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“That’s not a thing,” says Claire very firmly. “You don’t undo brain damage with more brain damage.”
“Okay, I’ll just say things are coming back slowly.”
“Your entire life is coming back slowly?”
“I didn’t say I’d forgotten my entire life. Just the bits it was convenient to not remember at the time. Like him being a prick and me being fired and—oh fuck, what about the cat?”
“You mean you actually forgot your cat or you told him you forgot your cat?”
“How could I tell him I forgot my cat if I couldn’t remember my cat? But what I did forget is that if I’m away until I can magically fix everything, he’s going to starve, but I’ve not set up the cat being part of the things I remember so if I suddenly sayhold on, I’ve realised I’ve got a cat,he’s going to twig I know more than I’m letting on.” I’ve fucked it, haven’t I? I’ve built this whole house of cards and it’s going to come crashing down and kill my cat when it does.
“You think,” Claire asks, “there’s a lesson here about making up absurdly convoluted lies?”
“Claire, can you feed my fucking cat?”
“Sure, I’ll just drive around Sheffield, breaking into houses until I find one with a cat in it that looks hungry.”
“I’ll give you the address.”
“Will you give me a key? Will you ring your neighbours and say,hi, if you see a tiny angry lesbian crawling through my front window, don’t worry, she’s just there for the cat.”
“You could come and get the key. I could sneak out and…” This is getting well away from me. You’d think pretending to have amnesia would be easy on account of your not having to know anything. “Wait, no. It’s fine. You can say you’d heard I’d had an accident and yez’ve come down from Sheffield to check on me.”
“And to make sure somebody’s feeding your cat.”
“And to make sure somebody’s feeding my cat.”
She’s quiet again. “So who do I put in charge of the store while I’m making the eight-hour round trip to Croydon?”
Fuck, there’s nobody. Tiff’s too young, New Enthusiastic Chris is too new, Amjad’s great at managing himself but hates managing other people, and Brian is the living embodiment of thebeforepart of a corporate training video. “Then what am I going to do?”
“Well”—I can tell in advance this isn’t going to be helpful—“as I see it, you’ve got two options. Either you tell Jonathan Forest to his face that you lied to his face about having amnesia, or you let your cat die.”
“Seems both of those end badly for one of us…” I get a sudden flash of panic that I’ve heard a creak except I don’t know because I’ve got the taps running. “Shit. Got to go.”
I’m so worried about getting rumbled that I hang up before she can even say goodbye. And it’s a good job I do because when I turn off the water I can hear footsteps.
Then there’s a knock on the door. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
“You’ve been a while and the doctor said I was supposed to keep an eye on you.”
“Yeah but”—I emerge—“not while I’m having a slash.”
He gives me a stern look. “I don’t think cerebral haemorrhages wait politely for people to finish going to the toilet.”
I suppose he’s got a point. But it’s bloody typical that evenwhen he’s being caring, Jonathan Forest is kind of a dick about it. “Thanks, but I’m okay.”
“And you’re not feeling lightheaded or headachey?” It almost sounds like he’s worried, and he probably is. Just about his bank balance rather than about my brain.
“Not so far.”
“And has—I know it hasn’t been long, but is anything coming back yet?” And now he sounds even more worried. Definitely a bank balance issue then.
But maybe, just maybe, this is my opportunity to get out of my dead cat problem. “Funny you should mention that,” I tell him, “because while I was on the bog I was looking through my photos to see if I could jog my memory and”—I unlock the phone, hoping he doesn’t ask why I remember the PIN (not PIN number, Amjad would have said,because that would be Personal Identification Number Number), and find a picture of me and Gollum, which is what the cat’s called because when your mam calls you Samwise you just have to own it—“I think I’ve got a cat.”
Jonathan recoils slightly. “That is…” Being nice doesn’t come easy to Jonathan Forest, but being nice about Gollum doesn’t come easy to anybody. “an interesting-looking pet,” he finishes.
