Dean - Everybody Died, So I Got a Dog

Emily Dean is a writer and radio presenter. She is Frank Skinners co-host on the award-winning Frank Skinner Show (Absolute Radio) and currently presents a hugely successful podcast for The Times called Walking the Dog. She spent eight years as Deputy Editor of InStyle magazine and has written for titles such as The Times, the Evening Standard and You magazine. She lives in London, supports Arsenal and her career highlight was when Mark Gatiss called her sci-fi royalty due to her childhood role in BBC cult series Day of the Triffids.

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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Hodder & Stoughton

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Copyright Emily Dean 2019

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Hardback ISBN 978 1 473 67136 2

Trade Paperback ISBN 978 1 473 67137 9

eBook ISBN 978 1 473 67139 3

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To my sister Rachael for everything xx

I think it is only fair to tell you that I was devoted to your mother. I owe my very life to her. She was brilliant, beautiful, and loyal to the end. I shall always treasure her memory. To you, her daughters, I pledge my friendship, forever and ever.

Charlottes Web , E.B. White

Contents

T his is a story about losing an entire family and gaining a dog. But youve probably worked that out already. As spoiler titles go, this one is up there with that film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford . If you want to tell the unvarnished truth, though, I reckon you should do it from the very outset.

I didnt know that my journey back from loss would involve dogs. They had always been symbols of a life Id longed for but never had. I couldnt have predicted that a crossbreed called Giggle and a Shih Tzu who looked like the star of a film called Chewbacca the Early Years would change everything.

There are certain things you have to accept in life. No good ever comes from a sentence beginning, I hope you wont take this the wrong way One day, the people you love will no longer be here. And youll probably die without ever really knowing how to pronounce the word furore. But, perhaps its never too late to try and get your shit together.

When you wake up one day with nothing, in a sense you have everything. What if you could start your life over again?

W e would never be a dog family. It was Cookie Monster who made me realise that.

The epiphany came while I was watching his performance of One of These Things, the lighters in the air hit of Sesame Street . Something about his cover version spoke to me. He really made it his own. As his ping-pong eyes bobbed about wildly, contemplating four plates of cookies, he delivered the words that would stay with me for the rest of my childhood. One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesnt belong! Can you guess which thing is not like the other thing? Before me finish me song?

He didnt have to finish me song. I knew already which thing was not like the others. It was my family. Because the others were dog families. And we would never be a dog family.

People with dogs represented every aspect of domesticity that was right and functional. We represented everything about family life that was curious and unpredictable. Those people with their spaniels, their setters and their terriers inhabited another country they simply did things differently there. I longed for a dog, desperately, passionately. But not as much as I longed for us to be a dog family.

Dog families gave their children something called tea at around .pm. When my older sister Rachael and I went to friends houses, their mums would produce Marmite soldiers, fish fingers or Findus beef Crispy Pancakes and orange squash. We would then be ushered into a room with a pastel floral sofa and yucca plant, to watch Blue Peter . The dads plum Ford Sierra would nose into the drive around .pm and a Collie or a Labrador would race to the door to greet him. Hey you, hows my good boy! the dad would say, ruffling a furry neck. The dog would lick the dad dutifully and the whole family would settle down to watch David Attenboroughs Life on Earth before bedtime.

Dog families set aside money for phone bills and insurance policies and cleaning products and food for the freezer. We existed on overdrafts and loans, which went on black cabs, first editions and pat from a posh shop called Fortnum & Mason. Dog parents taught you how to ride a bike. Our parents gave us masterclasses in deconstructing poetry, opening bottles of wine and charming bailiffs. And if the children in dog families asked, Why is Granny being horrible to me? the mums tended not to respond with, You know why, its because shes on AMPHETAMINES, darling.

In the unlikely event dog families got a parking ticket, they paid it before it escalated into court appearances. They ate Rice Krispies before school, not the melon and Parma ham starter from last nights dinner party. They didnt use letters marked Final Demand as wine coasters. They didnt forget to mention that the Sex Pistols would be filming in your bedroom today. Dog families punished you for misdemeanours by sending you to your room or withholding your pocket money. Not by sticking a series of handwritten Shakespeare quotes up on cupboards. This above all: to thine own self be true or more hauntingly, Cowards die many times before their deaths. And dog-family car singalongs didnt generally kick off with a song that began, Sit on my face and tell me that you love me

For the first seven years of my life we moved between houses, schools and continents with the casual indecisiveness of someone idly surfing TV channels. One moment we were living in a Victorian mansion flat in Battersea, the next a wisteria-covered cottage in Surrey, suddenly a wooden bungalow in New Zealand, then a modern beach apartment in a northern suburb of Sydney, before transferring to an Art Deco flat overlooking the citys harbour.

We witnessed a boat capsizing on our first day in Australia. Darlings HIGH drama! cried my mother, as my parents woke us up and ushered us on to the balcony to watch a rescue crew drag what was left of a mans life ashore. Shark attack! my father informed us, guiding us through reports on our new marine neighbours in a National Geographic magazine. Two weeks later my parents were telling friends over midday carafes of wine how extraordinary it was that wed shown such reluctance to get in the sea. We even hired an Olympic coach! they said, with a shrug. Perhaps shark-gate was their subconscious way of connecting us with the essence of our own existence, as we moved through life like Great Whites, torpedoing between friendships, houses and schools, bouncing frenetically from So sad youre leaving! cards to Welcome to your new home! tags attached to poinsettias in empty rental houses.