A rottweiler strolled the short aisles of the corner shop, its mouth white with foamy saliva. It smelt of mud and meat and something decaying like maybe it had a bad tooth rotting back there in its huge, square jaw. It cocked its leg and pissed on Mr Leighton’s underwhelming display of American crisps that were always covered with a light grey dust. Zara tightened her grip on her bacon and bread when the dog came near, it was wide and muscular, its fur sprung up around its thick neck. She covered her mouth and nose with the back of her hand.

​

“Is that your dog?” Zara said, tapping her card against Mr Leighton’s machine which, she knew, took a 10% charge on top of every payment. The cost of convenience.

​

Mr Leighton shook his head, his lips pinching down into a frown, “No, thought it came in with you.”

“I don’t have a dog.”

​

He slapped his palm against the counter and Zara jolted, as if a shot had rung out. The dog swung its head towards them and its little orange eyebrows moved up in surprise. Then its face went slack, a wide, pink tongue sliding out of the wet mouth, and it appeared to lose interest. “Go on, out,” Mr Leighton said.

When Zara took her shopping and left, she turned to look at the dog as the glass door shut slowly behind her. It watched her, still as stone, and Zara listened out for panting as she made the short walk home.

 

Zara tapped the dashboard in time with the rain that spat against her windscreen and scanned the car park. The sky grey bleeding into the tarmac grey until it was hard to make out where one stopped and the other began. The potholes were filling with rainwater and in the other cars women sat and watched, their wipers racing back and forth, engines rumbling.

​

When the school door opened so did all of the car doors in unison, flapping out into the rain like a flock of birds taking off. Zara jumped outside, her feet landing coldly in a puddle, and splashed on. Not a run, but almost. A greyhound slunk around the edge of the building, its bottom eyelids sagging so that the pink of them was exposed, tender and inflamed. Its ribcage looked as if it was trying to burst out from its strained skin, its ropey tail curled between its legs.

 

As soon as she saw her daughter, Zara took her roughly by the forearm and hurried her into the car. Cleo’s patent shoes collected raindrops like gemstones.

​

“Mummy I -”

​

“In a minute,” Zara said, slamming the car door shut on her with a thunk. She drove away fast and made sure to smile into the rearview mirror, sparing a glance at the greyhound that loped alongside them.

 

Something like a growl, in the night. Or a hundred growls. Zara couldn’t tell but it had woken her, drawn her downstairs to peer through the windows with a kitchen knife in her trembling fist. She didn’t know where the dogs were coming from, but here they were.

​

Earlier, while Cleo watched pastel cartoons in her tartan pyjamas and the day died outside, Zara watched a mangy terrier pace the garden. It dug holes with its dirty feet in her flower beds, its nails so long they circled round into thick crescent moons. It had matted fur and a stumpy tail that stuck straight out like a loaded spring. It snuffled at the back door, its nose pressed hard until Zara heard the sucking in and out of breath through wet, muddy nostrils.

​

She sent Cleo to bed early and left the outside lights on.

​

In the night more of them came, fifteen or twenty dogs baying softly beneath a sky so heavy with clouds it felt like it might collapse, pressing. A mastiff in the porch, skin wrinkled at its trembling joints, chest bulging forward like the bow of a ship. The smell of them crept inside, wet and animalistic, a smell of wild things. Their breath puffed in the wind, a lanky, spotted thing snarled into the dark and a fat, black labrador pushed its weight against the side of the house. Zara swore it shook, felt the bricks caving slowly inwards. Felt the warmth of her flesh and her quick pulse, smelt the panic steam off her skin in hot, acrid waves. Felt, with something like terror, that she was all meat.