There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned
– Antony and Cleopatra
‘You’re fired.’
It wasn’t the first time Cesca Shakespeare had heard those words. It wasn’t even the sixth time, but it was the only time they’d been said to her inside the ridiculousness that was Cleopatra’s Cat Café, London’s premiere fine-dining establishment for lovers of the feline species.
It was a crazy idea, Cesca thought, combining afternoon tea with furry cats who seemed to take pleasure moulting their hair all over the food and drink. Yet since she’d begun working here two weeks ago it had been completely booked out, full of cooing, selfie-stick-clutching tourists, who loved the way the cats curled up on their laps while they sipped lapsang souchong out of fine bone china cups.
The people, not the cats. The kitties preferred licking cream out of the hand-painted jugs.
‘I’m sorry?’ If it wasn’t for the fact she needed this job – or at least the way it paid her rent – she’d be laughing in the owner’s face right now. You couldn’t really describe it as her dream job, carrying trays of sandwiches while trying not to trip over cats as they seemed to deliberately jump in her way. More than once they’d sent her flying, launching plates full of cakes over the unsuspecting clientele.
‘You obviously aren’t cut out for working here,’ Philomena, the owner, told her. ‘In your résumé it said you were a cat lover, but you’ve done nothing but shout at Tootsie, Simba and the others. And what you just said to Mr Tibbles, well that was unforgivable.’
‘He’d just peed on a whole tray of afternoon tea,’ Cesca protested.
‘If you’d have picked up the tray as soon as I called service there wouldn’t have been a problem. These cats are highly strung, they need to mark their territory. It’s our job to give them boundaries. You told me you had experience of rare breeds like Mr Tibbles.’
From the corner of her eye, Cesca saw him prowl along the floor towards them. Mr Tibbles was a Sphynx, a hairless breed that made him look as though he’d taken all his clothes off and was prancing around the café in the buff.
‘I do have some experience. There were lots of cats around when I was growing up . . . ’ Cesca trailed off weakly, knowing she’d lied through her teeth to get this job. Not that the job was a catch, but by the time she’d seen the advert in the window, she was desperate. Enough to take a job surrounded by hissing cats who seemed to want nothing more than make her life a misery.
‘Well it isn’t working out. Customers have complained about the way you’ve been treating the animals. You can’t just drop-kick them whenever they misbehave.’
‘I didn’t drop-kick them, I swiped them off the table. And it was my first day, I didn’t know the customers liked sharing their food.’
‘That’s the point.’ Philomena sighed. ‘A real cat lover wouldn’t think twice. You’re clearly an imposter.’ She lowered her voice, brushing her hair away from her sweaty face. ‘Do you even like cats?’
Torn between a natural urge to be truthful, and her need for a job, Cesca hesitated. As if he could sense the drama, Mr Tibbles wandered over, weaving his way between Cesca’s legs. Looking up at her through his watery blue eyes, he narrowed them as if in challenge.
‘I . . . um . . . I’m not that fond of them. But I needed the job and I’ve never had a problem with animals. I used to spend every weekend playing with our neighbour’s dog.’
Philomena shuddered. ‘Dog lovers aren’t welcome here,’ she hissed, sounding almost cat-like herself. ‘Now get your things and leave before you upset Mr Tibbles with your nasty words.’
‘Can I at least have my wages?’ It had come to something when Cesca had to beg for money, but with this week’s rent looming ominously above her, there was nothing to do but embarrass herself. Too many times she’d had to make up excuses for paying late, or sometimes not paying at all. Living hand-to-mouth in London wasn’t for the faint-hearted.
What choice did she have though? At the age of twenty-four she was on a downward spiral when her friends were all on the up. While they’d been studying hard at university, and getting professional positions that paid them a good salary, Cesca had been rebounding from job to job like a pinball, not staying still long enough to really take a good look at herself.
She’d become good at that avoidance, too. Six years of pretending she was happy, she was OK, that she actually liked a bohemian lifestyle of drifting between flats, making her friends double over in laughter every time she lost another dead-end job, or told them about yet another failed relationship. But when she was lying in bed at night, trying to ignore the pervasive smell of damp and mould that seemed to permeate the walls, she wasn’t laughing at all. She wasn’t even smiling. That was when the monsters seemed to crawl out from their hiding place in the bottom of her brain, whispering in her ear, reminding her she was a failure, a loser, and she would never amount to anything.
That she’d had her big chance and she’d blown it.
‘Here, take this.’ Philomena shoved a thick envelope into her hand. She’d not bothered to close it, and Cesca could see the curled up corners of bank notes through the opening. ‘Please don’t ask me for a reference,’ her boss continued. ‘I won’t be able to say anything nice.’
Cesca wouldn’t dare. There weren’t many of her previous employers who had agreed to say anything pleasant about her, which was so unfair because she was genuinely a nice person. She simply wasn’t very good at holding down a job.
Stuffing the envelope full of cash in her bag, Cesca shrugged on her summer jacket, zipping it up to the neck. It might have been June outside, but nobody had bothered to tell the weather that, and a cold wind had decided to make its home in the city, whipping through the streets like an angry ghost.
‘Goodbye.’ Cesca walked across the kitchen floor, heading for the back door that led to the small, paved yard full of rubbish bins and cardboard boxes. Just before she reached out to open it, Philomena yelled again.
‘And close the door behind you, we don’t want the cats escaping.’
