The Dog Who Saved the World. Ross Welford

      

      I couldn’t worry for long, though, because that evening was Mum’s memorial.

      Mum: the mother I never knew.

      ‘Mum’s Memorial’ sounds like it’s some big event, but it’s just a little thing we do every year, mainly for Dad’s sake, I think.

      Mum died when I was very little. We have lots of photos, and a film clip shot on Dad’s phone, so I know what she looked like. In the film, I’m lying on a playmat and I am giggling and trying to grab the toy that Dad is dangling above me.

      There’s music playing in the background: a song called ‘You Two’ from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dad is singing along.

      ‘Someone to care for; to be there for.

      I have you two!’

      Mum’s there too: she’s pretty, with long hair in a ponytail, and a big smile. She’s laughing at Dad’s groany singing voice, and he’s laughing too. Then Clem comes in, and he looked so cute when he was five – especially his chubby knees – and joins in the song.

      Which makes Mum giggle more, and the camera pans up to her face with this big smile and then the picture stops.

      So I suppose it’s not really a memory, is it? It’s a video clip, shot on Dad’s phone. I’ve seen it hundreds and hundreds – maybe even thousands – of times.

      ‘Cow flu’ they called it: that’s what she died of. Eleven years ago, the virus was carried across the world on people’s shoes, in their fingernails, in their stomachs, in infected meat and foodstuffs, and milk. Thousands and thousands of people died, most of them in South America. Thousands more cattle had to be killed to stop it spreading. Millions of litres of milk were poured away while doctors and scientists worked around the clock to develop the vaccine: the special injection that would halt the spread of the disease.

      They did discover it, of course. Eventually. But it was too late for Mum. She became one of twelve people in Britain to die of cow flu.

      (It was also how Dad met Jessica. Every year Dad raises money for the new biobotics research unit to investigate diseases. It’s where Jessica works and, as Dad says, ‘One good thing leads to another …’)

      So Mum’s ashes are buried beneath a cherry tree in the field where the cows usually are. I know that sounds a bit weird, burying someone near cows when they died of cow flu, but Dad insisted.

      ‘She was an animal lover, just like you, Georgie,’ he said once. ‘She wouldn’t blame the cows for cow flu.’

      You can see Mum’s tree from our kitchen window, standing out against the sky, bent and buffeted by the winds off the sea, and fertilised by the cows beneath it. Sometimes I catch Dad sitting at the kitchen table, drinking his favourite super-strong coffee, and staring at the tree. It blossoms every spring: a beautiful cloud of white like a massive candyfloss, although there has never been any fruit. Dad says it’s too cold.

      Every year on her birthday, we – Dad and Clem and I – gather by Mum’s tree. Only this year Dad’s girlfriend Jessica was with us. You can probably guess how I felt about that.

      It was evening and the sun was lower and cooler.

      ‘She’s looking good,’ said Dad as the four of us processed up the field towards the tree. Dad always refers to the tree as ‘she’.

       She’ll be losing her leaves in a week or so …

       She’s done well to withstand that gale …

      That sort of thing. I think it’s because he likes to imagine the tree as being Mum, but I’ve only just realised that. I mentioned it to Clem about a year ago, and he just rolled his eyes as if I’d just said that I’d discovered that honey was sweet.

      The vicar from St Woof’s was already at the tree when our little group got there. He’d come over the back way.

      We’re not exactly religious, but the vicar is an old friend of Dad’s from way back, in that way that adults can be friends even though they’re years apart in age. Dad was one of the last people to go to St Wulfran’s Church before it closed down.

      That evening the vicar was wearing his vicar stuff – the black tunic with the white collar – under his zip-up jacket.

      We gathered beneath the tree’s leafy branches, looking back down the hill towards the sea, and we did exactly what we do every year.

      1 Dad reads a poem. It’s always the same one: Mum’s favourite, Dad says, by someone ancient called Alfred Tennyson. It starts like this:

       Sunset and evening star,

       And one clear call for me!

       And may there be no moaning at the bar,

       When I set out to sea …

      I don’t really understand it, even though Dad has explained it to me. It’s about dying, basically, which is sad, but Dad has a nice voice and I like hearing it.

      2. The vicar says a prayer with old-fashioned words. I have heard this every year now, and can almost remember it all: Almighty God, we pray for Cassandra, and for all those whom we see no longer … Then my favourite bit: and let light perpetual shine upon them. I mouth along with the words when I can remember them.

      3. Then Dad takes out his Irish penny whistle, and Clem his big old tenor recorder that he got as a prize in primary school. They both play an old hymn called ‘Amazing Grace’. Under any other circumstances it would sound awful: the high-pitched whistle, and Clem’s squeaky and inaccurate playing. But somehow, on that cool evening in summer, the tune is perfect, rising above Mum’s cherry tree and floating off into the wind and down to the ocean.

      And all the while, Jessica has this face on like she’d rather be anywhere else.

      While the vicar was saying the prayer, I cracked open my eyes a little, and saw her: eyes wide, gazing around everywhere, not praying at all. Then our gazes met for a second, and she just stared at me. I’m sorry to say it, but I hated her at that moment.