Audrey and Dave Parfitt are the Groomes’ next-door neighbours. They were there when Dominic and Kate moved in, but their interactions have barely moved beyond quiet ‘Good mornings’ from David and strings of polite complaints from Audrey – if she manages to buttonhole Kate at the fence that separates their properties. Both Audrey and Dave have now retired; Audrey from her job as a pa to a local attorney, Dave from the town planning department. But it still took Kate entirely by surprise when Audrey announced one day that they were going to get a dog. ‘Now that we’re both going to be at home all day, we can finally have a pet,’ she said.
And so, Dave gave Audrey a puppy for Christmas. ‘Only he can’t join us immediately, my dear,’ Audrey called out to Kate on Boxing Day. ‘They don’t like to take them away from their mothers too early, you know. They need the best possible start in life. We’re picking him up on the ninth of January and we’re calling him Tigger! Oh, Kate, I’m so excited, I can hardly contain myself.’
Kate nodded and smiled, edging her way back towards the house.
‘Maybe the puppy will be good for her,’ Maddie said. ‘Maybe she’ll keep her nose out of our business.’
The Groomes are all agreed that they can do without Audrey’s never-ending phone calls, her ‘Yoo-hoo Kate, Kate, could I have a quick word with you?’ Always about trivial matters: the noise the children make when they’re playing outside; the way their trees shed leaves all over Audrey’s lawn; how their automatic garage door clangs when it closes; why Kate never brings their bins in immediately after the rubbish has been collected. The complaints are endless.
Each time, Kate cuts her short with another, ‘I’m so sorry, Audrey.’
But no apology was issued from Audrey when Tigger finally arrived, with one of those shrill, incessant barks that punctured Noah’s head like an arrow.
Every morning, usually around 2 a.m., Noah was woken by Tigger as he bounced from one end of the fence to the other, raff-raff-raffing his way up and down, yelping at imagined shapes, chasing his tail with wild excitement. Every morning, Noah tried to block out the noise, but he couldn’t.
By the time Tigger had been in residence for 8 nights, Noah had had to adjust his timetable considerably.
When Tigger started his yapping, Noah had to get out of bed and watch the dog tear up and down, up and down. 4 times in 1 minute. It usually took 12 or 13 minutes (2×5+2/3) for the puppy to do his thing. Fine for Tigger, but not for Noah. Falling asleep had always been stressful, ages spent watching the clock, calculating how many valuable minutes he was losing every night, and now he was losing minutes more.
For the first few nights, Spit and Spot had woken up too. They’d ambled down to the fence, greeted the little dog with a sniff, then returned to the comfort of their baskets. From then on, it was only Noah who woke up, and stayed awake.
‘She’s besotted with that dog’. That’s what Noah’s mom said, and it was more than obvious. Mrs Parfitt would stand at the front door, her voice as shrill and yappy as her new pet’s.
‘Tiggie’, she’d yip from just inside her front door in the early hours. ‘Here, Tiggie-Tig!’
Tigger would pause, prick up his ears, cock a leg and mark his territory.
Noah dreams of running, balancing, measuring. If he wakes up during the night, he cannot go back to bed until he’s completed all his chores, done them perfectly. Sleep is Noah’s enemy. He can’t manage without it, but he hates the way it steals his hours, cuts them out of his day.
And now, with Tigger, it’s even more of a problem.
Don’t think you can drift off again. Find a way to earn more hours.
So Noah watched carefully through the window as Tigger yapped along the fence. He kept a record of the times the noise started, when it stopped, and how long it took Mrs Parfitt’s voice to pierce the night calm (2 minutes on average). He noted how many times Tigger ran up and down and whether the dog lifted his leg against the fence (✓), or squatted next to it (✓✓).
Every morning, on the way to school, there was Mrs Parfitt, at the fence, pooper-scooper in her gloved hand, cleaning up after her precious pup, with Tigger jumping around her.
‘Full of beans and full of bounce, he is,’ Mrs Parfitt would say fondly as Noah trudged to the car behind his sister.
‘This can’t go on,’ Kate said on the morning of the thirteenth day. ‘What are we going to do about it? You have to speak to her, she’ll listen to you, Dom. I’ve had enough and Noah’s exhausted.’
She had, in fact, already tried the week before. ‘Audrey,’ she’d said gently, ‘could I talk to you about Tigger? About his barking?’
Mrs Parfitt was washing Tigger’s ‘spot’ on the fence. She looked at Kate incredulously. ‘His barking? What on earth do you mean, Kate?’
‘Well, it’s just that he’s waking Noah,’ Kate said. ‘Every night, with his barking. When you let him out, perhaps you could try—’
‘But Kate, dear, we have to train him. Every night, dear, every night.’ Audrey scooped Tigger up, held him close. Two pairs of brown eyes bored into Kate’s.
Her voice wavered, but she carried on: ‘Yes, but you see, Noah—’
‘Well, I don’t know what you expect, dear. He’s a dog. You can’t expect him not to bark. There is absolutely nothing I can do about that.’
Before Kate had a chance to reply, Audrey turned on her heel and trotted into her house, closing the door firmly behind her.
‘He’s a rat of a dog,’ Noah’s mother said. ‘I can’t do it again, Dom, I just can’t. You have to talk to her.’
So on that 13th morning, his father walked up to the fence to talk to their neighbour about Tigger. Noah watched her soften as he approached.
‘Audrey,’ he said. ‘Audrey, we seem to have a bit of a problem here with Tigger’s night-time barking.’
She was holding Tigger, but her arms loosened and her puppy slid to the ground with a yowl. Noah’s father looked down at the small creature.
‘I’m sure we can come up with a reasonable solution? Especially now that the little fellow’s a bit older?’
‘Well, yes, yes,’ she gushed.
‘Perhaps,’ said Noah’s father, ‘you could let him out into the back garden instead of the front?’
‘The back garden? Of course. Now why didn’t I think of that?’ Audrey was fiddling with her hair, smiling. ‘What a good idea, Dominic.’
He left her blushing at the fence and walked over to the car. ‘So much fuss over one little dog,’ he muttered. What he meant, really, was so much fuss over Noah.
‘I tried to suggest that to her a week ago,’ Noah’s mother said. ‘Silly cow.’
‘Anyway, let’s see if the back garden works. She’s promised to try it the next time she lets him out at night.’
But there wasn’t a next time. That morning, after 13 sleepless nights, Noah broke Kyle Blake’s arm and everything changed.