Cleo

“You mean Cleo could help my dreams come true?” I asked.

The witch laughed, an ordinary old lady’s laugh, not a cackle.

“On a simplistic level, I guess you could say so,” she said.

We were interrupted by a tap on the door. It was Tina, casting her quick journalist’s eye over the witch. From that one glance I could tell she was soaking up enough raw material to produce a thousand words.

“Sorry to trouble you,” she said. “But there’s someone down-stairs wanting to see you. Says his name is Dustin.”

Absence

A cat seizes opportunities whenever they arise.

Cleo was on edge, as if a low-grade electric current was running through her fur. Whiskers twitching, she paced the carpet. Up, down, under the table and back again. When a car hummed down the street, she froze and flattened her ears. Once the car had gone she’d regained her composure and resumed her carpet patrol. Our next-door neighbor’s son shouted to a friend. She arched her back and sank her claws in the rug.

She kept returning to the desk under my bedroom window, which had the best view of the street. Its gravitational force pulled her back, and back again to survey our front garden and the houses across the road. At the sound of a bird’s call she sprang up on the desk and wove through the curtains to peer out. She then dropped back to the floor with a disappointed thud. The clatter of a distant rubbish tin and she was back on the desk again, scanning the neighborhood before jumping down again to resume her restless stride.

Th en the sound she’d been waiting for—the click of the front gate. Bounding on the desk and through the curtains, she stared intensely at the figure approaching the house. Her tail unfurled and quivered with delight. She sprang to the floor and sped down the hallway toward the front door squeaking mews of delight.

When I opened the door to Philip, Cleo lunged at him and stretched her front paws up his thighs.

“She’s been waiting for you,” I said, as he gathered her in his arms. Cleo clambered up his fisherman’s jumper, licked his neck and burrowed under his chin. Not since Cleopatra made up with Mark Antony had a reunion been so loving.

The children’s welcome was more cautious. Lydia glanced up from a wooden jigsaw puzzle she was working on with an expression that implied a certain amount of groveling would be required if she was ever to take Philip seriously again. Rob emerged from his bedroom door and nodded politely.

As weeks melted into months, warmth and trust gradually returned. The bond we’d had before grew even stronger. Even though I tried to keep part of my heart cordoned off in case it was shattered again there was no doubt I loved—we all loved—Philip.

Late one Sunday afternoon he bundled us all—including Cleo—into his car.

“Where are we going?” I had a longtime aversion to secrets and surprises.

“You’ll see.”

With Cleo perched on Rob’s knee and Lydia beside them, the atmosphere in the backseat was surprisingly genial.

“Are you taking us to a circus?” Lydia asked. Her latest ambition was to become what she called an “upside down lady” in a pink sequin bodysuit and matching feathers hanging from the roof of a circus tent.

“Not this time,” Philip replied. I was impressed how quickly he’d learned parents’ language—using the word “no” sparingly.

“What are we going to the museum for?” Rob asked as we turned into the botanic gardens that lead up to the museum.

“You’ll find out.”

Philip drew to a halt in the same parking lot I’d used that evening we’d first met. He asked us to wait in the car for a minute and disappeared up the steps.

“Are we going to see dinosaurs?” Lydia asked.

“We can’t,” Rob replied, “it’s too late. The museum’s closed.”

“That’s right,” I added. “It’s nearly sunset.”

A gold medallion sun sank in cotton-candy clouds. Long shadows stretched from the columns in front of the museum. It was a perfect night, an almost exact replica of how it had been when we first set eyes on each other. It didn’t take much to envisage the bridal party standing on the steps and that powerful surge of recognition at the sight of my handsome army boy. I still wasn’t certain if my physical reaction had been the result of a cosmic explosion of soul mates colliding—or simply undiluted lust.

Philip reappeared and beckoned us to follow him up the steps. We clambered out of the car. Normally, Rob would have left Cleo in the backseat, but he seemed to sense something momentous was about to happen. He carried her up the steps, while I took Lydia’s hand.

To my surprise, Philip was standing where I’d first seen him, in a shaft of evening sun slightly to the right of the museum doors.

“There’s something I want you to see,” he said, standing aside and holding out his hand. He seemed to be pointing toward a concrete window frame so recessed and steeped in shadow it was difficult to notice anything unusual about it. I was beginning to wonder if Philip wasn’t as straightforward as I’d imagined.

“Look closer,” he smiled.