by Matt Dunn
“Finished?” he says to his wife, somewhat inappropriately, and the four of us stand there awkwardly until Luke realizes he’s supposed to explain why he’s talking to us. “Oh. Sorry. Sarah, this is Julie. Julie works for me. At, you know, the office.”
As I snort in derision at his nervous, overly-elaborate explanation, Sarah smiles. “Nice to meet you, Julie,” she says. “Luke’s told me all about you.”
“He has?” says Julie. Frantically, her eyes flick across to Luke, in an I-doubt-it kind of way.
“In that you’re invaluable to him. A key member of the team.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And what is it you do for him?”
Julie almost drops the glass she seems to have forgotten she’s holding, though it appears she’s temporarily forgotten her occupation, as well. “I, um...”
“Julie’s our events organizer. She, um...” Luke looks like his mind’s gone blank too. “Julie?”
Julie clears her throat nervously. “Well, I organize, you know...”
“Events?” suggests Sarah.
“That’s right,” says Luke, as if Sarah’s just come up with the answer to a particularly tricky question on University Challenge. Sarah smiles again, then Julie opens her mouth and closes it, so I do a half bark from the floor, seeing as no one has introduced me yet.
“And who’s this?” Sarah says, beaming down at me.
Julie seems to be waiting for Luke to do the introductions, though he’s probably decided it might not be smart to admit he knows my name. “Yes, who is this cute little fella?” he says, kneeling down to pet me, but when I growl just for his benefit, he gets up again quickly. “I didn’t know you had a... French Bulldog, is it?”
I growl again, mainly at Luke’s bad acting, and Julie gives me a reproachful look. “Pug, actually. This is Doug,” she says.
“He’s gorgeous,” says Sarah, and I wag my tail to acknowledge the compliment.
“Don’t let him hear you say that, or he’ll get a big head,” says Julie, and Luke lets out a short laugh.
“Bigger than it is already?” Luke lets out another laugh, then stops abruptly when he sees Julie and Sarah scowling at him. “I meant in proportion to his body. You know. On account of him being a...” Luke swallows so hard we can all hear it. “Pug?”
Sarah rolls her eyes at him. “Ignore Luke,” she says. “He’s never been an animal lover.” She nudges her husband affectionately, and Luke’s cheeks darken, and, embarrassingly, so do Julie’s.
“So...” says Luke, in that way that suggests it’s the start of a sentence, but it really means the end of a conversation. Sarah, though, doesn’t seem to be on the same wavelength.
“We were going to order some lunch.” She jerks a thumb back over her shoulder toward their table. “Did you want to join us?”
Luke’s turned ashen again, and for a moment, Julie seems to be considering Sarah’s offer—after all, how better to get a window on their relationship? “No. Thank you,” she says, after a moment. “I ought to get... I mean, Doug and I... We should be...”
“I get it.” Sarah purses her lips. “Seeing your boss, eh?”
“What?”
“Outside the office. When it’s bad enough seeing him when you’re at work...”
“Oh. Right. Yes. That’s it!” Julie laughs, a little too loudly, and Sarah joins in, though Luke appears not to be finding any of this funny, and, in fact, is looking like he’s wishing the ground would open and swallow him up. “Anyway, like I said, we’ve got to...” She grabs my leash and starts pulling me toward the door. “Nice to meet you, Sarah, I’ll just...”
“But you haven’t finished your drink?” says Sarah, confused.
Julie looks down at her glass, which is still about three-quarters full, then, as if making some momentous decision, she takes a step back toward the table, picks it up, and downs the contents in one go. “There,” she says stifling a burp. “Anyway, Luke, I’ll see you tomorrow...”
“At work,” says Luke, a little too quickly.
“Yeah,” says Julie, to no one in particular, then she turns around a little unsteadily, waves her free hand vaguely in the air, and drags me unceremoniously out of the pub.
