Peripheral Vision Read Online Free

name.’
    â€˜A person, you mean. Like me or Daddy or your teacher.’
    â€˜Yes, a person.’
    In the ring, the dogs performed tricks people had taught them in the old circus. An Airedale played the ringmaster. He strutted across the sandy floor with a whistle clenched between his teeth, gesturing with his front paws to direct the performers around the stage. A Toy Poodle rode the shoulders of a loping Great Dane. Ten Border Collies formed a precarious pyramid, tumbled barking to the ground, bounced up and paraded around the ring for our applause.
    The chests of the bitches were fluffy, but below the ribs the fur thinned and soft skin showed through, mottled black and white in the same pattern as their coats. They looked strangely vulnerable beside the parading dogs. When dogs walk on their hind legs, they display their cock and balls like ostentatious jewellery. The castrated dogs walked differently from the ones who were still entire. With their small empty sacs tucked up close to their bodies and their cocks thrust far forward they walked as if they were about to lose their balance. But they never did.
    â€˜I want to go again tomorrow,’ Sienna demanded.
    â€˜No. Tomorrow is your swimming lesson, remember?’
    â€˜I don’t care. I want to see them again.’
    On the walk home we passed a cobblestoned lane, shadowy in the late dusk, stinking of city garbage. Two mixed-breed dogs stood with their shoulders against the south wall of the lane. In the past I would have called them mongrels. They faced each other and made throaty grunts, their tails snapping against the brickwork.
    I asked Sienna what they were saying. Only children and a very few adults could understand the dogs’ guttural conversations punctuated with sharp barks and whines. Academics were studying recordings of them talking but their progress was slow. It was easier to ask a child what was going on.
    â€˜They’re having a talk,’ she said. She licked ice-cream off her hand where it had dripped.
    â€˜I can see that. A talk about what?’
    Sienna took another long lick of her chocolate ice-cream before looking away from me and answering, ‘I couldn’t hear very well.’
    I think that was the first wilful lie she told me.
    Not all the dogs developed at the same rate. Our dog, Pugsley, was at home behaving like the dog we’d always known, shitting all over the yard, barking at shadows, goofing around with Sienna and her father, Adrian, until very late in the piece.
    I suppose, now I think about it, that it was the clown dogs who were the last to turn. Pugs, Basset Hounds, Boxers. The working dogs led the change. The first dog I saw standing up was a Blue Heeler bitch. She watched me walk past, my mouth open in amazement, and she coughed as I was about to turn the corner. When I swung to face her she wagged her tail slowly, languorously, looking me straight in the eye. That was the moment I knew everything had changed. Not the hind-leg walking but a dog gazing at me as if we were equals.
    Once everything settled down we went back to shopping at the supermarket, but in the early weeks of fear that the dogs might attack, shops were closed and people were guarding their goods and property. I went to the cupboard and found tiny jars of anchovies, truffle-infused olive oil, the hand-ground dukkah Adrian liked to bring home from his work trips to Egypt. Sensible people went to their cupboards and found flour, sugar, tins of baked beans and soup.
    I asked my neighbour if I could swap a packet of roasted almonds for a piece of fresh fruit for Sienna. She went inside to get an apple but her husband came out instead, red-faced and stinking of beer.
    â€˜I haven’t forgotten the fucking car, you bitch,’ he said.
    I stepped back, stomach whirling in fear.
    â€˜Didn’t the insurance company pay you?’ I said, my voice squeaky. I wasn’t sure whether to stay or run. ‘I did the