“It’s your fault we overslept,” she told the dog, ruffling his bristly head. She’d put his bed in the kitchen, but Spike wasn’t having that. When his increasingly loud whining didn’t bring Maxine running, he resorted to energetically digging up the floor. Hearing the scratching, she’d twice got up and tried to reason with him, but her appearances only sent him into a near-delirious state of tail-wagging. Each time she’d withstood a frantic licking, calmed him down, and closed the door again, only for his howls to get louder. Maxine, deciding that he must be afraid of the dark, took pity on him and let him into her bedroom. Spike leapt onto the bed, turned in several tight circles, and sighing with satisfaction, curled up on her feet. He was asleep within seconds. Which was all very well for him, but by then Maxine was wide awake, thinking about Noah. Far from easing the pain, seeing him again had only made matters ten times worse. Had she seriously imagined it could be any other way?
