We’d bought Lily from the back of a ute in a country town. She was Belinda’s dog as a puppy. A black mongrel Labrador cross Rottweiler – a Labweiler – who ate us out of house and home and slept on the bedroom floor next to her. Then Lily slowly changed allegiances. Could that mutt calculate by senses unknown, that cancerous cells were spreading undetected from Belinda’s lungs to her lymph glands? Could a creature given to shredding undies and digging up seedlings, know in the survival stakes, I was the better bet?

Belinda and me met in our 40’s. The sex stopped seven years in to the marriage. We lost interest. Separate bedrooms. I kicked in my sleep. She snored. We wore our wedding rings, not as a pledge of true love, but of deep companionship. Too old for love’s histrionics. The love and affection was there but – and no one likes to admit this – the bond weakened. As if making love was a curative for a relationship’s rough edges; for the regretful things said in the heat of the moment.

My wife loved the theatre. It bored the hole out of me. Maybe as an engineer, I lacked the sensibility. With a kiss on the cheek she’d wave goodbye from the front door and sit in the centre of aisle C with her girlfriends. If it was a Saturday night, Lily leapt on to the couch as the door closed and I drank beer and watched the football. At half time, I’d put on Led Zeppelin and we’d chase each other around the sofa and end up wrestling on the floor. On Belinda’s return, she’d give me a critique of the play and made a note of telling me as she closed her bedroom door, the names of the husbands who attended.

I’m a lone wolf. I admit it. I like people well enough but their venality, petty dislikes and self-referentialism, were tedious. Belinda’s friends became my acquaintances, more by association than affinity. When the test results came back with grey cancerous dots across her lungs, her girlfriends flocked to help. They vacuumed the house (my job), made food (my job) and bought chocolates and flowers. Belinda grimly joked the flowers usually arrived after someone died.

There’s a paradoxical aspect watching someone you love die slowly. Every day passes with the viscosity of treacle. Yet looking back four years after the diagnosis, with the palliative care nurse coming every second day and my hair turning from jet black, to grey to white – ‘distinguished’ – Belinda said, it seemed the passing of a moment. My wife turned from a fit swimming instructor, with a pretty face and long legs, into something staggering out of the gates of Bergen-Belsen. I would sit next to her on the bed with Lily’s head resting on the mattress, staring up at her in that adoring way labradors do. We’d talk of our travels across Asia, India, Turkey and Scotland. We lived on a Greek Island for six months and knew the Aegean like our handkerchief-sized back yard. When you talk more about the past than the future, the world of possibilities contracts, until you manage one day at a time and on bad days, one hour at a time.

Her friend’s visits became more sporadic. There was a logarithm to it. The dying person becomes a living reminder of what awaits us all. Who wrote, “Fly away little bird, man can not take too much reality?” For the last six month’s of her life, as I spooned pureed mush past her cracked lips, it was only me and Lily in the house.

I slept-walked through the funeral. Couldn’t tell you a thing about it. There were speeches, the wives gave me a hug and the husbands patted me on the shoulder. Someone played CeCe Peniston’s song ‘Finally’, one of Belinda’s favourites. The trays of sandwiches went around and then the people left and a taxi dropped me home to a worried and hungry dog.

Our home or rather my house now, faces the beach. The Great Southern Ocean stretches to Antartica. In winter, foam covered waves as high as a basketball hoop pound the sand bars and come rolling over the round pebbled shore, making a hissing sound as they arrive and retreat. There are no ‘dog’s on leash’ signs where I live. I call Lily ‘Natures Child’ as she hurls herself in to the roiling ocean to retrieve a tennis ball. We’d often have the beach to ourselves. Then she’d tear off chasing seagulls and stop in the dunes to dig a hole, lie in it and survey her estate, like the lady of the manor.

Grief came in waves. Memory could always find a scene of domestic happiness. As I searched the littoral for shells – rare on our beach – I broke down and wept in to the seaweed. I cried for Belinda and the time we shared but if I’m honest, I cried in miserable self-pity. Lily sat next to me. A paw hit me on the shoulder and again. Then a great sweep of tongue on my cheek. I wrapped my arms around her and wept in to her fur.

I’d get telephone calls every now and then from her friends, wondering if I was alright. If there was anything I needed. No, I said. I’m fine. The calls petered out after the first year and by the third year, I spent weeks pottering in the garden without talking to a soul. I got food delivered. I retired and became a dab hand at making curries, which appalled Lily. I took up painting seascapes, collecting shells and watching old movies. We had an extensive library of DVD’s. When Belinda was alive, Friday nights were comedy nights: The Marx Brothers, the ridiculous Carry On films, anything for a laugh. Saturday nights were drama nights: David Lean’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ or ‘Atonement’. We’d sit with drinks and chips with Lily curled around my feet. I kept up the tradition. It was a touchstone to the routines and merriment of yesteryear.

