Free Pedigree Mum by Fiona Gibson

heads for the door of the shop. ‘Just popping home,’ he says.
    ‘Okay, Dad,’ Luke replies.
    ‘I’ll only be half an hour. Maybe you could clear the decks a bit, set out some more smoked salmon, chuck some lemon and black pepper over it …’
    ‘Uh?’
    ‘Pepper, Luke,’ James says with exaggerated patience. ‘You do know how to operate a pepper grinder. It’s that twisty gadget with the little black things in.’
    ‘Sure, Dad,’ Luke says with an amiable smile. James blinks at his son, exasperated, yet unable to feel irritated with him for long. Luke is a handsome, stubbly-chinned boy who, while not wildly academic, has the knack of charming the pants off girls and money out of his wealthy friends’ parents’ bank accounts (hence being able to set up his own business at twenty-two years old). James can’t help admiring his entrepreneurial streak; the way he managed to write a business plan, design the shop and amass the funds, when he’d felt sure the whole idea would come to nothing. Unfortunately, though, Shorling residents and day-trippers haven’t gone mad for fillet steak with baby spinach and grilled artichoke hearts. Maybe, James reflects as he strides down the narrow street, it’s just too much. After all, there’s nothing much wrong with a plain cheese sandwich and a packet of crisps. He and Luke are virtually living off unsold food, their fridge crammed with leftovers. James has started waking up at night, nauseous after a supper of smoked trout, stilton and figs.
    It also became apparent that, while Luke has never lacked enthusiasm, he needed someone with him in the shop to keep things running smoothly. As he can’t afford to pay one of his floppy-haired friends, James saw no option but to step in, cramming his own freelance website design work into the evenings to get things on track. ‘Just a few weeks,’ he’d told Luke. ‘Six at the most. Then you’re on your own.’ However, they both know that James will never leave Luke in the lurch.
    James is back home now, and lets himself into the neat redbrick house with the not-so-neat dangly gutter, making a mental note to get it fixed.
    ‘Hey, boy,’ he says as Buddy charges towards him. ‘Been on your own too long, huh? C’mon, just a quick walk …’
    He clips on the lead, catching sight of himself in the small mirror in the hallway. God, he needs a haircut. He likes it short, no-nonsense, and before his involvement with Luke’s (after much debate, his son decided the simplest option was to name the shop after himself), James would have regular trims at the old-fashioned Turkish barber’s. Lately, though, such non-essentials have slipped off the radar. And, although he’s glad to escape from the shop for a while, he’s beginning to wonder if looking after Buddy is something he could do without too. Luke’s on-off girlfriend Charlotte used to undertake dog-walking duties, but the status is definitely ‘off’ at the moment.
    James sets off with Buddy pulling hard on the lead, panting and straining towards a dropped ice cream cone on the pavement. He barks suddenly at an elderly man on a mobility scooter, and James has to quickly haul him away before he pees against a bucket of fresh blooms outside the florist’s. A woman with a wiry grey terrier – impeccably behaved – glares at him as she struts by. ‘Should get him some training,’ she mutters.
    Oh, really?
James wants to call after her.
Don’t think I haven’t tried that. We’ve even seen a behavioural expert – a dog psychologist – who diagnosed severe anxiety caused by trauma. He wasn’t like this before my wife left, you know. Buddy was very much Amy’s dog but, weirdly enough, she wasn’t too keen on taking him when she moved up to Sheffield with her hairdresser – sorry, colourist … Said Brian ‘isn’t good with animals’.
Oh, really? James wasn’t particularly ‘good’ with being dumped without warning either, but he’d had to deal with