Page 26 of The Moon Sister
‘I will help you trust it before you leave here.’
‘I’m not thinking of leaving Kinnaird yet, Chilly, I’ve only just arrived!’
‘That’s what you think,’ he cackled.
Zara appeared with the basket of logs and dumped them next to the woodburner. Then she took some Christmas cake out of a tin and the whisky bottle she’d stolen from her father, which was already a third empty, and poured some into a tin mug. ‘There you go, Chilly,’ she said, setting the whisky and cake on the small table next to his chair. ‘We’ve got to go now.’
‘You,’ he said, pointing at me. ‘You come back soon, okay?’
It wasn’t a request, it was an order, so I shrugged noncommittally. We said our goodbyes and walked back to Beryl across the freezing earth. I felt very strange – floaty – as if I’d had some kind of out of body experience. Whatever and whoever Chilly was, he’d seemed to know me, and despite his rudeness, I felt a weird synergy with him too.
‘The problem is that he’s very proud,’ Zara chattered away as we drove back. ‘He spent all of his life taking care of himself and now he can’t. Dad’s even offered to put in a generator down there for him, but he refuses. Beryl says he’s becoming a liability and taking up too much of our time, that for his own sake he ought to be in a care home.’
‘She told me,’ I answered, ‘but the trouble is, Zara, now that I’ve met him, I understand why he wants to stay where he is. It would be like taking an animal out of its natural habitat after a lifetime of living in the wild. If he was carted off to a town, he’d probably be dead within a few days. And even if he did set the cabin on fire by mistake or have a heart attack, I’m sure he’d prefer to go like that rather than be stuck in a centrally heated nursing home. I certainly would.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right. Anyway, he seemed to take to you, Tiggy. He invited you to go back and see him. Will you go?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘I certainly will.’
6
Early the next morning, keeping to my side of the bargain, I met Zara in the courtyard and we walked down with a basket of meat to see the cats. I didn’t think it would do any harm – there had been further snowfall overnight and any sensible animal would be buried deep inside its cosy nest anyway.
‘Right,’ I said as we stood on the path above the enclosures. ‘From now on, as quiet as you can, okay?’
‘Roger, boss,’ Zara whispered, saluting me. We slithered down the icy slope to the first enclosure, where I unlocked the gate and threw the kill inside.
‘Molly? Polson? Posy? Igor . . . ?’ I called them, and with Zara tailing me, we walked around the other enclosures throwing food into each one and chatting to my invisible friends. When I indicated with a shake of my head that they weren’t coming out to play, Zara refused to leave.
‘Five more minutes, please? Can I try calling them?’ she begged me in a whisper.
‘Okay, why not?’ I shrugged.
She stood up and walked toward the nearest enclosure. Lacing her gloved fingers around the wire fencing, she pressed her face against it and called the cats’ names. I followed her around the enclosures as she spoke to them and waited, then suddenly I saw a movement in the box that Posy favoured.
‘Look, it’s Posy,’ I hissed, pointing to the box shrouded in undergrowth.
Sure enough, a pair of amber eyes glinted at us from the gloom.
‘Oh. My. God!’ Zara whispered in excitement. I watched as she fixed her eyes on those of the cat and blinked very slowly. ‘Hi, Posy, I’m Zara,’ she said softly, and to my utter surprise and delight, Posy mimicked her and blinked back. Then there was a sudden sound of feet crunching on snow and the cat immediately retreated.
‘Damn!’ swore Zara. ‘I thought she was about to come out.’
‘Maybe she was,’ I said as we retraced our footsteps up the hill to see who had scared the cat off. There, at the top of the slope, was Charlie Kinnaird.
‘Dad!’ Zara scrambled up towards him. ‘I just managed to coax one of the cats out and then she heard your footsteps and disappeared,’ she said in an exaggerated whisper.
‘Sorry, darling. I came to see the cats too,’ Charlie whispered back. ‘And to see you, Tiggy. Maybe we should go up to the house where it’s warmer and we’re actually allowed to speak?’
Charlie smiled at me and I felt my insides melt like snow in the sun.
‘Well, here you all are!’ A loud voice came from up above. I looked up and saw Ulrika walking along the path towards us. ‘I thought these animals were out of bounds to everyone except you?’ Ulrika pointed to me. ‘Youarehonoured,’ she remarked as Charlie and Zara scrambled up the rest of the slope ahead of me. ‘I was shooed away a few days ago.’
With her hands on her hips, her height and her vantage point above me, Ulrika reminded me of an angry Valkyrie.
‘She only brought me because I begged and begged and wore her down, Mum,’ Zara said, trying to placate her.
‘So, I must go on my hands and knees and also beg you next time?’ Ulrika spoke lightly, but as she looked down at me, her eyes were hard and cold.
