I am powerless. X has taken charge, propelled by some sense I cannot replicate or imagine, let alone overcome. Gerald has left—who knows where? The school run? Surely too early in the cycle of naps and feedings that has come to replace my dainty gold Rolex as the indicator of time. There has been some kind of panic, some discombobulation that upsets animals accustomed to their routines and patterns. X has taken me to various observation points—the key intersections of the apartment whence bipeds can be tracked and potential escape routes left open. My husband’s behavior since I have been exposed to it through my feline eyes has amazed, shocked, perplexed me. Are we not a happy couple? Do we not trust one another? When I am not on the road, do we not enjoy a full and satisfying physical relationship; have dinner parties; go to the movies; play with the girls; spoil them; transport them; cosset them; help where we can with the homework? And think of the holidays in Port Grimaud and Connecticut, Africa for my roots, up north for his—the Lake District, the Peak District; Derbyshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumbria, or should that be Northumberland? In any event, was their way of life not the apex of contentment? Even if his writing is temporarily blocked, are they not a model family unit?
But being a cat—being part of a cat—has initiated me into a netherworld, leaving the ground beneath our marital feet to resemble a warren with tunnels and diggings that could collapse in on themselves at any moment. Flirtation. Sex. Lycra. Since when has the great novelist owned Lycra jogging stuff? Where does he go? Why does he carry a rucksack? He is not exactly the boot-camp type. Why does he busy himself with cling film and wrappers and a set of digital scales?
Unless.
Not that.
Please not that.
X is carrying me on some enthusiastic mission I cannot pretend to understand. I am still in awe of her—our—ability to crouch and leap to enormous heights, as if on springs or fired from the barrel of a circus gun. The feline cannonball! Watch and wonder! One minute we are on the cork floor of the kitchen. The next we are on the work surface that needs so much oiling and attention that the human in me sometimes wonders why she chose it over granite or slate or Formica or anything but this fancy, dark, beautiful wood of the rain forest that shows every stain. Here we are, this time, weaving past the microwave and the coffeemaker, the olive oil bottle and the earthenware pot of implements—wooden spoons, spatulas, whisks, ladles. We teeter past the drying rack, along the rim of the Belfast sink as if we are mountaineers on a high and precarious arête.
X is only partly navigating by visual means. She is sniffing and snuffling along. Her nostrils have become her dominant guidance system. Only vaguely—at first—do I become aware of what is drawing her along to some tantalizing, new, chemical odor. Then I realize.
* * *
Rosemary Saunders was not one of those women who drove a nonsensically large 4 × 4 on the school run although she sometimes felt that she would be able to fill a medium-sized truck with her habitual cargo of daughters, their friends, mountains of homework, hockey sticks, swimming togs, cellos, gym kit, laptops and all the other accoutrements of a modern, if privileged, upbringing. Indeed, there were some who thought she, above all women, fit the SUV/soccer-mom demographic.
She was in her late thirties, impeccably turned out in a slightly House and Garden–cum–Hermès scarf–cum–Barbour coat sort of way that recalled her roots in the county set, familiar with ponies, gymkhanas, riding to hounds and, of course, real 4 × 4 vehicles with dented panels and mud-spattered flanks to tow the horse-box between events. She had been raised in a culture of helpfulness, of filling the days with amusement for herself and good works to the benefit of others. Her husband, Freddy, a decade her senior, was a stalwart of a venerable brokerage that survived bear markets and cataclysmic financial crashes with ineffable grace and a gift for clearing out just in time before the fire sales began. A nod here. A wink there. A business web of old chums who knew which way the wind blew. Who were not above starting a fire sale themselves. And fanning the flames.
As a partner and spouse, Freddy shared many of her values, particularly the assumption that people like them were somehow immune to and aloof from the shenanigans that dragged the inner workings of so many other marriages into the unwelcome public glare of the divorce courts.
Both of them took a dim view of the behemoths that clogged the no-parking zones around the school when the first wave of pupils left to be transported through snarled London traffic that seemed to ease only in the term-end vacations when parents and offspring whose families boasted a certain stature and status decamped to ski resorts in the Alps or second homes in Gloucestershire or beach houses on the Côte d’Azur. (Others, she had read somewhere, decamped to weekend breaks and package deals on the Costa del Sol or the Turkish Aegean coast. And still others went nowhere at all, not even to the Gospel Oak Lido or the beaches of Kent and Essex.)
Rosemary believed that her own vehicle—an E-Class Mercedes station wagon with netting along the backseat to keep her matching chocolate Labradors, Oscar and Lucinda, in their muddy place—was perfectly equipped for the job. This morning’s itinerary, however, had been arranged at very short notice. The dishy Gerald Tremayne had called during breakfast to ask a favor and she was hardly likely to turn down a request from the famous and dashing author who doubled as househusband in his wife’s frequent and possibly ill-considered absences. She could hardly refuse. Any hint of hesitation might be interpreted in some quarters as a display of reluctance to transport children of color and that would never do: she would not want any malicious tongues casting gossipy doubts on her credentials as a fair-minded, almost liberal sort of person.
Still, it was a big ask, so close to the end of term when parents might be preoccupied with finagling upgrades on Caribbean flights, or pre-renting ski gear, or checking out Mediterranean yacht charters. So many things to do. So little time to look after second-home villas in the Dordogne or Tuscany, book convertible Mustangs for the Route 66 pilgrimage, tailor the dates around the salmon season and the grouse shoots. Not to mention the Serengeti migrations.
Never let it be said that I did not do my bit in the interests of social harmony, Rosemary was thinking. Never let it be said that I did not put my shoulder to the wheel.
Kentish Town, it was true, lay outside her comfort zone and familiar navigational coordinates. Normally, she would have preferred to see the Tremayne girls home and safe, rather than deposit them in a neighborhood that appeared to be populated by people whose lives had been far less fortunate than hers. Many of the people on the sidewalks gave every appearance of having been crushed by misfortune, collateral damage in the scramble for riches that deposited the Saunders of this world in comfortable, leafy neighborhoods with private schools and late-model cars and lolloping Labradors. But given the afternoon schedule—an away netball game for her youngest and an extra maths tutorial for her eldest—she had little choice but to concur with Gerald’s arrangements. Waiting for the girls to arrive, she switched the interior car-door-locking system onto automatic and scanned a dog-eared A-to-Z to work out a route. Always plan ahead, she had been taught. Surprises are not good. Unless they arrived in a pale blue box marked “Tiffany” on your birthday. She was not worried about herself, of course. In preparation for the walk with the dogs—and in light of reports in the local paper of muggers on motor scooters abroad in her neighborhood—she had switched her antique Rolex for a nylon-strapped Timex. She had left her Gucci wallet with its sheaf of debit and credit and store cards in a locked drawer on the marble-topped island across from the Aga cooker in her cavernous kitchen. Given the time pressures, it had not been possible to rearrange the dog-walking schedule, so she was still wearing her knee-length Dubarry boots and waxed cotton coat when she pulled up outside the school.
Yet, despite the possibly illusory protection offered by her retrievers, she felt a lingering unease about her expedition to Kentish Town. Oscar and Lucinda would be no match for the pit bulls and Rottweilers she assumed would be the dominant breed.