April 12
I hung up the phone and stared at the handset a moment longer, as if it were the one to blame.
For twentytwo years Ive been a lettolet agent, moving flats with overdue mortgages, tenants with names on the lease, leaky pipes and, on one occasion, a parrot swearing in three languages. Id never, however, had to list a cat as part of the encumbrance.
Right, let me run through the specs again, I muttered, leafing through my notebook. Twobed flat on Baker Street, third floor, sixtytwo square metres. Owner passed away in January. Heirs a son and a daughter from Birmingham want a quick sale. The cat isnt being reclaimed, they wont take it to a shelter, and theyll not consent to euthanasia. Cat included.
I sighed and added a line that would make any solicitors stomach churn: Cat included in price. Offers welcome.
The first viewing was scheduled for Saturday.
I opened the door for the prospective buyer a tall woman, about fiftyfive, wrapped in a drab grey coat. She crossed the threshold and halted. The flat smelled exactly as a house lived in alone for years does: lavender soap, aged paperbacks, a faint hint of valerian.
Ethel Pratt, she introduced herself, not extending a hand. She glanced around. And wheres this bonus?
The cat lounged on the windowsill of the big room a massive, gingerwhite beast. He stared at Ethel without blinking, his gaze neither fearful nor curious, merely an endless, weary patience.
Thats how you look at things youve been abandoned by.
Ethel walked through the flat in silence. She ran a finger along the spines of books on the shelf Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafyev, their covers already softworn. In the kitchen hung a torn calendar stuck on 17January. On the sill sat three pots of withered geraniums and a bowl, pristine and empty, exactly where the left leg of the stool met the floor.
Does anyone feed him? she asked without turning.
The neighbour, I replied. Tammy Clarke, number36. She pops in twice a day. The heirs top her up a little each time. Not much, but they do.
Ethel returned to the living room. The cat had not shifted his posture front paws tucked, eyes fixed on the courtyard where leafless February poplars swayed, and a woman with a pram trudged past.
Whats his name?
Marquis, the heirs had decided.
Marquis, Ethel repeated, expression unchanged.
The cat gave no sign of acknowledgement.
She called three days later.
Margaret, Ive thought it over. The areas decent, the tube is close. But the price is still above market, even counting the extra. And the place needs work new wallpaper, fresh linoleum. Id take it if you knock off another £300.
Ill see what I can do, I said.
The heirs reduced the price by £200 and Ethel agreed.
Three weeks later the paperwork was signed. Ethel came back twice more once with a tape measure, once with a notebook measuring walls, scribbling notes, doing mental calculations. Marquis watched her. When she crouched by the window to check the radiator the second time, he leapt down, padded over, and settled a footandahalf away, not closer.
Hello there, she whispered.
Marquis flickered his eyes once, slowly, and turned away.
Tammy Clarke turned out to be a slight, nervous woman with startled eyes. She waited for Ethel at the front door on the day the handover was to be signed.
You the new owner? she asked.
I hope so, Ethel replied.
Ill tell you about Marquis. Nina Whitaker, the previous owner, rescued him ten years ago when he was a scraggly thing, halfstarved, in November. She fed him, looked after him. He never left her side.
Tammy fell silent, then lowered her voice.
When Nina had a stroke in the kitchen, he was lying right beside her head. The ambulance broke in, and he stayed there, not moving a muscle.
Ethel stood in the doorway, a ring of fresh keys in her hand three keys: two for the locks, one for the postbox that now gathered no letters.
Hes harmless, Tammy continued. No scratching, no furniture damage. The only problem is he wont come to you. Ive fed him for two months and he never once approached me. He only eats when Im out the door. I put a bowl down, and he darts away. When I return its empty. He never comes near me.
Maybe hes scared.
No, hes waiting. Every evening, about six oclock, he sits by the door and watches. Nina used to come home at six from her walks.
Ethel moved in on a Saturday. She owned few possessions after twentythree years as a cardiac nurse, then a junior doctor, then a redundancy, a cramped flat in Birley, aching knees and a weary heart, owning a home had become a longstanding plan, a goal that finally seemed within reach after nine years of saving.
The movers barged in a sofa, two wardrobes, boxes of crockery. Marquis disappeared. I found him later in the storage cupboard, tucked behind an ironing board, ears flattened, massive and still.
