38

Boris seemed, if anything, to be getting even thinner. His fur looked even stragglier and his eyes looked even bulgier. Toby was concerned that this was more than just a weird-looking cat, that this was a cat preparing to meet its maker, so he made an appointment for him at the nearest vet.

He was staring out of his bedroom window, pondering the logistics of getting a cat from Silversmith Road to the surgery which was a ten-minute walk away, without a cat box, when it occurred to him.

Melinda’s car.

He was staring right at it.

It was red and shiny and parked outside. Which meant that Melinda was at home, as she never went anywhere by foot or public transport. Before he’d given himself a chance to think of a dozen reasons why he shouldn’t do it, Toby was knocking on Con and Melinda’s bedroom door.

Melinda came to the door. She was wearing a pink towelling dressing gown. Without her make-up, Toby noted, she looked much younger, much more approachable. She smiled when she saw him, making no attempt to bring her dressing gown together over her cleavage. ‘Hello!’

‘Hi, there!’ Toby smiled and wondered briefly, not for the first time, how this pink, blonde, overly genial woman had ended up living in his home.

‘This is a rare privilege.’

‘It is?’

‘A visit from the lord of the manor! I am honoured! What can I do for you, love?’

‘Are you busy today?’

‘No, not particularly. Did you want me to do some ironing for you? Or a spot of dusting? I don’t mind if you do. Keeps me busy!’

‘No, no, no. Nothing like that. It’s just, I’m a bit worried about Boris. And I’ve made an appointment for him at the vet’s later and I was wondering, if it’s not too much hassle for you, if you’d mind taking us there? In your car?’

‘What time?’

‘One o’clock?’

She smiled. ‘No worries. I’d love to. I’ll see you downstairs at one.’

Toby couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a woman’s car. Women’s cars were strange, alien places. They were a funny shape, round, bulbous. They had tissues in them and, in Melinda’s case, soft toys. And they smelled strange, not like cars at all. More like cakes. Melinda’s car smelled of peaches. Not lovely fragrant peaches, straight off a tree, but sickly sweet peaches, steeped in syrup. The root of the smell was a small plastic peach hanging from her rear-view mirror.

She was restored to her usual state of casual glamour in bleached frayed jeans, pink hooded top, pink trainers and a Burberry visor. She tapped her foot pedals gently and methodically, as if they were driving a church organ. And she talked. And she talked. And she talked.

Toby sat in the back with Boris on his lap in a cardboard box trying to find an opportunity to start the conversation he’d been hoping to engineer since he’d first set eyes on Melinda’s car this morning. He waited until they approached a roundabout, as he’d noticed that she tended to stop talking for a moment when she was concentrating, then he said the first thing that came into his head.

‘So, are you … seeing anyone at the moment, Melinda?’

She turned round and grinned at him. ‘Why? Are you interested?’

‘Good Lord, no. I mean. No, not at all. Not that I wouldn’t … not that I don’t … but no. I was just wondering.’

‘No,’ she said, turning back to the road, ‘no. I’m young, free and single. And that’s the way I like it.’

‘It is?’

‘Yes. Bloody men. I’ve had it up to here with them all. They’re all losers.’

‘Oh, surely not all of them.’

She smiled at him again. ‘Well, not you obviously, Toby. You’re different. But generally speaking, in my opinion, men are just liars and losers and idiots.’

Toby drew in his breath, about to do something that was so out of character for him that he felt like his head might fall off. ‘So,’ he said, ‘then you wouldn’t be interested in meeting my friend Jack?’

She laughed. He couldn’t blame her. ‘Your friend Jack?’

‘Yes, well, not my friend, exactly. A friend’s friend. A friend. Of a friend. She’s been raving about him. Says he’s amazing. Apparently.’ He breathed out, feeling quite dizzy with embarrassment.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Her head turned from side to side as she approached a junction to turn right. ‘Well, if he’s that great, then why doesn’t she want him for herself?’

He shrugged, then winced as one of Boris’s claws pierced first the cardboard, then his jeans and then his skin. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe she doesn’t fancy him.’

‘Well, then, he’s obviously a minger.’

‘No, no, no. Not at all. Apparently he’s very handsome. And very rich.’

‘That’s what your friend’s told you, is it?’ She laughed again, somewhat patronizingly. Toby began to feel that maybe he’d gone about this all the wrong way.

‘Yes,’ he said, sliding the wriggling, scratching box off his lap and onto the seat next to him. There was a small freckle of blood on his jeans which he dabbed at with a fingertip. ‘I have to admit, I’ve never met this man, but he does sound like quite a catch.’

‘Oh, bless you, Toby and your way with words. Quite a catch, eh?!’

‘Well, apparently.’

Melinda pulled in to the car park behind the veterinarian’s and turned off the ignition. ‘What are you trying to say here, my love? You want to fix me up with this rich old guy who your mate don’t fancy?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say he’s old …’

‘Well, what sort of age is he, then?’

‘I’m not sure. Your age, I think. Maybe a little older. And he’s Italian.’

He felt her go still in the driver’s seat, like a child hearing the distant tone of an ice-cream van. ‘Italian?’ she said.

‘Yes. Jack. Short for Giacomo.’

‘Giacomo.’ She let the name run across her tongue and over her lips. ‘Is he dark?’

‘I don’t know. I assume so. I mean, I could find out for you if you’d like.’

‘And when you say rich, how rich exactly?’

‘I don’t know exactly, but he’s got a four-bedroom house on Cranmore Gardens. With a swimming pool.’

‘And he’s not married?’

‘No. Recently divorced. Two teenage daughters. Desperately lonely, according to my friend.’

‘Nah,’ she said, ‘sounds too good to be true. Sounds dodgy.’ She pulled her keys out of the ignition, slung her handbag over her shoulder and headed towards the vet’s.

The vet was unable to find any medical reason for Boris’s deteriorating condition. ‘Boris is very old,’ he said, sympathetically. ‘I would imagine that he’s pining for his late owner and, being a runt, he probably isn’t able to deal with the degradations of ageing as well as a more robust feline. Leave him be, see how it goes and, if it gets much worse than it is now, bring him in and we’ll put him to sleep.’

‘How long do you think he’s got?’ Melinda asked as if she were playing a bit part in a daytime soap.

‘That’s hard to say.’ The vet patted Boris’s head. ‘Could be a few days, could be a few weeks.’

‘So basically, he’s dying?’ said Toby.

‘Basically, yes.’

Melinda started to cry then, thick rivers of mascara running down her cheeks.

But Toby felt a curious sense of unburdening, of a loosening of the straps tying him into his rut. Boris was dying, but slowly, day by day, Toby was being reborn.