1996
The cat lay prone on the stoop of the back door, which led out onto the garden. It was fat and ginger with white paws and a pink nose. It didn’t belong to the Bowmans. Their mother used to chase it away if she saw it in the garden. Amy Bowman hated cats, they made her sneeze. It belonged to one of the neighbours whose garden ran alongside theirs. All the gardens lay in a straight row at the back of the terrace like a line of verdant soldiers.
The cat would bound through one of the holes in the trellis face and walk languidly over to the step where the sun would hit most afternoons, creating a warm patch in which it liked to sleep.
Laurel and Rosie sat cross-legged on the grass, watching the cat in slumber. They sat quite still, their eyes steady on the animal, on his ginger paws crossed in front of him, his whiskers twitching in the soft breeze.
After a while, Laurel held out her hand, her fist closed, her arm straight and stretched out. A moment later Rosie did the same, her clenched first alongside her sister’s. As if to a beat that only they could hear, they bounced their fists once, twice, three times over the grass before opening their palms simultaneously. Laurel’s fingers formed a V-shape whereas Rosie’s hand was flat. Seeing this, she nodded and climbed slowly to her feet.
Carefully, she walked across the grass to where the cat lay. She made no sound, her bare feet quiet on the warm grass. Laurel continued to watch in silence as Rosie picked up the cat by the scruff of its neck. It opened its eyes in surprise but it was impossible to wriggle out of the girl’s grip. She held the cat out to one side as she made her way round, past Laurel and down to the end of the garden where the blue hydrangeas were.
Laurel lay back on the grass, stretching out her toes and feeling the caress of the sun on her face. As her mother looked on from the kitchen window, she counted the clouds in the sky, floating past on the current of the earth. A shadow fell briefly over her as Rosie came back to join her, lying next to her sister without speaking. They lay there for a while, softly breathing before getting up and going to sit on the now empty stoop.