LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      Dog Poo Divorce

      Coffee. Check.

      Fresh air to clear head after last night’s leftover Christmas Shiraz. Check.

      Dogs in the garden for morning poo. Check.

      So here I am, shivering on the back doorstep early on a Sunday morning. It’s cold but dry for once. Dawn is breaking on the horizon and… wait, okay, I can’t see the horizon because of the six-foot fence and the house behind mine, but the English teacher in me is being poetic.

      The sky is a beautiful shade of red and… okay, it’s not really dawn either. It’s eight-thirty but it does feel really early. On a weekday, I’m used to being up at five-thirty and I begin hurtling through the day until I flop exhausted on the sofa at nine p.m., yet on Saturday and Sunday, rising any time before ten o’clock feels early.

      Perhaps it has something to do with the wine haze this morning. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have finished off the bottle, but then, I don’t drink through the week – well, not every day anyway – and is one glass after a hard day at work actually binge drinking? So I feel entitled to a glass or two at the weekend. I rarely go out anywhere so wine and chocolate tend to be my little treats. The trouble with red wine is that it just sends me off to sleep so quickly. It’s a legal and easy way to get hold of a sedative. Besides, the youngest two are at their father’s this weekend and my eldest, well, she was busy studying.

      Janis turned seventeen last summer and has her A-levels coming up in May and June. She tells me she’s studying and I hope that she’s being honest. It’s so important to me that Janis succeeds, that she doesn’t follow in my errant footsteps and make the same mistakes. I know I’m lucky in that Janis is fairly sensible. She’s always had an old head on her shoulders. I wonder sometimes if it’s because I had her so young, as if nature sought to compensate for my youth and naivety by giving me a wise baby. After all, she got ten A* grades at GCSE. She’s bright and she works hard. She’ll be fine with the jump to A-level, I’m sure. She is, sadly, going through a bit of a phase regarding me and I seem to irritate her more than I used to, but I’m hoping that it’s just hormones and possibly tiredness from all the studying, and that she’ll soon adore me in the way she always used to – before she turned into a serious teenager.

      My attention is dragged to my two British bulldogs Dragon and Fairy Princess. Yes, interesting names for pets dogs but Henry named one and Anabelle the other.

       What on earth is that?

      Dragon has just divested himself of the BIGGEST poop in the world – please excuse my vulgarity, talking about dog faeces, but when you have three children, no subject is taboo – and…

      Oh no, not again! There’s something white and stringy in it.

       Eek!

      Worms.

       Shit!

      Literally.

      I jump up and down on the spot, forgetting my half-full cup of coffee, which spills over my fluffy white dressing gown. I just get squeamish at the thought of parasites, especially with young children around. I’ve seen the warning posters at the doctor’s surgery about dog poo and how young children can get it into their eyes and go blind, or pick up worm eggs that they then digest and…

      I approach the offending pile, which steams mockingly in the cool morning air, for a closer inspection. I don’t want to do this but as the responsible adult of the house I have to. I mean, who else would do it? Who else would mow the grass, sort the recycling and take the rubbish out? I brush away the cloud of loneliness before it can engulf me. I’ve no time for self-pity, especially not today.

      I hold my breath as I lean forwards.

      Yes, there is indeed a long white stringy thing wound into the mocha swirl. But part of it is sticking out of the top and waving in the breeze. And… is that writing?

      I glance around the garden, looking for a tool, something to probe the smelly pile with. Dragon watches me, his big pink tongue hanging out of his wide mouth as he dons his happy face. I hope he doesn’t think that this is a game. His stubby tail wiggles with excitement. I shoot him a warning glance. He raises his eyebrows in the way that only bulldogs can, then hurries off to sniff Fairy Princess’s behind.

       So…

      An abandoned lollipop stick on the step of the moss-covered plastic playhouse attracts my attention. That will be my weapon of choice.

      I crouch next to the brown swirl of stinky matter, well aware that I will have to clean this up before the kids come out here, and assess how best to extract the worm. Or whatever it is masquerading as a worm. But worms don’t have writing on them, do they? So it’s not worms. I sigh with relief.

       But then, if it’s not worms, what has my dog eaten?

      I roll up my sleeves.

       Here we go.

      I wiggle the stick into Dragon’s waste and lift out the white material. Yes; it’s definitely paper, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s… ‘Dragon!’

      He glances up from his rather intimate grooming of Fairy Princess and eyes the lollipop stick in my right hand. He knows. He knows damn well what he’s done.

      He’s been eating my post again.

      ****

      ‘That’s just disgusting!’

      I glance from the dirty lollipop stick to the horrified face of seventeen-year-old Janis. There’s no look as scornful as that of a teenage girl; they just have this way of combining venom with distaste in a way that can make even a grown man tremble. I’ve seen it firsthand, believe me. Take Mr Watford-Browning who used to be employed at the school where I work. That man – once the dynamic and enthusiastic Head of Art – turned to drink because of a group of girls who terrorised him during their time at high school. It’s not funny, not at all, but I see those girls around now and they’re all grown-up with children of their own; you wouldn’t think that they were once so mean. They tormented him on a daily basis until he locked himself in his cupboard. It culminated in him being prised out of there by the caretaker and a burly PE teacher during a fire drill. They couldn’t find him at first, then one of the girls confessed and the deputy head sent the two men in to find him. It was dreadfully sad to see the quivering wreck he’d become. I heard recently that he now has his own gallery

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