The Puppy That Came for Christmas (22 page)

Back at the house, I decided that Freddy and Gandalf, who'd been playing with each other ceaselessly since they'd met, should probably have a break.

“Gandy never seems to get tired,” said Rachel, but I knew Freddy did, so we gave them each a chew, separated them by closing the door and opened a bottle of wine to give ourselves a break too. The two dogs were such good friends already that we had Gandalf whining and barking at the passage door and Freddy scratching at it to be let in as an accompaniment while we sipped our Prosecco. I accepted a second glass, and then another, thinking that I could get a taxi home and come to collect the car the next day. Then we opened another bottle, and by the time Ian arrived in a taxi from the station (I didn't entirely remember making the call), I was feeling very merry, and happy that, if Freddy really had to go, he was going to Rachel's. Freddy and Gandalf hadn't stopped playing, and I was slightly worried that having two teenage boys together might be awfully hard work for her.

Freddy had collapsed into sleep on the backseat as soon as we drove off, snoring and twitching every now and again as he chased Gandalf in his puppy dreams. I smiled at Ian. We loved watching our puppies sleep and imagining what they might be dreaming about.

 

Back at home there was a message from Marion to say that Sugar had given birth to eleven puppies, so I gave her a call and we arranged another visit so that we could finally meet them.

Ian drove us to Marion's smallholding after work a few days later and she took us straight through into the warm farm-style kitchen, where the puppies were together in a large crate with soft bedding next to the Aga. They clambered all over each other, making tiny mewling sounds. Blind, eyelids closed, with tiny pink-veined ears and the softest of soft creamy-colored coats. Their paws were huge compared with their bodies. Sugar looked at us with a combination of pride and concern as we cooed over her litter.

“She had eleven,” Marion said. “But only three of them are girls.”

“They're beautiful.” And vulnerable, so defenseless. How could anyone not want to take one home and love it? But how could anyone take a puppy away from its mum? How could Marion be prepared to let any of them go? I was sure that the pain of separating from a pup would never get any less, no matter how many times it happened.

“Do you want to hold one?” Marion said, as she reached into the box.

She reached for the smallest of the puppies. Thinner than the others, she had a yellow spot painted on her back. The puppy mewled and squeaked in protest at being picked up. Marion gave it to me.

“It's one of the girls.”

I held the tiny warm body close and the puppy nestled into me, still making a racket. A noisy girl—just what I wanted. This puppy would bark and let us know what was going on. This puppy would never stand out in the rain in silence waiting to be let in as one of the dog walkers at the river had told me his dog did.

“Would you like to hold one too?” Marion asked Ian, and he took another of the puppies into his arms. A gentle smile of pleasure lit up his face.

“We're going to be calling our puppy—that little one—Traffy,” Ian told a surprised Marion, who hadn't expected us to have a name already, for this to be such a foregone conclusion.

“It's short for Old Trafford,” I said.

I awoke the morning after visiting Traffy feeling guilty about Freddy. It wasn't the first time, but it was certainly the sharpest pang yet. He hadn't even left us and already we were thinking about the forever puppy that would be replacing him.

“She'll be able to wear Freddy's Manchester United shirt when the match is on,” Ian joked, as he set off into the dawn to work. Freddy had grown much too big to fit into the special doggy football shirt Ian had bought him. Ian still considered him a Man U fan, and it was true that Freddy did still like to watch the matches; mainly, I suspected, because Ian gave him a Schmacko treat every time his team scored a goal—and Freddy was very fond of Schmackos.

“I feel so guilty,” I said.

“Poor Mr. Pup-Pup,” said Ian. We loved Freddy so much and were going to miss him at least as much as we'd missed Emma. Every day one or other of us would pipe up hopefully, saying maybe Helper Dogs would decide not to take him after all. Deep down, we knew it was wishful thinking: we both knew we couldn't keep him, however much we wanted to. We'd already been down that road once, with Emma.

“He'll have a lovely time at Rachel's. You know he will,” said Ian.

I had to agree. There were woods for him to run in right next to her house, and Gandalf to play with, but I still didn't want to let him go. Although he was now huge, he was still our little boy, and we wouldn't be able to replace him.

“It's only natural not to want to give him up,” Ian tried to console me, “but you know we can't keep him. We're Freddy's foster parents not his forever ones.”

“I'm going to miss him so, so much,” I sniffed.

“Well, maybe he won't pass. Maybe he won't be suitable as a Helper Dog and we'll be asked to take him back.”

But it felt wrong to wish that. Freddy had more of a quirky personality than Emma and wasn't always so eager to do everything he was asked to, as Emma had been, but if you asked him in a nice voice (which I always did) then there was no stopping him.

“Supposing we'd never had a dog,” Ian said.

“That'd be terrible.” I didn't want to be dogless ever again. Life just felt right with a dog in it. Not to have one would be all wrong.

 

Following Len's advice, I'd contacted his friends, Nora and John, and they'd put me in touch with Parenting Partners, a private adoption and fostering agency. Kirsty, the lady who'd answered the phone, had been really nice and chatty. She'd asked all sorts of questions and she seemed to listen carefully when I told her about our previous caring experiences. She'd e-mailed afterward to say it had been a pleasure to chat, and that she'd send us all the forms and arrange a visit.

The next step for us was to invite Nora and John around to dinner and hear about their experiences of fostering over big warming plates of fish pie followed by apple crumble. To them it was a full-time job and hard work.

