Megan Harper, the estate agent, hung up the phone and stared at it for a few seconds as if the handset itself were to blame.
In the twentytwo years shed been in the trade, Megan had sold flats riddled with overdue mortgages, cramped with longgone relatives, still sporting original pipework and, on one occasion, a parrot that swore in three languages. But never had she ever listed a cat as a burden in the contract.
Alright, lets run through the details again, she muttered to herself, leafing through her notebook. Twobed flat, Baker Street, third floor, sixtytwo square metres. Owner passed away in January. Heirs a son and a daughter from Southampton want a quick sale. The cat stays, they wont rehome it, they wont have it put down. Cat included.
She sighed and added a line that would make any solicitor wince: Price includes cat. Negotiation possible.
The first viewing was scheduled for Saturday.
Megan opened the door and let in the prospective buyer a statuesque woman in her midfifties, swathed in a grey coat. She crossed the threshold and paused. The flat smelled exactly like the homes of longstanding, solitary seniors: lavender soap, aging paperbacks, a hint of valerian.
Ethel Morgan, the woman announced, not extending a hand. She glanced around. And wheres this bonus?
The cat perched on the windowsill of the spacious living room a massive, orangewhite beast. He stared at Ethel without blinking, his gaze empty of fear or curiosity, filled only with weary, endless patience.
Thats the look you give when youve been abandoned more times than you can count.
Ethel walked through the flat in silence, trailing a fingertip along the spines of books on a shelf Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafyev, all read down to the limp covers. She peeked into the kitchen, where a tearoff calendar was frozen on 17 January. On the sill sat three withered geranium pots and a bowl. The bowl was spotless, empty, perched precisely where the left leg of a stool met the floor.
Someone feeds him? she asked, without turning.
The neighbour, Megan replied. Mrs. Doris Clarke from number 36. She drops by twice a day. The heirs give her a token fee. Small, but its something.
Ethel returned to the living room. The cat hadnt moved still perched, front paws tucked, gazing out at the courtyard where bare February poplars swayed in the wind and a woman with a pram trudged by.
Whats his name?
Morris. At least, thats what the heirs called him.
Morris, Ethel repeated, expression unchanged.
The cat didnt flick his ears.
Three days later she called.
Megan, Ive thought it over. The area is nice, the tube is close. But the price is still above market, even with the extra. And the place needs work the wallpaper, the linoleum. Id take it if you could knock off another three hundred pounds.
Ill see what I can do.
The heirs trimmed the price by two hundred pounds. Ethel agreed.
The paperwork took three weeks. Ethel visited the flat twice more armed with a tape measure and a notebook. She measured walls, jotted notes, did the maths. The cat watched. When she crouched by the window the second time to check the heating, Morris leapt down, padded half a metre away and sat, not a whisker closer.
Hello there, she said.
Morris blinked once, slowly, then turned his gaze away.
Mrs. Clarke turned out to be a wiry, nervouseyed lady. She waited for Ethel at the front door on the day the handover was to be signed.
Are you the new owner? she asked.
I hope so, Ethel replied.
Ill tell you about Morris, Mrs. Clarke said. Nina Walters, the previous owner, took him in a decade ago. He was a stray, all ragged, in November. She fed him, gave him a name, and hes never left her side.
She fell silent, then lowered her voice.
When Nina had a stroke in the kitchen, he was right there, lying beside her head. The ambulance broke down the door, and he stayed put.
Ethel stood in the doorway, clutching a fresh set of three keys two for the locks, one for the mailbox that now gathered dust.
Hes harmless, Mrs. Clarke continued. He doesnt scratch, doesnt ruin the furniture. The only problem is he wont come near you. Ive fed him for two months and hes never approached me. He eats when Im out, but as soon as I set a bowl down, he darts away. Hell never come close to my hand.
Maybe hes scared, Ethel suggested.
Hes not scared. Hes waiting. Every evening around six, he sits by the door and watches. Nina used to come home at six from her walks.
Ethel moved in on Saturday. She had very little, and got used to living compactly. After twenty years as a cardiac nurse, a stint as a junior doctor, a redundancy, a stint in a flat in Birkenhead that left her knees and soul sore, owning her own home had become a dream so long it was almost a plan. Shed been saving for nine years.
The movers hauled in a sofa, two wardrobes, boxes of crockery. Morris vanished. Ethel found him later in the storage cupboard, hunched behind an ironing board, ears flattened, massive and motionless.
I get it, she said to him. Its hard for you. Its hard for me.
