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“I was talking about Tofu,” I muttered.
Ash laughed.
With her hand still pressed to her chest, she shook her head. “After all these years, the first thing you say to me is that my cat looks like a chicken wing.”
“He kinda does,” Ash said, eyeing him. “I’ve never seen it before, but now that you mention it… Wait, Granny, did you put suncream on him again?”
Gwen sniffed. “Of course I did. I can’t have my snookums getting sunburn now, can I?”
Ash swung her gaze from Gwen to me. “Charles might wear jumpers like Tofu, but I bet Camilla doesn’t call him snookums.”
“Maybe she does. He looks like a snookums to me,” Gwen declared, unclipping the lead from Tofu’s harness.
Tofu hopped up onto the counter and sat down, staring at me. His eyes were huge and a beautiful shade of bluey green. It was quite unnerving to have him look at me so intently, but he obviously decided I wasn’t a threat to his royal nakedness as he curled up in a ball right in front of me and closed his eyes.
“He likes you,” Gwen announced.
I looked from the cat to her. “How can you tell? He looks so angry.”
She tried to glare at me, but failed dismally, instead waking around the counter to wrap me in a warm hug. It was the most wonderful grandmotherly hug, and I almost burst into tears when she patted my hair and rocked me from one side to the other.
“How are you, dear?” she asked, holding me at arm’s length. “You look exhausted. Aren’t you sleeping?”
“You wouldn’t if you’d had her forty-eight hours,” Ash pointed out.
Gwen nodded. “Very true. I have some sleeping pills in my bag. Would you like one?”
“No, thank you. Mum already tried drugging me this afternoon.” I sighed, leaning on the counter again. “Just been a weird day.”
“I saw you walk past this morning. Did you go for a run?” Ash asked, disappearing into the back room behind the beaded curtain.
“Yeah,” I called after her. “Then ran into your brother and his girlfriend.”
“My condolences.”
“And mine,” Gwen added. “She must be good in bed, because God only knows there’s nothing else redeeming about her.”
“Granny!” Ash reappeared with a bottle of wine in her hands. “You can’t say that.”
“Why not? You’re the one who said it first. I’m just repeating what you told me.”
Ash pressed her lips together as I fought back a laugh. “Fine, but don’t go around telling people I said that, for God’s sake.”
Gwen mimed zipping her lips.
“I bet it was fun meeting her,” Ash said, putting the bottle on the counter and reaching for the corkscrew to open it.
“Not really,” I replied. “She barely acknowledged my existence. I can’t say I’m surprised you don’t like her. She even asked Noah if he should be talking to me. I got the impression she’s not joining the Lottie O’Neil fan club anytime soon.”
“Of course she’s not,” Gwen said, pushing Ash out of the way and taking over the wine uncorking duties. “Everyone knows you were the great love of my grandson’s life. If I were his girlfriend, I wouldn’t want to meet you, either.”
“I was not the great love of his life,” I argued. “If I was, he never would have ghosted me.”
“You were kids. Kids are idiots, despite what they think at the time,” she continued. “You absolutely were, and I suspect she was all right with that when you didn’t exist. Now you’re here.”
“Then she’s going to have to get over it, whatever she believes. I have zero interest in stealing her boyfriend. He’s on my shit list.”
Gwen eyed me. “You didn’t kill that man, did you?”
