Free Alice and the Fly by James Rice Page A

reached your back hedge. Your garden was overrun with weeds, foot-long grass, white plastic patio furniture. Any intentional plant life was dead – the hedge patchy, the few scattered plant tubs at the back housing only shrivelled brown remains. Your father was spread across the couch in the lounge, lit by the TV. Laughter murmured behind the glass. Your father wasn’t laughing, he was swigging from a bottle. His eyes were shut and he was swigging from a bottle.
    There was a shed in the corner: shelter from the light of the house. I found a gap in the hedge just behind it. The shed itself was rotten. There were several crooked or missing planks. The roof was held up by four wooden beams, one in each corner, planted into the surrounding mud.
    A strip of light shone from the first floor of the house. A bedroom. The curtains were thick and purple, giving nothing away but a thin square of light round the edges. Every few seconds a shadow passed over it, flickering, back and forth. Back and forth.
    That’s when I heard a growl – deep, nearby. I was leaning on the shed and I assumed it was the boards creaking but as I turned the growling increased, snarling and guttural. I turned too sharply, slipped in the mud. The wet grass broke my fall. A sharp pain spread from my palm – the burn, the scab from your cigarette butt, I’d grazed it on the side of the shed and now it was bleeding. There was mud and blood on the arm of my coat. I tried to wipe it but my hands were muddy too, even muddier than my arm and all I could do was make things muddier and bloodier and worse.
    That’s when the barking started. I could see it now, the dog, through a gap in the shed. Its head was long and snouted, just a foot or two from mine. Its breath was hot and smelt like boiled ham. The only thing holding it back was a length of chain, knotted round its neck. I don’t know one breed of dog from another but it was a pretty mean-looking dog. It had lots of teeth, most of them yellow with black bits in between. Its gums were the colour of chopped liver.
    I was halfway to standing when the back door opened. Your father’s voice echoed out across the garden. I dropped to the ground, once again facing the roaring stinking dog. Your father shouted for a minute, stuff like ‘Shut up, Scraps’ and ‘I’ll give you something to bark about’ but the dog didn’t shut up, if anything it got louder. I closed my eyes. The barking stabbed into my ears. Everything was wet and tasted like soil.
    And then there was you. All it took was your mumble across the garden and the dog stopped its barking and turned to face the house. It whined from deep inside itself. You told your father to go back indoors. Liquid clunked from his bottle. He coughed and swallowed and breathed.
    He said, ‘If you don’t shut it up, I will.’ And the back door slammed shut.
    I tried to catch a glimpse of you then, strained to see over the long grass. Your feet rustled past. They slowed to step over the patio furniture, slapped the concrete steps up to the shed. The dog scrambled over to greet you. I glanced at the house. Your father was across the couch again, head back, swigging at his bottle.
    Your footsteps creaked into the shed. I saw you then, kneeling beside the dog, scratching its ears as it whined. You had your back to me, your hair tied in pigtails. You wore a pink dressing gown, a pair of black Wellington boots. You rubbed the dog’s head, pulling the skin back to show the red of its eyes.
    You told it, ‘There-there.’
    Then you stood and reached, high up into the shed, returning with a clear plastic bag of bone-shaped biscuits. You rattled a few into your palm. The dog chewed noisily. It drooled onto your dressing gown. When it’d finished it rested its head on your lap. You stroked its belly. Rubbed its ribs.
    You said, ‘Good boy, Scraps. Good boy.’
    You lay its head beside me. Facing me. It breathed, soft and warm. The boiled ham smell was stronger than ever,