“You get paid more by the agencies than the council . . .” John said.

We weren't interested in the money side of it. Never had been.

“. . . but the kids are usually more damaged—they're ones that the council couldn't place with regular foster parents.”

“We have meetings once a month and are monitored and given counseling,” Nora said.

She saw Ian's raised eyebrow and added, “Believe me, you need it.”

 

Part of the reason I wanted to be a foster parent was that we might be able to give a better life to a little boy just like Ian had been. A little boy in need of some kindness and consistency and love to thrive. We could give that. There was a framed photo of Ian on the mantelpiece at his aunt Mabel's house, a school photograph in which he looked so unhappy and vulnerable, in a little shirt and a scruffy school jumper, that when I first saw it all I wanted to do was hug the little Ian.

“You look so sad,” I'd said, picking it up for a closer look.

“Probably went to school without any breakfast or any lunch money again, or any dinner the night before,” Aunt Mabel had commented wryly. I'd thought at first she was joking, but I caught a look between her and Ian and realized she wasn't. I'd never asked her anything more about his childhood, as I didn't want to have secrets from Ian and trusted that he'd tell me what he wanted to or what was necessary, but there were huge gaps in his past that he simply wouldn't—or couldn't—fill in.

“We'd like to do some nice things while the child's with us,” said Ian to John, munching on some salad. “Take them on trips, holidays to the seaside . . .”

We'd loved seeing Emma and Freddy play in the sea and the sand, although Freddy found it almost impossible, despite repeated tellings-off, not to drink the salty sea water.

The professional foster parents' eyes widened in horror at Ian's holiday idea.

“They'll be worse than ever if you take them on holiday,” said John. “They need to have a regular routine to feel safe and secure.”

“Breaking the routine will only lead to tears and tantrums,” added Nora.

I could see what they meant. The puppies liked to have a routine so they knew what was going to happen when, and on which day, but they didn't get all disruptive if the routine was temporarily changed.

“They're not little innocent Snow Whites, you know,” Nora said. “They have all sorts of emotional and physical scars that you'll never get to the bottom of, or heal completely, and it comes out as lying, cheating and stealing. They try to break you down.”

When it was time for them to leave, we saw them to the door.

“Len said you were helping to raise puppies for Helper Dogs,” John said.

“We are,” I smiled.

“Don't leave the foster kid alone with the puppy—ever,” Nora said.

“But . . .” I'd thought a child would love having a puppy.

“One of the foster kids from the agency got hold of some matches, and fur . . . well, it burns, and a little puppy . . .”

I felt sick as I washed the pans and loaded the dishwasher. A little puppy was so vulnerable. How could anyone, however badly they'd been treated themselves, knowingly hurt one?

 

It had been a disappointing dinner with Nora and John. They'd seemed very negative to us, but perhaps after a while that was how you became. We'd thought we could become short-stay foster parents, looking after a child for a week or so if their parents had to leave home for some reason. We'd thought we'd be able to make their forced break from home a special experience, leaving happy memories. It sounded as if we were wrong.

Nevertheless, I was still looking forward to meeting Kirsty from Parenting Partners. As soon as I saw her beaming smile I thought,
At last!
Finally I'd met someone in the fostering and adoption world who was a little more upbeat. She even liked dogs.

We chatted all afternoon, talking about our experiences and what our hopes were. Kirsty told us that the agency usually dealt with children who were difficult to place, but if we were willing to take a child with special needs then she'd love to add us to their books. Then she turned to Ian and said she understood that he'd been taken into foster care himself when he was a baby.

“Yes, twice,” he said. “Once when I was a baby and at least once when I was older.”

“So that's more than twice, was it?” said Kirsty, a little puzzled. “What was it for?”

“I'm . . . I don't know . . . I can't really say. I don't remember very much.”

Ian had shut down, and although Kirsty gently pressed him for details, she quickly hit a barrier.

Freddy padded in, and Ian took the opportunity to supervise Freddy outside while he did his business in the garden.

Kirsty whispered to me: “Meg, I'm worried about Ian. Children don't get removed from their homes without a very good reason and he's blanking it all out. He's such a lovely, gentle, kind man, but it worries me.”

I nodded; I felt exactly the same. I knew Ian so well that I could tell what he'd be OK with, and what he wouldn't, and it felt to me that raking up bad memories would definitely not be OK.

“Everyone we take on as a prospective foster parent has to go through a detailed psychiatric assessment,” she continued, “which involves a lot of digging into their childhood. Even just from this afternoon, I'm not sure, I'm really not sure, if Ian's ready to go back into his past. The assessment is hard enough for people who had reasonably good home lives, but for someone who hasn't . . . I don't know how much distress you want him to go through . . .”

Ian came back in with Freddy and Kirsty smoothly changed the subject.

 

I loved Ian for his sunny outlook despite the odds that had been so stacked against him, and also his generous desire to help people who were going through the sort of things he'd been through. When he was little, he sometimes used to help his uncle, a milkman, out on his round, he once told me, and one stop on the route was a children's home.

“The kids there always looked so happy and clean and cared for,” he'd said. “I used to feel jealous of them. I wished I could stay there.”

Yet despite repeated visits from social workers and the police he had only been removed from home for a brief time. I wanted to raise children with him in anyway possible, and to help kids, but if I was forced to choose between his happiness and others'—even mine—well, there was no choice.