The Labrador Pact

by Matt Haig

  ‘Anyway, Charlotte. I’d like you to come and meet the lady I work with. You know, I’ve told you about her. The one who used to know Jonathan Ross.’

  Charlotte rolled her eyes as she got to her feet.

  ‘See you later,’ Simon said, smiling, as Kate and Charlotte walked away. Kate turned, threw a worried glance back towards him, and then disappeared among the guests.

  Adam was inside, in the kitchen, sorting out the drinks. He didn’t notice me as I entered through the patio doors, even when I sneezed. He just carried on, blank-faced but stiff-bodied, cracking ice into glasses. I tried to smell what he was thinking but it was difficult to decipher, with so many scents in the air. Once I sniffed past the desire molecules the only thing I could identify was the black and smoky aroma of burnt animal flesh carried through from the garden.

  ‘Orange juice,’ he said, pointlessly, as he poured the orange juice. ‘Coca-cola. White wine.’

  He wasn’t himself.

  ‘Do you need a hand?’

  Emily’s question made him jump. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see you. No, no, I’m fine. It’s all right.’ He was managing to look straight at her without giving anything away. Even his eyes seemed completely neutral.

  ‘I’d like to help you,’ she said, moving closer. ‘Pretty please.’ In contrast, Emily’s face was proud to give everything away. Her smile, and something about the way her eyes widened, locking his in a strong and steady gaze, made Adam’s attempt at indifference even harder to keep up.

  ‘OK. You can help me take these out.’ He handed her two glasses of orange juice. She paused, as if he had misunderstood her question, and then headed outside. Adam followed, precariously holding three wine glasses and keeping his eyes fixed on Emily’s backside as she walked out in front of him.

  learning

  Although desire molecules were still floating about, the guests were starting to leave. Charlotte, having been as polite as possible for as long as possible, was now upstairs in her bedroom. Grandma Margaret had come inside for an early night. Hal, who had returned from visiting his best friend Jamie, was helping people to find their coats and bags.

  ‘So, Hal, off to university then soon?’ one guest said.

  ‘Yes. Leeds, I think.’

  ‘Leeds, eh?’

  ‘Is this your coat?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Are you off to Leeds, did you say?’ asked another.

  ‘Hopefully,’ Hal said.

  ‘Our daughter. She’s in her second year there. Studying Psychology. She’s having a brilliant time. She says the nightlife’s amazing.’

  ‘Yes. I’m looking forward to it. Is that your coat?’

  ‘No. It’s that one.’

  ‘OK, there you go.’

  ‘Oh, Hal,’ said a third guest, a woman. ‘I hardly recognised you. When did I last see you?’

  ‘It must have been quite a while.’

  ‘Four years ago, wasn’t it? You must have been about fourteen.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Look at you now! A proper man! Getting ready to leave home!’

  ‘Yes. Is that your coat?’

  ‘Oh yes. The pink one. Thank you very much.’

  When most of the guests had left, Hal went up to his bedroom to play his music and revise. I stayed downstairs, because I knew my work wasn’t finished. And the reason it wasn’t finished was because Simon and Emily were the last two remaining guests. For some reason, Kate seemed to blame Adam for their reluctance to leave, and kept on sending him angry eye-darts when no one was looking.

  It was getting colder, so they were inside.

  ‘Shall we go in the living room?’ Adam asked.

  Kate didn’t answer. Not verbally anyway. But she did take him up on his suggestion. Simon and Emily followed, with me close behind, trying to observe as much as possible. I realised that the future protection of the Family could depend on any information I could pick up from the strange scent-signals passing between the four of them.

  They sniffed the room when they entered it as humans always do. I don’t think they know they do this, because they rarely act upon the smells inside, but there is no mistaking the nostril-twitch as they walk through the door.

  ‘Wow!’ said Emily. ‘You’ve got a cat!’

  Lapsang, stretched out on the settee, opened one semi-interested eye. ‘Just when you find some peace and quiet,’ she grumbled.

  ‘What’s she called?’

