Love is a Four-Legged Word: The romantic comedy about canines, conception and fresh starts

by Michele Gorman

  Except it wasn’t win-win, was it?

  She shoved the stick deep into the rubbish bin where Rufus wouldn’t see it. They didn’t talk about those tests anymore. It was her dirty little secret now. She was just glad they hadn’t told anyone they were trying. She couldn’t handle disappointing their parents every month, too.

  You’ve got one thing to do, she berated her uterus. One thing. Why don’t you pull your socks up and do your job?

  But it seemed to be no use. Her reproductive system was on strike and she had no idea how to coax it back to work. Maybe her radiator needed flushing, too.

  The dogs shot through the open bathroom door to step all over her socked feet. ‘Did you miss me?’ She ran her fingers through their wavy white coats. ‘You know it’s rude to bother a person when she’s in the loo.’

  Then you should leave the door open, their looks said. Don’t blame us.

  She sat on the floor, burying her face in Fred’s furry back. ‘Want to come to Max’s session with me?’

  She didn’t usually bring them, but she’d rather not be alone at the moment.

  In the hall, she clipped on their leads. ‘Come on, I’ll drive. You can stick your heads out the window and bark at the cars.’

  ‘Just because it’s taking a little longer than we hoped to get pregnant,’ she reasoned to Fred and Ginger in the rear-view mirror as she came off the exit into London, ‘doesn’t mean, absolutely and definitively, that there’s a problem, does it?’

  Definitely not, both dogs agreed.

  ‘Besides, I’m not even sure we’re doing it on the right days,’ she continued. ‘Sorry to give you that kind of detail about your parents’ sex lives.’

  The dogs waited for more. They didn’t have much choice, being harnessed in by their dog seatbelts.

  ‘I guess I could get one of those ovulation kits. It just seems so clinical, you know? Though if we know the right days then we could shag all the time and I’d definitely get pregnant. Or not. At least I’d know, right?’

  Ginger grunted as she laid down.

  Scarlett had lost her audience. She’d have to wait till she got home to google How long does it take to get pregnant. Again.

  Like she didn’t know the odds by heart. Twenty per cent got pregnant within a month (the lucky sods), seventy per cent were up the duff within six months and eighty-five per cent were pregnant within a year.

  We are the eighty-five per cent... hopefully, Scarlett thought. Which sounded like the world’s lamest pregnancy slogan.

  Tears blurred the view of the road up ahead. What if it never happened? She tried to stop her mind going there, but it had been eleven months already without so much as a late period. They’d failed to make eleven babies, babies who now could never be born. They’d missed those chances.

  What would those babies have been like? Would they have had Rufus’s eyes or hers, the Deering nose or the Fothergill freckles? They might have been easy births. Or she might have spent days in labour, worrying she wasn’t strong enough to get through it. Maybe they would have slept through the night after the first few weeks, or they might have been colicky little windbags.

  She’d never know now, yet those babies were as much a part of her as any child she could imagine. They were once possible children, just like the one they still hoped for. The difference was that what was once possible now could never be possible. She’d never get to kiss those tiny fingers or pat those backs after a feed or feel those warm little bodies snuggle against hers.

  It felt like mourning. Every single day she mourned those impossible babies.

  Was she going insane? Surely the lightning-quick and totally overwhelming hatred that overcame her at the sight of pregnant strangers wasn’t normal. That wasn’t sadness or regret. It was much worse. She wished very bad things to happen to those women. If she couldn’t have it, then nobody else should either. She could be happy for them once she had her own baby.

  She’d never tell Rufus about those feelings. Just knowing they were trying and failing in those first months had sucked the joy out of their relationship. That scared her. Imagine if Rufus knew he’d married a crazy person who loathed people she’d never met and hid pregnancy sticks in the bin each month.

