The Dog With The Red Bow

The Dog With The Red Bow

How could she have been so stupid?

If she hadn’t been sitting on a crowded bus she would have slapped herself melodramatically, like they do in the movies. She could feel the looks burning into her skin.

The day had started badly. It looked likely to end worse. Don’t let the sun go down on an argument – that much she knew already. Never go to work on one, that was for sure. And over such a routine thing that now she couldn’t even remember what it had been about – she’d simply blown a fuse at him. Huffing as if he were the injured party he stormed off, cursing her under his breath, and then she flopped down onto the unmade bed and sobbed like a baby, then hated herself for sobbing, then sobbed some more until she was dry-heaving.

Melodrama. Hormones. She was out of kilter. It was time to head to the bathroom, and put the face on she needed to face the day.

The bus had been late and so she’d been late again, and by the time she arrived the lady of the house was in a fume and angrily bullying her way into one of her many cashmere overcoats.

‘Finally’.

‘Sorry, the bus….’

‘The bus. Bloody Poles,’ she’d muttered none too quietly, and then brushed past her and out the door.

‘Ma’am,’ Magda hissed at the slammed door. She went into the enormous living room and helped herself to a fashionably slim cigarette from the ivory box on the marble coffee table, but remembering the woman’s acute sense of smell she decided to light it later on the way home. She dropped it into her purse and slipped on her pinafore apron. The house was immaculate already and yet the woman always seemed to know if she’d just had a flick round with a duster.

And so the day had continued.

She’d moved in with her boyfriend two months ago. They’d met at Heathrow Airport, where she was working as a barista, and she’d been surprised when he answered her with a degree of courtesy. She was used to being ignored by the people she served as they hovered around the counter in rushed transit, wheeling suitcases, checking departure gates or frantically scrolling through mobile phone messages, not making eye contact and not really bothering to understand her broken English. Later, when she’d been cleaning the tables, he’d made sure to smile and say goodbye on his way out. She smiled back briefly, and the next day he’d been back. By the end of the week they were out on a date, and before she knew it she’d moved into his flat in Acton.

It was a month before they’d started getting on each other’s nerves.

She’d have to get off the bus at the next stop. The dog wouldn’t stop yapping, and the other passengers were piercing her with darts of irritation. She was uncomfortable and guilt-ridden. A flimsy cigarette was one thing, a flesh and blood Pekingese was something entirely other. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

It was the dog that had finally tipped her over the edge. She was tired and she hated her job. At least serving coffee at the airport there’d been the companionship of the other girls, all of them from Eastern or Central Europe. They knew they were being paid badly because they were all foreigners, but it didn’t seem to matter that much when they had each other to laugh with and laugh at. They were youngish and full of energy and that compensated for the occasional tedium. And the customers could be so funny sometimes, without even trying. But now she was a cleaner she felt isolated and resentful as she polished the gaudy splendour of these outrageous houses for people she couldn’t stand.

And it was his idea, his fault. She’d been happy making coffee. There was nothing wrong with it. People needed a pick-me-up, and it was nice to make them feel better for a little while.

The dog would not stop yapping at her heels as she tried to clean, getting under her feet like a loose marble. She was tempted to kick out at it, but the dog wasn’t to blame. It was just things. She’d put on her favourite red sweater that morning, and the dog had a silly little red bow tied to it. She believed in signs. Maybe the dog was yelping because of the indignity of the little red bow. She knew the feeling – she wanted to yelp herself quite often these days. The Pekingese had a pug nose, its scrunched up face framed in a half-moon of blonde hair. Dogs and their owners, she thought, they really do look the same, it’s true.

He was jealous. Never even tried to deny it. He’d said that if she wanted to be with him, she’d have to find something else. He couldn’t face the idea of her being chatted up by other men at the café. He was so stupid at times that she didn’t know how she could have fallen for him at all. And yet now here she was, a cleaner on a bus with a stolen dog stuffed in her shoulder bag, living with a man she didn’t love, didn’t much even like anymore. What on earth had she been thinking?

The woman would contact the agency and she’d have the police round, no doubt. She could just take the dog back quickly, hop off the bus and onto one heading back before the woman got back, but somehow she felt that would be another defeat. And a kind of cruelty to animals. She couldn’t just abandon it to the mercy of tougher, street-wise city dogs either. It wouldn’t have a chance with that stupid bow. And if she tried to keep it he’d go crazy and throw her out.

Maybe she’d keep it. She made a good cup of coffee, after all.