‘It was that arrogant Dutch woman, do you remember? We were up on the slopes and she was talking about her adopted daughters, Chinese I think, about how wonderful they were, and she got onto talking about her teaching and how they’d never find a better Dutch teacher than her as she was just so over qualified for the school. And then she sneezed. You do remember, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember.’
‘She was the one that gave this to me. I know she was. Sniffing and sneezing all over the place. She sneezed all over me. Made no effort to cover her face. It was her fault.’ Saskia took a tissue from a packet in her handbag and blew her nose. She examined the tissue before stuffing it back into her bag. ‘It was definitely her.’

We were in Lausanne, on a day out as we’d needed to get off the mountain. It was freezing – it didn’t feel any warmer than it had done over a kilometre higher.

Saskia was struggling with her cold. She wasn’t very good with any sort of illness. When she had a headache it was best to stay away from her for a while. She became very unpredictable when she was feeling poorly.

She ordered an Amaretto. ‘For my throat,’ she said. I ordered another coffee. It didn’t do me much good, drinking coffee in the afternoon, but there was nothing else I could think of having. When it came I could hardly drink it. There is something about the smell of coffee when you don’t really want it. I only managed a couple of sips. ‘That was a waste,’ Saskia said.

After the meal we walked up to the cathedral, which sits at the top of a steep hill. There was an exhibition of photography Saskia wanted to see. We looked at the photographs which were positioned around the walls, like the stations of the cross. Some of them were of the cathedral. My favourite was the shadow of the cathedral’s cross on a nearby office block. Saskia sniffed. ‘They’re terribly badly mounted,’ she said, examining one more closely. ‘There really is no excuse for it,’ she said. ‘For poor presentation. No excuse at all.’
I lost interest in the exhibition after that.

We went to the front of the cathedral and sat down. Saskia knelt and closed her eyes, and her lips moved as if she were testing out the best things to say. I looked around at the people coming and going. It was a Saturday so was quite busy, by Swiss standards anyway. Nothing is ever very busy in Switzerland. There was an elderly couple to our left, who were in conversation about the photograph of the shadow. I would have liked to have gone across and listened to what they were saying. A young woman about Saskia’s age, maybe younger, was sitting a couple of rows in front of us on the other side of the aisle. She was staring ahead of her, at the image of Christ on the cross. A mother chased her child towards the font. The child had her hands raised and was squealing with excitement.

Afterwards, we took a tram up to the Musee d’Art Brut. Saskia loved this place – it was full of art by mad people. That was the criteria for selection – that you had to have lost your mind in some way. There were exhibits by paedophiles and suicides and even the whole wooden wall of a prison cell, that one man had carved into with a spoon while he was in prison for doing something unspeakable. Hanging from the ceiling was a roll of wallpaper, covered in doodles. The comment read that the woman who did the doodling would never have seen her whole creation, as she’d had to keep rolling up the wallpaper as she went. To me it looked like a lot of doodles on wallpaper. To Saskia, it was genuis. I often wondered whether I was missing out on something when I went to art galleries with her. What she saw that I didn’t.

We went for a drink, in a little café near the gallery. A small man was sat in the corner, smoking a cigarette. He kept looking over at us. Saskia turned her chair away from him. ‘So rude,’ she said.

We saw the dog as we were heading back to the car. It came out of one of the side roads below the café and turned towards us. It kept stopping and starting, as if it were changing its mind about which way to go. When it got closer, Saskia crouched down to try and get it to come to her.
‘Is that wise?’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ She was crouching quite low and had her hands out in front of her, in the way you’re supposed to do to show you’re not a threat.
‘It might be dangerous.’
‘Oh don’t be ridiculous.’ The dog had stopped a little way short of us. It was looking at Saskia, perhaps trying to measure her up. Or wondering which bit to attack first. The dog looked like a mongrel. He was medium sized and fit-looking, and was mainly brown apart from a black patch on his back. His ears were crooked and made him look quizzical. I had to say he looked like a friendly dog, but you could never be too sure, even in a fairly safe place like Lausanne.

Saskia sniffed. ‘Look at him. Poor doggie. He’s lost. Where’s your owner, boy? Where is he?’ The dog moved a little closer and cocked his head to one side. He had on a collar, and definitely didn’t look like a stray. He was too well-kept. ‘Come here, boy. Come on. We won’t hurt you. Come on then.’

