Page 60 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
I have yet to see the point of cats and I suspect he feels the same way about humans.
20
Message in a Bottle
I woke early after a good night’s sleep, feeling much fresher and ready for anything: Tigger had got her bounce back.
I lay in bed for a little while, thinking over everything that had happened since my arrival – and there seemed to have been such a lot packed into just two days that I felt as if I’d lived there for months and had already known Simon and Pearl for ages … though perhaps the new Thom would take a bit more getting used to.
On the surface, we might have fallen back quickly and easily into our old relationship, but underneath things had changed. Although in slight and subtle ways that I couldn’t yet quite understand.
During the years between childhood and our early twenties, when we had been apart, we had both been driven inwards by circumstances. Thom had always been quiet and reserved, and became even more so. And, of course, we both had our secrets from those years. We didn’t confide everything to each other when we met again.
I had never told him what a bitter and angry teenage rebelI’d been, which I’m sure must have made my poor aunt rue the day she’d taken me in. It was a sympathetic art teacher who had helped me escape the past and find a career I could channel all my energy and passion into.
As for Thom, growing up literally centre stage must have been hell, and I could understand why he’d formed such a strong bond with Leo and Mirrie, while all the time, like me, he must have been mourning my parents and the loss of our old, safe, happy life together.
We’d resumed our old, close relationship, and though we’d occasionally gone out with other people in the first couple of years, eventually our friendship seemed to be enough for both of us … until I so suddenly and unexpectedly fell for Marco.
By that time, Thom had been spending more and more time at his secret hideaway and I’d gone to the party where I met Marco only because Thom had been away for six weeks and I’d begun to feel very lonely.
Then, when Thom finally returned to London and I told him I was in love – and who with – I really expected he’d be happy for me, once I’d convinced him, as Marco had convinced me, that he was a changed man, ready to settle down.
Thom had seemed first stunned by my news and then, when I wouldn’t listen to his warnings, angry.
Perhaps we would have made our quarrel up, had Leo not died from an overdose so soon afterwards, stirring up all Thom’s old mistrust and animosity against Marco, and, of course, at the crucial time I was up in Scotland, occupied with organizing my aunt’s funeral and sorting out her estate.
Of course, Thom suspected Marco had had that affair with Mirrie, and had he told me that at the time, it might haveopened my eyes to Marco’s true nature – or perhaps not, because I was so totally blinded by love.
Marco was devastated by Leo’s death and I was desperately lost and unhappy when it became clear that Thom had cut me right out of his life, along with everyone else, so that we clung together … and that’s when I saw his more vulnerable side, the lack of self-confidence that lay under his sophisticated exterior, and which endeared him to me.
Marco had needed me, even if Thom hadn’t …
A clock chimed somewhere, jerking me back out of the past and I saw that pale gold rays of sunshine were sneaking in around the edge of the curtains.
I got up, showered and dressed, then went downstairs. There was no sign of Golightly anywhere, but he must have been asleep in his cardboard box, because when I looked in the utility room he popped up out of it so suddenly I nearly had a heart attack: cat-in-the-box.
I filled his bowl and then made myself a poached egg on toast, and afterwards, when I was drinking a second cup of coffee, Golightly came and wound himself around my ankles.
This was not something he’d ever done before, and nor did he usually make an odd rasping noise …
It took me a few moments to realize it was a variation on his usual wheezy purr.
Was this the first manifestation of a slight feeling of affection or merely cupboard love? I bent and stroked his odd, bluish-grey fur, which had the appearance and texture of an old Persian lamb coat.
‘Are you feeling a bit more settled?’ I asked him. ‘This is your new for ever home and, from now on, it’s just you and me, kid.’
His only response was to jump on to my knees and headbutt me under the chin, so that my teeth snapped together painfully. Then he jumped down and made off into the living room and his favourite chair, leaving me staring after him.
My relationships with the males of any species always seemed to be so complicated!
He watched me as I sat at my desk in the window, from where I could see the top of a small tree somewhere in the middle of the central garden, and opened my laptop. I thought I’d probably need a bigger desk, a decent printer and a filing cabinet in my workroom, something else to add to my interminable lists.
It was ages since I’d had a chance to read any more of Rosa-May’s journal, which was easier to make out blown up on the laptop than on my phone, but that would have to wait for later, because I had a lot of business to sort out first.
There were emails from my solicitor and estate agent, and the sale of my flat seemed to be going through OK. I should come out of it with a decent profit, so one day I could buy a place of my own, if I wanted to. Prices up here were bound to be a lot cheaper than London.
I sent off some replies, caught up with a change to a standing order I’d missed and was just about to reply to a message from George, hoping I was settling in well, when Miss McNabb rang me.
