‘Goodnight, darling.’
‘Goodnight.’
As Bella ascended the narrow, steep staircase to her bedroom, she found herself, for the first time in a long while, wondering if this was going to be it for the rest of her life. She had always felt contented with her lot, but she was beginning to realise that her lot didn’t consist of, well,a lot. It was probably the Jack Daniel’s talking, she figured. Shaking her head wearily, she just about managed to brush her teeth before falling into bed and into a dreamless, heavy sleep.
6
In contrast, Noah did not have a peaceful night. It was partly due to the fact that he was sleeping in the same single bed that had been in his grandfather’s spare room for the past twenty-five years. It was a foot too short for him and about six inches too narrow and he only just managed to save himself from falling out and hitting the varnished floorboards of the spare room in the wee hours of the morning by force of will alone. He was a bad sleeper at the best of times, unable to allow his brain to switch off even when he wasn’t stressed. He usually poured a lot of this into his work, and it had driven his success, but as the dawn broke gently through the small, mullioned windows of his grandfather’s cottage, he wished he invested more time in trying to be mindful.
He remembered an old girlfriend of his swearing by yoga to aid a full night’s sleep; pity he hadn’t taken her up on the offer of a few sessions together, but something about yoga pants and throat breathing made him feel the ick. They’d split soon after.
‘Shit…’ he muttered as he tried to get comfortable on the very lumpy pillow. He’d given some thought to sleeping in his grandfather’s old bed but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Even though Jack hadn’t lived in the house for the four months prior to his death, there was something ghostly about the place, especially the bedroom. It wasn’t a room he frequented when his grandfather was alive, and he didn’t feel as though he should intrude, even now. Plus the fact that Monty had always guarded the space like a territorial lion, and he’d been on the wrong side of that particular cat’s claws too often to push his luck.
Lying there, watching the daylight infringe on the room, little by little, Noah’s mind started to wander. Even though the room was small and the bed even smaller, and he hadn’t slept well, he was beginning to feel a sense of relaxation that he hadn’t felt for a long time. Perhaps it was the sheer bliss of slowing down, of not living life at a hundred miles an hour for a change, but it was as if the Somerset air was expanding his lungs, filling his bloodstream with positive rural vibes instead of the lungfuls of mildly polluted air he was used to breathing in the city.Better than any ULEZ zone, he thought and was surprised to find himself smiling.
That smile abruptly vanished when he thought about what he had to do today. The chatty bartender at the pub last night had unwittingly put her finger on his main reason for being here; not that she knew it. But in a way, he thought, she’d been right. Monty might just be a cat, but he was a part of his grandfather’s life and had been company for Jack in his later years. Noah knew he owed Monty the certainty of a future one way or the other, even if that future was becoming a long-term resident of the Purrfect Paws Cattery.
It wasn’t going to be cheap though, he realised. Before he’d come down to Lower Brambleton he had gone through the bills for the last couple of months and realised that full-time long-term boarding for a cat as old as Monty was going to cost a small fortune. But what was the alternative? Put the old boy down? Get a cat basket and take him back to his flat in London, thus dooming him to be an indoor cat for the rest of his life? Try and re-home him? That didn’t seem fair at eighteen years of age. Monty had only had one careful and loving owner: his grandfather. Would it really be fair to uproot him at his time of life?
He resolved to talk things through with Mollie Wakefield, the owner of the cattery, and to see what she advised. Mollie and his grandfather had been good friends over the years and he was sure that she would be able to provide some useful insight into what happened next. All the same, he thought, it wouldn’t be an easy decision to make.
Noah rolled over again and tried to get comfortable in the small bed. It was no use; if he was going to spend another night here, he might have to bite the bullet and sleep in his grandfather’s bed. This one was definitely no good. After another hour’s tossing and turning, he decided to admit defeat and make a cup of coffee. He needed the caffeine hit and he was beginning to get hungry. Dinner at the pub seemed an awfully long time ago at the break of dawn.
When he got downstairs to the kitchen, he was reduced to rooting through what was left of the non-perishable supplies in his grandfather’s cupboards until he found an ancient jar of Mellow Bird’s instant coffee powder. For a moment he debated whether that was actually better than nothing, before the need for caffeine of any sort made the decision for him. Wincing as he dug into the jar and poured water from the newly boiled kettle into a mug, he topped it off with cold water and took the mug over to the extremely small red Formica-topped kitchen table that stood with an air of melancholy in the corner of the kitchen.
His grandfather had always insisted on eating at the table, even when it was only him. Noah remembered, with a pang so sharp it surprised him, that when he’d stayed with Jack it had been his responsibility to lay the table every evening with knives, forks, his grandfather’s cruet set and cotton napkins that matched the white tablecloth. He’d laughed at Jack’s insistence on ironing the tablecloth and the napkins every time they were washed, but the old man had been in the army for years, and that need for order and precision dominated his life, even long after he’d retired.
Noah pulled out the chair and sat at the drop-leaved table, wrapping his hands around the mug. The sun was pre-rise, and the view from the kitchen window faced east. To the far horizon, the sky was turning pink at the edges, presaging another warm day to come. It was cooler here, in the West Country, than in the claustrophobic heat of the city, but the warmth was there, beginning to encroach on the day.
