Here we are, the first chapter of the sequel to The Lost Ones, which you're advised to read first if only to find out who Ned and Ricky are. Also note: Pedigree Dogs Exposed was indeed broadcast in the UK in August 2008, and has spawned controversy in its wake. Google it and see. In the meantime, read, enjoy, and review!
Sarah Jane Smith smiled when the first sound to greet her as she elbowed her front door open after a couple of days away was the rise and fall of teenage voices. Sometimes she could hardly believe that little more than a year ago she'd been the only human in this big house.
Her smile was replaced by a raised eyebrow as she registered the conversation filtering into the front hall.
"- oh, of course Sarah Jane will like her! How could she not?" That was Maria.
A pause. "How do you know it's a she?" Luke, sounding confused.
"The same way you know you're a he!" Sarah Jane heard Maria return smartly and her eyes widened. What was going on?
She dropped her bags loudly and her lips twitched at the sudden silence that descended. The partially closed living room door swung open, and her entire gang appeared.
"Mum!" Luke flung himself into her arms, followed immediately after by nearly eleven year old Dickon, or Ricky, as the former Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, preferred to be known these days.
Ricky's brother Ned sent her a small smile and bent to pick up her bags. Sarah Jane put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed. He was her responsible one. "Have they all been good?"
Ned looked awkward and her eyes narrowed.
"You have a suspicious mind, Sarah Jane," Clyde told her solemnly from where he was leaning against the banisters. "Anyone ever tell you that?"
"You know what they say. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you," she tossed back at him. She gave Ned a final squeeze before putting her hands on her hips and giving the entire group a stern look. "All right then. What have you done?"
Her gaze transferred to Maria, who was, most uncharacteristically, hanging back. Her hands were behind her, Sarah Jane noticed. She raised her eyebrows at the girl.
Maria blushed and opened her mouth, but was forestalled by a high pitched noise that sounded remarkably like .... a puppy?
"Do you have something you need to show me?"
"We found her today, when we went to the park with Alan," Ricky explained quickly, his blue eyes fixed imploringly on Sarah Jane's face. "I - we - had such a dog, before." He looked sad for a moment, and her heart wrenched. It was hard to imagine how much Ned and Ricky had lost in their barely remembered journey to the future. "Please, Mamere, may we not keep her?"
Sarah Jane puffed out a breath. "Let me guess. It's a dog," she said resignedly. "Clyde, what did I tell you when you mentioned this before?"
Clyde raised his hands. "Oi, it was nothin' to do with me, Sarah Jane! Ricky and Maria are the guilty parties this time." He sent Maria a disgusted look. "I told you to get something big and scary. This is not it."
"Maria?"
Sheepishly, the girl brought her hands around to her front. She was holding a small spaniel puppy with large soft brown eyes, droopy ears, a milk chin and a thin white blaze running down the middle of its face. At the moment the puppy seemed stunned into stillness, and Sarah Jane frowned.
"Honestly, don't you people know better than this? Look at it, it's clearly no mutt. I'm sure someone's looking for it."
"We think not, my lady," Ned said in his quiet voice.
Ricky had adopted the name 'Mamere' for Sarah Jane early on (he had flatly refused to address her as 'Sarah Jane', and she had balked at being 'Mum' after the whole Ashley debacle) but the elder and more reserved boy rarely did so. They'd have to discuss it again soon, she thought absently. He couldn't be allowed to address her in such an archaic manner indefinitely.
"We found it in a - a cardboard box," Ned was saying. "There were two other puppies there." He paused and his jaw tightened. "They were dead."
Sarah Jane swallowed. "I see. That's odd, it looks like a pedigree dog, and surely no-one would leave saleable puppies to die when..."
"It's a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel," Maria said, her dark eyes snapping. "The vet said so. He said that ever since Pedigree Dogs Exposed was shown on the telly in the summer, more and more people have been abandoning them. And with the credit crunch, fewer people have the money to spend on puppies anyway."
"But still," Sarah Jane protested weakly, trying not to give in to the mute appeal of one pair of soft puppy eyes and four pairs of equally pleading teenage eyes, "there was no reason to bring it home, was there?"
Luke's face became wistful. "We thought you'd like her. She's sweet, isn't she? And she's got nowhere else to go."
Not for the first time, Sarah Jane found herself regretting the day she'd allowed her kindhearted and hopelessly naive son to see her home as some kind of general purpose all-species intergalactic refuge shelter.
