I am late leaving the shops. As I walk slowly up the rotunda-style stairs to the car park, I realise how late I am. I fumble for my keys at the top of the stairs and finally find the right one.

The car is on the floor I enter the car park on and as I cross the open deck, I feel the bottle of perfume in my pocket.

“The costliest perfume in the world,” the advert said. I open the car door and get in, settling down and start the engine. It’s my Dad’s car of course. At seventeen, I’m not going to have my own for a few years I realise, as I first reverse and then make my way across the deck to the down ramp.

But first, I have to pay and watch the barrier rise. I have a fear of those things. They seem uncontrolled in some way. I pass safely through, with a small smile of success.

The traffic is a little slow and the first light is on red. Costliest perfume eh? She’ll like that. I think she will anyway. As the lights change I start to navigate the route I know so well.

Now, the road is pretty clear as I drive out of town. I can see ahead and I make my way up along the street towards the suburbs, where I have lived most of my adult life.

I’m now wondering what she’ll think about my gesture as I speed up. There is a large van ahead of me and I think about the fizzy pop factory entrance up the road where I’ve been working. It’s a shit job really, but we have fun in the summer, when we can go out and play on the old trucks.

My mind is wandering, when all of a sudden, down a side street, not a hundred feet away, two dogs run at full pelt into the side of the van in front of me. I hear the ‘bang, bang’ as they hit it.

Everything stops.

There is no one between me and the van, which has pulled over. The two dogs are in the middle of the road, inert.

Dead, I guess.

There’s nothing anyone can do as a crowd gathers. People cautiously look at the dogs, but there’s nothing anyone can do, they simple ran full pelt into the side of the van and that was it.

Now, I’m being waved past and I see the dogs, one brown and one black in the road as I pass them. There is a pool of blood on the glistening tarmac surrounding the head of one of them and not the other. I have to focus on the road ahead as there are other cars coming towards me.

I am driving away and look back in my mirror, but I cannot see the dogs any more, just the front of the van parked up at the side of the road. The driver has already left the van and is standing on the pavement looking at the dogs with someone else, gesticulating lightly with his arms.

Now, I am passing the side road where the fizzy pop factory is, on my right. I see the gates and the doors open as they work. My shift isn’t till tomorrow, so I continue towards the traffic lights and turn left. I make good progress now, for the traffic is light. I’m still thinking about the dogs.

The one – I think it was the brown one, was chasing the black one and the black one hit the van first. They simply forgot the dangers of the road in that moment and both were dead because of it. I can’t shake the image of the just before they hit.

Bang, bang. I can still hear it.

Under the bridge and the sunshine disappears for a moment and past the Post Office where that girl lives. The one from the show. The one I quite fancied at one time, till they told me she was off with a biker and that she now wore skirts more because it was easier to, well, get access when it was needed.

Now we are on the home stretch and the road is clear. I’m at the roundabout now and across that dodgy junction off it where drivers think you’re going one way and you aren’t. My tactic is to drive straight at them and scare them shitless, so they stay put. Frozen in my stare, or maybe just my car coming at them.

Now, to negotiate all the parked cars before I turn off along my street. I have to focus on my driving, cos it’s like Wacky Races out there. Zig and zag, zig and zag. Then a chunk of acceleration on the flat so I can get up the hill and park the old bus gently on the actual hill.

Make sure the handbrake is properly on and turn the ignition off. Make sure I have the perfume in my pocket for later. It’s the costliest in the world, I’m told.

‘Joy’, is its name.

Not exactly reflecting my experience of the day I smile wryly a little as I go up the steps and reflect. But I move on. The dogs are dead and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

As I go through the doors, I have a story to tell and after that an evening to look forwards to – full of promise, I hope.

I smile again.

“I’m home,” I shout and I’m greeted.

I have a doggie story to tell.