Routines don’t respect death. Every morning I wash up on the shore of sunrise and the front porch needs to be swept of sand. The garden must be watered every second day. I’d cook enough food for four, ladle it in to tuppaware containers, write the date on the lids and freeze them. Lily needed brushing twice a week. In summer the fur flies off her. She hated the brush but now in old age, with gammy hips, she puts up little fight. Just as well as I don’t have the strength to hold her. Her paws and chin are grey and every afternoon about 3.00pm, she makes her way to her basket in the sunroom for an hour’s kip before her dinner.

It was a good year for the roses, when the courier knocked at the back garden gate. Nancy was a handsome woman in her mid 40s, with an engaging smile, blonde fly away hair and long fingers. A parcel from Scotland. I had distant relatives in Glasgow who tracked me down and wanted to keep in touch. We visited them many years ago and came away with the impression that they were missing a chromosome or two. Lily did her usual trick with women of sticking her snout in Nancy’s groin. She laughed and as she handed me the parcel, our hands touched. The first time I’d been touched by a woman in three years. Nancy knew I was a widower and maybe out of kindness, kept her hand pressed against mine a moment longer. I hoped it wasn’t out of pity. I took the package and we made small talk about the weather. Her oldest boy was at university. He wanted to be an engineer. He could have some of my old books if he wanted but I was sure they were out of date. She thanked me for the kindness and left. I called Lily who wanted to go with her, closed the gate and made a cup of tea. I opened the parcel. It was a book on modern Scottish theatre.

It was just before Christmas – never an easy time for me – when I lay in bed as the morning sun’s first light hit the Venetian blinds. I stirred and turned on the bedside light, a signal for Lily to get up and make her way down the corridor to my bed for a head scratch. I would make a cup of tea, return to bed and let my foot rest on her flank, while she snoozed. I couldn’t hear the heavy paw fall of an overweight Labrador. I went to her basket in the lounge and she looked fast asleep but was as cold as church yard stone. I cradled her body. I remember when my mother died many years before, I cried for a week and more when Belinda died but this was different. Lily’s death was discontinuity, as if two tectonic plates had dramatically shifted and I was being driven away from the light, deep in to the earth’s crust.

‘Pets over Rainbow Bridge’ took Lily away. They were kind enough to take her basket, bowl and lead with them. I mumbled something about cremation. I kept her collar as a momento and put it in the ‘precious box’ with the photos. I put the kettle on and sat in the kitchen. It was going to be a hot day. Normally, we’d waddle down the path through the sand dunes and rest our bones in the ocean. I stared at where her basket used to lie and it was surrounded by black fur. I made my way to vacuum cleaner cupboard and kept going. I lay on Belinda’s bed, still made with fresh sheets every week, and curled up in to a ball and  listened to the blood beat in my ears.

On Christmas Day I kept myself busy by cleaning the house, weeding the garden and going for a swim. There were a few Christmas cards from old work colleagues and two cards from Belinda’s relatives. Proper form stuff but I appreciated the gesture. There was an envelope from Scotland which was thicker this year. It contained the usual card of a reindeer wearing a kilt but there was also a gift voucher, for a one hour massage at the Stressless Therapy and Spa centre in town, to the value of $150.00. They must have looked it up on Google.

I’ve never been to a professional massage therapist, thinking they were unseemly places, synonyms for sexual services but this looked legitimate. I put the voucher on the mantle piece next to the Lily’s picture. I remembered how Nancy’s hand touched mine. I didn’t want anything sexual but neither could I rule out the sensual appeal of a woman laying her hands on me.

I was cleaning out the garage when I came across an old photo album of us in Sarajevo, Mostar and Dubrovnik, six years after the war ended. We sat in cafes with bullet holes in the walls. The last page of the album had photos of us standing inside a hammam in Athens. We emerged steamed, pummelled and massaged. We’re holding hands and smiling at the camera. My shoulders were straight and pulled back and the photographer, a local lad, clearly had an interest in Belinda’s cleavage. So long ago. Were we really there?

Two weeks past and every time I walked in to the lounge, I saw the gift voucher. I called the number and a woman answered. She’d look forward to seeing me at 11.00am the following Saturday. I forgot to tell her I was in my 60s, had bad hips and a voucher. I felt like a foreigner.

On the day, I had two showers and scrubbed myself with one of Belinda’s old luffas. I sat in the car for five minutes before going in to the massage centre. A woman in a white top, pants and bare feet, welcomed me and said her name was Cindy. She led me down a corridor to a small dark room lit with candles. It smelt like an old chemist shop from my childhood but sweeter, with a hint of vanilla and lavender.