Ned looked up. "My lady, pray do keep her." He reached out a hand to gently caress the flatly rounded head which rested on Maria's arm. "I had a comforter spaniel such as this, when I was younger ... I miss her. She died before we went to the Tower, Dickon and I."
"Ricky," the owner of the name muttered.
She pursed her lips. "If we keep her - and I did say 'if', mind - who will be responsible for her? She's still a puppy, and they're a lot of work. Who's going to feed her, train her, walk her?"
Luke and Ricky looked at Ned, who gave one of his rare smiles. "I will, I swear it."
Sarah Jane sent her 'second' son a straight look. "You've done this before, have you? Yourself? Bear in mind we don't have a staff to do this sort of thing for you." Her tone was unwontedly sharp.
Ned smiled again, and she caught her breath. He was so serious and reserved that she often forgot that he was the son of a man once accounted the handsomest in England. "Mamere, even princes must train their own animals, and once we left court, we had few who were faithful to us. I know what I ask."
Sarah Jane sighed and glanced round. Ricky and Luke stared back at her, round-eyed. Maria frankly pouted as she treasured the pup's smooth head against her cheek. Clyde rolled his eyes. Ned merely stood and returned her gaze openly.
She threw up her hands. "Oh, all right! You may keep her, boys. As for you Maria Jackson, you can put in your fair share and I'll tell your father so." She glared at them and tried to ignore the triumphant looks passing between Maria, Luke and Ricky.
I'm hopeless, she groused to herself. Evidently I need to toughen up. They seem to think I'm a pushover.
As much to assert what remained of her supposed authority as anything else, she took off her coat and handed it to Luke. "Hang that up for me, would you? Ricky, run the black bag up to my room, but the smaller case needs to go straight up to the attic. Clyde, go and put the kettle on and dig out a menu. I'm too tired to cook. Maria, give me that pup. Are you staying for tea?"
"Can I, Sarah Jane?"
"You may as well, but run home first and tell your dad he's welcome to join us." She gave the girl another mock glare, but Maria only grinned in response before giving her the small ruby-brown pup and running out. Sarah Jane shook her head before giving Ned a wry look.
"I suppose all that answers my question about being good, doesn't it?" She secured the pup firmly under one arm (it was starting to wriggle, a little) and slipped her hand into the crook of Ned's arm. "Let's go to the kitchen before Luke and Clyde order food from every takeway menu we have."
For a moment Ned looked like the barely-fourteen year old boy he was in instead of a young man who had been trained to be a king. "I like pizza," he said decidedly, "but do you not wish to rest and refresh yourself before we dine, my lady?"
She squeezed his elbow. "I'll have a bath later, thanks. For the moment, I'm as hungry as I'm sure you lot are. Well?" she asked as Maria dashed back in, panting slightly.
"He's got work to do," the girl said, "but he says to tell you he'll do the food next time. Here, give her to me." She extracted the puppy from Sarah Jane's arms and started cooing when it began to lick her nose.
"What are we going to do with her when we're working?" Luke asked suddenly as the three of them entered the kitchen together. He had evidently tried to set the table before deciding it was too much trouble and put a pile of plates and cutlery down instead.
Sarah Jane repressed a smile. "You'll have to work that one out yourselves. What are we drinking? Coke? No thanks, Luke, I prefer not to rot my stomach before I have to." She accepted the cup of tea Clyde handed her with a smile just as Ricky fell in.
"Food?" he asked, panting slightly from the run up to the top of the house and back down again.
"It's coming," Clyde told him. "Pizza and chips. I'm starving."
"Rescuing animals is hard work," Luke agreed from where he was chewing on a slice of bread.
"Harder than catching aliens?" Maria teased.
Luke rolled his eyes and leaned forward to turn on the small TV that Sarah Jane had finally installed (after much arguing) in the kitchen. Being Luke, he immediately put the news on.
"Boring, boring, boring," Clyde muttered. "Lukey boy, haven't I taught you yet that the news is for old people?"
"Shh!" hissed Maria, to his obvious surprise and Sarah Jane's amusement. "Look!"
They all turned to look at the screen where an image of a dog not unlike the one currently cradled in Maria's arms flashed up.
"...on other news, some of London's dogs seem to be exhibiting behaviour reminiscent of that shown by the dogs in Dodie Smith's classic 101 Dalmations and The Starlight Barking. On the very spot where Charles I was executed in 1649 in front of the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace, numbers of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels have been gathering to the confusion of both their owners and passersby..."
Clyde's eyes were like saucers. "The dog's an alien. The flipping dog's an alien!"
