Departures: Seven Stories from Heathrow. Tony Parsons

having a chat with himself.

      ‘I don’t believe this,’ the man was saying. ‘She loved that damn mutt.’

      ‘We get one hundred animals pass through here every day,’ Tim told her quietly. He wanted her to understand. He needed her to know. ‘Every animal that you can think of, and plenty you can’t. Racehorses and cheetahs and Komodo dragons. Poisonous scorpions and domestic pets. Animals that are shipped in and animals that are smuggled in and animals that hide in someone’s suitcase or in a crate of fruit. Ten thousand dogs a year. Six thousand cats. Ferrets . . .’ He paused, unsure of the latest statistics on ferrets. Then he ploughed on. ‘Ferrets galore. Thirty-five million fish. We accept every animal. And this – this now – this with you – what we are doing now – this is the absolute worst part of my job.’

      The young woman nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. Her face did look familiar. He thought perhaps he had seen it once in a dream. ‘But what happened to Finn?’

      ‘Finn was too heavily sedated,’ Tim said. ‘I’m sure that the vet who sedated him was trying to be kind – trying to spare Finn some of the distress of being transported from Los Angeles to London. But the cargo hold of an aircraft is pressurized at nine thousand feet and what would be a normal dose on land has three times the effect in the air – just as a glass of wine hits you harder on a plane than it does on the ground. It put too great a strain on his heart.’

      The man stood up. He was jabbing angrily at some palm-held device and muttering something about a lawyer who was going to enjoy burying a loser like Tim.

      ‘That’s it?’ the young woman said. ‘Just that? It seems – I don’t know – such a banal reason for Finn to die.’

      ‘I’ve seen the handling report from the airline,’ Tim said. ‘I’ve checked the travelling container. And I’ve looked at all the paperwork. Your dog – Finn – was compliant with the pet travel scheme. He was up to date on all his shots, all of that . . .’ He looked down at the lead with the silver name-tag. He was not certain that he could look at the blue eyes for much longer. ‘You are – if I may say – clearly a loving and responsible owner. And this is a tragedy.’ He looked at the eyes for what he thought might be the last time. ‘But it’s not a mystery,’ he said. ‘The vet in LA over-sedated . . . Finn.’

      The young woman was thinking.

      ‘Where is he now?’ she said.

      ‘The vet?’ the man said. ‘Probably on the golf course. I’m going to sue him, too.’