Cleo

I followed her tentatively up the staircase, safe in the knowledge that if I broke down Ginny of all people would know what to do. She pulled a curtain aside and beckoned me towards the window. Our old bungalow was barely recognizable. The front garden with its path lined with forget-me-nots had been obliterated, along with the boys’ digging patch, to make way for a concrete slab wide enough to park two cars alongside each other. Sensible, yes. No more rain-soaked treks carrying groceries to the front door. Not that it resembled our front door anymore. The dark paneling had been painted white, along with the mock-Tudor beams that had once given the place “character.” Someone had decided to rid the place of its ghosts by throwing buckets of white paint over it. The house seemed narrower, chastened. Rob’s bedroom window where Cleo used to sit was the same shape, the roof pitched at the same angle, but it wasn’t our house anymore. Like the zigzag and everything else in the neighborhood, it had moved on.

I’d been steeling myself for flashbacks on this visit. Instead, looking down on the old house with Ginny, I experienced an unexpected sensation of lightness and peace. A circle had completed itself. Our life on the zigzag was faded as an old photograph. Nothing but a memory. The only thing that mattered was the lives we had now.

Even after Cleo died she continued to leave physical reminders of her presence. Unmistakable black hairs were scattered through our sheets and clothes. There was frozen cat food in the back of the freezer. Hauling Cleo’s rejected dog bed out from under the house, I had an urge to call Rob. His line was busy, of course.

“Were you trying to call me?” I asked when I finally got through.

“No, I was talking to someone.”

“Who?”

“Chantelle. She’s back in Australia.”

“Oh, that’s lovely! With her boyfriend?”

“She’s broken up with him.”

The bond of friendship between Rob and Chantelle had deepened with the death of her brother. Sam’s loss was so much a part of him that Rob was able to understand a lot of Chantelle’s pain. They both now belonged to the nameless club of people who have lost brothers. Within a year they were living together, engaged to be married and discussing what type of kitten they’d like to add to their household. Intense research was carried out over the Internet. A British Blue, perhaps, or maybe even a Siamese.

When they stayed a night at the house of Chantelle’s Aunt Trudy, who’d introduced them nearly ten years earlier, the resident Burmese insisted on sleeping on their bed.

“No way am I living with a pedigreed kitten,” Rob said next day. “That cat spent the whole night talking to me, telling me to get out of his bed.”

“What is it with you and cats?” I said.

“Dunno. Guess it’s a Cleo thing.”

I smiled, remembering six-year-old Rob cradling his brand-new kitten, how she’d helped him sleep alone in his bedroom for the first time without Sam, “spoken” to him through his dreams and helped him develop friendships. Watching over him for nearly a quarter of a century, Cleo our cat goddess had presided over countless birthday parties and nursed Rob through illness. From her resting place under the daphne bush, she was still exerting her influence.

If and when Rob and Chantelle do acquire a cat, Rob says, it’ll have to be an ordinary mog. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be a crossbreed with just a whisker of Abyssinian.

THE BEGINNING

Acknowledgments

Every kitten belongs to a litter. Likewise, Cleo’s story would never have been born without help from many wonderful people. I’d like to thank Catherine Drayton at InkWell and Amy Pyle, Laurie Parkin, Michaela Hamilton, and the magnificent team at Citadel for embracing Cleo with such enthusiasm. Thanks, too, to Louise Thurtell and Jude McGee in Sydney, who believed in our cat story from the beginning. They provided me with unwavering support through various forms of self-doubt and an unexpected health hiccup while I was writing the book.

A purr to U.S. friends Helen Trammell, Faith Kaiser and Sarah Heineken, who discovered my stories on the Internet and sent generous reassurance that people laugh and cry about the same things whatever part of the world they live in.

Huge thanks to Roderick and Gillian Deane, who encouraged me to write about Cleo in the first place. And to Douglas Drury for providing soothing lunches during what seemed, to a superficial 500-word-story journalist, long months of writing. Julie Wentworth, the world’s best yoga teacher, deserves a salute for her flowers and phone calls, which arrived just when they were needed. As does Sarah Wood for regular laughs over cups of coffee, along with Heather and Mano Thevathasan for countless acts of kindness. Big hugs to my sister Mary for her loving care during my recovery.