Page 63 of Safe Hands

Lauren’s frown deepened. “You know you’ve just named Paige’s baby after her.”

“It’s a good name,” Carly said, picking her glass back up. “She’s not using all of it.”

Lauren laughed, and when Carly looked over, the frown had become a dimpled smile that tipped her very slightly off balance. Again.

“I should get this one home,” she said.

Berkeley had folded himself onto the carpet outside the living room door, his chew abandoned between his paws. He got up when she called. He always did.

Lauren saw them out. Carly sat in the car for a moment before starting the engine, watching the shape of Lauren behind the front window, already talking to a dog that wasn’t hers either.

Her dad’s house was eight minutes away. Samantha’s was fifteen.

She indicated right, towards Samantha’s.

21

Lauren

Lauren rolled over, reached out, and smiled.

“I’ve missed a warm body in my bed.”

The warm body sighed through its nose and stretched, shoving thirty-five kilos of golden retriever slowly and deliberately into the space where her legs had been.

She wriggled down and let him have it.

Friday night had been a bag of chips, three episodes of something she’d already seen, and a dog asleep against her ribs. She’d woken up knowing where she’d been, what she’d said and who she’d said it to. No number in her recent calls that shouldn’t be there. No shame disguised as dehydration. Just Reggie hogging the duvet and breathing directly into her face.

She felt for her phone and opened the camera. Reggie’s chin on the pillow. Reggie’s paw across her hip. Reggie upside down with his lips fallen back off his teeth.

She sent them to Paige.

He’s taken over the whole bed. Starfishing. I’ve got about nine inches of mattress. This is what my life is now.

When are you having him back?

Paige usually replied before Lauren had put the phone down. She had done for the best part of twenty years, through house moves, jobs, heartbreak, hangovers and the entire back catalogue of Lauren’s bad decisions.

Delivered.

Lauren watched it for a while, checked she’d sent it to the right person, and tossed the phone behind her.

Reggie shifted into the warm patch she’d left.

“Fine,” Lauren told him. “Have my side too. See if I care.”

He did not care.

She was dozing again, pinned diagonally under a dead weight of dog, when the phone pinged.

It wasn’t Paige.

How is Reggie?

Carly. On a Saturday morning. About something that wasn’t roof repairs or video schedules or whether Lauren had remembered the caption.

A dog. A perfectly safe subject. Nothing to get weird about.