Dad comes upstairs for another Taming Lilah session on a Thursday after school.
I’m already feeling pretty cross, because although Bindi liked her bangles, our friendship is still all cautious and nervy and not like it was before, and I see her whispering with Adam Carter sometimes during break, and I just know that they are discussing me and how annoying I am, and when I see them with their heads bent close together, I go all shivery and get a big pang deep in my stomach.
So I’m up in my bedroom trying to get lost in schoolwork, but as always there’s this bad feeling right at the middle of everything I do, like the black bit you have to scrape out from the middle of a clean white potato. I just can’t shift it.
Dad taps on my door and comes in without bothering to wait for my reply.
He’s wearing a thick black jacket, which is a bit odd, as our house is heated up like a tropical greenhouse due to Mum’s inability to tolerate any cold weather at all.
‘How ARE you?’ he begins. I poke my tongue out at him and we both laugh a little bit, but then I remember the afternoon I’ve just had at school and I begin to bang the back of my head against the wall, not really all that hard, but just enough to show Dad that I’m not at my best.
‘That bad, huh?’ says Dad. He comes over and sits on the foot of the bed.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘When the big boys at the zoo get angry, there are a number of things we try. Firstly there’s exercise, like you did last time. And secondly we use something called “the distraction method”.’
I give him a mournful look.
‘I’m so not in the mood for being distracted,’ I say. ‘And if you’re about to suggest that we play a board game, then forget it.’
My family have this gross love of playing games. I hate them. They’re not called ‘bored games’ for nothing. Just the tap-tap of the little plastic pieces around the board is enough to get my anger prickles starting off again.
‘It depends what the distraction is, surely?’ says Dad. He’s got a worrying smirk on his face, like he knows something I don’t.
But I’m kind of interested now, and I’ve stopped banging my head on the wall.
‘What?’ I say. ‘Could you just tell me, please? I can’t cope with all this mystery stuff.’
Dad puts his hand inside his odd black puffy jacket and pulls something out.
‘Oh!’ I say. My eyes are wide as frisbees.
Dad passes it into my trembling hands.
Two very big brown eyes look up at me, and a small pink tongue comes out and starts to pant.
‘He’s yours,’ says Dad. ‘But there are two conditions. Number one, you don’t ever, ever take out your anger on this puppy. OK?’
‘Of course,’ I say. I’ve melted into a pile of slush in the corner of the duvet. I can’t stop gazing down at the bundle of golden fur in my arms.
‘And number two,’ says Dad, ‘when you get angry, you take this little animal for a good run. That way, he gets his exercise and you get to feel better. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ I murmur. I’ve buried my head in soft puppy fur.
‘And one more thing,’ he says. ‘Your mother might work with children and animals for a living, but she isn’t actually that keen on them as a combination. So try to keep him and you out from under her feet, OK?’
I smile a bit at that.
He gets up and goes over the door.
He looks back at us on the bed when he gets there and he gives me a big wink.
‘Dad,’ I say, as he heads off downstairs. My voice is cracked with joy. ‘Thanks.’
I spend the next three weeks walking Benjie, playing with Benjie and rushing home from school to stroke Benjie. He’s adorable.
Mum mutters a bit about puppy puddles on the floor and fur all over her best white sofa, but she can see that Benjie is making me happy, so she grits her teeth and gives him a rather forced pat from time to time.
And I kind of feel less angry. I’m even OK at school, and things with Bindi are a bit better too, although I still get the feeling there’s something she’s not telling me.
Then one night a policeman comes to our front door just as we’re eating supper.
I hear his low voice on the front door stop and then Dad shouts out, ‘Oh no! Oh God, no!’ and Mum leaps up from her chair in the kitchen and rushes to his side and her voice rises up into a panicking shriek, and I go dizzy and clutch onto the sides of my chair while the kitchen seems to whizz around in a circle.
Dad comes back into the kitchen with a grey face, and he’s staggering like he’s seen a ghost.
He sits down next to me.
He takes hold of my hand.