“I have a gift voucher,” and handed it to her.

“Well, you get the full treatment. I’ll let you undress. Keep your undies on. There’s a chair to put your clothes on”

My mother would have said Cindy had a ‘a pleasant face’, which meant the woman was plain, without distinctive features. But she had nice eyes and a soothing voice. Mother was always a hard taskmaster with other women. I got undressed and lay tummy down on the table. It was warm. There was a hole in the table for my face, which felt odd. An Indian raga was playing at a whisper. I waited for Cindy to return and wanted to go home. The full treatment. This was a bad idea. The curtains parted and closed.

“Have you had a massage before?”

“Many years ago. Overseas with my wife”

“I’ll start with the feet and work my way up. Are you warm enough?”

“Yes thank you”

“If you want to talk, fine. If not, that’s fine too”

I closed my eyes and listened to the music. I knew a bit about Indian music when I played in a band at university. The foundation beat was a drone, a raga and the sitar played over the top accompanied by tablas. Her oil-covered hands massaged my toes which tickled, then moved up and down my rock hard calves, pressing and kneading as she went, slowly moving up to my thighs.

I tried to remember the last time me and Belinda made love. It was in New Delhi in the Karol Bagh district. Young men hassled us to buy cheap trinkets or ‘special trips’ to see the Taj Mahal. I played cricket on the street with the kids while Belinda watched from the relative safety of a bakery. Then we went up stairs for an afternoon nap and it just happened. It was short and perfunctory. Nothing to write home about. That was 15 years ago. It must have been before we got Lily. Was that possible? Lying on the table in the dark, time seemed like a Mobius strip, folding back upon itself. Cindy pulled down the top of my undies, exposing my old bony arse, like the arse of the oxen I saw in India. She massaged my lower spine in concentric circles and I smelt cinnamon, which reminded me of eating cinnamon donuts with Belinda and Lily on a jetty down the south coast, many years ago. The memory came back so clearly. The white and grey seagulls sitting on the railing, Lily fixated on the donuts, fishermen watching their floats bob in the water and Belinda’s lips encrusted in cinnamon. The music played a famous song from the Mahabharata and I could feel it welling up from deep inside me. I had to think of something else: of equations, prostate operations, doing the laundry but once the first sob fell, the rest came tumbling out until my chest was heaving.

Cindy stopped and put her hands on my shoulders. I looked down and through the tears, saw she wore red nail polish on her toes.

“Massage sometimes triggers memories. I figure no one has touched you in a long time”

“My wife died some years ago”

“Everyone needs to be touched. I suggest we continue but if you want me to stop, of course I will”

“I’ve been dwelling too much on the past. Continue if you can tolerate a blabbering old man”

“I’ve had worse”

She returned to my lower spine and moved up to my shoulders and neck. The tension oozed from my muscles and the crying stopped.

“My old dog died recently,” I said. “She was a touchstone with my wife. Do you have a dog?”

“Yes, his real name is Alexander but we call him Hoover.”

“Labrador?”

“How did you guess?” she laughed. “I’ve been with my partner for eight years and we’re good together but if something happened to him, if he died or left, I’d be heart broken but I’d get over it. If Hoover died, I’d crumple. Know what I mean?”

“Lily didn’t say a word to me for 13 years but I could read her like a book and she could read me. Total trust. A two way street”

“Exactly. Roll over on your back and I’ll do the front of your legs and give you a head massage”

The head massage put me to sleep. I saw myself as a boy, sitting on a toboggan at the top of a giant sand dune. A hand pushed me and I screamed and laughed as I flew down the dune with the tang of the salt air in my nostrils and as I reached the bottom, Belinda and Lily were waiting for me. I awoke and Cindy had blown most of the candles out. She had tilted the table back and hung a small bottle of warm thin oil above my head. The oil ran slowly on to the middle of my forehead. Her thumbs massaged the oil clockwise and counter clockwise over both temples and time stopped and all I could hear was Cindy breathing. Then she towelled my hair and said ‘times up’.

I got up slowly, dressed and caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. The oil in my hair made me look a 1950s British gangster. I’d fix that at home.

“How was that?” Cindy asked with a laugh.

“Ecstatic, emotional, cathartic…”

She handed me a small business card with a lotus printed on it and an address.

“I conduct a meditation class on Thursday lunchtimes. We have blokes as well, so don’t worry. You don’t need to sit cross-legged. Give it some thought.”

“I’m not much of a joiner”

“We meet afterwards at a small Greek café next door. Best dolmades in the world”

“I love dolmades”

“And one of the women has a small Rottweiller cross cattle dog for sale”

I drove home and pulled in to the garage. It was Saturday night. Drama night and Mrs Miniver was waiting for me.