I can’t help but laugh, which makes her laugh. ‘We’re a right pair.’
‘Sorry it’s so shit here.’
‘Liam.’ My name in her mouth still makes me tingle. ‘I grew up in a house with thirty-two rooms, and I was lonely in every single one of them.’
‘I’d choose this over that any day.’
Pulling her in for a kiss, I thank my lucky stars that she gave me even a moment of her time.
That’s when the cat appears from behind the bedroom separator, padding out with his belly wobbling. He’s enormous, but smaller than he was when I rescued him from Pete. The two of us are working on getting him to a healthy weight. My broad, battered tabby. One torn ear and a permanently perplexed expression.
Kat makes a noise I’ve never heard from her before. A sound I imagine an excited fox might make when he sees a rabbit.
‘You have acat?’
‘He’s a recent addition.’
She drops to a crouch and extends her hand. The cat walks directly into it as trustingly as I took her hand allthose years ago. Treacherous animal. He took far longer to come round to me.
‘What’s his name?’
‘I haven’t given him one.’
She looks up at me, scandalised.
‘You can’t just not name him.’
‘He hasn’t complained.’ I nod at the far corner where the new water fountain gurgles, the automatic feeder beside it.
‘Where did you get him?’ she asks, while loving on the cat, who flops in her lap and purrs like a bloody tractor.
‘Pete’s house. Before I burned it.’
She looks up at me. Her expression darkens.
‘This poor boy lived with that horrible man?’ Her focus fixes back on the cat, her voice rising to a high baby talk. ‘You have a much better daddy now.’
A daddy. I’ve never imagined myself with a family of my own. Feline or otherwise. Such a dream seemed utterly impossible. But watching Kat with the ball of fur makes my insides flame in a way that’s indescribable.
She’s my family.My hearth.
The cat kneads her thigh as she pets him. ‘He needs a name.’
‘Fine. You name him.’
She considers him with great seriousness, petting his little face between her hands. ‘I think he looks like a Reggie.’
‘That’s not a cat name.’
‘Reginald Mousefort the third. Reggie is just for his friends.’
I look at the cat. He looks back at me with his one good ear swivelled forward.
Damn, am I friends enough not to have to call him Reginald?
I make the coffee and set it on the floor next to Reggie and Kat, seeing as she makes no move to sit at the table. My flat smells like her shampoo, and I’m intoxicated by it. And I can barely think with her here in my space. I’m aware of every inch of space, and fur, between us.
A sound banging against the wall kicks up, and I sigh. The headboard bangs between rising voices, who don’t sound particularly happy to be shagging, yet neither seems to stop either.