The dog was almost within reach. Its head lowered a little, perhaps out of curiosity or perhaps something else. I didn’t know much about dogs. As a family we’d never had them, as my brother Joe was allergic. Some people say that if you’re allergic you should get a dog, but Joe had spent six months in hospital once after cuddling a puppy, so it was always out of the question. So when this dog lowered its head, I wasn’t sure what sort of a sign it was giving off. Saskia didn’t seem too bothered. She just kept crouching, her arms out, waiting for it to get closer.

Just as she was about to grab hold of its collar, she sneezed. The dog darted away to one side of her and stopped a few paces away. ‘That fucking Dutch woman,’ Saskia said. ‘Shit.’
‘Perhaps we should let the police know,’ I said. ‘Let them deal with it.’
‘We just have to get hold of its collar, then we can find out where he lives. That’s all we need to do. We can’t just walk away from him, not here. He might get run over. It’s so busy round here. Too busy for dogs to be running around on their own. Here boy, come on, I promise I won’t scare you again.’ She stood a little, and moved slowly towards the dog, her arms outstretched. The dog trotted off away from her, back up towards the café. ‘Fuck.’ Saskia turned to me. ‘You’ll have to help me. Do something to draw him closer, then I can get hold of him.’
‘I don’t think he wants to be got.’
‘How do you know? He’s just scared. If I can get hold of him then he’ll feel safer. Then I can find out who he belongs to. If you had a dog and he was lost, wouldn’t you want to know where he was? Wouldn’t you want someone to try and rescue him?’

I put my hands in my pockets. Saskia blew her nose. It really was very cold. All I wanted to do was get back to the car and go home. But Saskia was having none of it. I knew what all this was about, even if she didn’t.

The dog looked like it was about to cross the road. I could see that this was not the best option. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What do you want me to try and do.’

I headed up towards the dog, keeping close to the kerb. Saskia walked towards the dog in the middle of the pavement. Neither of us looked at him. Saskia said that if it didn’t look like we were interested, he might ignore us, then I could grab him before he noticed. If not, he might run towards Saskia, and she could grab him. The plan didn't seem foolproof.

As we moved closer, the dog began to move away from us. ‘It’s not working,’ I said.
‘I can see that.’
I remembered something I’d seen on TV a while back, about what to do if your dog runs off. The programme said that if you ran after your dog it would probably keep on running, as it thought you were following it on a hunt. But if you called its name then ran in the opposite direction, the dog would follow you. It was all about who was the alpha in the pack. Who was in charge.

I suggested this to Saskia. She immediately saw a hole in this plan. ‘We don’t know the dog’s name. Jesus, Sam – you’re really not helping matters.’
‘You have a better idea?’ I said. I was beginning to feel foolish, stood there in the middle of the pavement, shivering with the cold, trying to get a dog who didn’t want to be got.
‘Please don’t start,’ Saskia said. ‘Not now.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Just don’t start. This is not the best place.’ She blew her nose again. ‘Oh this fucking cold.’

She began to walk towards the dog, who by now was at a busy crossroads. He didn’t know which way to go. He was looking all over, his tail between his legs. I didn’t hold out much hope for him. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the dog run over, seeing it all mashed up on the road. If he got caught under a trolley bus there wouldn’t be much left of him. He reminded me of Schrodinger’s cat, stood there on the corner, both alive and dead at the same time. I followed Saskia towards the crossroads.

‘What if we got some food to tempt it with. Maybe that would work. Do you have anything in your bag?’

I didn’t think so, but I looked anyway. There was a half eaten Mars Bar that had been there for weeks, and a packet of gum. Nothing a dog would like. ‘We could go back to the café and get something there,’ I said.
‘Finally, a good idea,’ Saskia said.

The small man was still sitting in the corner. He said ‘bonjour’ as I went in. I told the fat woman behind the counter about the problem, and asked if she had anything a dog might like to eat. My French wasn’t very good so I wasn’t sure whether I’d said the right thing. It made the small man laugh, whatever it was I said. The fat woman disappeared into the back and came out with a piece of bacon rind. She didn’t charge me for it.

I went back outside. There was no sign of the dog. Saskia was standing on the corner, where the dog had been. She was crying. ‘You’re too late,’ she said. ‘You’re always too late.’

I stood in the middle of the pavement, the bacon rind still in my hand.