Emma, but at least she was happy and loved with Mike. And now I was going to betray Mr. Pup-Pup in exactly the same way. Yes, today we were only visiting, but it still felt like I was rehearsing a betrayal. Today wasn't permanent, but even so I had to force myself to start the engine and roll the car off down the road.

About forty miles in, the GPS lost its signal and all of a sudden I was on the B road to nowhere. I had the address, but all I could see were fields, and in another act of self-sabotage I'd forgotten to write Rachel's number down. It all seemed so hopeless. I called Ian and cried down the phone while he looked up the way on his computer; but I wasn't in a fit state to take in the directions and then Freddy began to agitate to get out of the car. I said a tearful goodbye, and Freddy and I went for a long walk up the isolated lane, far enough to see that there were no signposts in the vicinity, nor any signs of life. Even so, I felt much calmer for doing something as normal as walking my pup. Freddy fell out once again as he was trying to get back into the car, which only made everything worse, but finally, as I was ready to turn round and head for home, the GPS miraculously recovered and we were on our way again—from one crisis to the next, or so I felt.

We arrived—me red-eyed, Freddy restive—at Rachel's an hour late. She brushed aside my apologies with a smile and made a huge fuss of Freddy. She seemed a kind, kind lady, with lots of long blonde curly hair, wearing hippyish clothes. I thought to myself: “I really want him to be with someone who'll love him more than anything.” I realized it didn't bother me if he never did what anybody asked him ever again; if I had to lose him, I just wanted him to go somewhere he'd be loved.

Gandalf was also very pleased to see Freddy and immediately took him on a tour of Rachel's huge, orchardlike garden. They were soon jumping all over each other, barking and playing furiously, and Rachel, looking a bit worried, suggested we go for a walk in the woods to tire them both out a bit. As we did, we chatted and chatted and chatted, and I felt I'd made a new unexpected friend. Rachel, a widow who'd brought up three children on her own, was a survivor.