The One Plus One

30. Jess

He was on the ground. Jess ran, breathless, barefoot, into the street and the man was standing there, both hands on his head, rocking on his feet, saying, ‘I never even saw it. I never saw it. It just ran straight out into the road.’

Nicky was on the ground beside him, cradling his head, white as a sheet and murmuring, ‘Come on, fella. Come on.’ Tanzie was wide-eyed with shock, her arms rigid at her sides.

Jess knelt. Norman’s eyes were glass marbles. Blood seeped from his mouth and ear. ‘Oh, no, you daft old thing. Oh, Norman. Oh, no.’ She put her ear to his chest. Nothing. A great sob rose into her throat.

She felt Tanzie’s hand on her shoulder, her fist grabbing a handful of her T-shirt and pulling at it again and again. ‘Mum, make it all right. Mum, make him all right.’ Tanzie dropped to her knees and buried her face in his coat. ‘Norman. Norman.’ And then she began to howl.

Beneath her shrieking, Nicky’s words emerged garbled and confused. ‘They were trying to get Tanzie into the car. I was trying to get you but I couldn’t open the window. I just couldn’t open it and I was shouting and he just went through the garden fence. Before I could get there. He knew. He went straight through. He was trying to help her.’

Nathalie came running down the road, her shirt fastened with the wrong buttons, hair half done in rollers. She wrapped her arms around Tanzie and held her close, rocking her, trying to stop the noise.

Norman’s eyes had stilled. Perhaps focused on some distant piece of food. Jess lowered her head to his and felt her heart break.

‘I’ve called the emergency vet,’ someone said.

She stroked his big soft ear. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

‘We’ve got to do something, Jess.’ He said it again, more urgently. ‘Now.’

She put a trembling hand on Nicky’s shoulder. ‘I think he’s gone, sweetheart.’

‘No. You don’t say that. You’re the one who said we don’t say that. We don’t give in. You’re the one who says it’s all going to be okay. You don’t say that.’

And as Tanzie began to wail again, Nicky’s face crumpled. And he began to sob, one elbow bent across his face, huge, gasping sobs, as if a dam had finally broken.

Jess sat in the middle of the road, as the cars crawled around her, and the curious neighbours hovered on the front steps of their houses, and she held her old dog’s enormous bloodied head on her lap and she lifted her face to the heavens and said silently, What now? WHAT THE HELL NOW?

She didn’t see Jason Fisher climb into the car and drive away.

But the CCTV did.