Gary was certain the renovation mattered more than the dog; the boy would get over it. The dog was taken to the shelter despite the boy’s pleas. But eleven days later, Sarah walked into her son’s room and found a drawing that turned everything upside down.
The bags stood by the front door. Two bags, to be precise: one held bowls, the other held the last of the food and a rubber ball that Buster had carried around the flat ever since he’d learned to walk.
Liam saw them before he’d even kicked off his trainers.
Buster nudged his nose into the boy’s knee and wagged his tail so hard he knocked the bag. The bowl clinked inside. His ginger fur smelled of the garden, autumn leaves, and something warm and properly doggy that always made Liam’s chest tighten. He crouched down, wrapped both arms around the dog. Buster froze, pressed his side against the checked shirt, and rested his head on the boy’s shoulder.
His back left leg turned in awkwardly. The dog had limped on it since puppyhood, and Liam was used to supporting him by the side when he sat.
The kettle hummed in the kitchen. His mother stood by the hob, twisting her wedding ring on her finger. Fast, a habitual motion, as she always did when she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words. His father sat at the table, back straight, hands folded in front of him. A cup of coffee sat exactly in the centre of the saucer.
“Mum. What’s that for?”
Sarah didn’t turn. Her fingers on the ring sped up.
“Dad, why are there bags by the door?”
Gary finished his coffee in one gulp. Set the cup on the saucer so precisely it didn’t clink.
“Liam, we’ve decided. We’re taking the dog today.”
“Where?”
“To the shelter. Good conditions, I checked. Heated kennels, decent grub.”
The boy looked at his mother. She stared out the window, where the grey October sky pressed down on the rooftops. The ring kept twisting.
“Mum?”
The kettle clicked off. The silence let them hear Buster breathing in the hallway.
“Mum, say something.”
Sarah adjusted the tea towel on the hook. Took it off, hung it again, though it had been straight.
“Your father’s right, love. We need to do the renovation. The dog would be…”
“Buster! His name’s Buster!”
“Buster would find it hard. Paint, dust, tools on the floor. It could make him ill.”
She spoke in a flat voice, each word sounding rehearsed. As if she and Gary had practised the night before while Liam slept.
The boy gripped the edge of the chair. His knuckles went white.
“I’ll walk him three times a day. I’ll stay with him in my room. He won’t get in the way. Please.”
Gary stood up. The chair scraped across the linoleum.
“I’ve said so, and that’s that. We leave in half an hour.”
“Please. Please don’t.”
His voice became thin. Not childish, but transparent, as if the words passed through him without sticking. Buster scratched his claws on the tiles, limped into the kitchen, and sat next to Liam, leaning his side against the boy’s leg. He rested his head on the knee. And stayed still. The dog’s eyes were brown, with flecks of ginger, looking up calmly. He didn’t understand. He trusted everyone in this house.
Sarah squeezed her eyes shut. For a second, maybe two. Then opened them and reached into her pocket for the car keys.
Liam grabbed his jacket.
“Liam, you’d better stay home. You don’t need to come.”
“No, I’m coming!” Liam was almost crying.
In the car, it smelled of petrol and warm plastic. The sun hadn’t come out, and the town outside looked drawn in grey pencil on wet paper. Buster lay on the back seat, his head on Liam’s lap. The boy didn’t cry. He sat upright, stroking the ginger head, his fingers moving slowly, steadily, as if memorising every bump, every curl of fur.
Gary glanced once in the rearview mirror. Quickly looked away.
Sarah drove, thinking about the wallpaper in the hallway. About rollers, about the colour ‘ivory’ they’d picked on Saturday at the DIY store. In a month the flat would be bright. Clean. No dog hair on the sofa, no click of claws in the morning.
The shelter was on the outskirts, behind some garages. A grey building with an iron door, behind which smelled of bleach, wet concrete, and something sour, thick, that made you want to breathe through your mouth. From the depths came barking. Not loud, not angry. Mournful, as if someone was calling and no longer believed they’d be heard.
A woman in a green apron came out to meet them. She smiled at Buster, ruffled his ear.
“Lovely boy, ginger fellow. We’ll sort him out, don’t worry.”
Liam held the lead. With both hands, tight, so the leather strap bit into his palms. His fingers were red from the strain.
“Liam, give it here.”
His father held out his hand. A big palm, smelling of engine oil, opened in front of the boy’s face.
Liam looked at the lead. Then at Buster. Then at the lead again.
And opened his fingers. Slowly.
The woman took the lead and led Buster down the corridor. The dog limped on his left hind leg, and his claws clicked on the tiles, the sound echoing because the corridor was long and empty. At the turn, Buster looked back.
The woman turned the corner. The clicking grew quieter, quieter. And faded.
In the car on the way back, the boy sat behind the driver’s seat. Where ten minutes ago Buster had lain. The upholstery still held his scent: warm fur, garden, autumn leaves. Liam pressed his cheek to the seat and closed his eyes.
Sarah reached for the radio. Gary shook his head. They drove home for twenty minutes. Not a word.
At home, Liam took off his shoes, walked past the kitchen, and shut himself in his room. The door clicked softly. Just closed.
Sarah put the empty bags away, folded them neatly, stuffed them into the bin. Then she saw the bowl.
A red plastic bowl with toothmarks along the rim. Buster had chewed it as a puppy, when he didn’t know bowls weren’t for chewing. Sarah picked it up, held it. The plastic was light and smooth, the toothmarks rough under her fingers. She put the bowl back on the floor.
The next day, they noticed oddities.
