Cleo

“Mid thirties, maybe.”

“Is she going to jail?”

Gazing over my left shoulder, he shook his head slowly.

“They must be prosecuting her for something. A fine, at least?”

A fly performed a lazy figure eight above his head.

“They can’t.” His voice was calm and kind, as if he was speaking to a lunatic. “It was an accident.”

What did he mean accident?

“There was no way she could’ve seen him running out from behind the bus. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

My brain spun to a halt. He might as well have been saying the sky was green. If Sam’s death really had been an accident and the woman wasn’t at fault, there was no one to blame. I had no right to hate her. I might even be expected to forgive her.

My heart was tight and hard. Forgiveness was for the gods.

Resuscitation

Cats are willing to take into account the fact that people are slow learners.

The moment my old school friend Rosie heard we had a kitten there was no stopping her. I put her off the first time she phoned. That was like a bowl of sardines to a starving stray. A couple of days after the inquest she broke through the invisible barricades around our house. Notorious for her ebullience and lack of tact, Rosie wasn’t everyone’s favorite person. Steve suddenly remembered an important appointment he had in town.

“Poor itty-bitty baby Cleo,” she crooned, examining Cleo through giant red spectacles. “Fancy having to come and live wid a whole lot of humans who aren’t cat people.”

“I didn’t say we’re not cat people, Rosie.”

“So you can honestly say you are a cat person?” she asked, peering at me over her crimson horizons.

“Yes. Maybe…I’m not sure.”

“Then you’re definitely not a cat person,” she said. “You’d know if you were. It’s like being a Christian or a Muslim. You just know when you are one.”

Rosie didn’t have a Church of England background like mine, where you could mumble the Lord’s Prayer, sing “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” and slurp tepid tea while avoiding conversation with the vicar before going home free from any sense of allegiance.

Rosie was a cat lover extraordinaire. She’d adopted six strays she’d named Scruffy, Ruffy, Beethoven, Sibelius, Madonna and Doris, though it was impossible to guess which one belonged to its name. Adopted wasn’t exactly the right word. More accurately, Rosie had invited a sextet of four-legged thugs to invade and decimate her property. Ungrateful to the core, the fur balls shredded her curtains and splintered her furniture while sprinkling her house with the unmistakable stench of ammonia. When they weren’t indulging in gang warfare and raiding rubbish tins they were murdering local wildlife. Whenever humans dared venture through Rosie’s gate, six sinister shapes skulked under her bed. None of which, she said, stopped them having fabulous personalities and being unbelievably cute and adorable.

There was nothing Rosie didn’t know about cats. Her radar was bound to suss out a member of the kittyhood that had been condemned to life with us on the zigzag.

“She’s not exactly the prettiest kitten, is she?” Rosie continued. “I’ve seen more fur on a golf ball. She looks like she’s been in prison camp. And those eyes. They’re so…bulgy.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” I said, riding an unexpected surge of loyalty. “She’s a work in progress.”

“Hmmm,” said Rosie doubtfully. “Part Abyssinian, eh? Famed for their love of water and high places.” Rosie used every opportunity to show off her knowledge. “Even taking into account that she’s related to the short-haired Asian cats that are lightly built and therefore able to tolerate warm climates more easily than their more sturdy European cousins, she’s pretty skinny. What are you feeding her?”

“Cat food,” I sighed.

“Yes, but what sort of cat food?”

“I don’t know. Stuff from the pet shop.”

“Vitamin supplements?” she asked in courtroom tones.

“Of course,” I lied, changing the subject. “Do you want to see her play sock-er?”

I held a sock above Cleo’s nose. Cleo pretended she’d never seen such a thing before.

Rosie shook her head. “Cats don’t play fetch,” she said. Her ginger curls tumbled forwards as she reached into her red handbag. I felt a twinge of remorse. Even though she could be irritating, she deserved a thousand brownie points for turning up. So many of our friends had found excuses to withdraw.

Rosie hadn’t changed her manner since Sam’s death. Her behavior was mercifully dictatorial and cheerful as ever. What’s more, she wasn’t speaking to me in that hushed, now familiar, tone that implied the house had some kind of curse over it.

“You’ll need these,” she said, thrusting a pair of dog-eared books at me. Kittens and How to Raise Them and Your Cat and Its Health. “Oh, and I thought this might be helpful.”