Dying for Christmas by Tammy Cohen

hired a dog nanny to come in at lunchtimes and take Winston out. I returned home dreading the devastation I’d find. Yet, I loved that dog. When he slept, exhausted, on my chest as I lay on the sofa in the evenings and I felt his little heart beating against mine, I thought I might die from love for him.
    Travis found someone at work to take him. Someone whose husband worked from home and who had a garden and didn’t mind their rugs getting dirty.
    ‘You know it’s for the best,’ he said as he loaded Winston’s basket and bowls and his toys into the car. His favourite toy of all was the remnant of a red spotty lead he’d chewed right through. He used to carry that scrap of lead around from room to room as proudly as a lion with its kill. Travis was too mortified to pack that in the bag for the new owners so it stayed in our flat.
    Travis made an effort to be extra nice when he got home from dropping Winston off. He’d gone shopping on the way back and he cooked cauliflower cheese with baked potatoes. But then later that night as we were getting ready for bed, he said, ‘Won’t it be lovely not to be woken up in the middle of the night.’
    And I wanted to kill him.
    Dominic was watching as all this passed through my mind, as if he could suck the thoughts out through my skull and read them like a book.
    ‘I knew you would be a dog person.’
    ‘Cat person. You guessed cat person before.’
    He ignored my interruption. ‘There’s nothing like it, is there – the devotion you get from a pet? No conditions, no qualifications, no “I’ll love you as long as you do X, or are Y, or give me Z.”’
    ‘Did you have a dog?’
    ‘I had a bird. A canary. Does that surprise you?’
    I said it didn’t.
    But of course it did. Who has a canary as a pet? Wasn’t that the same as a budgie? What was the point of them – they didn’t even talk, did they? They certainly couldn’t lie on your chest as you watched the telly.
    ‘There’s a funny story about it.’
    My heart dropped inside my chest.
    ‘When I was about five, my mother got pregnant. Yes, Daddy must have taken a breather from porking Mrs Meadowbank long enough to sire another child. I think by that stage I was already starting to exhibit what the authorities called “challenging behaviour” and my parents were keen not to make it worse. They were concerned with appearances, my mum and dad. I bet that surprises you. Someone, a health visitor maybe, told them that to prevent any jealousy it helps to smooth the way if the oldest child is given a present, supposedly from the as-yet-unborn baby. They asked me what I wanted more than anything, and I said a pet, meaning cat or dog, though I knew Mummy would sooner eat her own fat arm than have something in the house that moulted and brought in dirt and mud. So one day I came home from school and there was this canary sitting in a cage on the kitchen table.’
    I smiled, but only because he seemed to be expecting it.
    ‘While Mummy was pregnant things were almost normal in our house. Mummy went back to her own bed. Mrs Meadowbank stayed in her own house. And I grew to love that canary. Guess what I called him?’
    I had no idea.
    ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Guess.’
    ‘Bertie?’ I said. ‘Buzzy? Buddy the budgie.’
    He roared with laughter. ‘I called him Dominic.’
    ‘You called your canary after yourself?’
    ‘Yes! That bird was mine, you see. Did you know, Jessica, in the old days servants who accompanied their masters or mistresses to other houses used to be known by their employer’s name, not their own? So were plantation slaves. Maybe if you’d called your dog Jessica, things might have turned out very differently.’
    I had a sudden flash then of Sonia Rubenstein, leaning forward eagerly in her chair, peering out over the top of one of her brightly coloured scarves, drinking in the significance of what he’d just said.
    ‘So what happened?’
    ‘Well, my parents and this health worker kept