Sometimes a pony doesn’t want a bridle on and jerks its head out of reach. Jessie showed me how to do this shuffle where you hold a carrot in one hand, and the bridle in the other. The pony goes for the carrot, and you swap hands at the last minute. You still give them the carrot. Quickly, before they get annoyed.
‘They never mind really. I love it when you unclip the lead rein. They always go charging up the field as if they’re late for something, like they’ve got to run to catch the pony bus. In the afternoon all you do is stand in the field with a carrot in your hand and they come trotting up. You clip a lead rein back on to the bridle and it just follows you back to the stall. I think maybe carrots have some kind of hypnotic ability when it comes to ponies.’
Sputnik followed us out of the yard and up the loaning. We were opening the gate to the field when Jessie noticed that he was missing. ‘Oh no! Where is he? Please don’t let him be up in the pasture scaring cows again.’ We slipped the ponies’ bridles and they cantered off up the field. ‘You check the barns. I’ll check the pasture.’
I ran off down the loaning. I knew he wasn’t going to be in the barns or the pasture, or the shed or the stables. I knew exactly where Sputnik would be. The fridge.
Except he wasn’t. The house seemed to be empty.
Where could he be?
‘I’m upstairs.’
I was always surprised at how far away Sputnik could hear me thinking. If I’d shouted he probably wouldn’t have heard me.
– You’re not allowed upstairs. Come down.
‘I’m hiding in the one place I know she won’t look for me.’
– Where’s that?
He was in Jessie’s room.
– Come out. That’s really bad. They’ll all come back into the house when they’ve done their chores.
‘I’m trying to save your planet. If she finds me, she’ll put that thing around my neck and try and take me walkies. Every time I hear the word “walkies” I reach for my pistol.’
– But this is her room. It’s private.
I didn’t even want to look in. It felt wrong. But Sputnik wouldn’t come out. He was lounging on her bed, flicking through a book.
‘Have you seen this?’ He flipped it round so I could read the cover. It was a kind of scrapbook. It had ‘Jessie and Ray’ written on the front with a Sharpie, and the title . . . Dogs of the Future.
– That’s really private. She didn’t want me to know about that. Put it away.
But privacy is not one of the things that Sputnik cares about. He read the whole book out loud, holding up the pictures for me to see. I thought Dogs of the Future would be about robot dogs or dogs with superpowers. But it wasn’t. The first page was a photo of a sheepdog. Underneath it said the dog was called Brach and it lived for eighty dog years at Stramoddie, then it died.
We asked Dad for a new dog. He said a new dog would just come into our lives one day. That’s how it is with dogs. These are some of the dogs we hope will come into our lives in the future.
– Look! The dog in the picture is wearing the same collar that Jessie put on you.
‘A second-hand collar! A collar from a dead dog! Unbelievable.’
– Maybe it means a lot to her.
The rest of the book was just pictures of dogs printed off the Internet. There were collies, Labradors, pointers, lurchers.
Then at the back there was a picture of a black-and-white dog wearing a little padded jacket and sitting in some kind of machine.
‘That’s her! That’s Laika!’ said Sputnik. ‘What’s she doing here?’
– Laika was a real dog?
‘Of course she was real. I told you all about her. Look, that’s her rocket. The Sputnik II.’
– I know. I just didn’t expect her to be real like in a history book.
Underneath Jessie had written:
Laika
World’s Most Famous Dog Ever
First Creature Ever to Orbit the Earth
First Earth Creature to Die in Space
‘She did not die! That’s a conspiracy theory. She was rescued by me and she had a grand old time, telling all kinds of lies about Earth.’ He turned the page. Someone had drawn a square and written underneath in excitable marker pen ‘Sputnik [awaiting photo] greatest dog ever’. The handwriting was the same but neater, more grown-up. Jessie must have written that bit recently and the rest years ago.
– She thinks you’re the greatest.
‘She’s right about my greatness. Wrong about my species.’
– Shush.
