Easily Upset

Her parents were concerned over what effect the news would have upon Franny . . .

THEY should never have started with the whole pet thing in the first place. “We were asking for trouble,” Debs said, the morning they realised the tortoise really had gone missing.

“Pets die, it’s unavoidable, and then you’ve caused your child trauma at a vital stage in their emotional development.”

She was almost in tears. “Gonzales isn’t dead,” Owen pointed out. “He’s just wandered off.”

“Oh, Owen! He might as well be dead – he’s not coming back, is he? Not after all this time. What will it do to Franny?”

The previous afternoon their daughter had taken Gonzales into the garden for his exercise. Debs had called Franny in from the lawn to try on a new school cardigan, and had then forgotten all about the tortoise.

Later, in bed, Owen asked about their day and Debs slapped a hand to her forehead. “Gonzales!”

They searched into the night, picking over every inch of the garden. Gonzales had gone.

Owen stared up at Franny’s window. “She’ll be so upset.” “Gonzales might come back,” Debs said in a small voice.

“He might. Let’s go in.” Neither of them could sleep.

“How could I have done this to my own child? She adores that little animal.”

“We have to manage this carefully,” Owen replied. “It’s her first experience of loss and grief, so we have to get it right.”

The next morning, Owen sat at the breakfast table. Franny could be heard moving about upstairs, getting her school shoes tied and her books collected.

An independent child, at seven she managed her own morning and evening routines.

“I can’t tell her,” he said. “Not this morning. I’ve got a meeting at work later and I need to be ‘with it’.”

“We’ll wait until after school. It’s Friday and I’m not working today so I can search again for Gonzales.”

Debs ran an eye along the kitchen bookshelf.

“There must be eight books up there with chapters about childhood trauma.”

She noticed a volume entitled “Caring For Your Tortoise” and took it down.

“Caring? There’s irony for you,” Owen said grimly.

Debs riffled through the pages.

“There’s an entry here about losing your tortoise.

“‘Make friends with the neighbours. On many occasions Mrs Smith next door will find your tortoise taking a bath in her pond, so be on good terms.’

“Oh, Owen! We’re hardly on good terms with Mr Webb!”

Owen put his head in his hands.

“I’m not blaming you, darling,” Debs said. “For what?”

It was Lou, Owen’s mum, standing in the open back doorway. She was a matter-of-fact person and rarely bothered to knock.

“Owen and Mr Webb had a falling-out over ivy,” Debs said. “It was difficult for Owen.”

“Oh?” Lou said. “He’s not speaking to me,” Owen muttered.

“I’ll ask him today about Gonzalez but I don’t hold out much hope.”

“Is the tortoise dead?” Lou asked. “Was it poisoned? I know that happens.”

“Shush, Mum!” Owen glared at his mother. “Franny’s upstairs. She’ll be devastated when we tell her. Gonzales has disappeared, that’s all. Debs and I worry about the effect it will have on her. It’s an early-years issue.”

“What do they mean by early years?” Lou asked. She watched Debs slot the book back on to the shelf. “I mean, our Franny’s early for dating boys, but late for playing with bath toys.”

“You’re so flippant, Mum,” Owen complained.

“Maybe. Deborah, don’t start eyeing up those childcare books again. Franny will be OK. Can I take her to school?”

“Don’t tell her about Gonzales!” Owen and Debs said in unison.

Franny was full of her school day when

she came home.

Looking at her eager face as she described her science lesson, Debs cringed.

Gonzales’s little wrinkled face was sure to haunt Franny once she knew he was missing. She loved animals and was full of information about them.

She’d told them several facts about tortoises and turtles.

“He’ll live longer than all of us!” she had said the day they’d purchased Gonzales.

“I am so glad we picked a tortoise,” Debs had whispered to Owen. “I can’t bear the thought that her pet would die after a few years like a goldfish or a dog. The sadness!”

Owen had promised to conduct a fresh search for the tortoise on his way back from the station.

When he came in he shook his head slowly at Debs over Franny’s head, as the little girl hugged him round the waist.

“I am doing a project on llama farming,” she told him.

“On what?”

“Ms Williams said to choose a subject we’d never done in class. Jasmine picked dresses in Disney films, and Jacob’s doing Pokémon. I picked llama farming.” She looked up at her parents. “Are you OK?”

“We’re fine, sweetheart,” Owen said.

“How about some fresh air, Daddy? You always say it makes you feel good.”

Owen stared at Debs. In a corner of the garden was the tortoise run – empty.

