Never Fall for Your Back-Up Guy by Kate O’Keeffe

Chapter 4

Dear Dad,

You know how much I loved Kelly and Hannah growing up? Well, I’ve made a decision. No more putting it off. No more ‘one day’ thinking, because that day has come. And it’s today.

I’m going to get my dog.

Miss you. Love you.

Your Za-Za xoxo

I hitsend and slot my phone back into my purse. Dad will get it. He’ll love that I’m getting my own dog. With rising anticipation, I tuck my tablet under my arm, button up my coat against the cool London air, and take the short walk from the Tube stop to Penelope’s Pooches.

Once I reach the shop, I look in the window. With a start, I notice there’s no sign of the puppy from this morning. It’s been replaced with a small ball of fluff who happily yaps at me as I peer in at it.

The little Jack Russell can’t be gone.

Why didn’t I drop everything this morning and get it? Could it have already been sold?

I look up and read the sign instructing people to come inside and “talk pooches with Penelope.” Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

“Sorry, sorry!” Scarlett comes rushing down the street toward me, her hair streaming behind her as she clutches onto her unbuttoned coat. “I got held up. We might have a new client!”

“Hey, that’s great. Who is it?”

“A woman called Delilah Smith.” She catches her breath, her cheeks pink from the exercise.

“She sounds familiar. How would I know her?”

“Footballer’s wife. Married to a guy called Tony Smith who plays for Chelsea.”

We both pull a face. Neither of us know much about football, let alone knowing who the players are.

“Anyway, she wants us to come and look at their new London pad. They want a total redesign.” She clutches onto my arm. “Zara, it’s an eight-bedroom, four-living room house with a pool.”

I blink at her. “Seriously? And she wants us to design the whole place.”

She presses her lips together and nods, her blue eyes bright. “Can you believe it? If we get this, we could be in Hello magazine someday. We will be on the map, girl.”

“We’ll own the map.”

“Oh, yeah. We’ll make that map our beeeyotch.”

“Speaking of…” I nod at the entrance to the pet shop. “Let’s go get me a puppy—if it’s still here. It’s not in the window anymore.”

She points at the white fluff ball. “What about that one? It’s cute.”

“It’s not the one I want.” I push the door open to a tinkling bell, step inside, and look around the shop. The moment my feet hit the floor, I feel like I’m in another world. There’s a huge colourful portrait of a West Highland Terrier on the wall, shelves filled with dog beds and treats, and racks of dog accessories, from hats to booties and clothes. The floor itself is soft and springy, and each step I take I bounce along like I’m on an oversized balloon.

“This is freaky,” Scarlett says as she bounces next to me.

“Welcome to Penelope’s Pooches,” a soft and feminine voice says behind us.

We turn to see a woman in her 30s, her hair in pigtails, making her look more than a touch like Pippi Longstocking, wearing a pale blue boilersuit with the word Penelope embossed in bright pink lettering on her chest. She’s got a friendly smile on her plump, make-up-free face.

I glance from her nametag up to her face. “Hi, Penelope.” I say. When she offers me an uncertain look, I say, “You are Penelope, aren’t you?”

Her smile broadens. “Not exactly.”

I glance around the store. There are two other staff members nearby, both busy stocking shelves, one holding a clipboard in her hand. They’re dressed the same as the woman beside me, right down to the boilersuit and pigtails. “Which one is Penelope?”

“Oh, let me explain. You’re obviously new to our dog-cept.”

“Dog-cept?” Scarlett questions.

“It’s a melding of the words ‘dog’ and ‘concept.’ Dog-cept.”

Scarlett’s eyes flash to mine. “Okaaay.”

“Our dog-cept states that we are all Penelope.”

I raise my eyebrows in question. “Really?” A door at the back of the shop swings open and a man comes breezing in. He too is dressed in the exact same boilersuit, although he’s not sporting the same hairstyle. “Even the guys?”

“Even the guys,” she confirms.

I cast my mind back to “Priscilla,” the opinionated Australian bartender on Friday night. “Is that, like, a new London trend or something? Calling guys by women’s names?”

“Penelope is more of a way of being, a way of looking at the world, a way of experiencing life, than an actual person.”

Riiiight.

“How does that work exactly?” Scarlett asks.

“A Penelope is a pooch lover, a life giver and keeper, a person with canine sensibilities and a deep understanding of the natural environment. A Penelope is not a person or a group of people, more it’s you and it’s me. Or it can be.”

Well that cleared it up.

“Does that mean we’re Penelopes?” I gesture between Scarlett and myself.

She sizes us up. “You could be.”

“Babe, I think you’ve got to buy a dog in order to become a Penelope,” Scarlett says.

The woman recoils from us with a shocked expression on her face, as though she’s been prodded with a hot poker. “You don’t buy a dog.”

“You don’t?” I question.

Penelope shakes her head vehemently. “Oh, no. You become part of its pack.”

Scarlett’s eyes slide to mine. I know what she’s thinking. And I’m thinking it, too.

