Emma Clarke, the estate agent, hung up the phone and stared at the handset for a few seconds as if it were to blame.
For twentytwo years she had been selling flats that came with arrears, a list of registered relatives, aging plumbing and, on one occasion, a parrot that swore in three languages. But never had she ever had to list a cat as an encumbrance in the contract.
Alright, let me run through the terms again, she muttered to herself, flipping through her notebook. Twobedroom, Baker Street, third floor, sixtytwo square metres. The owner died in January. The heirs a son and a daughter from Manchester want a quick sale. They wont take the cat, wont surrender it to a shelter, and wont agree to euthanasia. The cat is included.
She sighed, then added a line to the advertisement that would make any solicitor wince: 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 in her midfifties wearing a grey coat. She stepped across the threshold and paused. The flat smelled of the sort of places a solitary elderly person inhabits: lavender soap, old books, a hint of valerian.
Evelyn Harper, the woman said, not extending a hand. She looked around. And where is this bonus?
The cat perched on the windowsill of the spacious living room a massive, gingerwhite beast. He stared at Evelyn without blinking, his gaze neither fearful nor curious, only weary, endless patience.
That is the look of those who have been abandoned before.
Evelyn walked through the flat in silence. She traced a finger along the spines of books on a shelf Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafyev, their covers softened by use. She slipped into the kitchen, where a tearoff calendar was stuck on the wall, frozen on 17January. On the sill sat three pots of withered geraniums and a bowl, spotless and empty, sitting precisely where the left leg of a stool had once been.
Does anyone feed him? she asked, not turning around.
The neighbour, Emma replied. Megan Jones from number36. She comes twice a day. The heirs pay her a little, but they do pay.
Evelyn returned to the living room. The cat had not moved still perched, front paws tucked, gazing out at the courtyard where bare February poplars swayed and a woman with a pram ambled past.
Whats his name? she asked.
Marquis, the heirs had called him.
Marquis, Evelyn repeated, expression flat.
The cat did not turn his head.
Three days later she called.
Emma Clarke, Ive been thinking. The area is nice, the tube is close. But the price is still above market, even with the extra. The place needs work the wallpaper, the linoleum. Id take it if you knock another three hundred pounds off.
Ill see what I can do, Emma said.
The heirs reduced the price by two hundred pounds. Evelyn accepted.
The paperwork took three weeks. Evelyn visited the flat twice more with a measuring tape and a notebook, checking walls, making notes, doing mental calculations. Marquis watched her every move. When she crouched by the window the second time to inspect the radiator, the cat leapt down, padded over and sat a halfmetre away. No closer.
Hello there, she said.
Marquis flicked his eyes once, slowly, and turned away.
Megan Jones turned out to be a frail, nervous woman with startled eyes. She waited for Evelyn at the door on the day the handover act was to be signed.
Are you the new owner? she asked.
I hope so, Evelyn replied.
Ill tell you about Marquis, Megan began. Grace Miller, the previous owner, was a kind soul. Ten years ago she rescued him from the block, where he was shivering in November. She fed him, gave him a home, and he never left her side.
She fell silent, then continued in a softer tone:
When Grace suffered a stroke in the kitchen, he lay right beside her head. The ambulance broke down the door and he stayed there, never moving.
Evelyn stood in the doorway, a set of three fresh keys in her hand two for the locks, one for the postbox that now would never be checked.
Hes not a troublemaker, Megan added. He doesnt scratch, he doesnt damage furniture. The only problem is he wont come to you. Ive been feeding him for two months and he never approaches me. He eats when Im out, I set a bowl down its gone the moment I return. But when Im there, not a single lick.
Maybe hes scared, Evelyn suggested.
Hes not scared. Hes waiting. Every evening at six he sits by the door and watches. Grace used to return from her walk at six, too.
Evelyn moved in on Saturday. She owned few belongings and had learned to live compactly. Twenty years as a cardiac nurse, then a junior registrar, then redundancy, a cramped flat in Harrow where her knees and spirit both ached. Owning a home had been a dream for so long it had become a plan. She had been saving for nine years.
The movers hauled in a sofa, two wardrobes and boxes of crockery. Marquis vanished. Evelyn found him later in the storage cupboard, tucked behind an ironing board, ears flattened, massive and motionless.
I understand, she whispered. Its hard for you. Its hard for me too.
