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I’m about to say he’s a stray and that his ears are like that because of an infection but then I remember I have amnesia. “Yeah, I must have took him in off the street or something on account of being an amazing person.”
“Or you’re a soft touch with no sense of hygiene.”
“Hold on. Of the two of us”—I do a back-and-forth gesture—“which is the one who can’t work a washing machine?”
He gets that angry wolf look. “I. Have. A. Housekeeper.”
“And I’ve apparently got a cat that might starve if we don’t sort it out.”
“Do you not have housemates or a neighbour or—”
“How would I know? I’ve got amnesia.”
“I’m sure”—he’s trying to be patient, bless him; actually no, don’t bless him, fuck him—“the cat will be fine.”
Gollum is not going to be fine. Being a cat, he doesn’t have a vocabulary but if he did, fine would not be in it. “What if he’s not, though? What if I really care about this cat and I get my memory back and you’ve killed my cat?”
“I won’t have killed your cat. I’m sure you made arrangements in case you were away for a long time.”
I didn’t. Fuck, am I a bad pet owner? In my defence, it’s not like one of the things they tell you at the rescue centre isIf you’re going to take this cat home, make sure he’s got at least six month’s food available at all times in case you get amnesia from falling into a shower. “But what if I didn’t?” I try. “My emergency contact didn’t work. What if my cat’s emergency contact doesn’t work either?”
“That seems unli—”
“Jonathan, please.” I wave the phone in his face. “Look at this picture. I clearly love this cat. That is the face of a man who loves his cat.”
Jonathan’s eyes flick from me to the phone back to me. “I’m not sure it’s the face of a cat who loves his man.”
I’d tell him Gollum always looks like that, but I’m not meant to know he does, and it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. “It might help my recovery. Familiar things and all that. Get me out your hair sooner.”
He thinks about it. “I’d need to arrange some things first.”
“Please,” I say again. “I don’t want to come home to a dead cat.”
He sighs. “Fine. I’ll get your address from the files, and we’ll drive up tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll meet a friend or a neighbour who can take care of you, but if not…”—this seems to be causinghim actual physical pain—“…we can bring your…animal back here for a bit.”
I’m so relieved I could hug him. I don’t, of course, because it’d be fucking bizarre. So I just say “thank you” and I genuinely mean it.
And Jonathan looks at me in this confused way like it’s the first time he’s ever done a nice thing for someone in his life. Which, honestly, it probably is.
PART TWO
GOING HOME & MEETING THE BOYFRIEND
CHAPTER 7
The next morning, jonathan rings Sheffield to let them know I’ve had an accident and won’t be in work for a couple of weeks. I don’t overhear much of the conversation, but I do think I hear Claire sayingoh no, but who’s going to feed his catin a tone of pantomime concern that I think is intended to bring the distressed-cat-situation to the attention of the authorities, and Jonathan does reassure her that we’re coming up to deal with exactly that issue, but that I’ll be too fragile to come by the branch. Which is either nice or controlling of him depending on how you cut it.
The journey’s a long, quiet one, and I spend most of it staring out the window not quite sure what to talk about with the boss who thinks I don’t remember anything. “Look,” I say when we get there. “You’d better wait in the car.”
I’m hoping he’ll let it go at that but I’m not quite that lucky. “Why?” he asks.
“Because I don’t know what it’ll be like in there.” That’s not the truth, obviously. The truth is that I don’t want to have to act all disoriented and confused while I’m trying to feed Gollum and get him into his travel case. “It’d be embarrassing.”
He accepts my excuse, maybe because we’ve been trapped in a car together for hours and he’s glad to be shot of me. To be honest,I’m quite glad to be shot of him because I’ve had a bigger dose of Jonathan Forest in the last twenty-four hours than any sensible person could want.
After the cat fight—I mean, the fight about the cat—we’d had a bit of an uncomfortable half hour but then settled back into pretending to be nice to each other like nothing had happened. Jonathan hadn’t known how to use his oven any more than he’d known how to use the washing machine, so we’d ordered Chinese from a restaurant up the road, but I’d not really been hungry what with the concussion and the incipient risk of cat death. I’d got my own room at least, because Jonathan Forest lives alone in a five-bedroom house, but he’d kept checking on me in the night to make sure I was okay, which I would have been if he hadn’t kept checking on me. I told him that what he was doing was the kind of thing you get brought up in front of the UN for doing to political prisoners and that I’d be better off if he just let me kip through ’til morning. But he seems to have got it in his head that if I’m on my own for more than half an hour together my brain’ll fall out my nose and he’ll have to get his housekeeper to stash my corpse under the begonias.
All of which means getting a couple of minutes alone while I went to do cat things is blessed relief.
