I am having a lovely time watching family videos with Connor who has the Russian bride.
“Is that your wife’s sister?” I point at a taller blonde woman, on the grainy video. She is sitting in a deck chair at the beach, is pretty, has an early Lady Di haircut.
“No that’s someone else.”
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When we are finished I take my leave and it is his wife who sees me out.
From the outside, the house is nice, though small, plain, one story, with exterior walls painted dark red. It has a well-groomed front yard, a brown wooden picket fence. It is just like the other houses dotted around a warren of paths in the Hanger Hill neighborhood, not like the older Ealing houses.
I am opening the gate when I see a dog with reddish brown and black fur, black nose, standing at the front door. A retriever? Is that Connor’s dog?
At first I think nothing of it and it bounds off and over a wooden fence. As I crisscross the paths around the multi-colored houses I keep thinking, I should call Connor to check. I try to pull his number on my phone but the screen resolution is not working and I have to resize the text to make it readable. I should stop walking, so that I can call him properly.
When I finally get hold of him, I can already see the cars on Hanger Lane.
“I texted you,” he says. I am sitting in a café.
“Oh,” I reply. “I am calling about the dog… Do you have a red and brown dog with a black nose?”
“Yes, he just returned.” I can hear him telling his wife.
I want to say something more, and I expect he’ll return to our phone call, but as I start to speak I see that he has just hung up.
Photo by Debarshi Ray via Flickr
