Dog Handling by Clare Naylor Page A

Alex had shared with her it sounded like the roughest breakup since Romeo and Juliet. In fact, before Liv had even met Laura she had sometimes drifted off to sleep chanting, “At least I’m not Laura Train Wreck.”
    “It’s all right, isn’t it, this place?” said Laura, giving Liv her first taste of the Australian knack of playing things down. Elle Macpherson? Yeah, she’s an okay-looking chick. The ninety-degree cloudless weather? Not bad going today. A spider the size of a Shetland pony? He’s a big bloke. Liv would get used to it in time.
    “Yeah. At least it’s not Golborne Road in the pissing rain,” mumbled Liv. Which was exactly where she had spent last Saturday night. Walking backwards and forwards in her only item of designer clothing. Which happened to be a Chloe corset designed more for seducing rock stars than prowling up and down wet streets hoping to bump into your ex-boyfriend on his way out to buy a pint of milk and convince him that you were completely over him and now had a full and active social life full of seducible rock stars whom you were on your way to meet at Woody’s. Thank god for Alex and Sydney, was all Liv could think as she looked back on perhaps the worst way she’d ever spent four hours. In fact, looking back made her realise how far she’d come. And not just the gazillion or so miles. She was only thinking of Tim every hour or so now and not every ten minutes. Maybe things were looking up.
    “I’m dying to explore,” Liv said, suddenly curious about the city that, until five minutes ago, had existed in her mind as a faded postcard of an odd-shaped opera house and a whole load of men with sunburn and stringy long blond hair. Judging by her view, she was going to have a hard time keeping the promise she’d made to Alex not to explore the best bits before she and Charlie came home next week.
    “Well, I’d love to give you the tour, but I’m in the middle of painting Venice, I’m afraid. Maybe tomorrow?”
    “Venice?” Liv asked.
    “Sure, come and have a look.” She put down her spoon and led Liv into the hut. Propped against a wall was the Grand Canal, Harry’s Bar in the distance, and the unmistakable brickwork of Venice. A floor-to-ceiling city, stretching across the entire room. The bed had been shoved into a tight corner and the floor was strewn with open paint pots and a chaos of brushes. “I’m a set decorator,” Laura said, grabbing a paintbrush and touching up a gondolier.
    “This is amazing. What’s the play?” asked Liv.
    “Death in Venice. . . .
It opens at the opera house tomorrow night, so I have to push on.” Laura was unable to resist getting back to work. Within moments all talk had ground to a halt and she hummed away to herself as she mixed some more brick colour. Liv tiptoed back to the cottage.
    As Liv finished off her tea, leaning over the balcony, she was beginning to remember all those stirrings she’d had: Roger, Ben Parker, any old random bloke on the tube. Yes, the sap was definitely rising. I mean was she just going to abandon all those dreams she’d had of wearing no underwear to lunch and having sex in the afternoon just because Tim didn’t want her? Absolutely not. No, the time had come to boot the accountant from her soul and get kicked out of nightclubs for raucous behaviour. Bugger Tim. Liv’s life was about to take off so dramatically that she’d turn into one of those women who never seemed to have a pair of clean knickers so she had to turn yesterday’s inside out. Well, she didn’t literally hope for this because it might be a bit foul, but theoretically she dreamed that she’d be so busy being socially indispensable that knickers would be the last thing on her mind.
    The only problem was she didn’t really know how to kick-start this knickerless social whirl. Given that she knew nobody in the city save a linguistically impaired cabby and Laura Train Wreck. There was always the option that she could just leave it