Without the distraction of rounding up my father’s scattered belongings, I am poleaxed by both everything that has happened and the emptiness of the flat.
I am deafened by the silence and mocked by unclothed hangers, hooks without coats and a bathroom devoid of any products except my own.
I don’t even have Pebbles here to ignore me.
And whose fault is that?
Guilt gnaws at my belly. He could have died, for God’s sake. Because of me.
I open my laptop and search for pet-proof bins. Why has it taken something like this to make me do this? I start comparing options. Pebbles will not just have a pet-proof bin, he’ll have the best pet-proof bin that money can buy.
The lies my father has told this weekend are jostling for position in my mind. I am angry with him but also with myself for being suckered in by him. (Surprise: the leopard’s spots are unchanged.)
But there’s another reason to direct the anger inwards too – the one nailed by that ugly poster at St Anthony’s with its curled-up edges. Am I really as different to my father as I like to think I am? I have also lied and lied. I’ve allowed my father to buy me a wedding dress, let him put down the deposit on a wedding venue. And, even if I tell myself he deserves no better, what kind of slippery moral slope is that? I have also lied at work. What if I am not the Good Person I like to think I am? As the old adage goes, it’s not until people are under pressure that you see who they really are.
I settle on a pet-proof bin with over a thousand five-star reviews. It’s stainless steel, so will show every fingerprint and drive me crazy, but as long as it’s safe for Pebbles I don’t care. I should have got one ages ago. Maybe as well as being less honest than I thought I was, I’m also less responsible? Like my father.
Wait, though. Doesn’t everyone always tell me I’m like my mum? She herself used to call me a ‘chip off the old block’. Just this afternoon, my grandma went on about how I remind her of Mum.
I look across the room at Pebbles’ empty bed, suddenly noticing how old and shabby it is. I should have replaced it ages ago. I type luxury cat beds into Google.
The Sleepycatz luxury igloo bed is our softest and comfiest bed. Ideal for even the fussiest of felines!
I add it to my basket. I’ll buy Pebbles some new toys as well. He has shown precious little interest in any plaything before now but maybe I’ve just never chosen the right ones? I want to make everything perfect for when he comes home tomorrow.
A memory pierces my consciousness, sharp and jagged. Me, aged seventeen, trying to make everything nice for when Mum came out of hospital. I cleaned the house from top to bottom, cooked Mum’s favourite supper of fish pie and bought a huge bunch of hyacinths for her bedroom. But when she came home, she was so sick and tired that she didn’t even comment on how clean the house was. She couldn’t eat more than a couple of forkfuls of the fish pie and the hyacinths had to be moved downstairs because the smell was making her nauseous. And I was cross with her, actually cross. And I covered it up, of course I did, but still.
I add a catnip-filled mouse toy to my basket. Apparently, it will satisfy Pebbles’ natural hunting instinct and offer physical and mental stimulation. I also add a teaser toy and a turkey drumstick that squeaks. I have always avoided squeaky toys in the past for fear they will drive me insane, but maybe that’s selfish? Like my father.
I’ve thought about that day when Mum came home from the hospital so many times over the years. Tried to find a way to excuse myself. Told myself it wasn’t really about the clean house or the fish pie or the flowers, it was because Mum’s diagnosis had been so out of the blue and so devastating and I was in shock.
But she must have been in shock too. I remember her National Trust wall calendar. The entries, in Mum’s small loopy handwriting, went from ‘Coffee with Sue’ or ‘Pick up dry cleaning!’ or ‘Book group’ to ‘Chemo appointment’ and ‘Hospice visit’ and ‘Funeral director’ with no warning. And she was still nice.
I start looking at cat towers. They’re both ugly and pricey.
Sometimes my mum’s niceness annoyed me. After she was diagnosed, she was so worried about letting people down at work she didn’t tell them how ill she was, instead offering up her full month’s notice. I thought she was being ridiculous. ‘You’ve got weeks to live and you’re spending them pacifying people who are disappointed with the performance of their steam mop, or don’t think their twelve-hole mini-muffin tin is suitably non-stick.’
I add a cat tower to my basket.
My mum almost always pushed her own needs to the bottom of the list, from letting my father walk all over her, to saying she had no time for the drawing she loved (we found box after box of unopened charcoals in the loft after she died), to never visiting her best friend, who’d moved to the south of France ten years before she got ill. Even Mum regretted the latter, commenting in an uncharacteristic moment of self-pity that we always think we have all the time in the world.
Will I be saying the same one day about travelling?
Maybe I am like my mum? But that’s not all good either?
The thought is as shocking to me as if someone has suddenly revealed the world to be flat. For me, things have always been binary: my mum equals good, my dad equals bad.
For all Dad’s faults – and I could happily punch him in the face right now – he does have an enviable knack of squeezing the joy out of every day. He takes risks. He lives.
I shake the thoughts from my brain and pay for the Pebbles haul. Best to focus on the practical right now.