That only strengthened my resolve. Jude and I were together. I was going to make this work. I was going to keep the flame of passion burning in our relationship, whatever it took. I had a boyfriend, and I wasn’t going to let some eyebrow-raising, tarot-reading, high-cheekboned rival come between us.
Nineteen
Peace and happiness may be found today in nature, but don’t forget that the tides have power and tigers have teeth.
It was ten o’clock and I was still in bed – my first morning off in ages and, crucially, what felt like the first free time in ages that I didn’t have to spend combing the internet for potential dates. It had been three weeks since Jude had… not moved in, exactly. But moved in. And I still hadn’t quite got my head around the fact that I was no longer single.
It seemed Jude had moved in with me permanently. His laptop was on my coffee table, his guitar was propped up against the wall, his clothes were… well, pretty much everywhere. Task one for my morning off was going to have to be putting on a load of washing – or more like three, judging by the amount of stuff there was draped over the sofa, half under the bed and covering most of the floor.
When I’d suggested to Jude that we do a bit of cleaning together, he’d said that he had work to do and wasn’t housework a ridiculously bourgeois construct, anyway? And to be fair to him, he was working brutally long hours, often leaving the flat before seven and not returning until nine or ten at night. And it was all for virtually no pay – as an intern, his transport costs were covered and he got an allowance for lunch, but that was it.
His commitment to the cause impressed me, but I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have a live-in boyfriend who I actually saw sometimes, as opposed to just seeing his stuff.
At the window behind me, open to the warm, breezy morning, I heard Frazzle give his familiar chirrup of longing. The blackbirds that had been nesting in the beer garden had kept him fascinated for days: he perched on the windowsill, his fluffy orange tail twitching with frustration, his whiskers bristling, as he watched the parents fly back and forth to their nest. As I watched, he stretched his jaw open in an enormous yawn, then started the little clicking cries again.
‘You’re on a hiding to nothing, Frazz,’ I told him. ‘Those birds can fly, and you can’t. You’ve got claws; they’ve got wings. Deal with it.’
Frazzle turned and gave me a hard stare. Clearly he expected his human servant to go out and bring him a bird to play with. Telling him to stop being so ridiculous, I heaved myself out of bed and pulled on a pair of frayed denim shorts and an old T-shirt. My shower could wait – by the time I’d finished cleaning the flat, I certainly wouldn’t be clean myself.
How, I wondered, could Jude have accumulated so much stuff in just a few weeks? There were newspapers everywhere – the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Morning Star, the Daily Mirror – most of them unread because Jude, like everyone else, got the news from Twitter. There was a teetering stack of vinyl LPs that he’d picked up from the side of the road where someone had left them after a clear-out. The same person had been getting rid of a load of old cookery books – Delia Smith, Marguerite Patten and The Microwave Gourmet – and Jude had brought them home because they’d have ended up in landfill otherwise and he thought I might want them. I hadn’t had the heart to tell him I really, really didn’t.
‘We’ve got a hoarder on our hands,’ I told Frazzle. ‘You won’t be able to get to your catnip mice at this rate.’
But I suspected that if I did what I so longed to do and took the whole lot out to the recycling, Jude would be hurt and annoyed. So I put a load of washing on and started the arduous task of sorting everything into more or less orderly piles.
From his spot on the windowsill, Frazzle gave another frantic chatter. I turned to see what was going on, and froze. There, on the ledge less than four inches from his nose, was a small, newly fledged blackbird. Frazz had gone quiet, frozen, clearly unable to believe his good fortune. Helpless, immobile prey didn’t just land under cats’ noses, I could imagine him thinking, Surely this must be some kind of trick?
But he didn’t freeze for long. Before I could cross the room, he’d pounced. The bird gave a frantic flap of its wings and managed, just in time, to take off – only instead of flying to safety, it flew into the flat, closely pursued by my cat.
‘Shit! Frazzle, come here. Leave the bird alone!’
But Frazzle wasn’t listening. He wanted to investigate this gift from the cat gods further. The bird had landed on the carpet and Frazzle was watching it, transfixed, as if he knew that just one more pounce would do the trick. I tried to grab him but, for the first time ever, he growled at me and darted underneath the bed.
It was fair enough, I suppose. In that moment, I wasn’t his loving human, provider of food, fuss, warmth and exciting games involving a sparkly fishing-rod toy. I was a deadly rival, intent on stealing his prey. And that was exactly what I was going to do. But I was too slow. The fledgling ran a few uncertain steps, then found the use of its wings and flapped frantically, managing a brief flight that took it to the top of the bathroom door, where it perched, hunched over in terror.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. Frazzle, you are such a naughty cat. What the hell do I do now?’
I was no ornithologist, but I knew that cats’ teeth and claws could be lethal to this tiny creature. Just because it had managed a short maiden flight didn’t mean it would be able to find its way back out through the window. And besides, Frazzle had emerged from under the bed and was crouched on the floor, waiting for the bird to leave its precarious perch.
I’m here for the long game, he seemed to be saying. One of us is going to give up first and it isn’t going to be me.
I needed to shut the cat away, but I couldn’t, because the only door inside my small flat was the one the bird was using as a temporary refuge. I needed to rescue the bird, but I wasn’t tall enough to reach it.
I needed help.
Scooping Frazzle up in my arms, ignoring his wriggling protests, I hurried out of the flat and down the stairs to the pub. Someone would be there who could rescue the bird – someone taller than me, which meant practically anyone.
But Robbie would be alone in the kitchen, with hot pans on the stovetop that couldn’t be left. Alice was sitting at a table with Maurice and the rest of the pub’s committee, deep in conversation. Fat Don was at his usual place at the bar, no doubt already on his third pint of the day, and would be absolutely no help to me.
I hesitated for a second. Even though Alice wasn’t much taller than me, she was sensible, and so were all the others – Maurice and various worthy people drawn from the local community. One of them would know what to do.
But then Frazzle started to squirm even more determinedly in my arms, his claws raking across my bare shoulder. He freed himself from my grasp, jumped down to the floor with an affronted meow and trotted off towards one of the corner tables.
I hadn’t noticed Adam there. He had the D&D set open on the table and was drawing what looked like a massively complex map on a pad of graph paper. There was a pack of coloured felt-tip pens in front of him, pencils, a ruler and a book called The Mega Monster Companion, which I’d never seen before.