Best British Short Stories 2020

^{NJ STALLARD} THE WHITE CAT

Linda had spent most of June trying to kill the white cat. For her first attempt, she used a simple method: three tablespoons of rat poison in a saucer of milk. She left the saucer next to the sliding doors of the villa. A few days later, she found two dead birds in the garden and one in the swimming pool, the grey feathers mangled in the gutter. Linda collected the birds in a shoebox and buried them beneath the bougainvillaea.

After that, she bought a BB gun from the hunting store in the mall. But when she tried to practise she couldn’t pull the trigger. She said it brought back memories of her grandpa’s suicide.

‘Would you believe me if I told you I’m an animal person?’ Linda said, leaning against the kitchen island where I was eating my cereal. She wore denim cut-offs, a faded pink T-shirt and a plastic golf visor. Her skin was aged from too much sun and the split ends of her blonde ponytail fluttered in the breeze of the AC.

‘You are?’

‘Of course I am, honey. I’ve had plenty of pets. I ride horses. I would never kill an animal except in self-defence.’

Linda didn’t want to kill the white cat, she explained. The cat had terrorised her. It left decapitated lizards on the doorstep. It stared at her while she swam. Plus it was ugly. A tiny head and a long thin body covered in pink sores and clumps of white fur. A missing eye.

‘Have you ever seen a cat with one eye? It’s gross. The skin on the socket is all pink and clenched, like an asshole,’ she said, and puckered her lips and laughed.

I assumed Linda was exaggerating about the white cat. Since I’d moved into the villa, she’d sent constant emails about the black bugs taking over the kitchen, advising me to scrub down the kitchen counters with rubbing alcohol and a paper towel, even though I’d never seen a black bug. I’d never seen a white cat either.

Cute Room and Pool View, the ad had said. The villa was a bargain for the price. Located in a compound next to the beach, the villa had a perfect swimming pool, shaped like a kidney and surrounded by trailing plants and palm trees. The blue and green tiles scrambled together and turned gold in the midday sun, like a Byzantine mosaic. Linda lived inside the villa and had decided to rent out the pool house in the garden.

‘There’s something super cute about this place,’ Linda had said when she’d opened the pool house’s door. ‘I’d live in it myself if it wasn’t for the villa.’

The interior was basic. A metal bed frame stood on top of the grey lino flooring. There was an old desk with a broken drawer and a shower drilled into the wall above a drain. Access to the villa’s kitchen and the swimming pool were included in the price. I moved in the next day.

Linda said she worked for an insurance company but during my first week in the villa she never left the house. She rose at 6am every morning and watered the garden in her denim cut-offs. When she heard me enter the kitchen for breakfast, she would follow me and launch into one of her monologues.

The only positive thing she ever had to say was about her childhood in Hawaii. She’d named the house ‘Villa Aloha’ in honour of her homeland. Fridge magnets of seashells and surfers clung to the kitchen’s magnetic surfaces. In the living room, the only sign of life among the white carpet and white leather sofas was a doll of a hula girl with frizzy hair, a rainbow-coloured lei and sun-faded skin, which sat on top of the drinks cabinet. During her tour of the villa, Linda clicked a switch on the doll and we stood there and watched the disturbing whirl of its hips.

On the day Linda told me about the white cat I spent the rest of the afternoon in my room. I tried to fill out job applications but I struggled to concentrate. At sunset I took a break and went to the supermarket. It was dark by the time I got home and I had to climb over the wall of the villa to get back in. I reached my foot onto the brick wall and lifted myself over the iron railings. Linda had promised to get an extra clicker to open the front gate but never did.

The moon was huge that night. I got changed into a bikini and went for a swim. I laid on my back and bobbed around on the water, like a leaf. The pool water was warm, like chicken soup. The smell of chlorine relaxed me. I closed my eyes.

Then I heard a splash. Something had entered the pool behind me. I thought it must be Linda, but when I turned she wasn’t there. Nothing was there. I grabbed my towel, went back to the pool house and locked the door. The AC was on full blast and goose pimples spread across my body. I climbed under the covers to get warm.

The next morning I woke up later than usual. I didn’t get out of bed for breakfast. My muscles felt tired and I had a fever. Around 11 am, Linda knocked at my door.

