Christmas at the Cat Cafe

Linda’s shopping habits notwithstanding, by the end of their first week the overcrowded conditions in the flat were beginning to take their toll. Perhaps sensing that tempers were close to fraying, Linda insisted that she would make dinner for the three of them on Friday night, as ‘my way of saying thank you’. And so, as the clock struck eight that evening, Debbie and Sophie waited at the dining table, while Linda bustled and clattered in the kitchen. Debbie looked worn out, but Sophie’s slumped posture and bored expression conveyed something closer to ill will. She had foregone an evening with her boyfriend in order to be home for dinner and was making no secret of the fact that she resented the sacrifice.

Eventually Linda tottered through from the kitchen, balancing three plates in her hands. ‘Voilà! Superfood salad,’ she announced, lowering the plates onto the table with a flourish.

Debbie smiled wanly at the pile of grains and pulses in front of her. ‘Mmm, wow!’ she murmured, with an unconvincing attempt at enthusiasm. Sophie scowled.

‘Don’t you like it, Soph?’ Linda asked, as her niece began to push the contents of her plate around reluctantly.

I sensed Debbie’s patience was wearing thin as she watched her daughter’s ill-disguised revulsion. ‘Come on, Sophie,’ she chivvied her. ‘Eat up, please. Auntie Linda has gone to a lot of trouble to make this.’ But Sophie merely glared sideways at her mother and picked at the mound of vegetation with her fork.

‘You don’t like quinoa?’ Linda asked, looking concerned.

‘No, I’m not a massive fan of keen-wah,’ Sophie replied, her drawling enunciation carrying an unmistakeable hint of mimicry.

I watched as she picked up a single grain on the prongs of her fork and peered at it dubiously.

‘There’s no need for sarcasm, Soph. Just eat,’ said Debbie, fixing her daughter with a stern stare. Sophie placed the tip of the fork into her mouth and began to chew the single grain, slowly. Debbie turned towards Linda. ‘She’s always been a fussy eater,’ she said apologetically.

There was a sudden crash as Sophie’s fork hit her plate. With a furious look at Debbie, she stood up and thrust her chair back, forcing the rug into messy folds behind her. On the sofa, the commotion made me jump, and I saw Beau’s body spasm as he jerked awake in alarm under the table. ‘I’m going to make a sandwich,’ Sophie mumbled, picking up her plate of uneaten salad and carrying it into the kitchen.

‘Sophie!’ Debbie said tersely, sounding at once cross and embarrassed. ‘Linda has gone to the trouble of making that for you – the least you can do is try it,’ she called after her daughter’s retreating back. In the kitchen, Sophie was noisily scraping the contents of her plate into the rubbish bin.

‘It’s fine, really,’ Linda said in a conciliatory tone. ‘Quinoa is an acquired taste, I suppose.’

Debbie ignored her, and kept her eyes firmly fixed on Sophie who, after much tutting and slamming of cupboard doors, stomped upstairs with her substitute meal.

It troubled me to see Debbie and Sophie bickering. It reminded me of how things used to be, when Debbie had first taken me into the flat. Back then, their arguments had been a regular occurrence, usually culminating in Sophie storming out, leaving Debbie morose and tearful. For a while I had blamed myself for Sophie’s unhappiness. Their relationship was already fragile, in the wake of Debbie’s divorce and their move to Stourton, and I worried that Debbie’s fondness for me had given Sophie another reason to feel hard done by. In time, however, Sophie’s resentment towards me had mellowed, at first to tolerance, and eventually to something approaching affection. It had been a long time since she had deliberately flung her school bag at my head, or referred to me as ‘that mangy fleabag’.

I sat in the cardboard box, listening to the ceiling joists creak beneath Sophie’s thudding footsteps. I was aware of stirrings of disquiet in the pit of my stomach and a feeling of foreboding that life in the flat might be about to get worse. Debbie had directed her annoyance at Sophie rather than Linda, but I suspected she might be harbouring frustrations of her own. As I watched Debbie chew her way stoically through her superfood salad, I wondered whether, in fact, she didn’t much like quinoa, either.

6

Since Debbie had made the decision, a few months earlier, to close the café at weekends, Saturday mornings in the flat were usually a laid-back, leisurely affair. Debbie would stock up on pastries from the bakery, and she and Sophie would settle down on the sofa in their pyjamas, licking sugar and crumbs off their fingers while the kittens and I napped or washed nearby. The Saturday morning that followed the superfood-salad argument, however, did not begin in the customary relaxed manner. The effects of the previous evening’s conflict seemed to hang over the flat and its residents like a cloud.