Cleo

“I think perhaps you should put her back down,” I suggested nervously.

“Nonsense! Pussy knows I adore cats, doesn’t he?”

“She’s a she, actually…”

As I tried to disengage Cleo from the necklace, she caught the bauble between her teeth and crunched. Like the first boulder in an avalanche, it tumbled to the ground. In an unstoppable flow of slow motion the bauble was then followed by a cascade of beads, gems and ribbon. Audrey shrieked. Not even the one-armed master would be capable of restoring the pile of festive rubble that now lay at her feet.

Audrey declined my offer to string the beads together again, or at least find somebody who might be able to. I grabbed an old supermarket bag and shoved what was left of the artwork into it. She was gracious enough to leave without strangling me. Or Cleo.

I was starting to feel desperate. Was nobody right for Cleo? Finally Andrea, a young doctor with green eyes and a froth of dark curls, arrived. She swore she was a cat person and would take good care of Cleo. She didn’t try to seduce Cleo as others had and failed. She simply looked around the house and asked questions in an easygoing way. As Andrea stood to leave, Cleo arched her back in a sensuous curve and invited Andrea to pat her. With our cat’s paw print of approval, we signed Andrea up.

I knew that as well as being capable of great affection Cleo was tough and independent, a survivor. Nevertheless, I worried. Sinking my nose into her fragrant fur, I prayed we’d see her again. The prospect of leaving the kids for three months was like chopping an arm off and putting it in the freezer. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t going to be an amputation like losing Sam, but a mere putting on ice. Mum and Steve assured me the children would be fine, especially with Anne Marie’s help. I knew all three of them loved Rob and Lydia, but they couldn’t provide that unique combination of neuroticism and adoration that is a mother’s love. They kept telling me three months would fly. Philip assured me he was going to be engrossed by his pressure-cooker MBA squeezing a two-year course into one.

Cambridge has been home to the best of Britain’s grey matter for centuries. Being clever people, the inhabitants have arranged to live in one of the most picturesque towns on earth. Its thirty-one colleges, ancient and modern, are tossed loosely together around the river Cam, which can be sluggish or romantic, depending on its mood. Even on that first day in the knifelike January air, the beauty of Cambridge dragged me out of internal melodrama. The turrets of King’s College Chapel pointed skywards with such delicacy they were surely fashioned by bees, not human hands.

“Miss Brown, we’re expecting you,” said a voice that sounded as if it came directly from God. It carried knowledge, power, authority—and belonged to the college porter.

Something about the porter reassured me I was part of his scene now and everything would be okay. After he showed me to a large, comfortable room overlooking four fruit trees, I spread photos of the children, Philip and Cleo on every available shelf. And burst into tears.

Everything about Cambridge was unfamiliar. Back home, January is one of the hottest months of the year. Even though I knew England was going to be cold, I hadn’t imagined the chill would penetrate every form of clothing and footwear I owned. The English version of the sun dragged itself out of bed at half-past seven and hovered in the air like a reluctant twenty-watt bulb before collapsing into the gloom around three p.m.

Nevertheless, I adored the oldness of Cambridge. The cobblestones, the creaking colleges, the dreaminess of boy soprano voices wafting towards what must surely be heaven at Evensong in King’s College Chapel (which, by the way, is nothing short of a cathedral). I loved the quirkiness of Cambridge and its adherence to rules so ancient nobody can remember why they exist. Only college Fellows are allowed to walk on the grass (though I never dared, in case I was the wrong sort of Fellow). Because most of Cambridge’s rules serve no apparent practical purpose, there’s a pleasant tolerance of odd behavior. If, for instance, a professor turns up at a formal dinner wearing a diving suit and mask (it was rumored one had) he was simply adhering to some tradition nobody else could recall.

Everywhere I went in Cambridge there were cats. Being hopelessly cat-sick, I tried to befriend the fat marmalade feline who sat on the brick wall behind the fruit trees. He scurried away at the sight of me.

One day I saw a black tail disappearing around the corner of an ancient church. My heart leapt in recognition. Logically, I knew it wasn’t Cleo, but maybe the creature carried some of her spirit. But by the time I’d clambered over the slippery paving down the side of the church the cat had disappeared.