October 1986
London was fun for me but not for my cats. Angelica and Witton sat on the high windowsills of my flat, looking out at treetops in the communal gardens behind. Guilt followed me out of the door when I went to work each day leaving a floor deep in clothes. The cats padded through the chaos, flexing luxuriating claws, then curling up plump in the folds of a dressing-gown until I returned. However stealthily I made my late-night entrance, they woke, purring machine-gun joy, twisting and cloying round my legs while I poured them milk. My dependants. The guilt turned to panic when one of Witton’s ears began to droop forward, like a shattered traffic bollard. I rang Mum and found a cardboard box. In went Witton, one ear twitching, the other at half-mast; in went Angelica, a ball of struggling orange fury. I drove them to the station and waved them off on the train like a mother abandoning her children to a new term at boarding-school.
Mum rang me that evening. ‘Darling, those poor cats, they look utterly miserable. Something’s happened to Witton’s ear. They miss you. I don’t know if it will work having them here. When are you coming down to visit them? And us?’
But there never seemed to be time. Every day I went to work, proudly arranging myself at my desk and making a hundred vital phone calls. Every evening I went to a party, or two, or three, chattering and bustling through unnoticed changing seasons as I plunged into London.
Brodie and Flook were in London too, but they didn’t have telephones. Sometimes they turned up in Covent Garden at the office, and I brought them up to my department for a cup of coffee, half embarrassed by their torn, faded clothes but ablaze with pride at the lingering looks from the other girls.
One day Brodie arrived at lunch-time. He was wearing a suit, and his hair was smooth, slicked black, a yellow strand from his peroxide days bleached stiff behind his ear. ‘I’ve got a job in the City,’ he said. ‘I’m selling bonds. I’ll take you out to lunch if you like.’
He wasn’t my little brother any more, striding now in grey pinstripes, his hat low on his brow like Bugsy Malone. We went to a Greek restaurant. ‘When did you last go home?’ he asked, reaching for a cigarette.
‘I haven’t been for ages.’ I didn’t look at him as I spoke. I knew he wasn’t smiling.
‘You should go. Dad isn’t well, you know, winter is coming, and he hates it, especially when the clocks go back. It would really cheer him up to see you.’
I was defensive. ‘I saw him the other day when he came to get that prize. You were there, you know I did.’
‘That’s different. One drunken evening with thousands of people isn’t like going home, is it?’
I twisted my fork in the crumbly mound of feta cheese on my plate; an olive dropped out and rolled on to the floor. I felt sick and scared. Brodie was irritating me with his superior manner. ‘What about you, then? You only go when you need money, and you won’t need money now, so I suppose you want me to go instead of you.’
Before the flash of anger in his eyes I saw panic and fear, and I was angry too. Why should we have to look after our parents? Why should we have to worry about them? Small and sad, Brodie and I sat at the Formica table, food untouched, ashtray full, a dreadful shared, unspoken fear heavy in the air between us.