  ‘Lapsang,’ said Kate. ‘The woman we bought her from named the whole litter after varieties of tea. She’s got a brother called Earl Grey and a sister called Darjeeling.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Emily, already sitting beside her on the settee and stroking her back. ‘I love cats! I’ve always had this special, like, thing, with cats. An infinity.’

  ‘Affinity,’ Simon corrected.

  ‘Yes. An infinity. Me and cats, we always get on really well. I think it’s because I used to be a cat in a previous life.’

  ‘Is she for real?’ Lapsang asked, genuinely unsure.

  ‘Yes,’ I confirmed, solemnly. ‘I’m afraid she is.’

  I checked for a scent of embarrassment on Simon, but there wasn’t one. He just smiled affectionately and looked at Adam. ‘She’s great, isn’t she?’ he asked. It was hard to tell whether he was talking about Lapsang or his wife.

  Adam smiled nervously. ‘Does, er, anyone want another drink?’

  As everybody still had a full glass his question was ignored.

  ‘At home with the Hunters,’ said Simon, moving over to get a closer look at the Family portrait on the wall. The one with me right in the centre.

  Adam went over to join him. ‘Oh yes, it’s quite good isn’t it? We had it done a few months ago. A guy from work did it. The art teacher actually, doing a bit of moonlighting. He did it from a photo.’

  ‘It’s a good likeness,’ Simon said, only to Kate.

  Kate didn’t respond. Instead, she joined Emily on the settee.

  ‘I hear you are an aromatherapist.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, still stroking Lapsang. ‘I am.’

  To my surprise, Emily seemed uninterested in Kate. She certainly didn’t want to talk to her. For some reason, Kate smelt like she accepted this as the way it should be. It didn’t bother her at all.

  ‘That must be interesting.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  I left Lapsang in charge and headed back to the two men, who were still standing in front of the Family portrait.

  ‘I go all over,’ Simon was saying. ‘All over Europe, Australia, the States, Canada, Denmark. Even bloody Africa. And everywhere I go, it’s the same thing, the same spiel.’

  ‘But you enjoy it?’

  ‘Damn yes. ’Course I do. Bloody easy money, I tell you. I just turn up, give them all a few creative-thinking exercises, throw in some meaningless waffle about thinking outside the box and that’s about it. Job done.’

  ‘Creative-thinking exercises?’

  ‘Yes. You know. Think of ten different uses for a chair other than for sitting on. That sort of crap.’ Adam looked over to the unoccupied wicker chair in the corner of the room and frowned, perplexed. Simon continued. ‘It’s all bollocks, but it’s the right sort of bollocks, that’s the thing. Big business, that’s what they go for. If you’re making sense, if you are telling people how it is, if you just waltzed in there telling them that they’re sitting on a time bomb, then, well, you wouldn’t have a cat in hell’s chance.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So what I do, what I do is recite what they want to hear, give them a framework within which they can carry on doing exactly what they were always doing, but with new words. Imagineering. Blue-sky thinking. Four-dimensional branding. They lap it up.’

  ‘But surely you must believe what you tell them?’

  Simon looked at Adam curiously, like a dog encountering a new breed. ‘Believe in it? Oh, come on, Adam, when did I ever believe in anything? Well, apart from mysel
f. Shit, no. I don’t believe a single word. But hey, I’ve got no conscience. You’re the hearts-and-minds man; I’m just in it for the money, I really am.’

  Adam’s face was smiling, but his scent was sad. He looked across the room and caught Emily’s eye, then turned away. ‘So, anyway, how did you two meet? You know, you and Emily?’

  ‘Oh, long story. The short version is that I went up to her at this conference. Something at the Queen Elizabeth Centre. She was temping, handing out flyers for different seminars. It was before she got into all this aromatherapy-numerology-crystal-ball malarkey. She looked gorgeous, she really did. Anyway, I went over to her and thanked her for promoting my seminar. We got talking and, after the conference, she ended up in my hotel room. And that was it.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘We went through ten different uses for a chair.’ Adam still looked (and smelt) blank. So Simon clarified: ‘We fucked. And then, after that, we fucked some more.’