Noah braced himself and took a sip of the coffee. Single-blend Italian it was not, he thought with a wince. But, risking a second glug, he couldn’t help a smile. The taste took him back to sharing a cuppa with his grandfather at this table. No matter how much he’d tried to persuade Jack to invest in a decent coffee machine, his grandfather had drunk Mellow Bird’s to the end. There was something comforting in that, even if the actual taste wasn’t to Noah’s liking.
Perhaps it was the same with Monty. The cat definitely wouldn’t be Noah’s first choice of companion, but he felt he owed it to his grandfather to come up with some kind of solution. He hoped that Mollie would be able to offer him one.
Noah had arranged to go to Purrfect Paws at nine o’clock. That seemed very far away, as he watched the sun slowly rising over the top of the tall trees at the bottom of his grandfather’s garden. Unaccustomed to enforced lack of activity, Noah wondered what to do with the hours between now and then. Perhaps a walk might clear his head? The past couple of days in London had been unbearably hot, and a heatwave had been predicted for the next few days. The stone walls of the cottage would protect him somewhat, but he was glad he didn’t have that much to do while he was staying here. Knocking back the last of his coffee, he decided to take a shower and have a quick walk. He hoped that the beautiful scenery and fresh air of Lower Brambleton would help to clear his head.
7
‘Morning, Monty!’ Bella injected an extra-special note of cheer into her voice as she approached Monty’s living quarters. Monty barely flickered an eyelid in her direction. That was fairly standard though. Whether it was his age, his breed or his normally very grumpy temperament, Monty was largely indifferent to anyone making overtures in his direction.
‘I’ve got you some of that gourmet food you like,’ Bella continued. She reached out a tentative hand to ruffle the top of Monty’s brown and black dappled head, but this morning, he wasn’t having it. With a warning yowl, he ducked away.
‘Oh, come on, mate,’ she encouraged him gently. ‘You know you’ll feel better if you let us give you a little bit of TLC.’
Monty disagreed. With a disdainful look and a weary hiss, he retreated to the back of his enclosure.
Bella sighed. It didn’t seem to matter what she or Mollie did to try to encourage him to be more friendly, Monty largely threw it back at them. Ever since he’d come into Purrfect Paws, he’d been miserable, despite their best efforts to bring him out of his shell. Bella couldn’t blame him. Losing his owner had hit the cat hard. Many people believed that cats were pragmatists when it came to their relationships; Monty, it would seem, was the exception to that rule. Although Bella wasn’t sure if she could believe Mollie’s assurances that when Jack had been alive, Monty had been affectionate. The change seemed too great now that poor Monty had been orphaned.
When Bella had checked the diary that morning to see if there were going to be any new boarders in the cattery area of the centre, she’d been pleased to see that an adoption was going ahead that morning, for one of the longer-term inmates of the rescue centre, a lovely older male called Brutus.
Shutting the door to Monty’s living space once more, Bella did her rounds of the other residents. There were four other cats boarding at the moment while their owners were on holiday. She made sure that they all had plenty of food and water and clean litter trays, and spent some time with each one, fussing and chatting to them, before heading out to the larger part of the centre where the rescue cats came in and were housed.
This was both the best and worst part of her job at Purrfect Paws. It broke her heart every time a new cat was brought to them. Some of them were injured, some of them were malnourished, and all of them, without fail, were confused and disoriented at the disruption to their lives. Over the time she’d been working there, she’d learned how to bathe and clean often desperately neglected cats, and while she’d sustained a fair few scratches from those who still had the will to fight back, she never got cross with them. Part of the joy of the job was helping to nurse the poor things back to health, and then seeing them finding a forever home was the icing on the cake.
It had been quiet for a few days, and Mollie and Bella had taken the opportunity to do a summer clean of some of the unoccupied pens. At the moment, there were only six residents in the rescue shelter, which was a relief. They hated having to turn rescues away, but when they were full to bursting, and their home-foster volunteers couldn’t help, they had to cast their net wider to help. Thankfully, they had a good list of contacts in Mollie’s old-school black leather address book, but when things got too busy, it became more and more difficult. Spring and summer were particularly hectic times, and Mollie’s shelter often ended up housing rescues from other centres. Bella knew not to take the relative quiet for granted: one phone call, and everything could change.
‘Hey, Brutus,’ she crooned to the largest cat in the centre. Brutus had come in five months ago, matted, half-starved and missing an eye. It had taken a while for him to settle, but gradually the large, long-haired black cat had grown to trust his new handlers. Even though he’d only had his new name since he’d been at the shelter, he was already responding to it, and Bella hoped he’d keep it once he went to pastures new. With his one remaining bright, clear green eye and his general air of put-upon nobility, it suited him.
On hearing his name, Brutus trotted up to the door of his pen and bumped against Bella’s hand for some fuss. The loud, rumbling purr that had surprised them all, the first time they’d heard it, soon followed as she stroked the top of his head and down his long back to the feather-duster-like tail that curled happily at the attention.