  Besides, part of her did still flicker with hope that she’d be pregnant soon. She snatched at the flimsiest of anecdotes. The fifty-three-year-old woman who conceived while on the pill? Scarlett had practically memorised the newspaper article. Women getting pregnant just as they got approval for adoption? Those stories were more common than one would think. Surrogate and client miraculously pregnant at the same time? Granted, it was a little bit tabloid, but she was too greedy for positive news to be discerning. Even though she still hated the mum-to-be for getting lucky, she gorged on the hope it gave her. She was afraid of what would happen if she stopped.

  Bucking herself up, she popped on her hands-free headset to ring Shannon.

  ‘Clive, get off your sister!’ Shannon shouted as she picked up. ‘Sorry. He’s such a bully. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing, really, just feeling a bit meh today.’ Understatement. ‘Tell me something cheery.’

  ‘Clive! Sampson doesn’t want to be your girlfriend either. Honestly, that dog. Are you driving?’

  ‘It’s okay. Hands-free headset.’ Shannon was a stickler for the rules. ‘I’m going to class.’

  ‘How come you’re meh?’

  Shannon had no idea about the pregnancy tests. It was too big a conversation for the M4. ‘Just an off day.’

  ‘You’re not the only one. I threw a full poo bag away a minute ago and missed the bin opening. The bag fell out and emptied on my foot. It’s always on my foot. Why is that?’

  ‘Like toast landing buttered side down. It’s a mystery. Sorry about your poo foot.’

  ‘Sorry about your meh day. Feel better to know my foot stinks?’

  ‘That definitely helped.’

  Chapter 11

  Shannon stood back from the huge white wall, with her hands on her hips, so she could study the canvases. The bottom left corner of each one was definitely lower than the right. Yet they were perfectly level on top. She didn’t need to a maths degree to know her paintings weren’t square.

  Which would have been useful to notice before she’d painted her entire degree show on them. But no.

  That’s what she got for buying cut-price canvases from her classmate’s cousin who she hardly even knew. He’d sold them from his family’s second-hand office furniture shop under the arches in Peckham.

  Julian sidled up from across the room where he’d hung his own work – collages made from lad’s magazines and butterflies. They were quite beautiful at a distance, but disturbing close up. ‘Happy?’ He bumped her hip with his as he examined her paintings.

  ‘Do you think it’s a problem that the canvases aren’t square?’ she asked.

  ‘Not at all. That makes you avant-garde. How fabulous!’ He clapped his manicured hands, making the sparkly blue nail varnish twinkle.

  Everything about Julian twinkled, with or without polish. During their first week of class he decided he would be Shannon’s closest art school friend – and there was never any point arguing with him. Besides, it wasn’t like many others were in the running for the job. Art school was as cliquey as secondary school had been, and even more competitive. It would have been unbearable if not for Julian.

  They’d never competed with each other, though, till now. Everyone was hoping to sell their work at the show. Most were broke, but Shannon had another reason to do well.

  She had a point to prove. One that was taking ten years.

  Way back when she was eighteen, which seemed ages ago, she knew she wanted to do a fine arts degree, but her parents acted like that would ruin her life. They didn’t forbid her, exactly, since that wasn’t their style. Instead, they served up a constant diet of worry with large helpings of We-Only-Want-The-Best-For-You ladled over everything. For the sake of family harmony and her own
sanity she made a deal with herself. If she studied a slightly more employable subject to make them happy, then she could do the degree she really wanted after she graduated. She was a total swot anyway. The idea of being a student through her twenties couldn’t be more appealing.

  The reality was pretty crap, though. After uni all her friends got jobs while she started on her part-time MFA. They rented decent flats and went out to pubs and restaurants and on city breaks. She could just about do the pub, and the occasional eat-all-you-like Chinese buffet. It got old, constantly having to shake out her pockets and dig down the back of the sofa cushions to buy a glass of wine.

  Some people, she mused, know what they want to do from an early age. Others fall into a career and still others never figure it out. Shannon wasn’t sure she had it completely sussed, but to her surprise, walking dogs went from a way to make some money to a job she cared about to her own business with Scarlett.

  Unfortunately that raised a tricky issue. Her heart told her to stay in the programme because she did enjoy it, poverty and cliques notwithstanding. But her head said it was really just a very expensive way of indulging her pride for a little while longer.

