Just The Way You Are(33)

‘Oh, it was nothing to do with her,’ a now amused Trev responded. ‘Just a mix-up between this lady and myself. You see, I thought—’

‘I am not interested in what you thought,’ Irene ground out between clenched teeth. ‘What I see is Ms Tennyson’s clients on the brink of a public brawl in my library.’ She glared at me with eyes like deadly lasers. ‘Raised voices. Aggressive language. Physical assault. I don’t know where to begin. Not that I didn’t foresee this happening.’

‘Irene.’ I stepped to one side, hoping to draw her away for a private conversation before she revealed quite how prejudiced she was about ReadUp using the venue.

She didn’t follow me, instead breaking her own rules and raising her voice to ensure that I, and everyone else in the library, could hear. ‘I suggest that your next lesson is teaching them to read this.’ She held out a copy of the library rules. Or, more accurately, her unofficial, unenforceable library rules.

‘I shall of course be reporting this to my superior,’ she said, before marching back to the reception desk.

‘Excuse me.’ An older woman looked nervously at Yasmin. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.’

Irene, filing returned books onto a nearby shelf, twitched her pointy ears and tutted.

‘I was wondering if you did classes?’

‘Yes.’ Yasmin nodded. ‘I’ve just started with the ReadUp programme. It is very helpful.’

‘No.’ The woman shook her head. ‘I meant dog-training classes.’

‘Oh?’

‘Only, my dog won’t walk nicely on the lead. He pulls so hard he sounds as if he’s choking on his collar, and it’s agony on my bad back. I’d love to know how to stop him yanking all the time.’

Yasmin smiled. ‘It sounds as though you could benefit from a one-to-one training session. If you give me your number I can let you know the next available slot.’

The woman hesitated.

‘I provide a free initial consultation. And we very rarely need a second.’

The woman sagged with relief. ‘Thank you. I would be so grateful.’

Once details had been exchanged, and the woman left, Yasmin turned back to me and Trev, a grin on her face. ‘A new venture!’

‘Yasmin, I’m not sure you can just set yourself up as a dog trainer.’

She shrugged. ‘I think I just did.’

‘It’s not much of a business if you don’t charge anything.’ Trev shook his head. ‘My niece paid a couple of hundred quid to sort her nervous lurcher.’

Yasmin stuck her hands on tiny hips. ‘Did she look like she can spare two hundred pounds on a professional dog trainer?’

‘Well, that’s beside the point,’ Trev said, frowning.

‘Precisely.’ Yasmin’s voice had risen again. ‘This isn’t about her. A dog needs help. Do you think I should sit back and let an innocent creature suffer, because their incompetent owner can’t afford to learn how to correct her mistakes? It’s not as though I’m starving and need the money.’

Trev scratched one of the eyeholes of his skull tattoo. ‘Well, when you put it like that…’

‘This is as much for my benefit as for hers,’ she went on. ‘I will not sleep, knowing a poor dog is suffering. I might even pay her to let me fix the problem.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to be necessary,’ I added. Yasmin might not be starving, but she definitely could do with the money. However, I did wonder whether it was wise, or even legal, to charge when she didn’t have any formal training. There might be insurance or a licence required. ‘She sounded pretty keen to have the training.’

‘That’s about right,’ Yasmin practically bellowed as she marched to the door. ‘It’s not the dog who needs the training. It’s virtually never the dog.’ She paused to yank open the door, her eyes roaming the room until they found Irene. ‘It’s the people who need to learn how to behave.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Irene huffed as Yasmin allowed the door to swing shut behind her.

Halfway through Trev’s session, a woman entered the library with a double buggy containing a screaming baby and a toddler. Shooing two older boys ahead of her into the tiny children’s section, she collapsed on one of the preschool-sized seating blocks, sat the toddler in front of the forlorn crate of toys and proceeded to start breastfeeding the baby.

Within moments the toddler had tipped the crate over, the toys clattering across the wooden floorboards. One of the boys was robotically pulling off every single book from the ‘confident readers’ shelf and his brother, who looked to be around seven or eight, had started spinning on his back in the middle of the spilt toys, sending them skidding under bookcases and off into the adults’ section.

The mum started pleading with her kids to choose a story, tidy up the mess, stop Holly chewing a book, please stop yelling, and please, please behave themselves so she could read them a story.

To give her credit, Irene waited a good five minutes before clonking over. Trev paused, his finger still pressed underneath the word he’d been attempting to sound out in his workbook, and wrinkled his forehead. ‘This ain’t going to end well.’

Irene cleared her throat a few times, but given that the woman was too busy trying to persuade her children to stop ransacking the place while pinned to a seat with a nursing baby, she was hardly likely to notice a couple of irritated coughs.