Page 8 of I’m Dreaming of a New York Christmas

‘Bring your laptop,’ Anneka mumbled casually. ‘Believe it or not, the place we’re going has internet access.’

‘But… but where exactly are we going? How long will the journey be? How many nights will we be away? Who’s going to look after Jason?’

‘Who the hell is Jason?’ Mum asked.

‘My landlady’s cat. I’m in charge of him while she’s away for the rest of the month.’

‘Oh, a cat.’ Mum looked genuinely disappointed, as if she’d been expecting a man called Jason to be handcuffed to my bed, ready for action. She scratched her head – her telltale sign that she was in the process of whipping up one of her ill-thought-through plans.

‘Right. So here’s what’s going to happen: I’ll make a start on your packing, Flo. Anneka, you can help your sister out with this cat situation.’

How the fuck had I ended up having a ‘cat situation’? I didn’t want any situation. In fact, I fully intended to avoid any and all ‘situations’ for the rest of my life.

‘Where’s this famous cat, then?’ Anneka asked, swinging her legs off the sofa and standing up, her head almost touching the sloped ceiling.

‘He’ll be under that blue bag next to the radiator.’

Anneka walked over to the upturned IKEA bag and lifted it as if it was a silver cloche. She revealed Jason, who was cowering in understandable fear caused by the sudden influx of noisy human beings in such proximity to his safe space. He was comfort-nibbling something square-ish and yellow-ish.

‘What the fuck is this in his mouth – a lasagna sheet?’ Anneka asked.

I looked down at him more closely, my mouth dropping open in horror. ‘Oh my God, no. That’s… that’s a layer of my flatmate’s foot skin.’

Anneka gagged, which was justifiable. ‘That is, like, the grimmest thing I’ve ever seen. She should see someone about that.’

‘Believe it or not, the shedding’s intentional.’

I grabbed a pair of tongs from the utensil pot on the breakfast bar and extracted the hardened dermatological layer from Jason’s mouth, dropping it – and the tongs themselves for good measure – into the pedal bin.

Anneka scooped up the wary cat and headed to the flat’s front door.

‘Follow me,’ she instructed.

‘Anneka, please tell me what you’re planning.’

She snorted. ‘I have no plan, just instincts.’

I sighed, following her out and down the stairs to the first floor. She paused at the first landing, shifting Jason onto her shoulder and reaching for the door knocker.

‘Anneka! I have no idea who lives here; please don’t—’

Too late, she’d already rat-a-tat-tatted. Thankfully, there was no answer.

Undeterred, Anneka marched down the next flight of stairs, all the way down to the ground floor. I didn’t even bother objecting as she knocked on the bell-less door. There was no stopping her.

‘Tabbi!’ The occupant of the ground-floor flat, a woman around Anneka’s age I’d only ever seen in passing, appeared to be thrilled to see a squirming Jason in the arms of my sister when she opened her door.

I poked my head around Anneka’s back to provide some clarifying information. ‘Actually, despite what it says on his collar, he’s called Ja—’

Anneka stepped to the right to block my face before I’d finished speaking. ‘Yay, so you know this floofball?’

‘Yeah, she bolted down from the top floor a few months back and I managed to scoop her up before she made a bid for the outside world. We bonded, didn’t we, Tabbi?’ She reached out her arms for Jason, and my sister dutifully passed him over.

‘Looks like you’ve got a fan,’ Anneka said to her, as the cat immediately softened into her embrace.

‘Just the one?’ the neighbour challenged.

‘We’ll have to see about that,’ Anneka retorted, leaning on the doorframe, putting her hands in her pockets and tilting her head coquettishly.