Mary Whitaker, the estate agent, set the phone down and stared at it for a few seconds as if the handset itself were to blame.
For twentytwo years she had been selling flats with longstanding mortgages, with tenants names on the deeds, with aging pipework and, on occasion, a view over a churchyard. Once shed even had a parrot that swore in three languages. But never before had a cat been listed as a burden in the contract.
Alright, let me run through the details again, she muttered to herself, leafing through her notebook. Twobedroom flat on High Street, third floor, about 670 square feet. The previous owner died in January. The heirs a son and a daughter from York want a quick sale. The cat isnt being rehomed, it isnt going to a shelter, and euthanasia is out of the question. Cat included.
She sighed, then added a line that would have made any solicitors stomach turn: A cat is included in the price. Negotiation welcome.
The first viewing was on a Saturday.
Mary opened the door and ushered in the buyer a tall woman, about fiftyfive, wrapped in a grey coat. She crossed the threshold and stopped. The flat smelled exactly as a house lived in by a solitary elder does: lavender soap, the faint perfume of old books, a hint of valerian.
Eleanor Whitcomb, the woman announced, not extending a hand. She looked around. And wheres this bonus?
The cat sat on the windowsill of the spacious living room a massive gingerwhite creature. He stared at Eleanor without blinking, his eyes showing neither fear nor curiosity, only a weary, endless patience.
That is how those who have been abandoned look.
Eleanor walked the flat in silence. She ran a finger over the spines of the books on the shelf Austen, Dickens, Hardy, their covers softened by years of handling. She peeked into the kitchen, where a torn calendar was stuck on the seventeenth of January. On the sill lay three pots of withered geraniums and an empty bowl, perfectly centred at the left leg of a small wooden stool.
Does anyone feed him? she asked, not turning around.
The neighbour does, Mary replied. Agnes Clarke from flat thirtysix. She comes twice a day. The heirs pay her a little, but they do pay.
Eleanor returned to the living room. The cat had not changed his posture he sat on the sill, front paws tucked under, looking out at the courtyard where bare February poplars swayed and a woman pushed a pram between them.
Whats his name?
The heirs called him Marquis, Mary said.
Marquis, Eleanor repeated, expression unchanged.
The cat did not turn his head.
Three days later she called.
Mary, Ive thought it over. The area is nice, the tube is close. But the price is still above market, even with the extra. The flat needs work wallpaper, linoleum. Id take it if you could knock off another £300.
The heirs will drop £200, Mary said. Will that do?
Eleanor agreed.
The paperwork took three weeks. She returned twice more once with a tape measure, once with a notebook to gauge walls and jot down figures. The cat observed. The second time she crouched by the window to check the radiator; Marquis leapt down from the sill, padded over half a metre and sat beside her.
Well, hello there, she said.
Marquis blinked once, slowly, then turned his gaze away.
When the day of signing arrived, Agnes Clarke turned out to be a small, gaunt woman with frightened eyes. She waited for Eleanor at the door.
Are you the new landlady? she asked.
I hope so, Eleanor replied.
Ill tell you about Marquis, Agnes began. Mabel Jones, the previous owner, was a saint. She rescued him ten years ago. He never left her side. When she suffered a stroke in the kitchen, he lay at her head. The ambulance had to smash the door open, but the cat stayed right there, never moving.
She lowered her voice. When she collapsed, he was right beside her. The paramedics forced the door in, but he stayed by her head until they got her out.
Eleanor stood in the doorway, a bundle of new keys in her hand three keys in total: two for the locks, one for the postbox that now had no one to check it.
He isnt a menace, Agnes continued. He doesnt scratch, he doesnt damage furniture. He just doesnt come to people. I feed him for two months and he never approaches me. He eats when I leave. I put a bowl down, and when I return its empty. But if Im there, he never comes.
Maybe hes afraid, Eleanor guessed.
He isnt afraid. Hes waiting. Every evening, about six oclock, he sits by the door and watches. Mabel used to come home at six from her walks.
Eleanor moved in on a Saturday. She owned few possessions; she was accustomed to compact living. She had spent twenty years as a nurse in cardiology, then a junior doctor, then faced redundancy, moved into a rented room in Hackney where her knees and spirit ached. Owning her own home had once been a distant dream, then a practical plan, a goal shed been saving for nine years.