I understand, I said softly. Its hard for you. Its hard for me too.
I placed a bowl by the same leftleg of the stool where the old one had stood and slipped out, closing the kitchen door behind me.
By morning the bowl was empty.
A month later we were living sidebyside, same walls, different worlds.
Ethel rose at six, sipped tea in the kitchen, trudged off to her night shift at the community health centre on Union Street not cardiology, of course, but shed taken the first offer after a year of unemployment.
Marquis only appeared in the kitchen after the lock clicked. I knew this because I left a strand of my own greying hair across the bowl each night. When the hair lay on the floor, he ate.
In the evenings I sank into the armchair by the window and read the books left by Nina Chekhov, his pages filled with tiny pencil notes in the margins: exclamation points, single words like yes, precisely, me too. Reading them felt less like sorrow than a strange recognition, as if a woman Id never met was thinking my thoughts.
Marquis sat in the hallway, not the bedroom, right by the front door, waiting each night at six, as punctual as a clock.
At the end of March Ethel fell ill. The flu struck in one night thirtynine degrees, sore throat, every joint aching. She called in sick, took some paracetamol and went to bed. She couldnt muster the strength to get up, let alone feed the cat.
Marquis, she croaked from the bedroom, sorry, I cant.
Silence.
She slipped into a heavy, sticky sleep, buzzing in her ears. She woke to a weight pressing on her feet. Not heavy, just warm and steady.
Marquis lay at the foot of the bed, curled like a biscuit, eyes unwavering, earnest. For the first time in weeks he wasnt in the hallway or the cupboard; he was right there.
Ethel didnt move. She feared that if she did, hed drift away. She simply stared, and he stared back, a silence that needed no words because everything had already been said.
You already know, she whispered.
Marquis pressed his ears against his paws, lowered his head, closed his eyes.
He stayed.
For three days she was ill; for three days he rested at her feet, only venturing to the bowl when she forced herself to pour food. On the third day, when her temperature fell and she sat on the kitchen floor wrapped in a blanket with a mug of broth, Marquis hopped onto the stool, settled beside her and began to purr a faint, hoarse rumble as if hed forgotten how.
Ethel set down her mug, removed her glasses, reached out slowly, palm up.
Marquis sniffed her fingers, nudged his forehead against her hand.
She wept not out of sentimentality, but because the truth hit her plain as day: she had bought a life that wasnt hers, with books that werent hers and a cat that wasnt hers, because there simply wasnt room in her own. And the cat had stayed in a life that wasnt his, with a woman who wasnt his, because he had nowhere else to go. Two encumbrances, two addons, two extra beings priced into the deal.
Now they sat together in the kitchen, a fifteenyearold cat and a fiftysixyearold woman, sharing the same heat.
Marquis purred, and Ethel rested her hand on his massive head and thought perhaps this was what they call the thing that comes when youre not looking for it.
In May Ethel ripped down the old floral wallpaper the tiny brown flowers that made the flat feel gloomier than it was and painted the walls a warm cream. She kept the linoleum for now; the money wasnt there to replace it all at once, but it no longer mattered. The flat stopped feeling like someone elses. She didnt even notice when that shift happened.
Ninas books remained on the shelf; Ethel added a handful of her own about a dozen. Chekhov, still annotated, sat in its familiar spot. Sometimes she opened it in the evenings and read not the story but the margins: the alien yes, precisely, me too. She nodded.
The dead geraniums were tossed out as soon as she moved in they were beyond rescue. She planted fresh seedlings on the same sill where Marquis had first perched during the viewing. He now chose that spot less often, preferring the armchair beside her or, on long evenings, her lap.
At six oclock he no longer shuffled to the door.
In June Margaret Ellis, the agent, happened to meet Ethel at the local Tesco on Baker Street. Ethel was in line, a bag of cat food and a bottle of kefir in hand.
Hows the flat? Margaret asked. Happy with it?
No regrets, Ethel replied.
And the cat?
She paused, shifting the cat food from one hand to the other.
You know, Margaret, they shouldve kept the price up. They sold it for too little.
Margaret laughed. Ethel did not. She was serious.
When she got home, Marquis was waiting in the hallway by the shoes. It was his new spot. The moment the lock clicked, he lifted his head, gave a slow blink.
Thats how you greet someone youve been waiting for.