She doesn’t say much on the way home, evidently emotional, and while at first I think it’s just because she’s drunk most of her wine in one gulp, it’s obvious meeting Sarah has been too much for her. As has the proof that Luke is plainly a liar, and is clearly “with” his wife—though at least now Julie should know she’s not going to end up with him, and be glad of the fact.
What’s confusing to me is that Sarah seems lovely, so I’m perplexed as to why Luke would be cheating on her?
Then again, it’s also a mystery why Sarah’s with Luke in the first place. Something she and Julie have, ironically, in common.
9
I’m sitting on the carpet the following morning, basking in a patch of sunlight streaming in through the front room window, when Julie marches into the room. “Come on, Doug,” she announces, though not with a great deal of enthusiasm.
Automatically, obediently, I get to my feet, big stretch for as long as it takes Julie to comment on it, trot toward her, then freeze. Julie’s dressed for work, and normally I’d be waiting for Julie’s dad to walk me, so something doesn’t quite add up.
“Doug?” she says, again, so I indicate Come on where? with a twenty-degree clockwise tilt of my head.
“Have you forgotten? It’s take your pet to work day,” she explains, grabbing her keys from the table, and even though my initial reaction is to snort derisively, it quickly strikes me as an excellent idea, as several of Julie’s coworkers are bound to be men. And though I’ve heard Priya suggest that office romances are never a good idea, she might have been specifically referring to the one Julie’s having with her boss. Let’s face it, any romance, even a different office one, is a better idea than going out with Luke. So, all I have to do is check out any eligible men there, work that old “pug magic,” set the two of them up, and voilà!
With an excited yap, I follow her out to the car, then clamber in and hop up onto the passenger seat. As Julie fastens my restraint, I can’t help but pant happily.
Today’s going to be a good day. I can already feel it.
* * *
When we arrive at Julie’s office, something a little weird happens. Julie picks me up, carries me in through the sliding doors, then carts me through a big room toward a large desk at the far end, behind which a man and a woman are sitting wearing headsets that look a bit like the one Frasier sometimes wears when he’s “listening.” Before I can figure out what they’re doing there, she carries me down a short hallway to another set of doors that slide open with a ping when she presses a button. We then step forward into a small metal-walled room and the doors rumble shut behind us.
The room shakes, and I get a weird feeling in my stomach, but it’s nothing compared to how I’m thrown a moment or two later when the doors slide back open to reveal that in the few seconds we’ve been in there, someone’s changed the whole space outside the doors into something different. I’m disoriented, and don’t want to move from the spot on the carpet where Julie’s just set me down.
Suddenly a large figure looms over me. “Who’s this gorgeous chap?”
A woman much older-looking than Julie, who smells of cigarettes, and has a raspy voice that makes Julie’s dad sound effeminate, squats down in front of me. In truth, she’s a bit scary, and on top of how confused I’m feeling after my changing rooms experience, it’s all I can do not to run and hide behind Julie’s legs.
“This is Doug,” says Julie.
I just about manage to stand my ground as the woman extends a hand to me. Normally, this would be my cue to offer her a paw, but I’m still a little discombobulated.
“Hello, Doug,” says the woman, patting
me on the head. “You’re a cute one, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
I just stare back at her, until I hear Julie chuckle behind me. “Sorry,” she says, on my behalf. “I think he’s just reeling a bit from his first time in an elevator.”
I glance back at the sliding doors as they ping shut behind me, and realize I’ve been stupid. I know what an elevator is—Frasier uses one all the time, and if it’s alright with Eddie then it’s fine by me.
Julie leads me over to her desk, stopping along the way to say hello to some of her colleagues. I suspect she really just wants the chance to show me off, as I get fussed over at least half a dozen times. Perhaps that’s not surprising given the lack of competition.
I’d been expecting her office to resemble the waiting room at the V-E-T’s, but it appears not that many people have gone along with today’s pet directive. And while I’m relieved to see there aren’t, in fact, any cats here, Vinay from accounts has brought his bearded dragon, which he assures Julie isn’t an actual dragon like on Game of Thrones. Tessa in HR has brought in her goldfish, swimming in a half-full plastic water bottle, which she’s placed on the corner of her desk, from where the creature is currently eyeballing me suspiciously. Though not as suspiciously as Luke, who’s just appeared at Julie’s shoulder.