  Adam was shocked, and embarrassed. He stroked my head in a desperate bid for homely normality to be restored. He looked at Kate, but she was too far away to have heard.

  ‘Oh sorry,’ Simon said. ‘I should rephrase that. We fell in love, and decided to live together. The sex, well, that was incidental.’ His tongue pushed behind his cheek.

  ‘She seems, um, very interesting.’

  ‘Does she?’ Simon asked, before sustaining a deliberate pause. ‘Yes. You’re right. She is very interesting. Her mind takes me to new places every single day.’ He laughed and, reluctantly, Adam joined in.

  ‘Oh, but come on. You must have something in common?’

  Simon looked up at the corner of the ceiling. ‘Nope. Not a single thing. Just sex.’

  ‘Honestly? That’s it?’

  ‘Hey, Ads. Don’t belittle it. It’s the stuff of legend.’

  They both laughed and sipped their drinks. But I couldn’t help noticing that Adam still smelt uncomfortable. ‘Ads? God I haven’t been called that since school.’

  ‘Anyway, your turn. How are things with you and Kate? Is everything as nauseatingly happy as this picture makes out?’

  ‘Things are going well,’ he said, almost too quickly to be convincing. ‘I mean, we have our moments, but what family with two teenagers doesn’t? Prince keeps us all in line, don’t you, boy?’

  I wagged my tail at the sound of my name, as if it was the first word of the conversation I had understood. Of course, I knew he was joking. I knew he didn’t realise that that was in fact my role. To keep them in line.

  ‘You’re a lucky man,’ Simon said.

  Adam said nothing for a while as the sad smells continued to filter through his trousers.

  ‘What about you? Have you any . . . plans?’ Adam asked, eventually.

  ‘With Emily? For kids?’

  Adam nodded.

  Simon laughed. ‘No. No plans. I don’t really think it would work out, to be honest. I’m not like you, Ads. I’m just not the faithful, committed sort of guy. I think you’re either made for family life or you’re not - and, well, I’m just not.’

  ‘I used to think like that.’

  ‘So you think I could change?’

  ‘I think everyone can.’

  ‘Perhaps you could teach me. Perhaps you could be my mentor in how to be a successful family man. You certainly seem to have got it down to a tee.’ I didn’t know what Simon was up to, but I realised he was definitely putting Adam through some sort of test. Now, of course, I know exactly what he was doing. He was trying to find a weak spot. He was trying to work out from which angle he would later attack.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t go that far,’ Adam said, his eyes still on the portrait in front of him. ‘I think I’m still learning.’

  holes

  I used to dig holes. When I was younger. Always digging holes.

  Trying to get the park to open up, to reveal its secrets. Dig, dig, dig. I could have dug all day, if Adam had let me. I could have dug until I reached the bottom, until I found what was really there underneath, but Adam always called me too soon.

  Dig, dig, dig.

  Back then, I was only allowed in certain places. Never in flowerbeds. But I didn’t mind because when you dug in flowerbeds you never found anything. I stuck to the back wall where there were more things to find. Where there were the things which helped you discover about humans. The humans who came in the park at night to drink and smoke and fuck and eat and drug and puke.

  Dig, dig, dig.

  What I really liked was when there was soft black earth which meant you could keep on digging past the things the humans had left. Past all the things that had been thrown away. When there was soft black earth you could dig down until you reached the smells you never found above ground. Time-travel smells. Smells which helped you understand why we die and why we live. The smells which told us that it may already be too late. The smells only dogs seemed to be able to pick up.

  But Adam, who liked looking up, who even now likes trying to find answers in the sky, never let me get too deep. He wanted me on the surface, where he could see me.

  I used to fantasise that one day, though, when he was not looking, I would dig and dig and dig until I could fully understand. Until all the smells made sense. Because if you got far enough down, I thought, you would be able to smell the truth. And then I would have been able to stop. To stop digging holes.