  She had a responsibility to her eighteen-year-old self and she was bound to that young woman’s dream, even though it wasn’t really hers anymore. She was never going to be a real artist. She didn’t have the stomach to make the sacrifices, existing on Pot Noodles and paint fumes. That wasn’t easy to admit, even to herself, when it had been part of her persona for so long.

  And she couldn’t bring herself to admit it to her parents either. So she was graduating. At least then she’d have finished what she started. She wouldn’t be a full-time artist, but she could still have a sideline in art with a focus on dogs.

  ‘How many invites did you send out?’ Julian asked. His deep brown, kohl-rimmed eyes sought hers and, as usual, his beauty took her breath away. His Jordanian parents had given him all their best genes. Incredibly perfect skin and a nose that plastic surgeons would use as a prototype. And those huge eyes. He looked like Conchita after electrolysis.

  Julian had been slightly more butch when they first started their programme. Slightly. She shuddered now to think that she’d actually contemplated him as a potential boyfriend. She’d figured he was gay, but wondered: just how gay? Like, were the chances of his ever seeing a vagina more or less than seeing a unicorn?

  Less, as it turned out.

  ‘Eight, I think,’ Shannon answered. ‘My family are coming, and a few friends. You?’

  ‘Fifty-two.’ He flicked a strand of sleek black hair over his shoulder. ‘One can never have too many wallets around when it comes to art, darling.’

  Shannon wasn’t sure she even knew fifty-two people. Maybe if she stretched it to the family who ran the corner shop and every neighbour on her road that she’d ever said hello to. Even if she did know them, though, she’d never impose an invitation. She’d been embarrassed enough inviting Scarlett and Rufus.

  No wonder she couldn’t talk to Mr Darcy, when she cringed about asking her friends to come along to a free event with wine. Banksy had the right idea. Anonymous art sounded like the way to go. She could post her wonky paintings under cover of darkness all over London.

  She’d have loved to stay for a drink with Julian, but she had to pick up the poodles back in Reading. Their owners wanted them as tired and empty of wee as possible when they got home from work. The park was off limits after dark, but Fifi and Clive preferred the pavement anyway.

  ‘My paintings are crooked,’ she told them as they meandered away from their house. ‘For the show next week. Not just crooked on the wall. They’re not square.’

  Fifi sniffed at a signpost. That’s typical.

  ‘It’s not like I have loads of money for canvases. Your parents don’t exactly pay me a lot.’

  Clive glanced up at her. That’s not our problem, is it? Get another job.

  It’s not just a job, though, it’s my business, she thought with the same quiet rush of pride she always felt. Art school notwithstanding, she’d achieved something in the past three years. It might have been easier to have a nicely-paying office gig with regular hours, treats on casual Fridays and Christmas parties in January, but then she wouldn’t have been able to finish school. She had a lot to be grateful for, and she wouldn’t devalue that just because the poodles judged her.

  She jumped when her phone rang. Scarlett. They’d already talked today. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I just wondered what you’re doing.’

  ‘I was in London earlier,’ Shannon said. She’d been at the gallery all week. But Scarlett knew that. ‘Now I’m with the poodles.’

  ‘Oh. You’re back already? I was ringing to see if you could sneak off for a drink with me before my next class.’

  ‘Sorry, if I’d known I’d have left the gallery a little earlier. I had to come back for the poodles.’ She glanced at Clive. He snubbed her. ‘Ring Rufus. He’s always good for bunking off.’

  ‘Yeah, I will. Okay. Have fun with the poodles.’

  ‘As if.’

  Something felt funny as she hung up. It wasn’t that Scarlett had rung. They talked every day. But she didn’t usually sound that… what was it? Meh, she’d said the other day. First Rufus’s quarter-life crisis (even if he didn’t admit it) and now Scarlett. What was going on with those two?

  Despite her promise to Rufus, she couldn’t sit by and watch her best friends be unhappy. Not if there was anything she could do about it.

  Clive deigned to look her way before turning twice and crouching on the small patch of grass under the street lamp.