Then Debs heard the dull patter of rain on the kitchen window.

“Oh, sweetheart, we can’t – there’s the rain. What a shame! Hey, let’s make a smoothie!”

Saturday dawned bright and sunny. Neither Owen nor Debs had slept well, and Franny came bounding down the stairs to find her parents hunched over mugs.

“That’s strong coffee,” she said. “I can smell it.”

They both nodded. Debs made a show of reading the back of a cereal box.

Owen started a complicated discussion about repair of the back porch, and then stopped when Debs glared at him, realising that the topic brought him dangerously close to the garden.

Lou arrived and sat beside Franny, asking questions about llama farming. Eventually, Lou looked up.

“Is there a funeral today?” she asked. “You could cut the atmosphere in here with a knife.” “Mum!” Owen hissed. Franny gave a long sigh. “I think it’s about the tortoise, Granny,” she said. Lou nodded. “I wondered.”

Debs looked at her daughter and an expression of panic spread across her face.

“He never came back on Thursday, did he?” Franny asked gently.

Owen shot a hand across the table and grasped Franny’s hand.

“We are desperately sorry, darling! We’ve looked everywhere, and today I’ll look again . . .”

“Oh, don’t do that,” Franny interrupted. “Gonzales could be quite a long way away by now, so there’s no point. I read the book. They normally go very slow, less than a tenth of a mile an hour, I think. But they can go much faster, more like a turtle. They can do four miles an hour.”

“Franny, are you OK?” Debs asked.

“I’m fine, Mummy. You look really sad, though.” She frowned. “I knew it would upset you and Daddy. Things do really upset you.”

Debs stared at her. “But he’s your pet!”

“I like animals a lot, Mummy. But pets, well, they’re just pets.”

Owen opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish.

“It was you who chose the tortoise, Owen,” his mum said.

“And the name,” Franny added. “He’ll be fine – they tend to find new homes. Don’t be too sad.”

“So you found out?” Owen said in a strangled voice.

“Yes. I didn’t talk about it because I knew you’d be so upset, but you already were, so that was pointless.”

“We were so scared that you’d worry about little Gonzales, darling,” Debs said. “At your age and all.”

“Even if he comes home, Mummy, you do know that he wouldn’t know he was at home? Tortoises don’t have brains likes ours.”

Lou grinned at her granddaughter.

“You take after me, sweetie.”

“He would never have been my best friend,” Franny went on. “That’s a job for a human. I picked Jasmine today, actually, even though she’s doing the Disney dresses. I kind of like her. If you want a friend, get a human being or a dog.”

“I thought of getting a replacement tortoise,” Debs said in a feeble voice, “with the same markings.”

“That would have been fine, Mummy – they all look the same.”

Lou was having trouble not laughing.

“You’d have made sure your mummy felt better about it all, wouldn’t you, sweetie?”

Franny nodded. “Definitely. I don’t like to see you upset, Mummy.” She turned to her dad, who still had his right hand over her left, and she laid her free hand on top. “Or Daddy.”

Lou made a fresh pot of coffee, and Franny discussed tortoise facts.

“You know that book of fables?” she said. Her parents only gazed at her. “With the hare and the tortoise?” Franny went on.

“Yes, sweetie?” Lou said. “Tell me.”

“Well, why would a hare say yes to a race against a tortoise in the first place? That’s what I want to know. Because if the hare won it would be called mean for, um, what is it called when someone laughs at someone?”

“Taking the mickey?” Lou suggested.

“Yes, taking the mickey. If the hare won, the other animals would all say it was taking the mickey out of the tortoise, which is horrible. And if it lost, then it’d look like the most useless stupid unfit hare ever.

“It’d look like an idiot. Don’t you think?”

Franny looked at her mum and dad, and they gaped back at her.

Gonzales came home on the Sunday evening. It was warm and sunny, and he simply loped back over the lawn towards where Owen was barbecuing sausages.

“Look, Mummy! Daddy!” Franny yelled. “He’s back!”

“She’s so pleased for you.” Lou had brought the rolls and was to share the barbecue. “She hates it when you’re upset. She knows you’re impressionable.”

Owen and Debs scowled at Lou.

“Can I give Gonzales some of this lettuce?” Franny asked. “He might be hungry.”

She peeled the plastic seal off a new bottle of salad cream.

“I think I might do a different project, actually. I might do the Mediterranean Spurthighed Tortoise. Llamas get quite nervous, I’ve heard.” n

The little girl loved animals and was full of facts about them “Gonzales would never have been my best friend”