‘Everything OK in there? I want to show you something.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah, look at what I picked up from the store.’

A small harpoon appeared from behind her back and she presented it to me like a present.

‘Is that another gun?’

‘Something for the white cat. Will you help me, honey? I know you like to stay up late so we could take it in shifts. By the way, did you see that son of a bitch last night? It was drinking the pool water.’

I told her I had some work to do and shut the door.

For the next few days I avoided Linda as much as possible. Instead of eating breakfast in the kitchen, I kept bread and peanut butter in a plastic bag underneath my bed. I didn’t have a knife so I smeared the peanut butter on with my finger, tearing holes in the bread.

Each day grew hotter and more humid. I started to notice all the faults in the villa. Mould gathered on the ceiling. Door handles came off in my hand. Every afternoon, the smell of sewage cut through the scent of Linda’s jasmine and hibiscus. When I laid on a sun lounger, I was bothered by flies or red ants swarming in the grass. The palm tree by the pool had a rare disease and the fronds had withered and browned.

I was surprised to receive an email asking if I was available for work. I dressed in a blue shirt and pencil skirt and took a taxi to the company’s headquarters. Most of the desks were deserted and there were cardboard boxes full of papers on the floor. The managing director gave me a tour of the office and sat me at a desk next to a guy named Bill.

‘Bill can show you the ropes – just ignore him if he asks to borrow any money,’ the managing director joked and then left.

Bill wore blue jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. He was chubby with a large mop of curly hair. His arms were a battlefield of eczema. I noticed a large tub of E45 behind a tower of takeaway coffee cups on his desk.

It didn’t take long for Bill to set up my computer. There were a lot of emails to answer. For the rest of the week I worked late every night in the office. When I got home from work, I climbed over the wall and went for a midnight swim in the dark. I didn’t switch on the pool lights because I didn’t want Linda to know I’d come home. I only said hi to her on my way out in the morning. ‘Go get ’em, tiger,’ she would say and continue to water the plants.

By the end of the week I was exhausted. I left the office at 7 pm and stood in a long queue for a bus. The sun was setting and the humidity made me feel feverish and dizzy. Bill’s car pulled up and he offered me a ride. I said yes.

Instead of driving home, we went to a bar. I asked Bill a few questions about his life, out of politeness. He asked about my living situation and I described the villa to him.

‘So it’s just you two in the house, you and Linda?’ Bill asked. His chubby fingers wrapped around his beer bottle like a paw.

‘Well, technically Linda is in the villa and I’m in the pool house.’

‘What does Linda do?’

‘Insurance, I think. She rarely leaves the house.’

‘She must be divorced.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘There’s no way she could afford to have a villa on that compound. Someone must have given it to her.’

‘I don’t know. I think she’s just sick of life.’

When Bill drove me home, he parked outside the front gate and I asked if he wanted to come inside and see the villa. No guests were allowed onto the property without permission, Linda had said, but it was late and I decided to take the risk.

‘You’ll have to climb over the wall though.’

‘What?’

‘Linda hasn’t given me a clicker yet. For the front gate. Don’t worry it’s fun – we can pretend we’re burglars.’

Bill struggled to swing his leg over the railings on the top of the wall. He listened to my step-by-step instructions and landed softly on the grass. He looked cute, like a racoon. I showed him the swimming pool and the garden, which shone nicely in the moonlight, and opened the door of the poolhouse.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘It’s small, I know.’

His eyes scanned the metal bed frame and the lino floor. ‘How much do you pay her for this?’

‘It’s cheap.’

‘You know it’s the maid’s room, right?’

I heard the door click behind me.

Bill must have seen the look in my eye. ‘Families in these villas always make their maids sleep in an outhouse,’ he said. ‘You’ve made it nice though.’

A lizard ran up the wall and I jumped. Bill put his arm around me to calm me down and then kissed me. The sex was clumsy even though it felt rehearsed. Afterwards, he snored and I couldn’t sleep. Around 4 am he started to grind his teeth.

I woke up to the sound of the front gate and Linda’s SUV pulling out of the driveway. She liked to spend a few hours in the mall at the weekend. I pushed Bill’s fat arm to wake him. His eyes opened and he smiled at me. I regretted hating him so much while he was asleep.