  But that was then. That was before everything. Before Henry had fully explained my duty, and made me understand.

  The Labrador Pact: Protect one Family, protect all

  When every dog believed in preserving the security of human Families, our influence could be seen everywhere. Although times have changed, we can still see the wider impact of our mission. If one human Family is secure and happy, it means there is security and happiness beyond. Likewise, if a Family falls apart, others are made more vulnerable.

  In protecting one, we are protecting all.

  changing

  Things were going wrong.

  How wrong, I didn’t yet know, but the signs were increasingly bad. Adam was changing. His voice, his behaviour, his scent - everything was different.

  He was getting angrier, and he was paying less attention to everything around him. He was also running three times a week. With Simon. It had been arranged the day of the barbecue.

  Obviously, Kate hadn’t been happy about the arrangement, and had tried to prevent him going.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked him.

  ‘This what?’

  She sighed. ‘This running.’

  ‘To keep fit.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s not something else?’

  ‘Something else?’

  ‘A competition. With Simon. You know, the way it used to be.’

  ‘Oh, Kate, don’t be ridiculous. That was years ago. Of course it’s not. Believe me, I’m not jealous of Simon. I mean what has he got that I’d want?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Oh, come on. His naff flash car? That horrible house? His double garage? His bookshelves with nothing but The Art of Leadership on them? Don’t be daft. His whole existence is a blank space he thinks he can fill with money.’

  ‘So why are you going running with him, then? If you don’t like him.’

  ‘I told you: to keep fit. God! What’s with you!’

  ‘I just wish . . .’

  ‘What? What do you wish?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Kate, placing her hand on her head. ‘Nothing.’

  But Kate wasn’t the only one unhappy with the new Adam. There was Charlotte, too. She was annoyed that she was not allowed out of the house on her own, because of all the news stories.

  ‘But it’s not fair. Everyone else is allowed out.’

  ‘It’s for your own good. Perhaps other parents don’t care as much as we do.’

  And then Charlotte would thunder upstairs, slam her bedroom door, and play her loud music. Night after night after night.

&nb
sp; Things had become worse when, the night after the barbecue, she announced that she had a boyfriend.

  ‘A boyfriend?’ Kate asked, smiling.

  ‘Mum, I’m thir-teen.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s just a boy.’

  And then Adam added, ‘What school does he go to?’ This question caused Charlotte to hesitate. She made a faint noise, unintelligible even to my ears.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Rosewood,’ she said eventually.

  ‘So how do you know him if he goes to a different school?’ asked Kate, still smiling.

  ‘Sarah knows him.’ Sarah was Charlotte’s best friend, fellow vegetarian, and the person who inspired her to turn my metal lead into a fashion accessory.

  Adam, suddenly aware that Charlotte’s new boyfriend could be one of his pupils, turned pale. ‘What’s his name?’

  Charlotte didn’t answer.

  ‘Charlotte. Your boyfriend. What’s he called?’

  Charlotte still didn’t answer.

  ‘Do I teach him?’

  Charlotte, clearly wishing she hadn’t brought the subject up, said nothing.

  ‘Charlotte, answer your father,’ Kate said, with reluctant solidarity.

  Charlotte made another unintelligible noise.

  ‘What was that? David? Is that what you said? David?’

  ‘Dan-ny.’

  ‘Danny? Daniel Smith?’

  Charlotte made a face and shook her head.

  ‘Danny . . .’ Adam scanned the ceiling, as if looking for clues. Charlotte’s anxiety pickled the air as she waited for the inevitable realisation. ‘The only other Danny I can think of is Danny Thomas but no girl in their right mind would ever go near that troublemaker . . . Charlotte, tell me, please tell me it’s not Danny Thomas.’

  Charlotte’s anxiety switched to fury, a switch which forced her up off her chair, across the room and out of the door in one dramatic gust. I wagged, too late. Always too late.

  Kate looked at Adam. ‘Who’s Danny Thomas?’ But as soon as she had asked the question her eyes strayed towards the carpet, where fallen debris from the dried flowers had been left unhoovered.