He clears his throat, and she stiffens, just as my hackles begin to rise. Then, following an overly-loud and excessively-formal, “Morning, Julie!”—probably for the benefit of anyone in the office who might have their suspicions—he bends down and pretends to be interested in the spreadsheet on Julie’s computer.
“Lucas,” she says, her voice formal and surprisingly even, given how her heart’s audibly racing.
“Funny bumping into you in that pub yesterday,” he says, quietly.
“Yes, wasn’t it?” Julie keeps her eyes fixed on her screen. “Really funny. Hilarious, in fact. Doug and I were chortling to ourselves the whole way home.”
“Alright. No need to go over the top.”
Julie freezes. “Over the top?” she says through gritted teeth, then she swivels her head round and fixes him with a glare. “If you want to see over the top, I can do over the top.”
“Okay, okay. Calm down.” Luke looks around nervously. “Listen, are we still on for tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“It’s Monday.” Luke taps the standalone calendar on Julie’s desk. It’s one of those ones with a new inspirational saying every day, with today’s being You only regret the things you don’t do. Though right now, I wouldn’t bet that Julie feels that same way.
“I’m fully aware what day it is, thank you very much.”
“But Monday’s our night. Our regular night,” he says, almost under his breath.
Julie narrows her eyes and types some alphabetical letters into the top row of one of her spreadsheets. While it’s a little hard to make out from where I’m sitting on the floor, they seem to spell out the word JERK in capital letters.
“It is. Or rather it was. Right up to when I saw your wife and discovered she’s pregnant!”
For a moment, Luke looks like he’s considering denying it, which would be a new low, and a particularly despicable one, even for him. “Right, yes, well, I can explain that,” he says, with the look of a man who’d actually rather not. Especially right now.
“Go on then.”
“I will. Tonight.”
“You will now. Or there won’t be a tonight. Or any other night.”
I’m impressed with Julie’s firm tone, until I see how tightly she’s gripping the edge of her desk, and realize she’s trying hard to stop herself from crying.
“Okay, okay. She’s pregnant. You’re right.”
Julie doesn’t say anything, but just looks up at him, and Luke swallows audibly.
“But I’m not even... If you could get me those figures by lunchtime that’d be... Sure it’s mine.”
Luke has whispered-shouted-whispered that last sentence, though it takes both me and Julie a moment to realize it’s been for the benefit of Tessa, who’s just passed by on her way to the watercooler.
“What do you mean?” asks Julie.
“Just that Sarah...” Luke peers at the screen again for just long enough for Tessa to get back to her desk. “I think she’s been seeing someone.”
“What?” For a millisecond, Julie looks like she wants to console him, and I snort in disbelief. Then she evidently realizes something, as her face darkens. “Hang on. You said you’re not sure it’s yours.”
“Yeah. On account of...what I just said.”
“Right.” Julie sits back from her screen and turns to face him. “But ‘not sure’ suggests it could be.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got no proof, you know? Just a suspicion that she...”
“Back up a sec. You’re missing my point. She’s pregnant, you’re not sure it’s yours because she might be sleeping with someone else. But the fact there’s a chance it might be means that despite everything you’ve told me, you’ve been sleeping with her too.”
Luke looks at Julie for a moment, and whatever color he is normally drains from his face. For a longer moment, I think it’s surely game over. Then—and on one level you have to admire this—he nods, and says, “Of course I’ve been sleeping with her. Or at least, going through the motions.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t...”
“This is what I wanted to explain to you. Tonight.” He shakes his head, as if Julie’s done something wrong by confronting him here and now. “Sarah and I are supposed to be married, Julie. I can’t not sleep with her, can I?”
Julie stares at him, any pretend interest in her spreadsheet long gone. “I’m sorry,” she says, eventually. “I still don’t...”
