The Puppy That Came for Christmas Read Online Free Page B

dogs of all kinds in the daytimes. These included agility and clicker work. Clicker work involved clicking a small handheld device followed immediately by giving the dog a treat. The clicking sound meant “good work.”
    â€œThe idea is that you reward Rusty as soon as he does what you asked of him,” Frank sighed as he explained it for the twentieth time, loudly, in front of the whole class. “If you’re late with your click or click for inappropriate behavior then your dog will never learn what’s expected from him—will he?”
    I looked down at Rusty. He gave me a consoling look back. If it wasn’t for Rusty, I might have been thrown out of the class as a hopeless case. Rusty was so smart he got just about everything right, even when I clicked in the wrong place.
    As the class was finishing, I saw Ian at the door. We were off to the coach station to pick his mother up. Her visit was a big deal; because they’d treated him unspeakably when he was little, Ian still had trouble spending much time with his parents. His father, Bernie, and aunt, Mabel, had been to visit while I was in Japan, so I’d been spared some awkward family time—although Auntie Mabel had often looked after him and his sister during the toughest of times. Now, Barbara was coming to stay, despite Ian putting her off as much as he could. We were both apprehensive, though I was determined to make the best of the few days and get them over with without a fuss. We’d decided to go to the station together for moral support.
    While he waited, Ian made a big fuss of Queenie, who lapped up his attention, rolling onto her back to have her stomach rubbed.
    â€œFunny that,” Jamie said. “She doesn’t usually like strangers—especially not men—apart from me and Frankie, of course.” He smiled and nodded his head. Ian had passed the approval test.
    Barbara’s coach from Stockport had arrived early, so she was waiting, smoking a cigarette, when we pulled up at the station. She was a wrinkled sickly looking woman, so tiny that you wouldn’t expect her presence to be so disruptive. Ian still had trouble telling me about—or even remembering—the worst bits of his upbringing, and it was only under special circumstances that he would see her at all. As the coach driver pulled a large suitcase from the hold, she lit another cigarette. Ian hated smoking—perhaps because when he was little she’d spent all her kids’ dinner money on cigarettes and sent them to school hungry—and had said to her before she came that if she smoked in the house he’d send her packing. I took the suitcase and put it in the boot. It was as light as anything; she couldn’t have much in it.
    Ian’s mum and dad hadn’t been good parents and now expected him to sort out all their problems—financial or otherwise—for them, but all I had been able to see, when he’d finally taken me to Stockport to meet them for the first time just before we got engaged, were two sick old people who tried as hard as they could to be nice to me. At first, I’d wondered why Ian hadn’t cut all ties with his family or stayed to start a new life in America where he’d lived for a few years, and I felt if he could still be civil to them then I certainly could. A long while later he told me that he had thought about not telling me about his parents when we’d first met, and pretending they were dead. I’m glad he didn’t. I was the only girlfriend that he’d ever taken to meet his family.
    At home, Barbara admired the house, what she called the “woman’s touch” I’d brought to her son’s bachelor pad, but mainly she sat in the garden, drinking cups of tea and smoking. I took pity on her and sat with her awhile. She said she was trying to give up, and she seemed sincere. With her long auburn hair, she reminded me a bit of my sweet