Free The Other Side of Summer by Emily Gale

murderous.
    ‘Nothing.’ I realised that, since we’d arrived, Wren hadn’t said a single mean thing to me. It was wasted, though, because I didn’t even have room to feel relief.
    The hire car smelled of plastic and lemony boiled sweets.
    ‘What’s going to happen to Dorrit?’ I said. ‘We just left her at the airport.’
    ‘Harry said he’d pick her up.’ Harry was Dad’s oldest friend. ‘He’s got a double garage so he’ll take care of her until … Well, he’ll take care of her.’
    I caught Dad’s nervous look in the rear-view mirror. Nothing more had been said about when Mum might be coming. Because she wasn’t.
    We arrived at a rundown house with a bare and dusty front garden. Some of its weatherboards were broken or missing and the rest were peeling. One window was boarded up and the porch was covered in bits of junk. The house sagged on one side like a shipwreck.
    ‘Are you sure you’ve bought a puppy, Dad?’ said Wren. ‘This place does not say cute baby animals to me. More like dawn raids and multiple arrests.’
    Dad had gone very quiet. A woman came out, carrying a black puppy and using one of its paws to wave at us. At the same time we heard a deeper bark coming from somewhere nearby.
    ‘There you go. Everything’s fine,’ said Dad.
    ‘Is that one ours?’ said Wren.
    ‘No, ours is a golden colour. Come on, let’s go and see.’
    We got out of the car and went with Dad. The puppy woman said, ‘Follow me,’ with a smile, and Dad made small talk as we were led down the side of the house towards a tall wooden gate.
    ‘She’s back here,’ said the woman.
    ‘She?’ said Dad. By then the gate had been opened and before he knew it Dad had a pair of legs over his shoulders. ‘Oh my God!’
    ‘Down, puppy!’ sang the woman.
    ‘Puppy? What sort of puppy do you call this?’ said Dad, as he tried to angle his mouth away from the dog’s baggy tongue. Standing on her back legs, she was as tall as my six-foot dad. She had wiry fur, a long whiskery snout and a nose like a lump of coal.
    ‘Technically they’re puppies until they’re two.’
    ‘And how old is she?’
    ‘Turns two next week.’
    Dad was still being ambushed.
    ‘But … But the ad said she was a golden retriever.’
    The woman addressed the creature in her arms instead of Dad. ‘Exactly. She’s a golden retriever cross, isn’t she, Muffin?’
    The dog licking Dad’s face looked nothing like a golden retriever, except for the light gold fur and maybe the eyes. She finally stopped licking Dad and ran past us. She lay on her tummy by the gate, regally, like one of the lions in Trafalgar Square. Then she put her head on one paw in the exact same pose as in the photo we had of when she was tiny.
    ‘Crossed with what?’ said Dad.
    ‘A donkey?’ said Wren through the corner of her mouth.
    ‘It didn’t say cross on the website,’ said Dad. ‘I wasn’t expecting something so …’
    ‘Excuse me, but I think you’ll find it did.’ The woman was still smiling, talking to us in a baby voice as if we were puppies too. But I got the sense she could turn at any moment.
    Dad got a piece of paper out of his back pocket: the original print-out. ‘Golden retriever … X. Oh. You mean the X stands for cross?’
    ‘Exactly. And I don’t do refunds.’
    Dad and Wren followed the woman down the path towards the dog. I stayed back. The dog looked up at Dad as he went down on one knee. He stroked her on the top of her scraggly head until she swivelled to make his hand go under her chin instead. Then she started making a low-pitched grunty moan deep inside that made Dad and Wren laugh.
    ‘She loves that,’ said Wren.
    ‘You hate dogs,’ I muttered, but I was too far away for them to hear. ‘Dogs are idiots, remember?’
    Dad got down lower still and let the dog lick his face.
    Wren looked back at me. ‘They’re tragic. Totally tragic.’ The corner of her mouth twitched, hinting at a smile. Without thinking it through,