Poppet

An Apple Tree

WHEN SUKI HAS been dead for so long that she’s cold, Penny starts to move. Outside, everything is ready – she has lived with herself for forty-two years and she knows herself well enough to have already prepared what she’s going to do next. She’s been out already this morning and dug the hole. It’s under the apple tree, the one that Suki as a baby – not much bigger than a guinea pig – used to chew at. Growling and leaping at it. Her own play-monster.

Dressed in the same sweater and skirt and socks she’s been wearing for almost two days, Penny carries the dog out into the main part of the mill – her home for the last sixteen years. The lights are all low, just a faint glow from the big log burner in the centre of the floor. Even wrapped in the old chewed blanket she used to drag around the house, there’s nothing of Suki – she’s no heavier than a feather.

At the back door Penny realizes she needs her boots on. Instead of putting Suki down on the mat – she doesn’t think she can bear that – she leans her shoulder against the door frame and jams her feet into the wellies, wriggling her toes around. It’s sort of comic, this middle-aged woman with all her scarves and her coloured hair and her jingly bracelets, standing there like a drunk in the doorway with a dead pet in her arms. She has to smile. Suki would be laughing. Wherever she is now. Up in the dark slipstreams.

It’s very, very dark. Very cold. Her breath is in the air. Winter is moving in. It has moved in. She gets to the bottom of the garden, in spite of all the slippery terraces. It would be better to be drunk or stoned or high, but there hasn’t been the chance. It would be better to have washed and changed – she’d like to feel cleaner and prettier for something this important, but she’s not young and no one is going to watch.

She crouches and lowers Suki into the hole. She’s lined it with dried flowers and fruit and blankets and Suki’s tennis ball – covered in dog spit and hair. The dog seems to sigh as her body settles, as if this is a relief. Penny moves her hands out from under the blanket – takes a step back, closes her eyes and rests her hands in a light clasp at her waist. She drops her face and tries to be respectful. She tries to wish good things and think about where Suki is going to go, but she can’t do it, so in the end she just takes the shovel and pushes frozen earth into the hole. Quickly, before she can change her mind.