Page 13 of The Good Sister

‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

He holds up my phone. ‘Your phone. It’s ringing.’

‘Oh.’ That explains why I was feeling irritable. The sound of a phone ringing is among the most crazy-making noises in the world for me. The tinny, repetitive sound of it. The accompanying vibration. Thankfully, my phone rarely rings. Rose sends text messages unless it’s an emergency, and if anyone else calls I let it go to voicemail. But when I look at the screen and see it’s Rose calling, I feel my heart rate increase. She’scalling. It must be an emergency.

I press the phone to my ear. ‘What is it, Rose?’

‘Oh, good, you’re there. I hope it didn’t scare you, me calling like this, but I have just heard from the neighbour and she said Alfie has been barking a lot.’

I scan my brain for a reason why Rose might be calling from Europe to tell me this.

‘Was she okay this morning when you fed her?’

I start to get a bad feeling. ‘I didn’t feed her this morning.’

‘You didn’t?’ Rose says. ‘Why not?’

‘Why not?’ I repeat, trying to make sense of the question. But I can’t.

‘Fern,’ Rose says, ‘tell meyou have been feeding and walking Alfie.’

‘I . . . I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Why do you want me to tell you that?’

There is a long silence, followed by a long, low expletive. I wait, suddenly feeling quite ill.

‘Fern! I told you I would put him in a kennel!’ Rose has her breathless, flustered voice on – the one she uses when talking to people about packages not arriving or being overcharged for the electricity bill. She hardly ever uses this voice with me. ‘You insisted! You said you would feed Alfie!’

I have no recollection of this. But if Rose says I did, then I did. I take a moment to consider the ramifications of this. It’s been four days since Rose went away. Four days since Alfie has been without food or walks. I search my brain for information on how long dogs can survive without food. But I don’t know. I think I might be sick.

Rose is clicking her tongue in that way she does when she is panicking. ‘What are we going to do?’ she says.

I look at Wally, who is watching me intently. ‘You said your van is down the road?’

He nods.

‘Rose,’ I say into the phone. ‘I’m on my way to your house.’

*

Wally is very efficient with time management, as it turns out. After I explain what has happened, he offers to run and get his van (and he does, indeed,run) while I pack up the picnic. By the time I shove everything into the bags and get to the gate, Wally is waiting for me in an orange vintage-looking kombi van. He opens the passenger door from the inside.

‘Where to?’ he asks, and I direct him to Rose’s house, a fifteen-minute drive from the Botanic Gardens. He leaves the radio off as we drive and does me the favour of not talking, which I appreciate as I need to keep my brain space clear to focus on Alfie. Not that I can think much. I feel wobbly with the anxiety of it all. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to keep myself calm. I will be of no use to Alfie unless I can stay calm.

When we pull up outside Rose and Owen’s house, it looks the same as always. Someone must be collecting the mail because there isn’t any sticking out of the letterbox. I wonder why Rose didn’t ask whoever was collecting the post to feed and walk the dog too – if she had, maybe Alfie would be all right.

Wally gets out of the car first. ‘Where will he be?’

‘In the backyard,’ I say.

Wally races up the side of the house and flings open the gate while I walk more slowly behind him, arms still wrapped around myself. When I get to the backyard, I see Alfie is lying on his dog bed on the back verandah. He’s utterly still. I try to take a step toward him but find myself frozen on the spot.

He’s so still. Unmoving. I see him. I feel his skin and hair in my grasp. Wet, dead flesh.

I’ve done it again.

Wally kneels at Alfie’s side. ‘He’s alive. It’s all right, Fern, he’s alive.’

I nod, but relief is slow to come. Alfie’s alive. Not everyone has been as lucky.