It’s fate that my dog is a t***

 Do you believe in fate?

I’m still not sure but when you stop and notice it seems undeniable. I want to tell myself that things are accidental, that nothing happens for a reason. 

To be honest, that aspect of religion totally freaks me out. The idea that a master puppeteer  is pulling our strings is terrifying. And often cruel. 

Yesterday, I decided to throw myself back into 1882. The present wasn’t working too well for me, the immediate past was too real and the future is one big unknowable ball of scariness. 

I started transcribing notes from court cases, but quickly got bored with men fighting, stealing things or exposing their willy to passing strangers and I started to think about Emily again. 

“Oh, hello you,” she said, “You’re back. I thought you’d forgotten about me. Everyone leaves me in the end.”

I’ll admit that her ‘poor me’ attitude is the thing that makes me want to leave her. She’s very needy. 

“You were in the workhouse over Christmas, weren’t you?” I asked her. “Why? Why would you do that? There were other places you could have gone.”

“Christmas wasn’t that bad. We got a day off from work and I saw Gerty all day.”

“I wonder if there are any descriptions of your Christmas in the newspapers.”

“Never mind that!” she snapped, “Find my William.”

I hushed her and typed ‘Maldon Union Christmas’ into the search bar of the newspaper archive.

I clicked on the first result, a Christmas Eve newspaper, and there he was. Her William. A description and a warrant for his arrest for abandoning them. A £1 reward for any information given.

“Don’t get too smug,” I told her, “I’m still going to write about you and it won’t necessarily go all your way.”

Emily flounced off in a huff. She’s prone to that.

I continued my research on the workhouse. They had beef on Christmas Day. A very useful book about the Guardians of the Board, that I’d borrowed filled in some of the drier technical aspects of how the workhouse operated. I’d kept the book too long and was wondering how I was ever going to be able to return it.

A few hours in and I was needing a change of scene. Stupidly, I left my books out and went to watch some TV with the Long Suffering Husband. The dog, panicked on his next in-breath, realising I was suddenly in the room and struggled onto his feet. He gave the LSH a dirty look and started to leave the room.

“Where are you going?” the LSH asked him.

He snorted and threw a look at me that clearly said, “Anywhere she isn’t,” before he went downstairs.

While we was down there, he decided to eat the borrowed book. 

After a personal meltdown I threatened to post his picture on the My dog is a tw@ Facebook page.

He was unrepentant though. 

“You’ll just have to buy her a new one,” he said, “you can keep this one for yourself!”

So, it’s fate that my dog is a tw@ and I’m now trawling the internet for a a rare antique book, in reasonable condition.