Out in the pasture, the cows were mooing. The door from the farmyard opened. Water was being poured into a kettle. The noise of a car pulling up and chickens making a fuss. A visitor had arrived.
– Maybe it’s Grandad? Maybe he’s all sorted out and he’s come to take me home in a taxi.
‘I don’t think so.’ Sputnik was looking out of the window. ‘It’s a woman in a red VW.’
It had to be Mrs Rowland from the Temporary.
– Oh, well, that’s just perfect. I’m supposed to be making myself useful. I’m supposed to be keeping you out of the house. And now she’s here, you’re not just in the house, you’re in Jessie’s bedroom poking around in her private things. This is so bad. We’ve got to get out of here . . .
‘Fear not! The Sputnik has saved the day!’ He had moved across to Jessie’s dressing table and was holding up a tube of cream.
– What’s that?
‘Invisibilizer. According to the label it is scientifically proven to invisibilize for hours on end.’
– It’s for covering up spots. It’s skin cream. It hides your pimples. It doesn’t make you invisible.
‘Have you read the instructions?’
– It doesn’t need instructions. It’s cream. You rub it on. You wipe it off.
‘You never read the instructions. “Total cover”, it says on here. “One hundred per cent effective”.’ He was already rubbing it on my face.
– Stop it.
‘Check out the mirror.’
– I looked in the mirror. I wasn’t there. Even my backpack wasn’t there!
‘Now me,’ said Sputnik.
I helped him rub it on and the two of us tiptoed downstairs. We could hear Jessie rabbiting on while the mum made Mrs Rowland a cup of tea.
‘Dad has the radio on all the time for the news. He’s scared of missing something. I don’t know why. I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to DO about the war in the Middle East. Back in the day you never even knew there WAS a war until it was over and someone made a big tapestry about it. Instead of the radio blaring out, you’d just have the sound of some nice nuns doing needlework . . .’
‘I came to see how Prez was getting on.’
That was Mrs Rowland, shutting Jessie up. The mum said she thought I was settling in nicely.
‘Has he spoken yet?’
‘Not really but then, as you can tell, we don’t give visitors a lot of chance to talk.’
‘Is he around now?’
‘I think he’s doing his chores,’ said Ray. He was looking straight at me when he said that. I was standing right there in the doorway. ‘Do you want me to go and look for him?’
He really couldn’t see me. ‘One hundred per cent effective,’ said Invisible Sputnik.
– Could we put concealer . . . ?
‘Right on the list.’ I couldn’t see his grin, but I could hear it.
I was so happy to get something else on the list that I didn’t notice at first that they were talking about Sputnik.
‘The thing is,’ Mrs Rowland was saying, ‘you never mentioned that you had a dog.’
Invisible Sputnik nudged me. ‘Talking about me,’ he whispered, ‘the Greatest. I’ve probably won some sort of prize.’
‘He’s only recently arrived,’ said the mum. ‘He just turned up out of nowhere. We put a message on Facebook thinking someone would claim him. He must have a home somewhere. He’s a very clever dog.’
/>
‘You call him Sputnik.’
‘Yes we do. How did you know?’
‘I friended you on Facebook, remember? Just seemed like a good way of keeping in touch. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the comments on your post.’
‘No. No, I haven’t checked.’
‘There are quite a few. They’re not about how clever he is so much as how dangerous . . .’
‘Dangerous? Sputnik? Are you sure?’
‘There’s a man called Dmitri from Dmitri’s shop . . .’
‘The kiosk on the caravan site.’
‘He says Sputnik came into his shop without supervision and acted in a violent manner.’
‘Our Sputnik’s soft as sponge cake,’ said Jessie.
‘I’m gentle as a cloud,’ agreed Sputnik.
– Except you do carry a gun.
‘Then there’s the lady – also from the caravan site – who says he bit her caravan.’
‘Bit?’ said Ray. ‘A caravan? Why would he bite a caravan?’
‘Bit clean through the tyre apparently. She thought it was an earthquake.’
