Free Oh Dear Silvia by Dawn French

only one she owned big enough to fit the dog in with a bit of breathing space. There is a regrettable wet patch forming on the bottom of the tan leather bag. Howcan such a spookily small dog contain so much liquid? She walked it about in the car park before bringing it in, to try and empty it out, but it obviously prefers Biba leather to prickly yellow grass. Never mind, Jo thinks, however leaky it is, it’s still a dog, with potentially massive healing power, but how is she going to get it on to Silvia’s bed without the nurses noticing?
    Luckily Jo judges herself to be no fool and has thought ahead. She owns a host of ‘cuddly’ toys, which live in well-organized, serried ranks, in descending order of size on her bed. One of the larger teddies is a sinister creature with its own full-teddy-sized Easter bunny outfit. When wearing it, only the teddy’s face is visible, surrounded by bunny ears and whiskers on a bunny hood. The whole shocking ensemble comes off easily via one long zip down the stomach of the ‘bunny’. Jo thought to bring this outfit as disguise for Lady. So now, Jo is furtling about in the smelly sodden handbag, trying to get the old dog into the teddy’s bunny outfit.
    After a short while of muffled yelpings which Jo coughs loudly to cover, the dog is finally, undeniably, in costume. Jo hauls the tiny old mutt out of the handbag and places her on the bed next to Silvia. The bunny outfit is a bit too big for Lady so she seems to disappear inside it, leaving the headspace horrifically vacant as if some invisible wraith is in attendance. When Lady does manage to poke her head through, her appearance is that of an Easter bunny with the face of an alarmed and wizened old rat.
    ‘Keep still Lady. Sit! Lie! Sit!’
    The mixed message notwithstanding, Lady has no option as to how she is positioned since she is utterly immobile inside the roomy bunny husk. She is also completely the wrong shape for the outfit. She is small-dog-shaped and so therefore her legs and … legs don’t fit where a teddy’s would. Jo picks her up and places her on her back, hoping this will make her look more like a stuffed something innocent. She manoeuvres the mutant toy into the crook of Silvia’s lifeless arm. Lady blinks up at Jo from the depths of the deep and empty head. She isn’t a happy actor. She has no idea what is happening to her or what is required of her, so she chooses to take the line of least resistance, and simply lie still, hoping whatever this all is will be over soon and she might be returned to her nice gentle farty old owner with the smelly feet and dog chocolates in her apron pockets. Instead of this … Hell.
    ‘Good girl, now just stay still and let your … canine … chakras flow out of you and into Sissy. That’s right, good. Heal her, heal her. Health, health. Wakefulness and well-being.’
    The veteran mutt stares blankly into the face of the rangy greying woman with the frosted, cheerless curls, whose mouth is constantly moving. Jo is speaking but absolutely no one, especially a dog, knows what she is trying to mean. This is very often the case in Jo’s life. Lots of hectic action in the lips department, usually with good-hearted intent, but no connection to any quiet, thinking head department.
    Jo doesn’t want to risk failure with today’s therapy. The dog is the prime player, and she hopes that at some deep human-canine level there will be a kind of holy healing fusion, but she doesn’t want to leave it all to chance. It could well be that Silvia might resist the dog energy, although that’s unlikely because she does actually like dogs, BUT it has occurred to Jo that this very tiny antique dog just might not emit enough power to raise Silvia. Maybe she should have brought two dogs? Or one big one? She simply doesn’t know how to work out the amp-age. So, in the highly improbable event that the dog is underpowered, Jo has brought some other creatures along, and must now try to place