Louise lay back in the deep bubbles and luxuriated. Lavender, ylang-ylang caught the steam and intensified with the heat. A bath to dream in. She closed her eyes and imagined, not her own standard, white suite, but the one from the Imperial Leather advert on the telly; sculptures of shells, exotic flora, an infinity view beyond a panoramic window.

Movement in the bedroom distracted her from her fantasy; Bodger, her terrier-collie cross.

“Bodger.”

As if, Louise smiled to herself. It was not the first time she had attempted to coax Bodger into the bathroom. On really brave days, he might stick his head around the door jamb, but that was it. She never managed to persuade him across the threshold since the day her husband had dragged him kicking and whimpering to the shower; a necessary consequence of his rolling in something particularly foul on the daily trek across the fields.

Still, it was impossible not to try when she thought of that big shaggy face, adoring eyes. “Bodger.”

She could hear him snuffling the covers on the bed, muzzling the washing she had piled on the floor, his pads on the parquet, for some reason always sounding different in the high-ceilinged bedroom; heavier, slower. Then, the creak of the bed under his weight. His unnatural panting in the perfumed steam that issued from the en suite door. More creaking as the bed realigned itself, released from the pressure and pad, pad, pad.

Louise lifted her gaze to the mirror opposite the doorway and searched the dimly lit reflection for the familiar shape. A movement near the top made her shift her line of vision, her mouth opened, scream-shaped. The glitter that she caught there was no adoring canine gaze.

She heard, with reluctant clarity, the clatter of the dog-flap on the floor below.

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