The Belgian pet shop where we found Julius wasn’t a good place. You could get anything: puppies, wallabies – owls, even. It smelled wrong in there: of excrement and fear. Your vestigial hackles were raised.
I knew we shouldn’t buy a pet from that shop. It was no better than buying a pangolin from a Vietnamese market to “save” it, really, but walking around, between sphynx cats, chinchillas, geckos and chameleons, we spotted a large tortoise in a glass case that was far too small. My husband and I had had tortoises as kids and loved the idea of them. Plus, he was so beautiful: big – probably 40cm long – with a yellow and black head and ruby-red spots, like jewels, on his legs. Impassively munching a stalk, he seemed like a grounded dragon, stuck in a box in a Brussels suburb. We exchanged a quick glance, then called over one of the sales assistants.
