‘That’s better,’ she said.
It was fun, actually. The chatting, the mingling, the sight of people with his book under their arm. He kept an eye out for Chloe from the Mail, just to clarify his argument, but she was long gone. Her mind was clearly made up about him. He could picture her right now, sitting in the Starbucks down the road, hunched over a MacBook and Frappuccino. Feverishly typing up how morals were now ‘off the curriculum’ in ‘Britain’s Once-great Academic Institutions’. That Matt Hunter couldn’t even bring himself to say things were ‘evil’ and ‘wrong’.
But the best part, as corny as it sounded, was the drive home. When he sat in the passenger seat, still tipsy and giggling, finishing off a plastic glass of Prosecco, while Wren drove. Randomly, the theme to the Muppets came on the radio and Amelia and Lucy insisted they keep it on. It was when all four of them joined in singing, ‘It’s time to start the music’ like a pack of deranged, goggle-eyed Kermits … that was the most profound moment of all tonight. London passing by the windows, his book in his hand, the wonderful belly laughs from Amelia, and the actual bona-fide giggle from Lucy. A sound he hadn’t really heard since the spring. The glances from Wren that said, you look fit in a suit.
Life felt good and balanced and right that night.
The only part that turned sour was when Wren finally pulled the car into the drive of their new house.
CHAPTER THREE
Sometimes when a cat knows it’s going to die, its frightened little body pushes out this gunky gel through the follicles. It’s pretty weird. Turns the coat into a matted, gooey mess. It doesn’t happen every time but it does happen, now and again. It gives off this smell too, which is impossible to categorise. Not pleasant, not unpleasant.
Rachel Wasson wasn’t a vet or biologist. She hadn’t the first clue as to why this slime stuff comes out, or what it’s made of. But when she was twelve years old her black and white cat Pob died during a bone-dry August in 2001. After six days of secreting this gel stuff, Pob stretched across the kitchen lino and he started twitching. Paws grasping at phantom mice, fur soaked in this stuff.
Mum was out at the chemist that morning, panic-buying roll-on deodorant because her short experiment with aerosols was leaving her pits red raw. But Rachel’s nine-year-old sister was home. But then, Holly Wasson was always at home. Up in her room, drawing pictures of dogs and cats and birds, as she often did back then. Though by the time November came around, she’d draw nothing but rabbits and hares.
Rachel called her down so she could come and see Pob die. After some timid padding down the stairs Holly stood there in the doorway, chewing the nail on her crooked little finger.
‘I suppose,’ Rachel had said, ‘we should sit with him.’
Holly tilted her head and nodded. They sat together on the lino.
Every now and again, as the years ambled by, Rachel Wasson would dream of this moment. The two sisters kneeling down on the glistening floor. Rachel’s blonde ponytail was pulled headache tight (to Mum’s specification). She remembered how it dangled like a ship’s rope over her shoulder, the weight tugging her head down to the floor, toward Pob’s quivering chin. And as she put an ear to his tiny breaths the only thing she could think of was how similar death was to birth. That Pob must be remembering what it was like to be born. To be pushed out of the mother cat, thick with new-life goo. Maybe a cat’s hormones can’t tell the difference between the start of life and the end of it.
‘Do you think it hurts?’ Rachel had whispered to Holly as Pob’s eyes grew wide, then back to slits. Wide again. Then slits. Hinting at either animal transcendence or basic agony.
Holly didn’t answer, but she did clench her knuckled hands in prayer. She said ‘Dear Jesus …’ Then lifted her hand about a foot above the dying cat. Waving it like a magician about to levitate his assistant. ‘… stop the pain.’
The gloopy belly rose one last time, higher than before, then something happened that Rachel never, ever forgot. The belly slunk back to a final, frozen stop.
Dead.
A drop of water splashed off the lino and Rachel realised it was a tear falling from her eye. Her chin started to go, but Holly slipped a hand into hers. ‘It’s okay, Rach,’ she said and touched her chest. ‘He’s still with us. The angels are with him. Don’t you feel it?’
Rachel remembered pulling her hand away. Not keen on touching the fingers that had just prayed Pob into oblivion. And so they both folded their hands back onto their knees. They both cried together for maybe twenty minutes. Then Mum came home with her big hair bounding. A Boots carrier bag dangled from her teeth as she unbolted the back door. When she spotted the furry lump on the floor she dropped to her knees between them both. Swooping the girls together with her long thin arms saying something like, ‘Don’t you fret, girls. The mice in heaven are fast. Pob’ll have plenty to do, plenty to do.’
They say, don’t they, that one of the top reasons to buy a kid a pet is so that it will die. That a dog, or cat