“Sorry. I think what my friend meant to say is that we really want to become part of one of your dogs’ packs.”

“Oh, you want to be the leader of a dog’s pack, Zara,” Scarlett corrects, and I nod in agreement.

“True,” I confirm. “So, the dog I’m interested in is the one you had—"

Penelope cuts me off with a stern, “We choose not to use the ‘l’ word here at Penelope’s Pooches.”

“We do?” I question.

“We embrace an egalitarian conceptualisation of the canine pack. It’s part of our dog-cept.”

This place feels increasingly more like a cult than a pet store. And haven’t they got the whole canine pack hierarchy thing totally wrong?

Scarlett elbows me in the ribs and I do my best to keep a straight face. “Okay. Not an ‘l’ word, and not buying a dog. What I mean is can I please…meet the Jack Russell you had in the window earlier today?” I hold my breath and hope I’ve said the right thing. Surely “meet” is acceptable in the dog-cept? If that’s even a thing, which I strongly suspect it’s not.

The Penelope’s features relax. “You can absolutely meet our little Jack Russell. Glass of champagne?”

I almost get whiplash from the turnabout.

“We’d love to, but we’ve got to go back to work after this,” I explain. “I’m dying to meet her. I mean, I assume she’s a her. She looks like a her.” I pause and add, “Or are you non-binary here, too? You know, as part of your dog-cept?”

The Penelope bursts into peals of laughter, ending in a loud snort. “Oh, you’re so funny. That would be absurd for a dog to be non-binary. Fancy that!”

“Oh, totally absurd,” I reply with a fake laugh because of course none of this is weird in the least. I refocus her on the task at hand. “So, that dog from the window this morning. Is she still here?”

“Oh, yes. We don’t keep a dog in the window for more than a short period of time. They get peer fatigued, you know, which is when too many people peer at them.”

Scarlett’s nose makes an odd sound as she suppresses a laugh. I shoot her a look.

“Of course,” I say.

“What we do is, after a certain period of time in the window, we ask the dogs if they’d like to leave the window and instead return to their den. Today, Steve decided to do just that. We like to give our dogs agency. It’s part of our—”

“Dog-cept,” Scarlett finishes for her. “Yeah, we’ve got it.”

“Her name is Steve?” I ask, confused. “Weird name for a girl. Weird but cute.”

And I can always change it…

“Her full name is Stevedore Clemence Norwich.”

“Stevedore Clemence Norwich. That’s quite a name. Isn’t a Stevedore a port worker? ‘Cos she didn’t look much like one of those.” I let out a light laugh but immediately clam up when I take in the unamused expression on Penelope’s face.

“We believe Stevedore is a very proud dog name. It has a long, illustrious history here at Penelope’s Pooches.”

A long, illustrious history? Hasn’t the shop only been open for a year?

I rearrange my features to look serious and avoid looking at Scarlett, who’s still snorting with barely suppressed laughter at my side. “Of course it is. It’s a very proud name, I’m sure. I didn’t meant to be disrespectful to, err, Stevedore.”

“I’ll need some details about you both first.” She pulls a tablet from her boilersuit pocket. “

Scarlett’s hands shoot up. “I’m not the one, errr, joining the dog’s pack. That’s Zara. I’m just here for the ride.” She adds under her breath, “Plus, I’m a human.”

“What’s your full name?” Penelope asks me.

“Zara Huntington-Ross.”

“Do you live in a flat or a house with a yard?”

“I’m in a flat, which I share with my friend, Lottie. She also adores dogs and will be wonderful with Stevie, I’m sure.”

She gives me a stern look. “We’ll need to meet her, too.”

“Of course.”

“And see your flat.”

She goes on to ask me a few more standard questions, noting my replies down on her tablet as Scarlett wanders around the shop looking at their merchandise.

Then things take a turn for the weird. Not that things hadn’t been weird from the moment we stepped inside this shop, of course. But they definitely get weirder.

“Tell me, Zara, if you were a cowboy in a small American town in the late-1800s and the sheriff was calling up men to form a posse to catch a couple of bandits who’d robbed the local bank, would you join him?”

I blink at her, my mouth dropped wide enough to catch flies. Or a small bird. “I’m sorry?”

“If you were a cowboy in a small town in the late-1800s and the sheriff—” she repeats.

“I meant…why? Why do you need to know something like that?”

Penelope—now I’m beginning to wonder if they get serial numbers when they start working here, like Penelope-0-1-2 and Penelope-0-1-3—gives me a stern look. “Ms. Huntington-Ross, we take this process very seriously at Penelope’s Pooches. Please don’t interrupt it.”

“With all due respect, what’s a posse and a bunch of cowboys got to do with me buying—”

She sucks in air.

“—I mean becoming a part of a pack with Steve?”

“We need to know so we can match you to the right dog,” she replies as though I’ve asked the most obvious question of all time. “We can’t have a posse member with a dog who would prefer to curl up in front of a fire. Likewise, we can’t have a blue crayon with a yellow one, but then that goes without saying as I’m sure you’d agree.”

