January 5 – Monday
The whining sound woke Tess before five o’clock in the morning. In the beginning, she thought it was the radio, normally the thick walls blunted any sounds from thwarting her sleep. Perhaps it was one of those disc jockeys who belt out questions and then wait for listeners to ring up to do their jobs for them. Tess hated them almost as much as she hated weather forecasters with their inane cheerfulness regardless of whether they were bringing news of sun, showers or snow. When she caught sight of the clock, she knew it wasn’t the radio. Her room was at the front of the flat, normally the only thing to wake her was the postman, singing loudly out of tune to his Spotify subscription. In himself, he was a torture, but his racket was different to this. This noise grated on her nerves in its insistence.
The din outside now was so loud, she wondered if something was trapped in the outer porch. She’d never been keen on that porch. It served no real purpose, just more windows to be washed, at best a place to leave her umbrella. These days she didn’t even bother locking it. To her sleepy ears, it could be anything. There was no choice really. She had to go and investigate.
She cursed as she pulled on her thinning beige dressing gown. She padded over the plaited parquet softly, as though there was a danger of waking someone else at this ungodly hour. If it was a damn dog she’d march him to the pound herself. She solved the mystery as soon as she opened the door. The cat volleyed through her ankles and slipped around her sitting room door. Well, she thought, on this occasion, he’s not going to do any damage and if it keeps him quiet, where’s the harm in letting him sleep easy for a few hours. Outside, the morning looked like night. Still, it had that frosty dewy feel to it, where everything seems crisp, new and full of promise in the quiet before the day ahead. The stillness caught her up with an arresting optimism.
‘Oh, look at you,’ she stroked the soft coat and the cat looked up at her with the most soulful eyes she’d ever seen on an animal. In the kitchen, beneath the sink there was a large box, filled with recycling. She wasn’t sure that he’d fit in it, but it was the best she could do for now. ‘God, you’re a bruiser,’ and the cat gazed at her as though Tess was the best thing he’d seen in yonks. Tess felt her heart soften and lifted him as gently as she could into it. ‘Mind you, I suppose, when it comes to heavyweights, I’m hardly one to talk.’
The flat at least felt warm as she moved through the kitchen. The stale smell of last night’s dinner wafted from the top of her bin; a muggy colostomy of leftovers, dank mothballs and neglect, all permanently seeping within the fabric of everything she knew. There was an oppressive, if reassuring, feel to knowing that all was as she left it when she went to bed, even if it was shabby and meagre.
From the fridge, she took a half pint of milk, emptied it into a bowl before taking the cold from it in the microwave. ‘Well, Robyn’s certainly going to be missing you this morning.’ When she looked at him now, it was hard to believe he’d caused so much trouble over the last few weeks. He’d caused all the bother with Tess’s arm and then tripped her up so she ended up looking as though she’d done a few rounds in the ring. Only here, curled up in a pathetic ball Tess couldn’t find it in her heart not to feel sorry for the poor thing. It was too late to be angry with the hapless little pudding. Nothing could convince her that those awful people hadn’t just abandoned him, left him to his own devices while they swanned around the golf clubs and theme parks in the Florida winter sun. He was an inside cat, too expensive to be left roaming about – too cossetted to have the skills necessary for life on his wits. Just now, in that little porch, she’d seen him in his most pitiable moment and there was no going back to their old relationship of distinct dislike. Tess knew herself well enough to know, it was time to let bygones be bygones.
‘Who would call a fine cat like you Margaret? No wonder you’ve taken to throwing yourself in the way of grumpy old women, eh?’ There was no denying that Margaret was not a lady – she had enough appendage for any Tom to be proud of. Tess much preferred male cats anyway, less needy, she’d always thought. She stroked his soft silky fur and, somehow, it seemed having him here made everything feel more opulent in some peculiar way. ‘I think you’re more of a Matt? How’s that, Matt?’ She scratched him under his chin and he purred agreement. It was decided, for as long as he stayed, he would be Matt and, with that, their past encounters were wiped clean as far as Tess was concerned.
*
Once he settled in, Matt was thoroughly reluctant to leave. Tess tried to encourage him out the front door when they’d had breakfast, just to stretch his legs, but his response was a decided no. She thought about popping him into her shopping trolley, for a little amble about the square later, but decided against it then. The last thing she wanted was to give him motion sickness. By late morning, she knew if one of them didn’t get out the door, they’d be climbing the walls once it got dark, so she popped on her coat and decided to go for her daily toddle about the square while the weather held. The last few days, she’d been trying to time it so she didn’t bump into that awful Amanda who seemed to have come up with the same bright idea as herself. Of course, being Amanda, she had to walk around the square backwards – well, clockwise perhaps, but it felt as though she was walking in the wrong direction. Truly, who turns left first?
Tess had a feeling that Amanda would be a fair-weather walker, falling out of the habit with the arrival of the first wet and windy night. Not so for Tess, she had a mission now. She’d made a command decision. She’d even weighed herself in one of the offices she temped in regularly – that had been an unpleasant experience. When had she grown so heavy? Then she realised, it was probably fifty years since she’d stood on scales. She couldn’t expect to be the very same as she had been all those years ago. She wasn’t exactly overweight, but she was brave enough to face the facts that it would do her no harm to lose half a stone.
Well, seeing Amanda King out there in her ridiculous sports clothes was just another stroke of motivation for her. She was damned if that snooty cow was going to be walking faster or further than her. If either of them was going to live a long and healthy life it was bloody well going to be Tess. She wouldn’t give that pair the satisfaction of getting their noses inside her front door, much less their measuring tapes – unless it was refitting her old bathroom as a measure of Richard King’s mortification and complete humiliation. The very notion of it made Tess feel pleased with herself all over again. So, when she ran into Amanda as she rounded her first circuit she was smiling and her greeting, instead of being bitten back, was almost pleasant.
Usually, she would have kicked herself for such a mistake, but today the look of complete shock and misapprehension on Amanda King’s face almost made it okay. On her next circuit, she could say something a little less pleasant. Now, what to say… maybe something motivational. She settled on, ‘It’ll take more than walking to shift what you need to get off those hips.’ Unfortunately, Amanda seemed to have ducked into the Square garden before she could follow it up with another motivational mantra to keep her going…
*
It struck Tess as karma in some offbeat way, the morning Matt arrived was also the morning that she learned about Douglas. It came as she’d always known it would. Out of nowhere, or more accurately, out of the letter box. It might have been there for days, Tess had gotten out of the habit of checking daily for letters that would contain nothing more than bills or fliers. A neat postcard, so she couldn’t not read it, she supposed. It was a small three by five inches, with Nancy’s flowing hand on the back. It was somehow obscene, to think that her sister would select an image of the sunrise in Ballycove to give her the news that Douglas had passed away. Tess sat with the card in her hands for she wasn’t sure how long, the cat next to her, silently keeping time to her thoughts.
It was reassuring in some strange way to think that even though Douglas was gone, she was not entirely alone in this moment. Matt was here. Of course, he’d have to go back next door, but when she needed to know she was not on her own, he was here, doing as much as anyone could while the tears silently slipped down her cheeks. She had the strangest feeling that she was moving closer to her destiny, although she couldn’t imagine how that might be. It felt wholly unnerving, but as with so many things in her life, Tess was too stubborn to make a move that might bring it closer just a little more quickly.