Free Oh Dear Silvia by Dawn French Page B

legs and be moving , dragging it back into its pillow lair. The other nurses join in the screaming when they see this.
    The new volley of screeches persuades Lady, in her dotage and in her quiescence, to quit her suspension and emerge to see what’s going on. She may be vintage, but she’s still a dog, of sorts, and she’s naturally curious. As she shuffles around to right herself, there are loud cries of ‘That rabbit thing!’
    ‘It’s moving!’
    ‘It’s alive!’
    ‘The toy is alive!’
    ‘Dear God!’
    Then Lady pokes her head through the rabbit face hole and the whole room erupts into a cacophony of horrified yelping and high-pitched ululation. It genuinely is a terrifying sight, the skinny hoary old ratty face with the bunny ears. Anyone would be petrified. It makes no earthly sense, what they see,they can’t process it all in any normal, logical way. The only immediate explanation is supernatural devilment. A live branch, a rat and a teddy/bunny aberration from hell. Neither fish, flesh nor fowl.
    Two nurses flee the room still yowling. Winnie remains, but is transfixed by the perversions of nature she is confronted with. Now that the stick insect is off her, Jo calms down somewhat, but she is still panting with shock when Lady, invigorated with new urgent energy from the shrill squawking, gets the smell in her nose of nearby rodent activity. A small mammal is munching on something, and Lady would like to be munching on that small mammal. She wriggles about and tries to free herself from the costume, but fails. Heroically, she lunges forward, virtually at Silvia’s face, trying to locate the pesky rodent.
    She can smell it, smell it, smell it.
    She wants to eat it, eat it, eat it.
    Somewhere deep inside the generations of inbreeding that Lady is a result of, where virtually all natural instincts have been bred out, there is still the remnant of a dog lurking inside her shivering delicate lappy skin. For a brief instinctual moment, Lady feels the urge to hunt. Her eyes grow dark, her tiny lips peel back, and she starts to slaver. She wants the prey in her jaws. She is growling and snapping and sniffing and straining to get out of the bloody rabbit head.
    Winnie starts to make sense of it all gradually, and fastensher furious gaze on Jo, who is watching the carnage with paralysed fear.
    ‘Sorry nurse. I just thought … animal therapy … might help …’
    Winnie wades in and, in one fell swoop, gathers up both the snapping dog and the murderous hamster with the insect still in its mouth, throws them all into the bag and shuts it quickly.
    ‘Now tek it, you dyam heediat – and go!’
    Jo exits hastily, carrying the gladiatorial arena of a handbag, which is thrumming with murderous activity. She would have some difficult news this evening for Betty or her granddaughter.
    Or both.

Twelve
Cat
    Saturday 8pm
    Cat is concentrating on Silvia’s face. She was furious to discover a couple of scratches there when she arrived this evening, and when she heard the farcical story of stupid Jo and her stupid neighbour’s stupid dog, she could hardly believe what had been allowed to happen. In a hospital ITU! She had stern words with the nurses, who were adamant that they cannot control visitors’ errant behaviour and that despite Cat’s pleas they didn’t want to bar Jo from coming since she is, after all, Silvia’s CLOSEST RELATIVE.
    That did not please Cat. Not at all.
    She is now painstakingly trying to apply the delicate drawn-on eyebrows exactly as Silvia does them. It’s impossible. Silvia has been doing it for years, she is expert. It’s a matter of the slightest flick of the wrist and such a light touch. Cat is never never going to get it right for one simple reason. Although sheis using the very pencil Silvia uses, it is blunt. Silvia never allows it to go blunt, because then, each hair is too thick. The secret to this trick is subtlety, artifice.
    Cat is an heroic keeper of secrets, but full-strength