My Life with George by Judith Summers

Author:Judith Summers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781401389857
Publisher: Hachette Books

twelve

Immediately after Christmas, I wrote down the little I knew about Teresa’s life and sent it to my literary agent. To my amazement, my outline for the biography was accepted by a publisher. I was back in business as a writer.

To be paid to piece together Teresa’s story was like being given a marvelous present. There was a problem, though: who would look after Joshua while I was stuck in distant libraries researching the book? I didn’t want him coming home from school to an empty house day after day, and neither did I want to leave him to his own devices for long stretches of time during the school holidays. My son was a strong character, and so far he’d weathered the loss of his father much better than I’d dared to hope. But these were early days. I knew from all the literature I’d read on the subject that fatherless boys were more than usually vulnerable to going off the rails, and I was determined that Joshua would have the most stable home life I could possibly provide.

There was also the added problem of what to do with George when I was working. I could hardly leave him home alone all the time either—or, rather, not alone but at the mercy of Monster Mog. Eighteen months after our Cavalier had joined the family, she was still waging war against him, and still clearly determined to win by any possible means. She’d treated George abysmally since the day he’d arrived, but since he’d been castrated her behavior toward him had become intolerable. Perhaps she sensed that he was no longer an “entire” dog, as the vet euphemistically put it, and so took even more advantage of him than she’d done before. The tactics she used against him changed from casual, sporadic violence into all-out attack. Slashing George’s face, boxing his ears, stealing his food, hissing, scratching, pouncing on him when he least expected it—all of these were now everyday occurrences, carried out with increasing force.

“Growl at her, George! Go on, bark!” I urged him. But no matter what I said, George wouldn’t or couldn’t put up a fight. There had never been an ounce of aggression in his character even before his castration, and since the op he’d turned into a double-wuss. Unlike Charles I’s followers, who might have lost the Civil War but had at least fought back against the Roundheads, our Cavalier was even incapable of self-defense.

The family volunteered to look after both Joshua and George as much as they could, but I could hardly rely on them all the time, for they were even busier than I was. As well as having young Nathaniel to look after, Tabby worked all hours of the day and night for a housing charity. Hannah, who’d once worked in the music business, was now retraining to become a nurse, a career she’d found herself drawn toward during Udi’s illness. Sue was switching careers, too. In the past she’d been a

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