The movers hauled in a sofa, two wardrobes, boxes of crockery. Marquis vanished. Eleanor found him later in the storage cupboard, pressed against an ironing board, ears flattened, huge and motionless.
I understand, she said to him. Its hard for you. Its hard for me too.
She placed the empty bowl back at the left leg of the stool, exactly where it had been, and left the kitchen door shut.
In the morning the bowl was empty.
A month passed. They lived parallel lives the same walls, different worlds.
Eleanor rose at six, drank coffee in the kitchen, and went on her shift at the Union Street clinic not cardiology, but still medical work after a year of unemployment. Marquis appeared in the kitchen only after the lock clicked. She knew this because she left a long, grey hair across the bowl each night; when the hair lay on the floor the next morning, the bowl was full.
In the evenings she settled into the armchair by the window and read the books left by Mabel Austen volumes scrawled with neat marginal notes: exclamation marks, single words like indeed, exactly, and I as well. Reading those scribbles gave her a strange sense of recognition, as if a stranger were thinking exactly as she did.
Marquis, meanwhile, took his place in the hallway by the front door, waiting each day at six, as punctual as a clock.
By the end of March Eleanor fell ill. The flu hit her like a hammer temperature thirtynine, sore throat, aching joints. She called in, took paracetamol, and lay down. She could not muster the strength to get up, to eat, or to feed the cat.
Marquis, she croaked from the bedroom, Im sorry. I cant right now.
Silence.
She slipped into a heavy, sticky sleep, her head buzzing. She awoke to a weight on her feet not painful, just a warm, steady pressure.
Marquis lay at the foot of the bed, curled like a loaf, eyes unblinking, solemn, attentive. For the first time in a month he was not in the hallway, not in the cupboard, not behind the ironing board. He was there, beside her.
Eleanor did not move. She feared that any motion would send him away. She stared at him, he stared back, and between them was a silence that needed no words because everything had already been said.
You already know, she whispered.
Marquis pressed his ears into her palm, lowered his head and closed his eyes.
He did not leave.
She stayed ill for three days; he stayed at her feet the whole time. He only left to the bowl for food, and when she finally forced herself up to pour in his meal, he returned. On the third day, when her temperature fell and she curled up on a kitchen chair, wrapped in a blanket with a mug of broth, Marquis leapt onto the stool, sat beside her, and purred a low, hoarse sound as if hed forgotten how to purr and was now relearning it.
Eleanor set down her mug, removed her glasses, and reached out slowly, palm up.
Marquis sniffed her fingers, then nudged his forehead against her hand.
She wept, not from sentiment, but from the sudden clarity that she had bought a life that was not hers books that were not hers, a cat that was not hers because she had none of her own. And the cat remained in a life that was not his because there was nowhere else for him. Two burdens, two extras, two unwanted additions.
Now they sat together in the kitchen, fifteen cat years and fiftysix human years, sharing a quiet warmth.
Marquis purred, and Eleanor rested her hand on his massive head, thinking perhaps this was what people talk about when they say that the best things come when youre not looking for them.
In May she stripped off the old wallpaper tiny brown flowers that had made the flat feel darker than it was and painted the walls a warm, milky cream. She left the linoleum for now; money was still tight, but it mattered less. The flat stopped feeling foreign. She didnt even notice the exact moment it happened.
Mabels books stayed on the shelf. Eleanor added a handful of her own about a dozen titles. The Austen volume with its marginal notes stayed in its place. Sometimes, in the evenings, she opened it not to read the story but to read the margins the stray indeed, exactly, and I as well. She nodded at them.
She dumped the dead geraniums and, once settled, planted fresh ones on the same windowsill where Marquis had first perched. He now occupied that sill less often, preferring the armchair beside her, or her lap when the night was long and the book good.
He no longer trotted to the door at six.
In June, Mary Whitaker, the estate agent, happened to run into Eleanor at a Tesco on Oxford Street. Eleanor stood in the queue with a bag of cat food and a tub of kefir.
Hows the flat? Mary asked. No regrets?
No, Eleanor replied.
And the cat?
Eleanor paused, shifting the cat food from one hand to the other.
You know, Mary, she said, they lowered the price for nothing. They should have kept it up, maybe even raised it.
Mary laughed. Eleanor did not. She wasnt joking.
At home, Marquis waited by the shoe rack, his new favourite spot. When the lock clicked, he lifted his head and blinked once, slowly.
That, she thought, was how you greet those you have truly been waiting for.