We’re onto crayons now? There has got to be an easier way to get a puppy.

“We can’t?”

“No. Anyone who knows the colour wheel knows that blue and yellow are opposites, and in the canine-human relationship that will not work.”

“Right. Got it,” I reply, not getting it in the least.

“And on that point, if you could be a new colour of crayon, what would you be?”

“Err, can I choose one of the existing colours? Or do I have to make one up?”

She raises her eyebrows at me before she taps something on her tablet.

“Wait. Did I fail that one?”

She ignores my reply, instead peppering me with more random and seemingly irrelevant questions. Once she’s determined that yes, I would join the posse, no I wouldn’t want to walk across hot coals as part of a tribal initiation process, and on a scale of one to ten I rate the colour turquoise as a solid seven, she finally, finally, tells me I’ve passed the test to be considered for Steve.

How I managed that, I’ll never know.

“Do you have something that smells of you that I could take to Steve? Your scarf, perhaps.”

“You’re going to give her my scarf to sniff?”

“Not just sniff. I want her to inhale your essence, really learn about you before she makes up her mind whether or not to meet you.”

I went through all that and I still might not get to meet the dog?

I pull my silk scarf from around my neck and hand it to her.

“Why don’t you take a seat in the pen and I’ll ask Steve if she’d like to meet you.” She indicates an area on the green carpet that’s ringed by a low picket fence. “If she gives the go ahead, I’ll be back shortly with her. See you soon!”

As she exits the shop via the back door, I blow out a puff of air. This whole thing is beyond weird, but I’ve got my heart set on Steve, so I’ve got to play ball.

I step over the little white picket fence and into the pen. There’s a selection of chew toys and a couple of beanbags in the pen, so I choose one and sink into it.

“You do know Steve is a totally weird name for a dog, right?” Scarlett asks me from the other side of the pen.

“Yeah, it is, but it’s also quite cute.”

“Cute is ‘Buddy’ or ‘Teddy’ or ‘Comet’. Not ‘Steve.’”

I say in a hushed voice, “I bet Penelope would have something to say if I changed her name.”

“Who cares?” she replies with a shrug. “I’m going to go and check out the doggie outfits.”

As Scarlett moves to the other side of the shop, I sit and I wait. And wait. I watch as another customer enters the store and is immediately greeted by one of the Penelopes. All he wants is some dog food, so he’s finished and gone while I’m still waiting.

I pull out my phone and start to research furniture for Asher’s flat. I’d may as well make use of my time. I find some gorgeous panels that would fit the look he told me he’d like for his bedroom, and a tan leather living room suite that he could comfortably lounge on in front of “Tonya.”

“Steve said she’d love to meet you.”

I look up to see my Penelope holding Steve in her arms. The puppy’s looking at me, her skinny white tail wagging like a pair of windscreen wipers in a downpour, as she wriggles to be put down on the ground.

I spring out of the beanbag, which is no small feat, and gush, “Oh, she’s absolutely darling! Can I hold her?” Warmth fills my chest.

“You’ll need to ask her that,” Penelope replies.

“Hi, Steve. I’m Zara. You sniffed my scarf. Can we have a cuddle?”

Her tail wagging moves into overdrive, which seems to be enough of a signal to Penelope that yes, indeed, Steve would like a cuddle.

I take her squirmy, warm, soft little body in my arms and she immediately climbs my chest and begins to lick and nibble on my earlobe. It tickles and I let out a giggle, which only makes her wriggle in excitement all the more.

“Oh, Steve. Who’s a gorgeous girl, then? You are, that’s who,” I coo. I receive another set of licks in response.

Penelope claps her hands together and I look at her in surprise. “It’s a match!” she declares, and instantly the other staff in their light blue boilersuits and pigtails begin to applaud, moving through the shop to join us. Someone hits play on a stereo somewhere and cheesy violin music, like you hear in old movies, fills the room as everyone gathers around me, an amused Scarlett watching in wonderment.

I feel like I should be holding Steve up above my head as Sir Elton declares that this is the circle of life to an audience of excited African wildlife who simultaneously bow to Steve’s future “queen of the jungle” status.

I don’t. That would be even weirder than this whole experience.

And that’s saying something.

“Zara Huntington-Ross, Stevedore Clemence Norwich has chosen you to be a part of her pack,” my Penelope states as the others nod and smile their agreement.

I gaze down at Steve. Her big dark brown eyes gaze back up at me, her ears standing to attention, and her little pink tongue locked and loaded, ready to attack my earlobe once more. It’s love at first sight, pure and simple.

“I would love to join Steve’s pack,” I tell the assembled group, and they burst into spontaneous applause once more. Scarlett and a cluster of customers look on in bemused silence.

Half an hour and a lot of paperwork later, I’ve agreed to have my Penelope visit my flat on Saturday afternoon—their earliest “future dog den visitation” slot available—to ensure it’s a suitable home for Stevie, and I bid my new little dog goodbye. Together, Scarlett and I head back to ScarZar, excited that I’m mere days away from become a mum to my own little Steve.