Luke does that furtive looking-left, looking-right-with-narrowed-eyes thing, then, under the pretext of pointing out something on Julie’s screen, he leans in a little closer.
“I’m going to leave her for you, right? I just can’t yet. Especially because she’s pregnant. I mean, who knows what that might do to the baby? So I’ve got to keep up the pretense that everything’s okay until she’s...” He does some sort of weird mime with his hands that I assume is supposed to indicate the miracle of childbirth, though it could just as easily be someone with a bad case of wind. “And part of that, I’m sorry to say, involves—and on the extremely odd occasion—sleeping with her. Otherwise she’d know something was up.”
“How do you work that one out?”
Luke sighs impatiently. “If I wasn’t having sex with her, she’d assume I was having sex with someone else. And then who knows where we’d be?”
Out in the open, I want to say. Where you’d be forced to make a decision. But I can’t, obviously, and for different reasons, neither can Julie—or rather, she won’t.
“And trust me,” Luke adds. “It’s you I’m thinking of whenever I do.”
Julie’s mouth drops open, as if she doesn’t know how to respond to that last point, and to be honest, I don’t blame her. What’s worse is how obviously she desperately wants to believe him—if only to prove to herself she’s not been completely gullible, and that on some level there’s been a method to Luke’s madness. And if it’s obvious to me, then surely it’s also obvious to Luke.
“I know it’s hard for you,” he says. “It’s not exactly easy for me either. But I just need a bit more time. Until she...” He looks like he’s about to mime the “pregnant” thing again, but obviously decides a crowded office perhaps isn’t the most appropriate place.
Then, worryingly, there’s a change in Julie’s body language, perhaps because Luke has given her an—admittedly vague—time frame for leaving his wife. Even more ominously, Luke picks up on it too.
“Just give me a chance,” he continues. “This evening. To explain properly. I owe you that. Then if you decide you don’t want us
to carry on with...” He lowers his voice a little further. “Business as usual, I’ll understand.”
Even I know he’s not talking about what goes on between these four walls. So does Julie, I’m guessing, because after a moment, she sighs, reaches for her mouse, and highlights the J word at the top of the columns. For the longest time, her hands hover over her keyboard, while both Luke and I hold our breath. And while I’m willing her to hit Ctrl and B, instead she presses the delete key.
As she replaces them with “my house, 8:00 p.m.,” I look up at Luke, already dreading the smug expression he’s bound to be wearing. Sure enough, he’s mirroring Santa’s fence-face from the other day.
“Thanks, Julie,” he says, back at normal volume, then he nods at the screen. “That’s great.”
Though as Julie hurriedly deletes her spreadsheet, I’m thinking the exact opposite.
10
The rest of the day passes pretty uneventfully, apart from when someone pretends to take a swig from Tessa’s water bottle, doesn’t realize the top’s been left off for aeration purposes, and accidentally swallows her fish. I’m also keen to limit my rides in the elevator, so pass on Julie’s offer of a lunchtime walk, and it’s a relief when Julie sighs, double-checks the time on her watch with the clock on the wall, clicks off her computer screen, then unties my leash from where it’s been looped around her desk leg.
“Come on, Doug,” she says. “Home time.”
Despite the fact that “home time” means “Luke visit,” I leap obediently up from where I’ve been napping, big stretch (to a chorus of “big stretch” from around the office), then happily trot after her and (bravely) into the elevator. On the drive home, just as I’m in the middle of trying to think up an appropriate anti-Luke strategy for later, Julie surprises me by stopping off at the park.
I assume it’s because I’m not getting a walk later given Luke’s scheduled appearance, but in the happiest of coincidences, in the distance, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, along with a cap, sunglasses, headphones, and running shoes, I spot Tom. He’s running toward us, though rather than being out on one of the “long runs round the park” Dot mentioned, he appears to be chasing after a large, somewhat manic-looking Alsatian that’s headed at breakneck speed toward the pond.
