Christmas at the Cat Cafe

23

As soon as the café door slammed shut, Debbie burst into tears. She staggered to the sofa and dropped down next to me.

‘Oh, Molly, what a complete and utter mess,’ she cried.

Outside, the wind had picked up and the windowpanes rattled ominously in their frames. I climbed onto her lap and began to knead at her legs with my front paws, gazing up into her face and purring. I was desperate to do whatever I could to comfort her, although in truth I knew I was powerless to help.

After a couple of minutes I heard Sophie’s soft tread in the hallway. ‘Mum?’ she said, peering anxiously around the living-room door. Her long blonde hair was loose and she was wearing her pyjamas and slippers. With a look of tender concern, she shuffled onto the sofa next to us. ‘What just happened?’ she asked.

‘Linda just happened,’ replied Debbie wanly. ‘When she started talking about Margery’s legacy, something snapped inside me. I told her exactly what I thought, as you said I should, Soph. You should be proud of me.’

‘I am proud of you, Mum.’ Sophie laughed. ‘But couldn’t you have picked a better time to tell her? This was meant to be your romantic night with John, remember?’

Debbie had covered her face with both hands. ‘I know,’ she groaned through her fingers. ‘I didn’t plan for it to happen like this! Linda promised to stay out for the evening.’

Sophie looked around the room, taking in the plates of half-eaten dinner lying on the table. ‘Where’s John?’ she asked, sounding troubled.

‘He left,’ Debbie answered listlessly.

‘What do you mean he left? Did you have a fight with him, too?’

Debbie shook her head. ‘I’m not sure what happened. One minute he was standing between me and Linda, looking like he wished the ground would swallow him up, and the next minute he’d vanished. He must have gone while we were arguing,’ she said in a flat, expressionless voice.

Sophie leant back against the sofa arm, frowning. ‘Have you tried to call him?’ she asked with an air of no-nonsense practicality.

Looking faintly surprised, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to her, Debbie craned forward, reaching over me to fish her phone out of her handbag. She tapped at the screen, then held it to her ear, biting her lip nervously. ‘It’s just going to voicemail,’ she said, before leaving a brief message: ‘Hi, John, it’s me, could you give me a call when you get this?’

‘I’m sure he’ll be fine, Mum,’ Sophie reassured her, as Debbie tossed the phone back into her bag.

‘He might have thought he was getting in the way and wanted to give you some privacy.’

‘Hmm, I’m not so sure, sweetheart,’ Debbie smiled thinly. ‘I think he’s probably had enough of me and my sister. And who could blame him?’ She tried to muster a watery smile.

Sophie was beginning to look pained, as though she had exhausted all the avenues of reassurance she could think of and was struggling to come up with something else to say. ‘Shall I make a cup of tea?’ she asked at last.

Debbie smiled appreciatively. ‘Thanks, Soph, that would be lovely.’

When Sophie had placed the two mugs of tea on the coffee table, she grabbed the remote control and curled up alongside Debbie. Leaning back against the sofa arm, with her feet pressing against Debbie’s thigh and her toes touching my fur, Sophie flicked through the television channels. I stretched out lengthways on Debbie’s lap and rested my chin on her knees, purring steadily as she absent-mindedly stroked my back. I closed my eyes and indulged in the blissful fantasy that Linda was gone for good and I would never see her again. I lost track of time, as I hovered deliciously between consciousness and sleep for what might have been a few minutes or a few hours, until the sudden slam of the café door reverberated through the flat.

I jerked awake and instinctively sank my claws into Debbie’s legs in alarm. ‘Ow, Molly!’ she exclaimed, sucking air between her teeth as she gently unhooked my embedded claws, one by one, from her knees. ‘Hello?’ she called in a pained voice, shifting forward on the sofa under me.

Disorientated, I looked around, noticing that the candles had burnt down considerably since I had last noticed them.

‘Debbie, it’s me. You might want to come down.’ It was John. Something in the tone of his voice made my heart lurch.

Debbie and Sophie exchanged surprised looks above my head and we all scrambled to our feet and made for the stairs, Debbie in front, followed by Sophie, with me at the rear. I was still in the stairwell when I heard Debbie gasp, ‘Who is it?’ Feeling my pulse start to race, I ran down the remaining steps and onto the flagstones.

John was standing on the doormat, unwinding a scarf from his neck. In a split second I noticed the cat carrier on the floor by his feet. Debbie ran forward and crouched in front of the carrier, fumbling to unlock its door. I felt strangely detached, as if I was watching the scene unfold from a distance, or in a dream. When Debbie flung open the door, there was a faint rustle of newspaper and a glimpse of black fur inside. Then, slowly, nervously, Eddie crept out.

He looked around warily, glancing first at Debbie, then at Sophie. Then, at last, his eyes found mine. In an instant, I saw a succession of emotions flash across Eddie’s face: relief, shame and happiness – all conveyed in the look he gave me across the flagstones.