‘Why would he bite through a tyre?’
‘I imagine it would be quite difficult to read the mind of any dog, let alone an unsupervised stray. What we can say is that he obviously has a very strong jaw . . . and is . . .’
‘He’s lovely. He lets me tickle his tummy and everything. He helped with the ponies this morning.’
‘The hens aren’t scared of him,’ said the mum. ‘That’s usually a good sign of whether a dog has a nice calm nature or not. Hens always know.’
‘Cows are scared of him though,’ said the dad.
Everyone looked at him.
‘It was all right in the end, but he did scare the cows.’
‘Dad!’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘But why are you just saying? Sputnik is the greatest—’
‘I took the trouble,’ said Mrs Rowland, ‘of ringing Dmitri in his shop, just to be sure. He did say the dog was very menacing indeed.’
‘How was he menacing?’
‘Dmitri wouldn’t go into detail. But he was obviously quite shaken. He said it was a terrifying encounter.’
– I told you not to rob shops at gunpoint.
‘All this puts me in a difficult position. When we at the Temporary arranged for Prez to come and stay with you for a while, we had no idea that there was a dangerous dog on the premises . . .’
‘But he’s really, truly, not dangerous,’ said Jessie. ‘He’s lovely.’
‘. . . and if you’ll just let me finish. If we had known there was a dangerous dog, we would never have agreed to let Prez come here.’
‘But this is a farm,’ said the mum. ‘There are all kinds of beasts here. Always have been. We’ve had a temporary child every summer for years. We’ve got nearly fifty cows. There’s a bull. He’s dangerous if not handled right. And the hens could give you a nasty wee peck. You’ve got to expect animals on a farm. What difference does one dog make?’
‘If it was your dog, it would be different. You could vouch for it. But this is a dog that turned up at your door just a few days ago. You don’t really know anything about him. If the dog turned on Prez, then the Children’s Temporary Accommodation would be held responsible.’
‘But Sputnik loves Prez,’ pleaded Jessie, ‘and Prez loves Sputnik. He even slept outside with him a few nights back.’
The dad winced when she said that. ‘We didn’t make him sleep out. We didn’t know he was sleeping out. He just did it.’
‘They’re best friends,’ said Jessie. ‘Sputnik likes Prez. He doesn’t like the rest of us.’ I could see that it really hurt her to say this. ‘Please. Don’t send Sputnik away.’
‘I’m afraid it’s either Sputnik or Prez,’ said Mrs Rowland. ‘They can’t both stay here.’
So that was the choice. Me or Sputnik.
I was sure Jessie was going to choose Sputnik.
She wanted a dog.
They all thought he was a dog.
Like Jessie had said, I was going to leave soon anyway. They could have the dog forever.
‘Are we going to vote on it?’ said the dad.
‘Of course we’re not going to vote on it,’ said Jessie. ‘Can I just go and say goodbye to Sputnik?’
So they were going to let Sputnik go and keep me.
‘That’s surprising,’ said Sputnik.
I was surprised too. If things had been different it would have made me happy, I think.
The dad rubbed Jessie’s hair as she went by. She was crying. He pulled her in for a big hug.
She wasn’t going to find Sputnik outside though. We were already running away.
13.
Post-It Notes
All the time I was at Stramoddie I never unpacked my backpack, just in case. Now this had happened, I didn’t have to pack. We just went.
Across the road from the top of the loaning there’s a bus stop. It’s just a wooden hut painted blue with pictures of gannets and seals, but it has a seat inside. We hid in there. It was cosy and dry. I thought about living there until Grandad came to find me. But Sputnik reminded me we still had a planet to save.
I had the key to the flat in Traquair Gardens.
– We could go back there and hide.
‘It can be our secret HQ for saving the planet,’ said Sputnik. ‘Have you got money for the bus?’
– I totally forgot about the bus fare.
‘Don’t worry, I’m going to show you how to stage a simple ambush. We’ll hijack the bus and then we can go wherever we like for free.’