She placed a bowl at the same spot by the left leg of the stool where the old one had stood, then closed the kitchen door behind her.
In the morning the bowl was empty.
A month later they were living parallel lives sharing walls but inhabiting different worlds.
Ethel rose at six, drank coffee in the kitchen, and headed off for her night shift. Shed taken a post at the community health centre on Union Street not cardiology, of course, but after a year of unemployment, choices were limited.
Morris only appeared in the kitchen after the lock clicked. She knew this because she left a long, greying hair strand across the bowl each night. If the strand was still on the floor the next morning, hed eaten.
In the evenings she curled up in the armchair by the window and read the same books left on the shelf by Nina Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafyev, all annotated in tiny pencil. Chekhovs pages were peppered with exclamation marks, the occasional yes, exactly, and I too. Ethel read those marginal notes and felt a strange, notsad, recognition as if a woman shed never met was thinking exactly as she did.
Morris waited not in the bedroom but in the hallway, at the front door, every evening at six sharp. He waited.
In late March Ethel fell ill. A flu hit her in one night thirtynine degrees, sore throat, every joint aching. She called in sick, popped some paracetamol and collapsed. She couldnt summon the strength to get up, let alone feed the cat.
Morris, she croaked from the bedroom, Im sorry. I cant right now.
Silence.
She slipped into a heavy, sticky sleep with a buzzing headache. She woke to something pressing on her legs not heavy, just warm, alive.
Morris was curled at the foot of the bed, a breadshaped ball, staring at her unblinkingly, seriously, attentively. For the first time in a month he wasnt in the hallway, the cupboard, or behind the ironing board. He was here.
Ethel didnt move. She was afraid to if she did, he might flee. She just looked at him, and he looked back, and between them lay a wordless understanding that needed no speech.
You already know this, she whispered.
Morris tucked his ears under his head, rested his chin on his paws, and closed his eyes.
He didnt leave.
She stayed ill for three days; Morris stayed at her feet the whole time, only venturing to the bowl when she mustered the energy to pour food. On the third day, when her temperature finally fell, she sat in the kitchen wrapped in a blanket, a mug of broth in hand. Morris hopped onto the stool, settled beside her, and began to purr a faint, hoarse rumble, as if hed forgotten how to make noise and was now relearning it.
Ethel set her mug down, slipped off her glasses, and reached slowly, palm up.
Morris sniffed her fingertips, then nudged his forehead against her hand.
She wept. Not out of sentimentality she wasnt the type to cry at cute things but because a simple, crystalclear truth hit her: she had bought a life that wasnt hers, complete with foreign books and a foreign cat, because her own life had no room left. And the cat had stayed in a foreign life with a foreign woman because there was nowhere else for him to go. Two encumbrances, two addons, two extra beings rolled into the price.
Now they sat together in the kitchen, fifteen cat years and fiftysix human years, sharing warmth.
Morris purred, and Ethel rested her palm on his big, heavy head, thinking perhaps this was what people call the thing you dont ask for, you dont look for, but it arrives anyway.
By May, Ethel ripped out the old, tiny brownfloral wallpaper that made the flat feel dimmer than it was, and painted the walls a soft, milky cream. She left the linoleum for now she didnt have the cash to do everything at once, but it no longer mattered. The flat had stopped feeling foreign. She barely noticed when that shift happened.
Ninas books stayed on the shelf. Ethel added a handful of her own about a dozen or fifteen. Chekhov, still pencilled, occupied its old spot. Occasionally shed open it at night and read the marginal notes, the foreign yes, exactly, and I too, and simply nod.
She threw away the withered geraniums and, once settled, bought fresh ones, placing them on the same windowsill where Morris had first perched. He now chose that sill less often, preferring the armchair beside her, or her lap on long evenings when the book was good.
At six oclock he stopped patrolling the door.
In June, Megan Harper, the realtor, happened to run into Ethel at the local Tesco on Oxford Road. Ethel stood in line, a bag of cat food and a bottle of kefir in hand.
Hows the flat? Megan asked. Happy with it?
No regrets, Ethel replied.
And the cat?
Ethel paused, shifting the cat food from one hand to the other.
You know, Megan, she said, they should have kept the price up. We lowered it for nothing.
Megan laughed. Ethel didnt.
When she got home, Morris waited in the hallway by the shoes. It was his new spot. As the lock clicked, he lifted his head, gave a slow blink.
Thats how you greet someone youve been waiting for.
