Bailey’s Little Adventure – Part 4

Tues PM

The moment I’d been absolutely dreading arrived. Sophie was home.

When the ‘missed yous’ and ‘love yous’ were out of the way she immediately asked “Where’s Bailey?”

My painful heart stopped. Brace yourself. I held her hands.

“Bailey ran off in a thunderstorm, he’s not here at the moment. But he’s okay! He’s just having a little adventure. He’s out there somewhere and people keep seeing him so we WILL find him,I promise, okay?!”

She’d just turned nine. Floods of tears fell silently down her face as she looked at me pleadingly, willing me to say ha! I was only joking! If only I could.

I told her about DogLost and their army of volunteers and that every single person we knew was actively out looking for him. Put on my false bravado voice. “We must put up posters tomorrow and I’ve found a print shop near Nanny’s house”. I hugged her tightly and then she ran to her bedroom and came back only a minute later.

“Right,” she said. “We’ll set the alarm for 6.30am and go out looking for him. Then when the print shop is open we get the posters at 8.30am. Then we go to Boswells and have a bacon sandwich at 9am and then we put the posters up”.

I’d underestimated her, she wasn’t going to fall apart. And I did have a little chuckle that even in the darkest of times she managed to fit a bacon sandwich* into the schedule. And as it happened we did need a table to insert the 100s of posters into plastic wallets, ready to be sellotaped wherever we could find a space.

To Be Cont’d…/

• She’s been vegetarian for over a year now!