‘Didn’t Martha tell you his name?’
‘No she didn’t, I had to end the call before she reached that point in her tale as I had somebody knocking at the door. Why? Is it somebody I know?’
Naomi closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘It’s Ellis.’
There was a long pause, and then: ‘Are you telling me you’re seeing Ellis Ashton?’
‘I am, and I feel exactly the same for him now as I did all those years ago.’
‘Do the girls know anything of your history?’
‘No. And it will remain that way.’
‘Yes,’ said Geraldine, ‘I would imagine that would be best.’
Chapter Thirteen
Willow was frantic with worry. Cedric had been missing for over a week now and Simon and Lucy were due home any day and what on earth was she going to tell them? She certainly couldn’t tell them the truth, that when she returned from seeing Martha to discuss The Mum Situation one of the cats was missing. She hunted everywhere in the house for him with Sirius following her. Rick couldn’t say with any certainty when he’d last seen Cedric, but he did admit to leaving the front door ajar when he’d come back from trying the new gym.
‘It was open for no more than a few seconds,’ he told her, ‘while I fetched in my gym bag which I’d left in the boot of the car.’
His admission had brought her out in a cold sweat. It was the Golden Rule, as laid down by Simon and Lucy, that under no circumstances was the front or back door to be left open if the cats weren’t safely shut inside a room in the house.
‘Sorry,’ he’d said. ‘I didn’t think a few seconds would matter. But when you think about it, it’s a bit cruel to keep a pair of moggies locked up and deny them the chance to be outside enjoying what they do best, killing birds and mice.’
Willow had tried to explain that they weren’t ordinary cats;they were special Siamese cats that had cost her friends a lot of money. And that was quite apart from the sentimental attachment they had to Cedric and Sirius.
‘They couldn’t be that attached if they left them for months on end to go off travelling around the world,’ Rick had argued.
‘But they trusted me to take good care of the cats in their absence,’ Willow had said, close to tears, ‘and I promised no harm would come to them.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have gone off to your sister and left me in charge of them. Especially when I’m allergic to the blighters.’
She hadn’t expected that from him, but maybe he was right. If only she had put her sister off as he’d suggested and gone to the gym with him, she wouldn’t be in the mess she was now. And in point of fact, it hadn’t done much good spending the afternoon with Martha, because all her sister had done was complain about Mum lying to them. All that moaning she’d been forced to listen to and then the shock of discovering Cedric was missing. She’d had better days.
Since then she had trawled the neighbourhood looking for Cedric, knocking on doors and collaring people in the street to ask if they’d seen a Siamese cat. Nobody had. He had completely disappeared.
‘I think we have to face facts,’ Rick said now as she sat at the kitchen table following another fruitless search. ‘Without any experience in roaming the streets, Cedric will have been run over almost immediately. Do you know if he was chipped?’
‘Yes, he was. Both cats were.’
‘Then I suppose there’s a chance you might hear something from a vet.’
‘But it would be Simon and Lucy who the vet would contact, not me. Oh, what am I going to do?’ she said miserably.
‘We’ll tell them the truth,’ he said, crouching down in front of her, ‘that it was my fault by leaving the door open.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘that won’t do. Cedric was my responsibility; I can’t let you take the blame.’
Taking her hands in his, he raised them to his lips and kissed them. ‘I had no idea you were such a brave little stoic. But the good news is that you’ll be leaving here very soon and coming to live with me where you won’t have any cats to worry about. You’ll just have me to worry about,’ he added with a smile. ‘And I think you’ll agree, I’m much better housetrained than a cat. No hairs on the furniture and no litter tray to deal with.’
Thinking how tidy he was, that even when he cooked a meal, he never made a mess in the kitchen, she managed a small smile in return. ‘You know what really marks you out from all other men I’ve dated?’
He feigned a look of shock. ‘My God, you mean I’m not the first man in your life?’
Shaking her head, she said, ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘But tell me what marks me out as special then?’
