The Dog Who Saved the World

Anyway, it all happened a few days after our first visit to Dr Pretorius and the Dome.

I had topped up the disinfectant in the sani-mats first, then I went into the quarantine section to see Dudley, who had a tummy bug. It wasn’t his first time there, either, so I wasn’t especially worried. If you remember, he’d been gnawing on a dead seagull at the beach, and I thought that might have been the cause.

He was behind a fence of wire mesh that comes up to my chin. There were wellies and rubber gloves by the entrance gate, which I put on before I went in. He wagged his bent tail weakly.

‘Hello, you funny old thing!’ I said. ‘Are you feeling better?’ Normally, I’d let Dudley lick my face, but we’re not allowed to do that with the quarantined dogs, so instead I gave him a good old tickle on his tummy. It wasn’t quite the same with rubber gloves, but he didn’t seem to mind.

A family had been in to see him a few days before, perhaps to adopt him, but I think he was just too odd-looking.

‘The little girl thought he was cute,’ said the vicar, ‘and she said something to her mum in Chinese. Then they all had a long conversation which I didn’t understand – except the dad was pointing to Dudley’s eye, and his teeth and his ear, and then they left.’

Poor, ugly Dudley! I thought of the little Chinese girl falling in love with him and then her dad saying he was too strange-looking.

Secretly, though, I was very relieved. I know it’s better for a dog to be with a family rather than in St Woof’s, but I couldn’t bear it if Dudley was adopted.

I looked at him carefully. He didn’t seem very well, poor doggie. He hadn’t eaten much of his food, but he had drunk his water and done a poo in the sand tray, which I washed out and sanitised, and I did everything right, exactly according to the rules. Then I threw his soggy tennis ball for him a little, but it didn’t excite him very much and anyway I bounced it too hard so that it went over the fence and rolled away and we had to stop.

I was coming out of the quarantine area, I’d done the sani-mats and I was about to do the hand-sans (which were empty) and who was standing there but Sass Hennessey. She did this little hair flick and stood with one hand on her round hip.

‘Hiiiii!’ she said but there was zero warmth in her eyes.

‘Hello, Saskia,’ I said.

‘I was just saying to Maurice that he’s got the place looking really smart now,’ she said.

Maurice? Maurice? Nobody calls the vicar Maurice, apart from my dad who’s known him for years. Everyone else calls him vicar or Reverend Cleghorn. It was so typical of Sass to call him by his first name, though. I was annoyed already, and what came next was worse.

‘That ugly old mutt in there,’ she said with her head on one side, all fake sorrow. ‘It really would be kinder just to put him down, don’t you reckon?’

That was it: the mean comment I mentioned before. It took me a few seconds to realise she was talking about Dudley. Dudley – my second-favourite dog in the whole of St Woof’s! I could feel my jaw working up and down, without any sound coming out.

‘Are you OK, Georgie?’

‘Yes, I’m fine, Sass.’ But I wasn’t. I was furious. In silence, I refilled the hand-sans, removed my gloves and put some of the gel on my hands, rubbing it in angrily while she just stood there. Then I took off the wellies.

‘Look, I didn’t mean …’

‘You know we don’t do that here. So why did you even say it?’ I was furious.

‘But if he’s very ill and old …’

I snapped, loudly: ‘He’s not that ill and he’s not that old. All right?’

I could tell Sass was a bit taken aback. She said quietly, ‘Ooo-kaaay,’ and I thought for once I might have got the better of her.

She bent down and gingerly picked up Dudley’s spit-soaked ball that had rolled towards the door. She handed it to me and I was forced to say ‘Thanks’. It was an odd sort of peace offering.

I turned the ball over in my hands as I watched her walk away, and then tossed it back to Dudley, shutting the quarantine door behind me.

I was still cross when I got back to my station. Ramzy was waiting for me, and he was holding Ben, the snarly Jack Russell, who was trying to lick his face.

‘Look!’ he laughed, dead proud. ‘I’ve made a friend!’

‘So you have,’ I said. ‘Good boy, Ben,’ and I let him nuzzle my hand. Then I went round the rest of the dogs in the station, giving them a final stroke before I left.

‘Bye, vicar!’ I said, pulling on the big door.

‘Goodbye, Sergeant Santos and Private Rahman!’ said the vicar, giving another salute. ‘Jolly good work!’

So that was it. Damage done. I had started the End of the World.

Obviously, I didn’t know it at the time. I’ve kept the secret till now: how I handled the tennis ball that was infected with Dudley’s germs, germs that he had picked up from the little girl who had wanted to adopt him. I then passed on the infection to poor Ben by letting him lick my germy hands, and then to the other dogs …

Turns out that all the DTR lessons in the word can’t stop someone being stupid.

Or – for that matter – being so furious at Sass’s mean comment that my mind was all over the place. Which amounts to pretty much the same as being stupid.

(#ulink_258e1c12-3f3d-5b31-8677-dd046e44d011)

‘Give me a week,’ Dr Pretorius had said. It was seldom out of my thoughts. Another week of secret-keeping.

Secrets are easy to keep so long as no one finds out.

So long as no one sees you. Someone who knows your brother, say. Someone who has just started working at the Spanish City and notices you coming out of the door at the back of the arcade.

Sass Hennessey’s sister, Anna, for example, who is in the same school year as my brother Clem and whose mum had got her a Saturday job at the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms.

Give me a week, give me a week. It was going around in my head, like some annoying song that gets stuck, as I was walking back from the Spanish City, up our lane, swinging my school bag. I was surprised to see Clem come out of Dad’s workshop, wiping his oily hands on a towel.

We live in a farmhouse, although it’s not a proper working farm any more. Nearly all of the other farms around us have been sold for development. You can stand by Mum’s tree in the top field with the cows, and see houses and cranes and half-built flats in every direction apart from to the east, where the sea glints silver in the distance. (The cows are not ours, though I wish they were.)

Down the lane from our farmhouse is Dad’s workshop where he restores old cars, and a barn with bits of engines, exhausts, and car doors and stuff.

It looked like Clem had been expecting me.

‘Hi, Pie-face,’ he said. He was cheery. He used his nickname for me for the first time in ages. This made me suspicious but I smiled.

‘Been anywhere exciting?’ he asked.

The truth? I had been a participant in a medieval jousting tournament, charging towards Ramzy on a virtual horse (made from an old piano stool and the saddle I had seen on the first day in the loading bay).

‘St Woof’s,’ I lied. I hated lying, even to Clem. I could feel my cheeks going red.

‘And how is he?’

‘Who?’

‘That dog. Ben?’