The Secret Dog Read Free

different. Calum will accept you. And we’ll roam the commons having adventures and searching for other animals to rescue. That’s why you’ve
got
to get better!’
    Then Josh started to tell her about himself. How when he was a toddler, his mother had always pointed to a photograph of a handsome soldier when he’d asked about his father  . . .  and that it was only when he was four that he’d come to understand that his dad had been killed in a far-away war before he’d been born. And that he would never meet or know him. All he had were his mother’s stories about him and an album of pictures of his parents’ wedding and honeymoon.
    He checked the puppy’s temperature. Still way too hot. He tucked the bag of frozen chips in next to her.
    Then he told the puppy about his mother. How they had lived together in a tiny flat and how she was small and funny and warm and how she’d raised him all by herself and how they were just fine, the two of them  . . .  until she’d decided to be a good Samaritan and drive a neighbour who was having a baby to the hospital. She must have been going way too fast – they were both killed instantly.
    He was just seven at the time, and though he still had some photos of her, he just didn’t seem to be able to remember her properly. Not
feel
inside him what she was like. Not since he’d come to the island  . . .
    That had happened two days after the crash. His mother’s brother, who he’d only met once when he was so small he couldn’t remember it, had taken him in. But Calum wasn’t at all like his mother. Not warm, not funny. He wasn’t cruel or anything like that, he assured the sleeping puppy. It was just that he wasn’t  . . .  her.
    Still – Josh remembered to check the puppy’s temperature and remove the bag of chips – the one good thing about living here was that he’d discovered the commons, the wild and varied land near his uncle’s croft. And it was there he’d discovered his passion: saving animals, like her.
    It wasn’t until the early evening that the puppy opened one of her eyes and with a huge effort, turned her little head to look up at him. She just gazed athim and Josh felt a huge joy well up inside him. He
knew
then that she’d pull through.
    And a name for her popped into his head – almost as if
she’d
put it there. Reggae. The music his mum had loved.

 
    Chapter 4
    It was the first class after lunch and the air in the Portakabin classroom was stale. Josh’s desk was near the window, in the sun, and his head was muzzy. Reggae was still waking him in the night, even though she’d fully recovered from her infection.
    She wasn’t noisy, but she loved to climb all over his face. Just when he’d finally fallen deeply asleep. Josh guessed she needed attention. She was alone way too much, even though he usually ran home at lunch time and spent as much time as he could with her before and after school.
    She was growing fast. Too fast. Josh knew he couldn’t keep her secret in his room much longer. His uncle’s hearing might not be the best, but his sense of smell was fine. And Reggae’s pee plus the hot sun in the loft were a potent combination.
    Mr Eldon, his geography teacher, was droning on. He insisted on talking about places on the other side of the world – when Josh wanted to understand the geography of the island where they lived. He knew it was fifty miles long, and that the loch his uncle lived on was roughly in the middle. But he didn’t get how it had come to have so many different types of landscape in such a small area. It had mountains in one place and moors and lochs and cliffs in others.
    Once, when he’d been bored – or brave – enough to ask about this, Mr Eldon had made fun of him, saying that Josh might have very limited horizons, but that other students were interested in the wider world. Looking at the blank faces around him, Josh didn’t think this was true.
    Josh stared out at the empty school