  Sighing, she pulled a roll of poo bags from her pocket.

  ‘I bet Banksy doesn’t have to do this.’

  Clive looked pleased with himself.

  Chapter 12

  Fake it till you make it, Scarlett dared the image that stared back at her from her bathroom mirror. Wasn’t that what those women’s magazines advised, between articles about who broke up, cheated or changed gender and the beach snaps of celebrities and their personal sun-cream application assistants?

  Scarlett couldn’t give in to all the uns – unpregnant, unsure, unhappy… unwomanly – or she’d end up depressed, bumping along the floor like a wrinkled birthday balloon long after the party.

  Her world seemed to divide now into twenty-eight-day cycles, and every month had the same punchline. Though these days she stopped herself from feeling the anticipation of those pregnancy tests, so at least she didn’t have as far to fall. Maybe she should let herself be optimistic again. Then she’d get a few days of excitement before the inevitable.

  No matter how much she told herself that pregnancy didn’t define womanhood, and it certainly didn’t define her, she still always ended up feeling awful after she buried the wee stick in the bathroom bin.

  She and Rufus were failing to do what millions of others seemed to manage on a reckless night out. And they weren’t even having fun trying.

  Just try being passionate when you feel about as sexy as a colonic irrigation.

  ‘Dogs,’ she said to Fred and Ginger, who stared at her from the doorway. ‘We need a change. Fake it till you make it, right?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I am sexy,’ she told the bathroom mirror.

  The dogs looked unconvinced.

  ‘I am sexy and FABulous. Sexy, fabulous and GORgeous!’ She made a kissyface pout. God, if anyone saw her… ‘Yeah, right. You’re practically Giselle’s twin, except for your eyes, nose, mouth, and your skin, and your hair, and...’

  She peered at her eyebrows. They’d gone feral and gave her face a permanently frowny expression.

  ‘If I tweeze it, he might come.’

  She scrutinised the rest of her face. There weren’t deep lines yet, but she looked tired. And where had that long hair under her chin come from? It looked like an inch of thread was stuck to her face. It could have been there for months waving at people.

  She knew she didn’t have twee
zers. Once upon a time, before her facial hair had gone rogue, she’d kept appointments at John Lewis’s brow bar.

  But she couldn’t let the hair stay on her face now that she knew it was there.

  She glanced at the razor in the shower (also sorely neglected lately). If she was really, really careful…

  Once she started she couldn’t stop herself. She found a few more hairs under her chin. They needed plucking. And she nearly got her brows under control, though the left one was a little stubbier than the right.

  Rufus’s shave gel was luxuriously thick and soft on her legs. Carefully she shaved past her knees, all the way up her thighs. She hadn’t done that in months. Nice and smooth.

  She stared at her pubic hair. Her eyebrows had been too bushy, and she had tidied them up.

  She watched the blondish clumps swirl away down the plug hole.

  Definitely trimmer, though now her bikini line looked unkempt in comparison. So she dragged the razor over the sensitive skin.

  That just showed up her undercarriage.

  She worked with the concentration of a brain surgeon. She really didn’t want the razor to slip now.

  Staring down at herself, she realised she’d gone too far. Instead of the perfectly normal muff she’d known and loved for most of her life, her pubic area was covered by a weirdly uniform patch that reminded her of the sticky felt pads they’d put on the bottom of the dining chair legs.

  Scarlett felt naked as a mole rat.

  Her mum rang just as she and Rufus were getting into the car. ‘Can you please give me a ride to your dad’s?’ Julia asked breathlessly when Scarlett answered.

  ‘Why are you wheezing?’ Scarlett wanted to know.

  ‘I ran from down the road,’ said Julia.

  ‘Why did you run from down the road?’

  ‘I was chasing the tow truck. They have my car.’

  ‘What?!’

  Rufus started at Scarlett’s outburst. She made an eek face at him.

  ‘It’s been towed,’ said Julia. ‘Now, can you pick me up or do I have to ring a taxi? We’re due at William’s in half an hour. You know how cross he gets when we’re late.’