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There is a house at the bottom of a lane in the smallest village the wrong side of a muddy river and inside, in a tattered chair, fluffy from tear sits a frail little woman, as old as the rafters, fiddling with thread, trying to find the tip to steer through a needle to sow a hole in a sock the dog brought in from the rain. It’s a grimy little thing with growth on the sole but an hour on the hob in a pan full of water taken from the bucket placed under the gutter turned the green and blue to soft cotton again. The pot will need a wash in the morning if lunch is to be had, all the bleach in the house was gone from the bottle and the shops will only stay open for another twenty minutes, the bus leaves in ten though won’t be coming back this evening again. She’ll get up in the morning then, from the chair or from the bed, and take that bus from the gate and she’ll sit at the front so it’s easy to get off, she’ll buy that bleach, more thread, some rosemary and a cloth. That aul bastard will be driving, his big silly yellow bus’ chugging worn-out engine smothered up and ruined with rust. The thread won’t go, and the pan is boiling over, the mould left spilling on the hob, and the room fills with cold. Our little frail lady holds her finger in her hands, shudders to the door and shuffles in her gown. A porch and what is left of it, falls apart in the wind and a dog outside feels the bite against his spine, and tails it to the door and scratches at the wood and Missy lets him in, and fixes him his food Jesper’s eighty six, and as old as he’s getting, the winter’s asking questions and Jesper’s got no answers, he’s been eating grass all morning and could do with getting fatter. Missy does his dinner in a silver bowl that’s more brown in colouration, and Jesper eats but tends to tire very quickly and has the last morsel with his belly on the floor. She pats his head and fondles the ball behind his ear, just the way he likes it.

He falls asleep on the tile, his hair knotted with rain, and with paws weak from scratching kicks out as he dreams of rabbits and muddy rivers and socks and streams. And as he falls off in slumber little Missy lets him be and tunes in the radio and fiddles for her docket in the pocket off the gown,and listens intently to a voice as it bellows out six numbers and a bonus to boot. And the slip of paper performs the poem as she fingers each digit, all one of them the same, and the voice says he hopes that she’s a winner and she checks them all again. Jesper starts to shudder, the cold ripples in under the door and tickles at his belly, till Jesper feels it no more. Missy boils a kettle and to hell with it with a hiss, she opens up the cupboard, pulls a merlot from the shelf, the cork has nearly rotted, a maroon shade of blue, Christmas’ not for weeks but what else is she to do? Donnie died of cancer, in his lung and in his throat, it nearly got his belly but not before he croaked. Missy dribbles with delirium, and fills up her cup, she lights Donnie’s cigarette, the one he couldn’t finish and breaths it all in slow. Jesper’s on the floor having not budged an inch so Missy wraps him in her gown and sets him on the porch. The wind fondles through his coat as he is set gently on the wood and Missy shuts the door behind him as it’s too cold to make a fuss. She holds tightly to the docket and sits quiet in her chair, in the morning she’ll take the bus, buy a cloth, rosemary and what else was on her list. The sock has dried up nicely on the grate beside the fire and the radio is playing music, she takes back to her chair as her head begins to tire. And as her day reaches to its end, ticket tight in her hand, old Jesper’s on the porch and there’s mould in the pan.

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