Mo confronted Dermo, even though I warned her to keep quiet about the slaughter of the little Papi.
Mo, being Mo, couldn’t let the cruelty go. Possibly she was trying to change him. That this was part of her grand plan to de-dog Dermo.
Mo stood arms folded and legs slightly apart as Dermo tried to explain himself.
‘I was only trainin’ dem ickle Dobermen for guarding things. From knackers and dudder robbers what has no consciences. Gets ’em good, and vicious, Babe. Foreplay for fuckin’ fightin’ to the death. Do you know what I mane? They gotta get blooded. Don’t they? There’s bettin’ goin’ on at the fight nights. What do you think pays for the dogs? Their children’s allowances, is it?’
Dermo argued the Papi was ‘already dead anyways and was road kill, a dumped orphan what didn’t get no rosette in the gay dog show. It’s the same’s a dead man donatin’ his organs.’
Mo laughed a bitter laugh and shouted right in his face, ‘You’re a ventriloquist then. A dog ventriloquist. What about the barking? I didn’t know dead dogs barked. And don’t call me Babe. I’m not your Babe. I’m your bitch.’
Her loving husband didn’t like sarcasm very much.
Dermo turned away as if he was choosing to ignore her.
He swung round unexpectedly and slapped her with the knuckles of his left hand, loosening one of her front teeth. Mo had perfect teeth. She brushed and flossed every day, even when she was a small girl.
Mo made for Dermo and hit him with her closed fist. The force of the blow was no more than a fly landing on an elephant.
Dermo kicked her away from him, in the stomach, with his steel reinforced work boot.
The sole left a muddy herring bone footprint on her bulging white top. As if he walked over her for a shortcut. Dermo left Mo bent on the floor, in the foetal position, and on the way out he slammed the door so hard the glass cracked.
Later that night Mo was taken to the hospital. She was bleeding from the uterus.
That was the night she lost her baby.