Juniper hopped down from his perch to investigate and then leapt into the empty box in one lithe jump. Catherine laughed and teased him with one of the cardboard straps. He snatched at it with his claws and pulled it into his mouth when he caught it.
“Stop distracting me,” she said through a grin, and turned back to studying the instructions.
Time slipped by as she absorbed herself in the task, stopping only to refill her water glass or to shoo Juniper away when he tried to bat the fixings off the coffee table.
It had gone midnight when, with a satisfied sigh, Catherine clicked the final shelf into place and rubbed her hand along the smooth woodgrain as if she’d cut and sanded it herself.
“Et voilà!”
With wide eyes, Juniper stared up at the finished construction standing proud in the centre of the room.
“What do you think?”
Juniper answered by rearing back and launching himself onto the highest shelf.
Despite her late-night furniture-building exertions,and the Francesca Dalton-related breakthrough, Catherine did not sleep well. Too hot, she kicked off the duvet, but then too cold, she groped for it, pulling it around herself, only to be prickling with sweat moments later. In her more lucid wakeful moments, thoughts raced through her mind, and even with all her techniques, she ended up giving over valuable sleeping time indulging them.
Should she try to talk to Jeremy about her discreet diagnosis of Francesca? Maybe he could get her some help.Maybe it’s none of your business, and you should leave well enough alone.She’d got what she needed from it, right? Closure, of sorts.
But just when she’d settled that, she had a sudden rush of regret concerning her evening’s activities. Would her new neighbours think it weird that she’d taken the liberty of constructing their flatpack furniture when she was only meant to be feeding the cat?
Oh God. It was weird.She stared into the swirling blackness, as waves of mortification washed over her. Should she go back up there now and take the bookcase apart before they returned?
No, that’d be even weirder. Leave it and claim it’s a neighbourly gesture — a moving-in gift, a wedding present?
Ugh… she may as well get used to having no sleep with newlyweds moving in above her. Maybe that’s what all the banging was the other night? They were having weird Spice Girls sex right above her head.But what sort of people have sex to the Spice Girls?
Perhaps she should offer them some therapy on top of the flatpack construction.
A dull thud came from above —Juniper. She didn’t like cats, but she could make an exception for one.Maybe.
Next thing she knew, she was chasing Francesca with a chicken club sandwich. Francesca sprinted away, somehow faster than Catherine even in preposterous heels and a sequinned cocktail dress, but still she followed until they reached a tall bookcase. Francesca turned and laughed at her before scaling the furniture like a sparkly spider-woman, climbing up and up as Catherine watched helplessly from below. “Wait!” She reached her arms up, but Francesca lashed out and clawed at her skin until Catherine fell and jolted awake in her bed.
It didn’t take a psychotherapist to work that one out.
Catherine’s eyes strained against the bright sunlight pouring into the room. She’d been so exhausted she’d forgotten to draw the curtains before flopping into bed, then failed to notice they were still open during the night. Resisting the urge to let the residual fug of a fitful sleep weigh her down in the bed any longer, she rose and stretched her neck from side to side. Her shoulders were surprisingly achy, probably thanks to her shelf-building efforts.
Perhaps she would see whether Penny fancied a wild swim; it’d been a while, and the weather was clement, at least according to her app. Penny would be up for it if Loz was still out of town; perhaps they could make an afternoon of it — an early pub dinner.
With the seed of a weekend plan sown in her mind,Catherine got dressed to head out for her morning walk. Pulling her front door to a close, she stepped to the building’s main door and stopped in her tracks — it was open. Not wide open but unlatched and slightly ajar. She could have sworn she’d locked it last night. Apparently not; she had been a little distracted after all the Francescafun.
Stepping outside, she pulled the door firmly closed behind her, giving it a little shoulder budge just to make sure the latch wasn’t on the fritz. She squinted against the sun and turned her collar up against the wind, still sharp with the receding bite of winter.
She strode amongst the early-morning joggers and dog walkers — a brisk canter around Jephson Gardens, with its glorious blooms battling against the bluster. On her route home, she intentionally detoured to Snoots, smoothing her hands through her wind-ruffled hair as she stepped inside to the buttery aroma of freshly baked pastries and the hiss of the espresso machine.
She joined the queue of customers and glanced up at the hand-written chalk board, even though she knew her order by heart — a tall oat milk latte and a croissant. Shuffling forward with the queue, she pulled out her phone to text Penny about weekend plans, but a voice grabbed her attention — that soft Scottish lilt. Catherine lifted her head, peering around the shoulders of the tall man in front of her.
There she was — the redhead in the red coat, ordering a double espresso to go.
Catherine’s fingers were back in her own hair again, feathering the strands this way and that, wishing she’dthought to wear a clean shirt and brush on a little mascara before leaving the house. But she always returned home to get ready for her day after her walk, so why would she have thought to do it before?
Her mind scrambled to find something to say, but would the woman even remember her from the other day at El Vino’s? The room seemed to brighten as the redhead turned from the counter, tiny cup and scrunched paper bag in hand. She was even more striking than Catherine remembered her — all hazel eyes and cheekbones. She squeezed past the queue, and before she could stop herself, Catherine reached out and touched her arm. The woman looked startled until her eyes settled on Catherine and softened with recognition.
“Oh, hi.” The woman’s painted lips quirked into a smile, but something else flickered across her face. Catherine was good at reading people —she was trained to read people— but she struggled to read whatever that was.
“It’s me… from the restaurant.” Catherine pointed at herself. “Frowny face.”
“I’m pleased to see you don’t look so frowny now.”
