The dog vanished after the incident, only to turn up at the doorstep six months later wearing a stranger’s collar.

Victor Clarke finds a tiny, shivering puppy lying on the side of the A1 in October. The little dog is wet, barely more than a lump of fur, and watches the passing lorries as if waiting for someone. Victor is on his way to the countryside cottage to collect potatoes, brakes for a moment, thinking the pup will just look at him. But the puppy lifts its head, and everything changes. The potatoes stay in the earth for another week.

The neighbour, MrsVera Hughes, invents the name. She spots the ginger, longeared creature with oddlysized paws in the hallway and declares, Reddish, nosy, hopeless Mars. Thatll do. Victor laughs.

Mars grows quickly. By spring he claims the whole left half of the sofa as his kingdom, and Victor, at first annoyed, soon stops complaining. Sleeping alone in the flat feels worse than sharing a bed with a dog that snores and occasionally thumps a paw in its sleep.

Their friendship doesnt blossom at once; it builds slowly, like the way people who have nowhere in particular to rush meet. Morning walks, a food bowl at seven oclock, the television. Sometimes Victor talks aloud to Mars. The dog sits beside him, listening with a solemn expression, only yawning now and then, teeth flashing.

Youre right, Victor says. Enough. He switches off the TV.

The accident happens in April as they return from an evening stroll. Victors memory is hazy. The road is slick, his car skids onto the pavement, Mars is on the leash, and the leash snaps. Victor is thrown onto the curb, hit on his side, and for a few seconds he lies there hearing only his own breathing and a distant shout.

When he gets up, Mars is gone. The broken leash lies on the tarmac, the plastic clasp split in two.

Victor searches until midnight, covering three streets, calling the dogs name, asking passersby. They shake their heads. One person mentions seeing a red dog dash toward the railway crossing about forty minutes earlier, but no one saw what happened after that.

Back home, Victor sits in the kitchen, staring at an empty bowl. He gets up, writes a notice, prints twenty copies, and the next morning sticks them on every lamppost in the neighbourhood. He also phones three veterinary practices and a shelter on Factory Lane.

If a red mixedbreed turns up, please call me. Heres my number, he says into the handset.

A week passes. Then a month. The flyers fade under May rain, so Victor reaffixes them, and does it again in June. The clinics stay silent. The shelter on Factory Lane calls twice, each time by mistake it isnt his dog.

In July MrsVera Hughes cautiously says from the doorway, Victor, maybe you could get another one. There are plenty at the shelter.

No, Victor answers, and she never brings it up again.

The flat feels different without Mars. It isnt empty; the furniture stays put, the fridge hums, neighbours thump on the stairs at half past nine as usual. Yet something has shifted.

Victor picks up an old rubber ball that Mars used to chase in the hallway, puts it on a shelf, then slides it into a drawer, only to pull it out again later and leave it on the shelf.

Each morning his hand reaches instinctively for the leash on the door, the leash hanging there, though theres nowhere to go.

He starts taking walks alone, the same route, the same time, just without Mars. He cant explain why, he just keeps walking.

In August his daughter Emily, who lives in Leeds, calls. Dad, come stay with us for a while, youll get a break.

I cant, he says.

Why?

He pauses. Maybe hell come back.

Emily is silent, then replies, Alright, in that tone people use when they want to say something else but decide not to.

Mars returns in October. Victor hears scratching at the front door just after eight in the evening. At first he thinks its the wind or some draft from the stairwell, but the scratching persists, deliberate, as if someone knows the door will open once you wait a moment longer.

He opens it.

Mars sits on the mat, older now. His coat is trimmed in a few spots where wounds must have been, the left side of his back a little scabbed. Around his neck hangs a leather collar, brown with a brass buckle and a small metal tag that reads Buddy.

Victor stands in the doorway, watching. Mars meets his gaze. His right ear hangs limp, a reddish patch on his forehead forms an uneven star. The amber eyes, darkframed, are exactly the same.

Youve been away, Victor says.

Mars steps inside, navigates the flat as if he knew every room by heart, heads straight for his bowl empty, as always.

Victor closes the door, shuffles to the kitchen, his hands trembling as he opens the fridge.

Alright, he murmurs. Alright.

The next morning he drives to the veterinary clinic. They examine Mars, give him the needed vaccinations, check his microchip. Victor asks about the collar. The vet pulls the tag and reads aloud, Buddy. Is that another name?

Someone gave him a different name, Victor replies.

He lived with someone before? the vet asks.

For about six months, somewhere. I dont know where.

She looks at Victor, then at Mars, then back at Victor. It happens, she says. Dogs sometimes wander off and then turn up again, especially the clever ones.

Victor says nothing, watching Mars sit calmly on the metal examination table, tolerating the checkup.

On the back of the tag they find a phone number. Victor dials from his car while Mars sits in the back seat, staring out the window.

After the third ring, someone answers.

Hello?

This is Victor Clarke. You had a red dog, you called him Buddy, he says.

A long pause.

Yes, a middleaged womans voice finally replies. He left us in September. Weve been looking for him.

Hes with me now. His name is Mars. He disappeared in April.

Silence again. Then, He lived with us. We fed him, treated his wounds.

Thank you, Victor says.

Hes a good dog.

Yes.

Another pause. Do you live far? On Birch Street? the woman asks.

Its another area, Victor answers.

Goodness. He just turned up at our fence in April, lay there and never left.

Victor watches the grey, leafless park outside his windscreen, the leafless poplars swaying.

The call ends on its own. Victor puts the phone away. Mars sighs, his head resting on his folded paws on the back seat.

Back home Victor removes the foreign collar, places it on the kitchen table and studies it brown leather, a sturdy buckle, the tag Buddy. Wellmade, not cheap.

Six months somewhere, and the dog still finds his way back.

Victor thinks of the woman from Birch Street, who fed and petted him every day, who must have missed him when he vanished in September. He imagines her still calling, perhaps putting up notices.

He picks up the phone again.

Its me again, he says when she answers. If youd like to visit, Im happy to arrange it.

Silence.

Really? she asks.

Really.

She arrives on Saturday. Margaret Green, sixtyfour, in a grey coat, carrying a basket with apple jam and a sack of dog food the same brand Mars grew accustomed to over those six months.

Mars spots her from the hallway, doesnt bolt; he simply waddles over, nudges his nose against her hand, tail wagging.

They sit for tea. Margaret recounts how she found him by the fence in April, took him to the vet, how scared he was at first, then settled in. Victor tells of the accident, the broken leash, the countless flyers.

Mars lies between them on the floor, dozing, occasionally lifting his head to look at one of them, then the other.

He chose us both, Margaret says.

Victor looks at the dog, then at Margaret.

Seems that way.

Victor puts the borrowed collar back in the drawer, not discarding it.

Mars resumes occupying the left half of the sofa and chasing the rubber ball down the hallway at one in the morning. The flyers on the lampposts dampen under November rain and peel off by themselves.

Margaret visits every Saturday, bringing jam, sometimes asking for advice on blackcurrants; she tends a garden on Birch Street, and Victor helps out in the allotments. They chat while Mars snoozes between them.

One evening Victor pulls the leather collar with the Buddy tag from the drawer, holds it up. The metal gleams under the kitchen light.

Two leashes hang by the hall door one red, worn, the other blue, new, the one Margaret brought on a recent Saturday and hung there quietly, without asking permission.

The flat feels whole again, the past months stitched together by the soft thud of paws on the floor and the quiet clink of a collar that once belonged to a stranger.