I felt a wonderful soaring sensation in my stomach. As Eddie began to walk gingerly towards me, I devoured him with my eyes. What struck me most was his height – I had forgotten how large and grown-up he was. During his disappearance, whenever I had pictured him in my mind, it had been as a gangly kitten. Seeing him in front of me, I was reminded that, outwardly at least, there was nothing kittenish about the rangy tomcat coming towards me.

His bulk was another surprise. I had convinced myself that Eddie would be half-starved after so long on the streets, and yet I saw no hollow cheeks, no protruding hip-bones or concave flanks. Wherever he had spent the past few weeks, I realized with a rush of relief that he had found food. One of his ears bore a fight scar, and his fur looked a little dull and scantily groomed. Other than that, he seemed unhurt; his gait was strong and his eyes as bright as ever.

He stepped closer and his wary expression softened, as if my proximity was bringing out his vulnerability. When Eddie sat down in front of me, he lowered his head and looked up submissively, just as he had when he was a kitten expecting a telling-off. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

Feeling my throat tighten and my eyes tingle, I leant towards him, allowing our noses to touch, before nuzzling my face into the fur of his neck. I closed my eyes, the better to allow my sense of smell to glean all it could about where Eddie had been. He smelt of hedgerows and damp earth, but also of furniture polish and log fires and people.

‘Molly, look.’

I opened my eyes, fleetingly annoyed by the interruption. Across the café, Debbie was beaming at me, one arm extended, her finger pointing across the floor. I followed her arm and saw that, sitting in front of the open carrier, with a look of paternal satisfaction, was Jasper. I stared at him in stunned disbelief and, when he blinked slowly, his amber eyes twinkling, I thought for a moment that my heart might burst with happiness.

Eddie’s deep purr filled the living room as I drew my tongue in long, sweeping movements over his fur, determined to lick away the tangles and make him smell like home again. We were in the shoebox and Purdy was watching us from the sofa arm, her face alert and curious, while Abby and Bella huddled together in the alcove, taking it in turns to peek out from behind Beau’s pet carrier. Jasper was sitting proprietorially on the rug in front of the fireplace, where Maisie had sidled up beside him, washing diligently in a manner that I knew was designed to elicit his approval.

On the other side of the room, Debbie and John were at the table, picking at the cold leftovers of their dinner. The candles had burnt down almost to stumps, the long flames dancing vigorously in the draught from the window.

‘Someone called while Linda was here,’ John explained. ‘Said she thought she had your cats. I didn’t want to get your hopes up, until I knew for sure. Besides, you were a bit busy at the time, so I just slipped out.’

Debbie smiled ruefully. ‘So, where were they?’ she asked, popping a piece of cold potato into her mouth.

‘A village a few miles south of here. The woman said Eddie had been visiting her house for a while. She’d assumed he belonged to one of the neighbours, till she asked around and realized no one owned him. Jasper had been hanging around too, but she thought he and Eddie were the same cat, until she saw them both in the garden together. It took her a few days to round them up and get them to vet to be scanned. She thought the vet was joking when he told her both cats were registered to the same owner.’ Debbie chuckled.

‘But what a coincidence that they ended up together,’ Debbie said incredulously. ‘They disappeared a good few days apart.’ She looked towards the shoebox, baffled.

‘I’ve given up trying to make sense of what these cats of yours get up to,’ John shrugged. ‘I’ve always suspected they’re playing us for fools.’

Licking the top of Eddie’s head, I glanced towards John, but he had already turned back to face Debbie.

When I had finished grooming him, Eddie quickly fell asleep, his warm body pressed up against me, his legs entwined with mine. Debbie and John had taken their drinks to the sofa, and the conversation had moved onto Linda.

‘I know I probably got a bit carried away,’ Debbie said regretfully, ‘but, to be honest, I’m relieved that she’s gone. This business with Margery’s legacy, on top of everything else . . . it was just the last straw.’ She trailed off, a familiar weary expression flickering across her face.

‘I think it was probably long overdue,’ John said tactfully. ‘Whatever you said to her, it needed to be said.’

Debbie yawned and stretched her legs out across John’s lap. ‘When I realized you’d disappeared tonight, I thought I’d blown it,’ she said with a sleepy smile.

‘It would take more than a row with Linda to scare me off,’ John reassured her, rubbing her feet.

‘You looked as if you wished the ground would open up beneath you,’ she teased him. ‘But, after the last couple of weeks, when I hadn’t heard from you . . .’ she persisted, biting her lip anxiously.

‘I didn’t want you to think I was getting ideas about the legacy – that I wanted you to keep it and was only hanging around for the money. I guess maybe I went a bit too far the other way, backed off too much,’ John said apologetically.

‘Perhaps just a little,’ Debbie replied. Her eyelids were heavy and I could see her chin begin to sink closer to her chest. ‘What a day,’ she mumbled drowsily. Then her eyes closed and her head lolled sideways onto the cushion.

John stayed on the sofa, watching her sleep for a few minutes, before carefully extricating himself out from under her legs. He lifted the fluffy throw off the arm of the sofa, where Debbie had diligently folded it earlier in the day, shook it and lowered it over her slumbering body. Then he kissed her softly on the head, blew out the candles and left.