Page 72 of To Hell With It

‘Can I see your cat?’

‘If you want to?’

I nodded desperately.

‘I probably should have said beforehand,’ she said with the penknife still in her hand. ‘But I’m adjusting, really.’

‘Adjusting to what?’ I followed Eve’s gaze.

Eve turned and reached towards the cupboard above her head and for a moment I wondered what I was going to see – a severed head like in that filmSeven(Una made me watch it and promised me it wasn’t that bad. It really was), a distressed cat about to make a bid for freedom, a toy cat that she believed to be real because she was a deranged psycho.

She lifted something ginger and fluffy (not a human head, thank God) out and into her arms then paused for a moment, placed the penknife down between us, and then stroked the cat. I kept my eyes on the knife not the cat because it was close enough for me to grab if I needed to.

‘I just couldn’t bear to part with her,’ she said as she turned around and held up the cat, and it took me a moment to focus on what I was seeing. ‘It’s not like I could have left her somewhere and I didn’t want to burn her. I wouldn’t do that.’

But I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak at all. I was too stunned by the cat.

Because it was stuffed.

ChapterForty

As it happened, Eve wasn’t going to cut me into little pieces. She was going to cut an apple that she had on the dashboard, only I hadn’t noticed the apple before because I was so focused on the knife and then the dead cat.

Eve said she talked to her dead cat like it was still alive and that she slept with it next to her every night. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that it probably made it harder for her to grieve when she was with her dead cat every day.

She’d had it stuffed by a taxidermist just outside of Auckland and put it in the cupboard when someone had reported her to the RSPCA after they saw it in the van, curled up not moving, and thought that it had overheated in the sun because she’d not left any windows open.

In some ways Eve reminded me of me. And I went from feeling scared of Eve to feeling sorry for her because she wasn’t living at all, really – not with a dead cat in her van that she pretended was still alive.

I drank two cups of chai tea (I wiped the handles when I thought she wasn’t looking) and ate a slice of bread and butter that she kept in a little cool box under her seat. By the time I was finished, I desperately needed the loo and when I couldn’t hold it in for any longer, Eve said to choose my spot, so I chose a bush far enough away so that I could text Una without being seen.

It’s dead.

What is?

What do you think?

No…

And stuffed.

You’re fucking kidding me!

Nope.

At least she’s not a serial killer, oh wait … did she kill her cat?

I don’t think so.

You know it all starts with killing animals, right? How long until you get to Te Puke?

I’m not sure. We’ve stopped at a mountain. Have you heard from Shaun did everything?

I couldn’t stop myself.

Yes.

And?

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