It was only when I turned round to answer him that I saw we weren’t alone at the bus stop.
Jessie was sitting on the bench. I knew from the way she looked straight at me that the concealer had worn off. ‘I knew you’d be here,’ she said.
How did she know we’d be here?
‘Where else would you be? If Sputnik can’t stay, I don’t want to stay. I knew that you’d feel the same. But you can’t just run away from Stramoddie. It’s too far from anywhere. If you’re going to get away you need to take the bus. Where are we going?’
WE?!
‘Let me guess. Your old flat in Dumfries. Where else could you go? Great. We’ll hide there until your grandad’s sorted out. I bet he’ll let us keep Sputnik.’
– What!? Why do I always end up looking after people? First it was my grandad, then it was you and now it’s Jessie.
‘You’ve got a kind face,’ said Sputnik.
She must have seen me looking annoyed. She said, ‘Have you got the bus fare?’
I shrugged a no.
She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a clump of five-pound notes. ‘Bought three calves on Fair Day. Birthday money. Raised them myself. Sold them last week. This money is all mine. You need me. I am the money.’
She was right that we couldn’t have run away on foot. The bus took forever. It snakes through the lanes and across the bridge into Kirkcudbright. It sat in the car park by the quay for a while. Jessie’s phone rang.
‘My mum,’ she said, and turned it off.
Then we went through woods, across the big road, into more woods, down more lanes for hours. The first thing I recognized was the giant Tesco on the bypass as you come into Dumfries.
From there we headed into town.
Jessie put her face against the window. ‘So many streets,’ she said. ‘How are you going to know which one is yours?’
– As if I’d forget my own street.
The thing is, though, Dumfries did seem loads busier and sound loads noisier than I remembered. Down at Stramoddie, there’s a lot going on but it’s all about one thing – cows. Cows being milked, cows being born, cows being taken in, taken out, bought and sold. Here there were all kinds of different things happening – all at the same time. Kids playing. People shopping. People cleaning the streets. Someone repairing the bridge. When we got off the bus, I grabbed hold o
f Jessie’s hand to make sure she was all right.
‘Get off,’ she snapped. ‘I have been to town before you know.’
– Oh.
‘I came for the Agricultural Show and it was way more busy than this. There were cars everywhere. And tractors. And a bloke with a camel. This is quiet compared to then.’
We walked over the footbridge and along by the Robbie Burns Centre. We got to the flats. Ours is number 4.
It was only when we arrived that I realized how long it had been since I was there. I’d always thought of 4 Traquair Gardens as home. But can a place still be home if you haven’t seen it for ages?
Mrs Mackie was smoking a cigarette out of the window of her flat when I walked up. She waved at me and asked how Grandad was. She seemed pleased to see me. Somehow it made me feel better, like I really was coming home. I put the key in the lock. It went in but it didn’t turn. I jiggled it. It still didn’t turn.
‘I can sort that out,’ said Sputnik, fastening the chinstrap of his flying helmet.
– No explosives, please. No guns and no . . .
He was gone.
The bathroom window was slightly open. He’d leaped up and squiggled through it. A few moments later we heard him strolling down the hallway. He opened the door from the inside.
‘See? He’s a clever, clever dog,’ said Jessie. ‘How could they say he was violent?’
– If only you knew.
‘Is this where you used to live?’ she asked as we went inside.
– No. This is where I do live. Where I’m going to live. With Sputnik.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Sputnik.
But obviously she couldn’t hear my thoughts and she couldn’t understand Sputnik. So she just went inside.
Everything was different. The hallway used to be decorated with blue wallpaper. Now the walls were bare and the old wallpaper lay in big curls along the carpet. Someone had scraped it off.
In the living room there was no furniture. Just a pile of boxes shoved into one corner.
In my bedroom – no bed. No carpet. No bookshelves. No wardrobe.
‘It’s a bit . . .’ said Jessie, trying to think of the right word, ‘bare. Where did you sleep?’
Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth Page 9
