In Too Deep by Billy O'Callaghan Page B

back, leaned in and kissed her cheek almost at the lobe of her left ear. Jonathan was there all right, his too-big carcass squeezed into the coupé that looked both expensive and ridiculous. He sat there, tapping one bear’s paw of a hand on the rim of the steering wheel, and my hand on Mel’s back was to manoeuvre her out of his line of vision because the door was open. I didn’t give a damn what he saw of me, but to my mind the very least that she deserved was the dignified privacy of a last farewell. After all, we’d just put paid to a whole life together, an entire convoluted history. We had reached the point now where our connection no longer counted for very much, but at this moment, with my lips pressed against the silken flesh of her cheek and with the tinge of her true scent scraping through the cloying breath of Christian Dior number whatever perfume, it felt, at least to me, as if we’d never known a greater intimacy. When she stooped to reach for her suitcase, the little nubs of her spine rose against my touch and a memory stormed my mind of our first time in bed together, back when everything was fresh and new, and exploring every inch of her body was a step further into the unknown.
    â€˜Take care of yourself,’ she whispered, clearly not trusting the strength of her voice. A tear blistered the lashes of one eye and burst against the heel of her hand. I held my breath for the deluge, but it seems that I was only worth the one tear.
    And then, without another word, she turned away and was gone.
    I stood in the doorway for a long time. There was heat in the late August day, but nothing unbearable. A breeze stirred the alders that leaned over the wall of the nearby schoolyard, and traffic out on the main road was light for the hour. I studied the sky, expecting some kind of revelation, I think, but there was little to see, only a blanket of washed-out grey and away on the horizon the stately crawl of a high-altitude jet. Apart from the imminent eclipse, this was just another ordinary Tuesday. Time still puttered along at its usual rate, always chasing, always in debt. Billions of hearts across the map still leapt, ached and, in dozens of tragic ways, broke. The world hadn’t stopped turning, hadn’t even slowed.
    Just after two o’clock, the dogs began to howl.
    Earlier, when I’d gone out into the yard to feed them, I found them subdued, drained of their usual boundless energy. Their barks were sharp and catching, the unsettling screech of the youngest one starting off a rounded chorus amongst the others, and they all stood with backs arched, their heads hung low and their haunches all aquiver. Such behaviour was most unlike them. But when I set out their food and assured them with a few soft words and a quick pat, they bunched together and attacked their feeding bowls with something like their usual gusto, and it seemed that everything was all right again. Dogs have a lovely way of simplifying a situation.
    I’d made myself a sandwich and was just sitting down to eat when the howling began. Such an eerie sound. I went outside and found them huddled together in one corner of the yard, all four of them. They raised their heads to howl and I’m not sure that I have ever experienced anything more unnerving. The sound seemed alien to them, an earthy long-ago sound, as forlorn as whale-song and as strange. They howled, and then shivered violently as, in answer, somewhere off in the distance, another dog started up with another series of long bleating whoops.
    The sky looked unchanged, still the same blanket grey of earlier, though away to the west the cloud had begun to split apart and lay in flumes across a thin swath of blue. The little breeze of earlier had sighed itself out or fallen away and a peculiar stillness had overtaken the afternoon. I thought about going back inside, but didn’t. Couldn’t.
    On last night’s news, they had come up with the