Emma Clarke, the estate agent, hung up and stared at her phone for a few seconds, as if the device itself had done something wrong.
For twentytwo years shed been selling flats with debts, with tenants on the lease, with leaky pipes and even with a view of the local cemetery. Once shed had a parrot that swore in three languages. But shed never had to list a cat as a burden in the contract.
Alright, lets run through the details again, she muttered to herself, flipping through her notebook. Twobed flat, Baker Street, third floor, about 660sqft. Owner passed away in January. Inheritors a son and a daughter from Brighton. They want a quick sale. The cat isnt being taken, they wont hand it to a shelter, and they dont want it put down. Cat stays.
She sighed and added a line that would make any solicitors stomach flip: Price includes cat. Negotiation welcome.
The first viewing was scheduled for Saturday.
Emma opened the door and let in the prospective buyer a tall woman, about fiftyfive, wrapped in a grey coat. She stepped over the threshold and stopped. The flat smelled exactly how a longstanding, solitary older persons home does: lavender soap, old paperbacks, a hint of valerian.
Margaret Collins, the woman announced, not extending a hand. She glanced around. And wheres this bonus?
The cat was perched on the windowsill of the large living room a massive, gingerwhite beast. He stared at Margaret without blinking, his eyes showing neither fear nor curiosity, just a tired, endless patience.
Thats the look you get from animals that have been abandoned before.
Margaret walked around the flat in silence. She ran a finger over the spines of books on a shelf Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafyev, their covers soft from use. She peeked into the kitchen, where a peeledoff calendar was stuck on the wall, stopped at 17January. On the windowsill sat three wilted geranium pots and a bowl, spotless and empty, exactly where the left leg of a stool met the floor.
Does anyone feed him? she asked, not turning around.
The neighbour, Emma replied. Martha Jones, flat36. She comes twice a day. The heirs pay her a little something for it. Not much, but they do.
Margaret returned to the living room. The cat hadnt moved still on the sill, front paws tucked, watching the courtyard. Bare February poplars swayed in the wind, and a woman with a pram drifted between them.
Whats his name?
Marquis, the heirs had called him.
Marquis, Margaret repeated, expression unchanged.
The cat didnt lift his head.
She called three days later.
Emma, Ive thought about it. The areas nice, the tubes close. But the price is still above market, even with the extra. And the place needs work new wallpaper, linoleum. Id take it if you knock off another three hundred.
Ill see what I can do.
The heirs trimmed the price by two hundred. Margaret agreed.
The paperwork took three weeks. Margaret turned up a couple more times measuring tape in hand, notebook ready, jotting down dimensions and daydreaming about renovations. The cat observed. The second time she crouched by the window to check the radiator, Marquis leapt down, trotted over, and sat half a metre away. No closer.
Hello there, she whispered.
Marquis gave a slow blink and turned away.
On the day of signing, Martha turned out to be a slight, nervouslooking woman with wide eyes. She waited for Margaret at the doorway.
Are you the new owner?
I hope so, Margaret replied.
Let me tell you about Marquis, Martha began. Nina Walters, the previous owner, was a dear lady who rescued him ten years ago. Hed been a scruffy stray in November, and she nursed him back. He never left her side.
She paused, then lowered her voice.
When Nina suffered a stroke right there in the kitchen, Marquis lay beside her head. The ambulance broke in, and he stayed there, not moving.
Margaret stood in the doorway, holding a bundle of fresh keys three of them, two for the locks, one for the postbox, which now no one would ever check.
He isnt a troublemaker, Martha continued. He doesnt scratch, he doesnt damage furniture. He just wont come to you. Ive been feeding him for two months and he never approaches. He eats when Im out. I set a bowl down, and its gone the moment I walk back in. But he wont eat in front of me.
Maybe hes scared?
Hes not scared. Hes waiting. Every evening around six hell sit by the door, watching. Nina used to come back from her walks at six.
Margaret moved in on a Saturday. She didnt have many possessions; she was used to living compactly after twenty years as a cardiac nurse, then a junior doctor, then a layoff, a cheap room in Harrow that left her knees and spirit sore. Owning a flat had been a dream for nine years, something shed saved for painstakingly.
