I do not know what happened in that review. I was never told the details and I did not ask. What I know is that Desmond found me at the shelter three weeks later, stood in the parking lot in the rain, and apologized in a way that was clearly costing him something. He said his aunt had loved that dog more than she had loved him and that he had been angry about it for nine years and had taken it out on the first old woman who walked in.

I let him buy me a coffee. It seemed like the thing to do.

The dizziness was a medication problem. It got sorted out in a fortnight.

Pepper died in March. He was almost fifteen. He went in his sleep, beside me, and I held him for a long time afterward because I was not in a hurry and because nobody was waiting for me anywhere.

The cafe has a small brass plate by the door now with Wilhelmina’s name on it, and beneath it, Pepper’s. Desmond put it there. He did not tell me he was going to.

I go on Tuesdays. I order the coffee and nothing else, and no one has ever mentioned a minimum again.

An old woman and an old dog spent a long time being looked past by people deciding what a room should look like. It turned out we had both already been seen, years before, by someone who painted a sign. Being worth something was never about what I could spend. It was only ever about who was still willing to look.