The window of the second-hand shop was littered with soft toys: a dirty cream bear, a pink bunny with a missing ear, a grey cat with scratched glass eyes. Callum paused and peered in, feeling a sharp stab in his heart. A large black horse with suede hooves. Another bear, this one sporting a Hug me jumper.

Inside, the shop smelled musty. By the clothing rails, an old lady methodically combed through the flannel shirts and thin pastel blouses. At the far end, in the children’s section, a woman was trying to persuade a small boy to release an orange foam gun.

“Put it back now,” she insisted.

“Excuse me,” smiled Callum as he squeezed past.

“Look, the gentleman wants to get by,” the woman scolded as her boy stared up at Callum, mutinous.

Callum reached above them to the shelf of cuddly toys, scooping all seven from their dusty row. He carried the armload to the already cluttered counter and smiled apologetically at the lady behind the till. She glared at him, tight-lipped, as he slid the fluffy mass onto the chipped counter.

“Can I leave these here for just a second?” he asked. She didn’t answer. He hurried back to the front window and reached for several more teddies, plucking them from their jumbled display like burrs from dog fur.

“That’s all, please,” he said, returning to the counter. The sales lady narrowed her eyes and didn’t budge.

“I know what you’re doing,” she hissed.

Callum tried to look innocent.

“Kid’s birthday,” he muttered sheepishly. “A lot of birthdays coming up.”

“I should hope so,” the lady replied grimly, rummaging the pile with sharp grabs and swiping her scanner over the labels. “Some kiddie loved each and every one of these. They deserve to go to a good home.” She gave him a final, level stare.

Callum tumbled out of the shop in relief, juggling his load and swinging the big horse by the hoof. He cast them all into the boot of his car and set off for home.

As the car bounced over the rutted track leading up to the house, he could hear the dogs start up their welcome chorus. His heart seized at the absence of Maisie’s high-pitched whine-bark. He’d given her a good life, everyone said. He’d rescued her after a bad start and provided her forever home. Only forever had turned out to be just six years, and Callum felt, after all the good times they’d shared, that was too young to go, disease or no. But it didn’t matter what he felt; she was gone, which left him with a pack of three.

The dogs scrabbled and yowled for his attention as he entered the kitchen. “Good girls,” he calmed them, manoeuvring past the tongues and tails and straining paws. Depositing the teddies in a large crate in the utility room, he eyed the furry jumble: a fuzzy arm poking up here, a broken button eye peeking out there. Maisie would have loved the horse; he could imagine her carting it off like a victorious cheetah, one suede hoof in her mouth and the legs trailing and bumping beside her on the ground.

He selected two teddy bears and a bunny, saving the horse in Maisie’s honour. Swinging them round the heads of the excitable pack, the dogs cavorted after him as he led them outside.

“Ready?” he cooed. “One… two… three!” He cast the toys up as far as he could throw them, up briefly into the pale sky and then down to thud limply onto the lawn.

The dogs bounded after them joyously, each scavenging a prize and claiming it between their teeth. With great ripping sounds, the creatures came apart at the seams. Stuffing began to spill out across the grass, fluff flying like feathers in a henhouse.

Hilda, Max’s Border terrier, shook the cream bear ferociously by the neck, tossing it in the air before catching and terrorising it again. Polly the pointer placed her paws either side of the bunny’s pouchy belly and tore off its lone ear with surgical precision.

Bella, the mutt Callum had adopted at the same time as Maisie, took her time to inspect the wiry brown bear. She sniffed and licked it, turning it over with her nose and settling down with a grunt in the overgrown grass. Callum had noticed that Bella had been subdued since Maisie had been put down.

Slowly Bella started biting the bear’s face, softly sinking her fangs into the patchy fur. She caught Callum’s eye and watched him as she chewed rhythmically, methodically, with a degree of care that looked, almost, like love.

*

A. S. Partridge has published poetry, flash fiction, and short stories in numerous magazines including Aurora, Malahat Review, Popshot, Scribble, and others. She lives in Edinburgh, where she is working on a satirical novel about motherhood.