Movers hauled in a sofa, two wardrobes, boxes of dishes. Marquis vanished. Margaret found him later in the storage cupboard, tucked behind an ironing board, ears flat, massive and motionless.
I get it, she said to him. Its hard for you. Its hard for me too.
She placed his empty bowl back at the left leg of the stool, exactly where it had been, and left the kitchen door ajar.
In the morning the bowl was still empty.
A month later they were living side by side the same walls, two very different worlds.
Margaret got up at six, drank coffee in the kitchen, then headed off for her shift at the community health centre on Union Street, not cardiology this time, but still caring. She kept a strand of her own grey hair on the table, crossing the bowl each evening. If the bowl was there, she knew hed eaten.
In the evenings she settled into the armchair by the window, reading the same books left by Nina Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafyev all scribbled with tiny pencil notes in the margins: exclamation points, single words like yes, exactly, me too. It felt odd, not sad, but a strange recognition, as if a stranger was thinking exactly as she did.
Marquis, meanwhile, camped in the hallway by the front door, right at six oclock each night, waiting.
By the end of March Margaret fell ill. A flu hit her hard in one night 39°C, sore throat, every joint aching. She called in sick, popped some paracetamol, and lay down. She had no strength to get up, let alone feed the cat.
Marquis, she croaked from the bedroom, sorry, I cant right now.
Silence.
She drifted into a heavy, sticky sleep, woke to a weight on her feet not pressing, just warm, alive. Marquis was curled at the foot of the bed, a loaf of fur, eyes fixed on her without blinking, serious, attentive. For the first time in a month he wasnt in the hallway, the cupboard, or behind the ironing board. He was right there.
Margaret didnt move. She was scared any motion and he might bolt. She just stared, he stared back, and between them lay the kind of quiet where words arent needed because everythings already said.
You already know that, she whispered.
Marquis pressed his ears against his paws, lowered his head, and closed his eyes.
He stayed.
For three days she was ill, and for three days he lay at her feet, only getting up to the bowl when she finally forced herself to fill it. On the third day, when her temperature finally fell and she was wrapped in a blanket on the kitchen floor with a mug of broth, Marquis hopped onto the stool, sat beside her, and purred.
Softly, with a raspy throat, as if hed forgotten how.
Margaret set her mug down, took off her glasses, reached out slowly, palm up.
Marquis sniffed her fingers, nudged his forehead against her hand.
She cried. Not from cuteness she never cries over that but because she suddenly understood something simple and clear: shed bought someone elses life, someone elses books, someone elses cat because there wasnt enough room for her own. And the cat had stayed in someone elses life with a woman who had nowhere else to put him. Two extra burdens, two little addons, two unexpected companions.
Now they were on the kitchen floor together, fifteen cat years for him, fiftysix human years for her, and both felt warmth.
Marquis purred, and Margaret rested her palm on his big, heavy head, thinking maybe this was what people call the thing you dont look for, dont ask for, but it just shows up.
By May she stripped the old floral wallpaper the tiny brown blossoms that made the flat feel darker than it was and painted the walls a warm, milky cream. She kept the linoleum for now; money was still tight, but it no longer mattered. The flat no longer felt foreign. She didnt even notice when that shift happened.
Ninas books stayed on the shelf. Margaret added a handful of her own about fifteen titles. Chekhov with pencil notes remained in its spot. Sometimes shed open it at night and read the marginal yes, exactly, me too, and nod.
She tossed the dead geraniums as soon as she moved in they were beyond saving and bought fresh ones, placing them on the same windowsill where Marquis had first sat. He now perched there less often, preferring the armchair next to her or her lap when the evening stretched long and the book was good.
At six, he stopped heading for the door.
In June, Emma Clarke, the estate agent, ran into Margaret at the local Tesco on Baker Street. Margaret was in line, a bag of cat food and a small tub of kefir in hand.
So, hows the flat? Emma asked. Happy with it?
No regrets, Margaret replied.
And the cat?
She paused, shifting the cat food from one hand to the other.
You know, Emma, she said, they shouldve kept the price up. We lowered it for nothing.
Emma laughed. Margaret didnt.
When Margaret got home, Marquis was waiting at the hall by the shoes. That was his new spot. As she clicked the lock, he lifted his head, gave a slow blink, and purred once.
Thats how you greet someone youve been waiting for.
