Roxy Mark II is dead. I hoped I’d never have to write those words, but there’s no doubt about the matter. I don’t mean our replacement hamster has escaped like the first one (current whereabouts unknown). I mean she’s expired. She’s not resting. She’s passed on. She is no more. She has gone to meet her maker.
I first learnt the news when I was travelling in East Africa a couple of weeks ago. Caroline called in a state of panic to say she ‘thought’ Roxy was dead.
‘She’s not moving,’ she said. ‘I forgot to feed her. D’you think she’s died of starvation?’
‘Oh Jesus,’ I replied. ‘Not another one?’
‘Sasha’s right, isn’t she? We’re pet serial killers.’
That was my eight-year-old daughter’s verdict after Roxy II went AWOL last month. Coming on top of losing our cat and then losing Roxy Mark I (I left her cage door open), this was her withering conclusion. A little harsh, but these tykes are merciless when it comes to handing out moral judgments. I managed to win a reprieve when I recaptured Roxy II in the downstairs lavatory — ‘You’re the best daddy in the world’ — but she had now been proved right.
My first instinct was to blame Caroline — ‘Nothing to do with me, gov. I wasn’t even in the country’ — and she must have suspected as much because she quickly followed up by telling me we’d have to stage the ‘discovery’ of Roxy’s corpse after my return. ‘I just can’t deal with this on my own babe,’ she explained.
I agreed, not least because as long as Caroline remained convinced she’d ‘murdered’ Roxy I would earn vital brownie points by covering up for her.
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