Free Even the Dogs: A Novel by Jon McGregor Page A

voice on the phone, talking briskly, telling him he couldn’t speak to Yvonne and telling him not to call them any more.
    The sound of the unanswered phone.
    The sound of the television while he sat and watched it and waited for the phone to ring. The sound of one morning when he couldn’t bear waiting any more and he threw the phone against the wall, picking it up and throwing it and picking it up and throwing it until wires and circuit boards and silenced voices spilt from its broken body and were trodden into the floor.
    And tidying up those pieces as well, eventually, putting them out with the rubbish, the flat a little bit emptier than before.
     
    He could have gone there himself though.
    What was he scared of.
    It was a long way but it shouldn’t have been too far should it. Instead of just waiting. Waking up each morning going What was that. The sound of the softly closing door. And when there was nothing left to tidy up he started drinking before he’d even got out of bed. Because was there any point waiting.
    It was the drinking that had made Yvonne leave in the first place.
    That’s what she said, on the phone.
    And if she thought it had been bad enough that she had to get away then she should see him now. Was what he thought, then.
    She should see him now.
     
    The last things to go, as the flat kept emptying out, were the television and the washing machine. Two men from the rental shop came and collected them, and he didn’t have whatever it might have taken for an argument. Strength, heart, fucking, gumption or something. There’s nothing worth watching anyway, he joked, as they unplugged the television and carried it out of the flat without looking at him. Mind your backs lads, he said, as they eased the washing machine down the hallway, dripping water behind them and taking a chunk out of the doorframe on their way through. When they’d gone, after he’d kicked the kitchen cupboard doors from their hinges and emptied the drawers out on to the floor, he’d sat on the front step with a bottle of cider and started to feel better. And when he’d finished that bottle, and finished another, and was lying on his back on the hallway floor, he’d realised he wasn’t waiting for them to come home any more.
    Which is when Steve first showed up, come to think of it.
     
    The way these things all come to mind. When you’re sitting and waiting somewhere. In a room, like this. A waiting room like any other.
    We’ve got all the time in the world to sit and wait now.
    We watch the hands of the clock tick through the seconds and minutes and hours, and we wait. For someone to come and open one of those heavy doors and roll Robert out. Bring him out to us. Take him away.
    We sit and we look at the featureless door. Like, what, keeping watch.
     
    And those hours and days he was lying there like that, in the dark, in the light, in the dark again. No one passing him by but still. Someone could have done something, could they. When Laura got out of the taxi like that. What was she doing. Or Mike, or Ben. What happened in there.
    Keeping watch for what though la.
    Waiting for what and these things keep coming to mind.
     
    Heather outside the flat again. When was this. Must have been Christmas Day was it. Before she knew anything was wrong. Sort of before any of us knew. Waiting outside with a bag full of cans and snap, waiting for someone to come to the door.
    Didn’t usually wait long for someone to open the door so what was going on this time. Heather thought, then. She knows now, sort of. We all sort of know now.
    Banging on the door, and shouting through the letterbox, and turning round to look up and down the street. Like he might have been standing out there in the cold morning light, watching her, saying her name. As if.
    Banging on the door again, and the old woman with the tiger-paw slippers shuffling out of her flat and saying Excuse me but I think you’d be as well to give it a rest. I haven’t heard a