Waiting for Doggo by Mark Mills

with Clara, with myself too. I spent six months in a self-indulgent slump following Fat Trev’s breakdown, wallowing in my misfortune. It was the opportunity I’d been waiting for to finally launch into the novel. Lack of time was no longer an excuse, so I dredged up some others. Clara could easily have flung them back in my face, but she waited patiently for inspiration to strike and my fingers to start dancing across the keyboard.
    I should have known she’d lose faith in me before too long; she’s always searching for something new, or somebody new, to believe in. Well, she found Kamael, her guardian angel, and then she latched on to Wayne Kelsey. I hope they’re happy together, all three of them, I really do. I am, it occurs to me, finally coming to terms with the fact that our relationship is well and truly over.
    It’s fine. No one died. Everyone’s alive and well. Okay, not Grandpa – he’s alive and rather poorly – but even his slow decline has to be accepted as one of those things that life throws at us. Mum was wrong: Alzheimer’s isn’t to blame. How can you blame something that acts with no malice, which is simply buried away in the genetic code of a person like a ticking bomb?
    And does it really matter whether Grandpa spoke the truth or not, whether or not Mum lied to me from her poolside perch in Morocco last night? I’m alive. It’s enough. It’s more than enough. No, it’s a miracle. Not in any religious sense of the word. I lost my faith a good while back. I mean, the major religions can’t all be right, and given that they’re so manifestly wrong about where we’ve come from, I’m not sure we should take too seriously anything they have to say about where we’re going. I’m pretty sure, however, that I don’t want to spend all of eternity in a place inherited by the meek.
    Feeling myself drifting off message, I take a few deep breaths, exhaling slowly through pursed lips.
    Edie, I think. Ah, Edie – smart, fun, beautiful Edie. So what if she’s having an affair with Tristan? Who am I to judge her, them? Maybe he’s married to an awful woman who demeans him the moment he crosses the threshold at the end of every day, who berates him for being a bad father, who maliciously chips away at his sense of self-worth. And what of Edie’s boyfriend, Douglas? I know he’s a sports nut who plays rugby all winter then switches seamlessly to cricket for the summer months. He trains two evenings a week and is often away at weekends. Who wouldn’t feel neglected, unappreciated, ignored?
    Maybe Tristan is destined to find true happiness with Edie the second time around, as my mother did with Nigel. I’m certainly not entitled to set myself up as some kind of moral authority, not after leaping into bed with the sister of my only-just-ex-girlfriend.
    Satisfied with the place my mini meditation has transported me to, I open my eyes to find Doggo now sitting right in front of me. I reach out a hand and stroke him. He tilts his head so that his ears also get a good going-over.
    ‘I’m sorry, Doggo, I haven’t been myself.’ Something in his big liquid eyes suggests that I’m not telling him anything he doesn’t already know. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
    Our morning routine is for me to grab a double macchiato from the Portuguese café up the road, which I sip en route to Athlone Gardens, where Doggo sniffs around a bit before taking his morning dump. We then double back to Ladbroke Grove, where I ditch my coffee cup and his bagged shit in the litter bin beside the bus stop. We’ve honed our timing to perfection; we rarely have to wait more than two minutes for the bus.
    The voice, which I ignore at first, comes from the block of council flats that doesn’t so much front Athlone Gardens as occupy a chunk of it.
    ‘Oi, you with the dog. Yeah, you. What’s your game?’
    A large man with a shaven head is peering down at me from a second-floor balcony. Still in his pyjamas,