‘Do you want to go for a swim? Linda won’t be back for a few hours.’

The sun was bright and the pool water was hot against our skin. We swam and then we kissed some more.

‘You know, I’m happy they hired you,’ he said and pulled his face away from mine. It was a surprise.’

‘A surprise?’

‘Have you decided what you’ll do when the office closes? You can’t stay here.’ He studied my face the same way he had studied the room. ‘Oh, you didn’t know.’

The company was on its last legs, Bill explained. Most of the staff had been made redundant before I arrived. He was hanging around for some extra money before he went travelling.

Bill left before midday. I guessed Linda would return around 1 pm and she did.

‘Hello stranger,’ she said. I was lying on the sun lounger, drenched in sweat. ‘Would you mind helping me unload the trunk? I struck gold at the garden store.’

‘Sure.’ I was glad to see her.

The trunk was full of strips of bamboo, different types of rope and a lever mechanism. Linda passed a bundle to me, then I carried the bundle inside the villa. Once the job was done, we stood in the kitchen and drank lemonade.

‘I’m making a cage.’

‘You’re what?’

‘A cage. For the white cat. It won’t know what hit it.’

She planned to build the cage by weaving the bamboo together like a basket. I helped her cut the wood into identical lengths and collected some of the dead fronds from the palm trees to camouflage it. She screwed the lever mechanism onto the outside of the villa, next to the swimming pool.

‘All you’ve got to do is lie on a sun lounger. Put one hand on the rope, the other hand on a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and wait for the cat to fall into the trap,’ she said and demonstrated the technique.

‘Wow, it works.’

‘Of course it does.’

Linda manned the cage for a few hours each day. When I came home late from work, she would leave potato chips and a can of beer for me to take over on the lounger. It was relaxing to sit by the pool and rest.

I considered telling Bill about the cage but I knew he wouldn’t understand. We went for lunch together a couple of times after he stayed over. He talked a lot about his upcoming travels.

One night, Linda waited for me by the pool until I got home. She was wearing a large sun hat and looked happy.

‘We did it!’ She jumped up and handed me a glass of wine.

I looked up to where the cage should have been hanging from its rope, but the cage was gone.

‘We did it?’

‘Yes, ma’am. That nasty son of a bitch kept wriggling and hissing but I took care of it.’

She hadn’t been able to shoot it with the harpoon. Instead she put the cat in a potato sack and fastened it with a seat belt on the passenger seat. She drove for an hour along the highway and into the desert. When there were no more buildings in sight, she threw the potato sack out of the door and drove away as fast as she could.

‘See, I am an animal person,’ she said. Deep red scratches covered her arms and legs. Her whole body smelt of antiseptic and sun cream.

‘Yes, you are.’

My last day in the office was uneventful. The managing director walked past my desk a few times and counted the computers, desks and chairs. I had no reason to say goodbye to Bill so I snuck out while he was at lunch and took a bus home.

There was a note on the door of the pool house: Gone away for a week. Eggs in the fridge, feel free to eat them or they’ll go bad. Clicker on the breakfast bar. Enjoy! Linda x

I wondered where she might have gone. I tried to imagine her in an airport, wheeling her suitcase through the departure hall in her denim cut-offs. Or sitting on a plane, eating a bag of nuts.

A girl who worked as cabin crew once told me they keep a special blanket on board every flight, in case someone dies. The body is covered by the blanket and left buckled in its seat, so passengers won’t be disturbed by the sight of a dead man or woman being carried down the aisle.

I hoped Linda wouldn’t die on her flight. Villa Aloha felt strange without her. I went to the kitchen and ate some eggs. Then I took one of her beers out to the pool and waited until dark to swim.

The worst of the summer temperatures were over now. The heat had started to break. As I swam, a breeze floated across the garden and the shadows of the palm tree fronds twinkled across the water, like fingers on a piano.

That’s when I saw it. Its pink sores shone under the moonlight. It had a missing eye and a missing ear too. Its white fur looked wet.

I swam towards it and let out a miaow, but it didn’t miaow back. It looked tired. The cat laid down on the grass next to the pool and seemed to fall asleep. As if it had walked for miles across the desert, to rest its legs, to swim.