Mama Cat had moved full time onto Samhain’s old bed, leaving a moulted circle of fur around herself in the shape of Saturn’s rings. Comfortable there, and declining to move.
‘You really should get her spayed,’ Mart said.
‘Can’t afford to.’ Frankie had been around the hotel, gathering guest soaps. They sat, egg-nestled, in folded fresh towels, in the old Estamos merchandise box. ‘And besides, she’s not my cat.’
‘PDSA do free spaying on a Tuesday,’ she said. ‘You just have to go to the place and wait.’
‘How long?’ Frankie put the box with the rest of Samhain’s stuff, waiting by the front door.
‘I don’t know, however it long it takes them to see you.’
‘All day?’
Mart reached down into Frazzles. He was in a box of his own, much smaller, and he moved his head, purring, under her scratching finger. ‘Maybe.’
‘I haven’t got time for that,’ Frankie said.
‘You’re the one who bloody let her in,’ Samhain said.
‘I didn’t let her in. She just came in one day when the door was open.’
This was the largest pile of things that Samhain had ever taken in a house move. A bed frame and mattress, a double duvet off one of the beds. Sheets and pillows. Resting on these were things from the kitchen – tin opener, wooden spoon, crock pot. Samhain wasn’t sure how Frankie was going to get along without these things, but Marta had put them in the pile with everything else, and talked him out of putting them back in the kitchen for Frankie.
He opened the front door. The sun gleamed into his eyes in a golden splint. ‘Christ, Frankie,’ Samhain said, ‘I’ll come back and take her to the PDSA myself.’ Any minute, Kebby was going to arrive, and he wanted to be waiting when it happened. It was odd enough that he’d had to give his workmate directions to come and pick him up here, at this disinterred old guesthouse. He didn’t want him going upstairs and asking questions as well. ‘If you don’t, she’ll have another litter of kittens. Then another, then another. Who’s going to look after them – you?’ He was hauling his rucksack onto his shoulder; as he lifted it, he felt the old, reassuring scrape of the screwdriver handle against his neck.
‘Did it this time, didn’t I?’
The bag felt heavier this time, less portable than it had ever been. Weighted with spoons, with forks, glasses from the bar; it bulged with toilet rolls from the linen cupboard. ‘You didn’t. I did.’ There was the chug of an engine outside. Samhain opened the doors wider, and waved at Kebby, pulling up in the van. ‘I’ll come again myself and see to it – next Tuesday, after work. Don’t let her out, right?’
‘I’ll miss you, boyo.’ Frankie came towards him, stretching out his arms. A manly hug constricted around Samhain’s back in a broad elastic. The hug that Samhain had felt a thousand times – darkened bars, late nights, under deep cover of Jägermeister. In the days when he had thought he and Frankie would be best friends forever. ‘Don’t be a stranger, will you?’
Samhain picked up the duvet, and was transported back.
Flores, her back to him, standing in one of the yurts. Small then, his head somewhere around mid-thigh height, clutching a pillow, the only thing he was big enough to carry.
Something in his other hand, something warm and wooden. The little toy car he had loved so much.
They weren’t supposed to keep toys for themselves, but somewhere along the way he had plucked this from one of the toy boxes in one of the camps, and kept it. A thing with red paint, and carved wheels that only turned some of the time.
Boys and girls were meant to play with things for a while, then return them to the shared box. But Samhain had been so attached to this car, and he’d held it often. It was always in his hand, and had been at that point. Flores gathered scraps of clothing: warm jumpers for cold, cagoules for rain, singing as she worked. She always did this when they were on the move. He hadn’t asked her where they were going, not that it made any difference. Wherever they went, they were always going to the same place. Another dusty camp with tents, placards and signs and chains, to the earth and sky, the constant murmur of voices.
He’d known what a house was, because he’d built one with Lego. A house was a place where you lived forever, a sturdy thing with a roof and four walls, a door you could close when you went home.
‘This all reminds me of moving when I was a kid,’ he remarked.
Mart was holding Frazzles in the box. ‘Better get him in the van, before we do anything else,’ she said.
‘Right. Just ask Kebby–’
‘Somebody ask for me?’
There he was in the doorway, off-duty. Old jeans and canvas shoes, a peaked cap worn and navy.
‘We said, better get the expert to move all this stuff,’ Samhain said.
‘That’s you, but what about me?’ Kebby glanced at the pile in the hall. ‘So where’s the rest of it?’
‘This is the lot. There isn’t anything else.’
Kebby grabbed the kitchen box, shaking his head. ‘You’re going to sit on the floor in the evenings?’ He went out of the door, throwing over his shoulder: ‘Let’s make Peter’s warehouse our second stop of the day. You need a bit more to live on than this.’
Roller blinds rattled, revealing a thicket of table legs. Tables, chairs, turned over on their backs on tops of one another, crammed helpless wooden insects.
‘Now look,’ Peter said. ‘You’ve been a good worker, Samhain. So you can take whatever you want from the front part of the warehouse, within reason, but you can’t take anything from the antiques at the back – I can’t give you those for nothing.’
