Waiting for Doggo by Mark Mills Page B

they’re playing pool.
    ‘Not that one. I put it there to cover the pocket.’
    ‘You were trying to pot it and missed, you English twat!’
    ‘Even if you’re right, which you aren’t, because you’re a thick-as-shite bog-Irish eejit, it’s still the wrong bloody shot.’
    Et cetera. Ad nauseam. Patrick’s theory is that they’re in love with each other but haven’t got round to admitting they’re gay. Then again, it took Patrick almost thirty years to admit it to himself, so the notion of repressed homosexuality maybe figures larger in his thinking than it should.
    Patrick has come to life since he clinched the SWOSH! account for the agency, and has been showering us with gifts as well as gratitude. Edie and I both went home the other night with bottles of vintage Dom Perignon champagne, Doggo with a silver disc (engraved with his name and my mobile number) dangling from a brand-new leather collar. The name tag has settled the debate – Doggo is Doggo – although I don’t suppose he was ever really going to be anything else.
    I look for him now but he’s not on his sofa. Odds are he’s with Anna, the sweet young thing who replaced Edie on reception. She spoils him something rotten.
    An email lands in my inbox. I glance at my laptop and freeze. It’s from Clara. My mind swiftly makes the calculation (as it has many times before): just after 9 p.m. in New Zealand. I check my watch: twenty minutes to go before our meeting with Tristan. Maybe I should wait until afterwards. But what if she isn’t there later? I open the email.
    I’m ready to talk now x
    I stare at the words. Is that really all she can offer after everything she’s put me through? Is it a joke? Five words and one kiss? I know I should sit on it for a few minutes, allow myself to calm down, but my fingers take on a life of their own.
    That’s great! I’m close too. Just give me another decade
.
    I glance over at Edie while I’m waiting for the reply. She catches my look. ‘What?’
    ‘Nothing,’ I reply.
    PING.
    You’re hurting and I understand
.
    I wasn’t before, but I am now. An unwelcome image blows into my mind: Clara sitting in the living room of Wayne Kelsey’s no doubt ridiculously hip pad, loved up, glass of Sauvignon Blanc at her elbow, tapping away, closing a chapter in her life with a few lazy words. Not even one whiff of apology.
    If an overwhelming sense of relief that I don’t have to deal with your narcissistic New Age bullshit ever again counts as hurting, then yes, I’m suffering all the torments of hell.
    Hardly in the live-and-let-live spirit of this morning’s meditation, it occurs to me.
    This only confirms I did the right thing
.
    Funny, that. When have you ever done the wrong thing?
    I wait for her reply. When it doesn’t arrive, I start composing another email.
    ‘Come on, what’s up?’
    I look across at Edie. ‘Nothing.’
    ‘You’re grunting.’
    ‘I’m not grunting. I don’t grunt.’
    ‘And you’ll break your keyboard if you keep typing like that.’
    I come clean, show her the exchange. She reads it over my shoulder, her hands on the back of my chair. ‘Ouch,’ she says at one point, and when she’s done: ‘Well, I’m not hearing wedding bells.’
    ‘My fault? Her fault?’
    ‘Does it matter?’ When I don’t reply, she says, ‘You were tough, but she was cold as clay.’
    ‘There speaks the daughter of a potter.’
    Edie smiles, wanders back to her desk. ‘She wants to meet you.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The potter.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yeah, beats me too.’
    That’s when Doggo scampers into the room with a letter in his mouth. He has grown much more intrepid recently, roaming freely about the place, and I assume at first that he’s nabbed the letter off someone’s desk. But Anna comes hurrying in behind him.
    ‘He did it! All I said was “Take this to Dan.”’
    I’m surprised and touched. ‘He knows my name.’
    ‘He knows where the Choc Drops are,’ mutters Edie.
    ‘No,