Nobody's Dog
The dog belonged to the bin sheds, and everyone on Pelham Rise agreed about that.
She was there when Idris left for school and there when he came back, lying in the gap between the brick wall and the wheelie bins where the wind could not reach. Nobody fed her, exactly. Mrs Achebe at number 9 put out chicken skin, and the man with the motorbike left half a sausage roll on the low wall most Fridays, and somebody — nobody knew who — had put down an old car mat for her to lie on. Between them, without ever discussing it, the whole of Pelham Rise kept her alive and no one at all looked after her.
Idris had named her Tuesday, privately, because that was the day he had first noticed her. He had never said the name out loud.
In February the council put up a notice. It was laminated, which on Pelham Rise meant serious, and it said that the bin store was to be demolished and replaced, and that the work would begin on the second of March.
Idris read it four times on the way past.
That evening he did something he had been not-doing for seven months. He crouched down at the mouth of the gap, held out the crust of his sandwich, and waited.
Tuesday did not come out. She watched him from the dark with her chin flat on the car mat, and her tail moved once, twice, against the brick — not a wag, exactly, more like someone knocking politely to see whether anybody was in.
"They're knocking it down," Idris said.
She did not move. He left the crust on the concrete, where she could reach it once he had gone, and he walked home very slowly, working out what a person would have to say to their mother to make her say yes.
Read it once through before you start. You can look back at it as often as you like — it stays on the page while you answer.