‘Look, Sam.’ Mart had already found a child’s bed, part-concealed behind an old roll-front writing desk. It was a bunk-style thing, with a bed on top and a desk underneath. ‘Perfect for Astrid’s room – don’t you think?’
There was an old fire surround tipped up against the ladder. ‘Looks like it’ll fit,’ he said.
A narrow path led a crooked way past some of the tables, down into the deeper recesses of the room. Kebby was already most of the way down there; Samhain saw his baker’s boy hat bob down between two sets of mirrors. ‘Oh, I remember this,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you’ve still got it, Peter.’ He re-emerged around the side of a Welsh dresser. ‘I thought you said you were going to have this thing restored.’ He said to Sam, ‘Me and Simon brought this over here, well... must have been more than three years back.’
‘I keep meaning to,’ Peter said.
Sam couldn’t see – he was climbing. Balancing with one foot on a table, and the other tentatively on a set of dining chairs. He was trying to get across to a neat sofa he’d seen, which looked purple in the darkness.
He turned, and saw Mart on the floor on the other side, a smear of dust across her cheek. ‘Come on, jump down,’ she said. ‘I’ll catch you.’
‘But I haven’t the time,’ Peter went on. ‘Thing like that – it needs a specialist restorer. I can’t get anybody out to come and have a look at it.’
Samhain heard Kebby’s voice, without actually being able to see the man himself. ‘What? I can’t believe that. If those guys could just see this place... I can’t believe some of this stuff is still here. It’s a crime, Peter. You should at least put some of it on eBay.’
‘What’s eBay?’
‘Here.’ Mart already had a stack going. She’d gone, magpie-eyed, around the wooden topography. ‘What about this?’ She led him over the dining table to an old leather sofa, then over that, further into the dark, away from the doors, to a book case and coffee table with an inlaid top. ‘And what about this – any good? Do you like it?’
Then from there, with what touched his hand feeling like her skin or a piece of velvet fabric hanging loose, through legs and standard lamp fringing, to more dark, greater dust, to a desk lamp and floor lamp.
‘It’s great, Mart,’ he said. ‘How did you find all this stuff so quickly?’
‘Don’t know.’ Things were dim here, back here, in this forgotten place so far back amongst the furniture. He could only see her teeth as she smiled. It took his eyes a moment to adjust. ‘Years of scavenging, I guess.’
‘You’ve got a great eye,’ he said.
They were standing in some part of the room where, by some accident of the way the furniture was stacked, there was only just room for two pairs of adult feet, facing one another.
‘So they tell me.’
She was smiling: he could hear it in her voice.
‘Thanks for bringing me here, Mart,’ he said.
‘I didn’t bring you anywhere. It was Kebby who drove the van.’
‘No, but – you know what I mean. Not just for this. For everything. The flat – Charley – the... you know, the stuff with my dad.’
She reached away from him, towards a lamp with a mermaid swimming around its base. ‘What’s brought all this on?’
There was a cinnamon smell about her, on her hair, her clothes. ‘I don’t know. I guess I just looked at all the things you’d picked out, and realised how lucky I am.’
‘Lucky?’
She was still smiling when he leaned down towards her: holding the lamp in one hand, sweet tea on her breath.
‘Yes – lucky. I don’t know what I would have done without you.’
‘You would have managed.’
‘Why don’t you put that lamp down?’
She looked at it, smiled at the graceful creature with the fishtail, reaching her hands up towards the bulb. ‘This is the best thing I’ve seen so far. I think I’m going to keep it.’
‘Put it with the rest of the stuff.’
‘Sam.’ She laid the lamp down carefully, on top of a cabinet with glass windows. ‘You’re better than you think. You would have figured it all out. With or without me. You’re smart. That’s what I like about you.’ The plug swung loose, and tapped against a wooden leg. ‘Or at least it’s one of the things I like about you, anyway.’
‘There’s more than one?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Wondering, he looked beyond her into the jungle of furniture, at polished corners catching and reflecting the sun, at Peter’s head shining with silver by the roll-top doors.
‘I didn’t know there was...’ he began.
Then he was quietened: she closed her eyes, and pulled him close.
Kissing Mart was like eating a Danish pastry. Sticky and sweet, the kind of thing he could have kept on doing all day. Her back was a boat-sail under his arms, her hands in his hair in a light breeze.
Up close, she was syrupy, soft. All parts of her might have been made from candyfloss. He was busy trying to get to the lollipop stick in the centre when he heard the crack of somebody knocking a piece of furniture over nearby.
A table bucked sharp onto his elbow.
‘Bloody thing.’ Kebby’s voice. ‘Why is it so damn dark in here? You’d think Peter could afford to switch on the lights.’
Mart was quick, leaning to catch the falling lamp. ‘Be careful,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We ought to have brought a torch. Anybody hurt?’
‘No.’
‘This is the last time I scratch around here for second-hand furniture,’ Kebby grumbled. ‘Have you found everything you need, yet? At least get a move on. I need to get home for tea.’