Liam didn’t ask what was for dinner. Didn’t turn on the telly. Didn’t take his school bag out. He came home from school, took off his shoes, went to his room. Quiet, like a shadow on the wall.
Sarah knocked.
“Liam, macaroni cheese? With cheese, as you like it.”
The bed creaked behind the door. That was all.
She stood at the door for half a minute. Listened to the silence. Walked away.
In the evening, Gary said: he’ll get used to it. Kids forget quickly. In a week he’ll be running around as before. He said this confidently, standing in the hallway where a scratch from Buster’s claws was still visible on the wall, left in the first month.
On the fifth day, the teacher called. Her voice was cautious, like someone stepping on thin ice.
“Is everything all right at home?”
“Yes, of course. Why?”
“Liam doesn’t answer in class. At all. He sits, stares out the window. At break he stands alone by the wall. Kids approach him, he stays silent.”
Sarah bit her lip.
“We just… we rehomed the dog. To a shelter. He’ll get used to it.”
The teacher paused. A few seconds, and in that pause Sarah heard more than in any words. Then the voice on the line said:
“I see.”
That ‘I see’ hung in the flat all evening. Like the smell of paint they hadn’t opened yet, but it was already there.
On the seventh day, Liam stopped coming to dinner. Sarah put a plate down. Collected it untouched. The macaroni cooled and formed a skin, and that somehow was unbearable.
Gary bought rollers and primer. Stripped the old wallpaper in the hallway. Underneath, the walls were grey, with patches of old glue, a crack from floor to ceiling that the sailing ship picture had hidden. It smelled damp. It didn’t look beautiful. And the silence wasn’t the one he’d planned.
The red bowl still stood in the kitchen. Sarah couldn’t bring herself to throw it away. Three times she picked it up, three times she put it back. The fourth time she turned it upside down. Then put it back as it was.
One day, Sarah went into her son’s room while he was at school. She wanted to tidy up.
On the desk lay a drawing.
A house with a triangular roof and a chimney with smoke. Ordinary, like all kids draw. Next to it, a boy: stick legs, round head, arms out. And next to the boy, a ginger blob with four legs and a curly tail. The boy and dog were drawn brightly, with red marker and orange crayon, pressed hard so the paper was dented.
But the house was empty. Windows without curtains, door wide open. Inside, no figures, no furniture. White.
No mum. No dad. Just white space behind the open door.
Sarah sat on her son’s bed. She picked up the drawing, brought it closer. At the bottom, beneath the house, in crooked little letters: “Buster I am coming.”
No comma. No full stop. A promise written by a hand that hadn’t yet learned to form letters evenly.
The ring on her finger pressed so much that Sarah took it off. Placed it on the desk next to the drawing. And sat staring at the wall, because she wasn’t thinking about wallpaper. Not about the colour ‘ivory’. Not about fur or claws.
She was thinking that her son had drawn a house in which she did not exist.
That evening, Sarah placed the drawing in front of Gary. She didn’t explain. Just put it on the table, next to his plate.
He looked at it for a long time. Then pushed his plate away.
“We’ll get him back.”
Sarah blinked.
“Buster. Tomorrow morning.”
And he said it, not her. She had expected to have to argue, persuade, jab her finger at the drawing. But Gary was staring at the empty house with no people, and something moved on his face, as if his muscles didn’t know what expression to adopt.
“Tomorrow. First thing.”
Sarah nodded. She wanted to say ‘thank you’, but the word stuck. There was nothing to thank for. This wasn’t a gift. It was an attempt to fix what they had broken themselves.
In the morning, they arrived at the shelter. Same iron door. Same smell of bleach and wet concrete. The woman came out to meet them, this time in a blue apron, but the same face.
Buster recognised them from the doorstep. He lunged at the kennel mesh, whimpered, wagged his tail so hard his whole body shook. He had lost weight in those days: ribs showed under the ginger fur, and his left hind leg turned in worse than before. He limped towards them faster than he could.
Gary took the lead. The same leather one, worn. His hand wrapped around the strap habitually.
At home, Liam sat in his room. The door closed.
Claws clicked on the tiles in the hallway. Softly. Unevenly, with a skip every fourth step.
The bedroom door opened.
The boy stood in the doorway. Buster rushed to him, shoved his nose into the boy’s stomach, licked his hand, his knee, his hand again. His tail thumped against the wall.
Liam sank to the floor. His fingers dug into the ginger fur, which smelled of the shelter, bleach, something foreign. But beneath that smell was another, old, real, the one that always made his chest tighten.
He spoke his first words in days:
“Buster.”
Then he lifted his head. Looked at his mother. At his father.
Sarah crouched beside him.
“Liam, love…”
He didn’t pull away. But he didn’t lean in either. He just sat on the floor, hugging the dog, and looked at them as if seeing them for the first time. And wasn’t sure he recognised them.
Buster licked the boy’s chin and calmed down. Lay down next to him, pressing his warm side.
Sarah poured food into the red plastic bowl with toothmarks along the rim. Buster limped to the kitchen, clicked his claws, began eating greedily, hurriedly. Liam sat beside him.
And Gary stood in the hallway, where the stripped walls smelled damp and old glue. The roller lay in the corner, covered in dust. The primer had dried in its can. The crack from floor to ceiling was still there.
From the kitchen came the sound of the bowl scraping on the floor and the dog chomping.
Gary stood and looked at the walls. The renovation hadn’t moved forward. And now it didn’t matter if it ever would. Because in this house, something else needed fixing.