She placed a bowl at the left leg of the stool, exactly where the old one had stood, and left the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
By morning the bowl was empty.
A month passed. They lived parallel lives under the same roof but in different worlds.
Evelyn rose at six, brewed coffee in the kitchen and went off to her shift. She had taken a job at the community health centre on Union Street, not cardiology, but after a year of unemployment she didnt have the luxury of choice.
Marquis appeared in the kitchen only after the lock clicked. She knew this because she left a long, greying strand of hair across the bowl each night. If the hair was on the floor, he had eaten.
In the evenings she settled into an armchair by the window and read the same books that had belonged to Grace. Chekhovs volume was full of pencil notes in the margins: exclamation points, occasional single words yes, exactly, me too. Evelyn read those marginal remarks and felt a strange, unsad recognition, as if the woman she had never met was thinking just like her.
Marquis, meanwhile, lingered in the hallway, not in the room, but by the front door. Every evening, precisely at six, he waited.
At the end of March Evelyn fell ill. A flu hit her in one night thirtynine degrees, sore throat, aching joints. She called in sick, took paracetamol and lay down. She had no strength to get up for food, nor to feed the cat.
Marquis, she croaked from the bedroom, Im sorry, I cant right now.
Silence.
She drifted into a heavy, sticky sleep, her head buzzing. She woke to a weight on her feet not heavy, just warm and steady.
Marquis lay at the foot of the bed, curled like a loaf, staring at her without blinking, serious, 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 here.
Evelyn didnt move. She feared that if she did, he would slip away. She simply stared, and he stared back, and between them lay a wordless understanding that needed no speech.
You already know this, she whispered.
Marquis pressed his ears against his paws, lowered his head onto his front legs and closed his eyes.
He didnt leave.
She was sick for three days; he lay at her feet for three days. He only left to the bowl when she finally forced herself up, poured food, and returned. On the third day, when her temperature fell and Evelyn sat in the kitchen wrapped in a blanket with a mug of broth, Marquis hopped onto the stool, sat beside her and purred.
It was a low, hoarse rumble, as if he were relearning the sound.
Evelyn set her mug down, removed her glasses, extended her hand slowly, palm up.
Marquis sniffed her fingers, then nudged his forehead into her palm.
She wept. Not out of sentimentality she never cried that way but because a simple, clear truth struck her: she had bought a life that wasnt hers, with books that werent hers and a cat that wasnt hers, because she didnt have enough of her own. And the cat had stayed in a life that wasnt his, with a woman who wasnt his, because there was nowhere else for him to go. Two encumbrances, two addons, two extra beings included in the price.
Now they sat together in the kitchen, a fifteenyearold cat and a fiftysixyearold woman, sharing warmth.
Marquis purred, and Evelyn rested her hand on his heavy head, realizing perhaps this was what it felt like when you stop searching, stop asking, stop demanding and it simply arrives.
In May she stripped the old brownfloral wallpaper that had made the flat feel darker than it was, painted the walls a soft, milky cream, and left the linoleum for now she didnt have the money for a full refit, but it no longer mattered. The flat no longer felt foreign; she hadnt even noticed when the change took hold.
Graces books stayed on the shelf. Evelyn added a handful of her own a dozen or so. Chekhov, still with his marginal notes, occupied its old spot. Sometimes she opened it in the evenings and read not the stories but the side remarks foreign yes, exactly, me too and she nodded.
She threw away the dead geraniums as soon as she moved in, unable to revive them, and only later planted fresh ones on the same windowsill where Marquis had first watched her. Now the cat spent less time there, more often perched on her armchair, or on her lap when the evening stretched long and the book was good.
At six oclock he stopped visiting the door.
In June Emma Clarke, the estate agent, happened to run into Evelyn at the local Tesco on Baker Street. Evelyn stood in line, juggling a bag of cat food and a bottle of kefir.
Hows the flat? Emma asked. Happy with it?
No regrets, Evelyn replied.
And the cat?
She paused, moving the food from one hand to the other.
You know, Emma, she said, they should have kept the price up. We dropped it for nothing.
Emma laughed. Evelyn didnt.
At home, Marquis waited by the entrance, next to the shoes. It was his new spot. When the lock clicked, he lifted his head, gave a slow blink.
That is how you greet those who have waited for you a lifetime.