Resisting the urge to slam the door, Cesca stepped into the yard and took a deep breath, immediately regretting it when the pungent aroma of used cat litter filled her nostrils.
Maybe getting fired wasn’t the end of the world, after all.
On Friday afternoons London took on a life of its own, full of wandering tourists who barrelled into suited city workers in search of their first drink of the weekend. Even the cars seemed noisier, engines roaring a little louder, their honking horns full of fury. The streets were full of people on a mission, with places to go, things to do, and that didn’t include being polite to anybody else.
Cesca barely noticed. She was too busy trying to push her way through the crowds while she mentally calculated how much money she had left. Over the years she’d learned how to eke out her wages to the last penny, coming up with experimental recipes that combined the strangest of ingredients. There was even a time when she was a skip-diver, running around with a gang of rich kids who thought it was subversive to eat a sandwich two days after its sell-by date. They’d been playing at being poor, finding the same exhilaration in living in a squat that most people got at the top of a roller coaster, holding their breaths before going down, down, down. But while for them it was a choice, for Cesca it had already become a way of life.
It was hard to pinpoint the exact moment she realised how far she’d fallen. By the time she looked around and discovered the hole she’d found herself in, it was already too late. She was too proud to ask for help, too afraid to admit to her family and friends what a state her life was in.
There was a big crowd of Japanese tourists trying to push their way into the Underground station, spilling out onto the pavement where the lobby wouldn’t hold them all. Cesca walked around them, shooting them an envious glance, knowing she couldn’t afford to take the Tube train home. The money in her purse wasn’t quite enough to pay this week’s rent, and it definitely wasn’t enough to stretch into next week. Luxuries like train journeys and dinner would have to wait until she found another job, or got her jobseeker’s allowance, or somehow managed to swallow her pride and ask for help.
The crowds thinned out as she crossed the Thames, heading towards the darker, dingier part of town where she shared a flat. The shops, so bright and full of pretty things north of the river, became less salubrious, offering overripe fruit and unwanted cuts of meat, the aroma wafting out into the smoky air. This was the part of London Cesca had come to know in the past few years, so far removed from her childhood in Hampstead, where her father still lived. Growing up in north London, the second youngest of four sisters, had been something of a fairy tale compared with the life she now lived.
Not that her childhood had been idyllic. Her mother’s death, when Cesca was eleven, had been enough to see to that.
The flat Cesca shared with another girl – Susie Latham – was on the top floor of a tall, crooked building. The red brick walls had long since turned black, coated with hundreds of years of soot and fumes, with patches eaten away by the wind and rain. The ground floor housed an old newspaper shop, the sort that sold cigarettes by the stick to children who weren’t anywhere near the legal age of eighteen years old. Stepping over the pile of empty soft-drink cans and screwed-up sweet wrappers, Cesca opened the door leading into the stair lobby, kicking the pile of unclaimed mail to the side. Like the rest of the building, the steps had seen better days, the carpet worn to shreds by years of trampling feet.
Susie was in the bathroom, using a set of tiny tweezers to apply false eyelashes with glue. She stuck them on strand by strand, cursing every time she dropped a tiny hair into the crusty blue sink. Hearing Cesca’s footfall in the hallway, she looked up, flashing a closed-mouth smile.
‘All right?’
Cesca nodded. She’d been living with Susie for almost half a year, yet they were still only on polite terms. That was the weird thing about life in London; a flatmate could be a virtual stranger, yet you could instantly click with somebody you met on the street. Cesca found the situation uncomfortable, enough to spend most of her time in the cramped bedroom she’d claimed as hers.
‘Dave rang this afternoon, he’s coming for the rent tomorrow.’ Susie glued the final lash to her right lid. ‘You’ve got the money this time, haven’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good, because it’s too bloody cold to be out on our arses.’ Susie tipped her head to the side, scrutinising her reflection. ‘Oh, and Jamie’s coming over tonight.’
‘I thought you two had broken up.’
‘He came crawling back, they always do. He’s taking me dancing first, then maybe for something to eat.’
‘Is his wife going?’ Cesca asked pointedly.
‘No she isn’t! Anyway, he’s explained all that, he’s planning on getting a divorce, but she’s making things difficult for him. She needs to get a bloody life.’
Cesca rolled her eyes. ‘What time will you be back?’ She walked into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. Pulling open the fridge, she looked inside, grabbing a small carton of milk that was languishing at the back of the shelf. Shaking it, she saw the telltale signs of yellow gunge sticking to the plastic sides. Black coffee it was, then.
‘Probably after midnight,’ Susie shouted from the bathroom. ‘Will you be up?’
It was funny how people asked the wrong questions all the time. Susie didn’t really want to know if Cesca would be awake – she wanted to know if she’d hide in her bedroom like she always did, letting Susie and her married-man-ofthe-week have some space.
‘I might go and visit my Uncle Hugh,’ Cesca called back. ‘He’s offered for me to stay over. So don’t wait up.’
Her godfather hadn’t offered anything of the sort, though Cesca knew he would in a heartbeat. Hugh was like a second father to her, and her confidant since her mother died.
‘Oh!’ Susie’s response held a whole range of emotions in a single syllable. ‘Well, enjoy yourself.’
That was that, then. Cesca was jobless, cashless and even the person she lived with couldn’t wait to see the back of her.
Was this rock bottom? She hoped so. If she sank any lower she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to climb back up.