Megan Smith, the estate agent, hung up and stared at her mobile for a few seconds as if the little device were to blame for everything.
In twentytwo years of the trade shed sold flats with overdue mortgages, with relatives on the title deeds, with leaky pipes and even with a view of the local cemetery. Once shed even had a parrot that cursed in three languages. But a cat listed as a burden in the contract? That was brand new.
Right, lets run through the details again, she muttered to herself, flipping through her notebook. Twobed flat, Baker Street, third floor, sixtytwo square metres. Owner died in January. Heirs a son and a daughter from Bristol want a quick sale. The cat isnt being reclaimed, wont go to a shelter, euthanasia is off the table. Cat included.
She sighed, then added a line that would make any solicitors stomach turn: The price includes the cat. Negotiable.
The first viewing was set for Saturday.
Megan opened the door and let in the buyer a tall woman in her midfifts, wrapped in a grey coat. She crossed the threshold and halted. The flat smelled exactly as a longterm solitary seniors flat does: lavender soap, old books, a hint of valerian.
Eleanor Parker, the woman introduced herself, without extending a hand. She looked around. And wheres this bonus you mentioned?
The cat was perched on the windowsill of the spacious living room a massive, gingerwhite beast. He stared at Eleanor without blinking, his gaze void of fear or curiosity, only a deep, weary patience.
Thats the look of a creature thats been abandoned too many times.
Eleanor walked through the flat in silence. She ran a finger along the spines of the books on the shelf Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafyev, their covers softworn from years of reading. She glanced into the kitchen where a torn calendar was stuck on the wall, frozen on 17January. On the sill sat three pots of wilted geraniums and a bowl. Clean, empty, placed exactly where the left leg of a stool met the floor.
Is anyone feeding him? she asked, not turning around.
Neighbour, Megan replied. Milly Jones from number36. She pops in twice a day. The heirs give her a little stipend. Not much, but its something.
Eleanor returned to the living room. The cat hadnt moved still perched, front paws tucked, eyes fixed on the courtyard where bare February poplars swayed and a woman with a pram trudged by.
Whats his name? she asked.
Marley, Megan said. Thats what the heirs called him.
Marley, Eleanor repeated, expression unchanged.
The cat didnt even turn his head.
She called three days later.
Megan, Ive thought it over. The area is nice, the tube is close, but the price is still above market even with the extra. The place needs work the wallpaper, the linoleum. Id take it if you could knock another £300 off.
Ill see what I can do, Megan replied.
The heirs trimmed the price by £200. Eleanor accepted.
The paperwork took three weeks. Eleanor returned twice more armed with a tape measure and a notebook, jotting down dimensions, doing mental calculations. Marley watched. When she crouched by the window the second time to check the radiators, the cat leapt down, padded over, and sat a foot away. No closer.
Well, hello there, she said.
Marley gave a slow blink and then looked away.
Milly turned out to be a slight, nervouslooking woman with startled eyes. She waited for Eleanor at the door on the day the handover was to be signed.
Are you the new owner? she asked.
Hope so, Eleanor replied.
Ill tell you about Marley, Milly began. Mrs. Hilda Clarke, the previous lady, was practically an angel. She rescued him ten years ago he was a ragworn thing by the building entrance in November. She nursed him, fed him. He never left her side.
She fell silent, then lowered her voice.
When Hilda had a stroke in the kitchen, she collapsed and Marley was lying right beside her head. The ambulance broke the door down; he stayed put.
Eleanor stood in the doorway, a fresh set of three keys in her hand two for the locks, one for the postbox that now no one would ever check.
Hes harmless, Milly continued. He doesnt scratch, doesnt ruin furniture. The only problem is he never comes to you. I feed him for two months and he never approaches. He eats when Im out, then dashes back to his bowl. If I put a dish down, he darts straight out the door. He never comes near me.
Maybe hes scared?
Hes not scared. Hes waiting. Every evening, around six, hell sit by the door and stare. Mrs. Clarke used to come home at six from her walks.
Eleanor moved in on Saturday. She didnt have many possessions; she was used to compact living after twenty years as a cardiac nurse, a stint as a registrar, a layoff, a cramped room in Birley that had taken a toll on both knees and spirit. Owning a flat had been a dream for so long it had morphed into a concrete plan, a nineyear savings project.
The movers hauled in a sofa, two wardrobes, boxes of crockery. Marley vanished. Eleanor found him later tucked behind an ironing board in the pantry, ears flattened, massive and immobile.
I get it, she said to him. Its hard for you. Its hard for me too.
She placed a fresh bowl where the old one had sat, next to the left leg of the stool, and closed the kitchen door.
In the morning the bowl was empty.
A month passed. They lived sidebyside in the same walls but in different worlds.
Eleanor rose at six, brewed coffee, headed off to her shift. She had landed a post at the community health centre on Union Street not cardiology, but at least it was work after a year of unemployment.
Marley only appeared in the kitchen after the lock clicked. She knew this because she left a long, greying hair across the bowl each night. If the hair was there, hed eaten.
In the evenings she sank into the armchair by the window and read the same books that had been left by Hilda Chekhov, his pages scribbled with tiny, neat marginalia: exclamation marks, single words like yes, exactly, me too. The notes made her feel a strange familiarity, as if a stranger were thinking exactly as she did.
Marley, meanwhile, was never in the bedroom always in the hallway, by the front door, waiting precisely at six each evening.
Late March brought a nasty flu. Fever hit thirtynine, throat raw, joints aching. She called in sick, swallowed a paracetamol, and collapsed back onto the bed. Getting up to eat was impossible; feeding the cat was equally out of reach.
Marley, she croaked from the bedroom. Sorry, cant do it now.
Silence.
She drifted into a heavy, sticky sleep, her head humming. She woke to a pressure on her feet not heavy, just a warm, steady weight.
Marley lay coiled at the foot of the bed, a fluffy loaf, eyes unblinking, serious, attentive. For the first time in weeks he was neither in the hallway nor hidden behind the ironing board. He was there, right beside her.
She didnt move. She feared that any shift would send him scurrying away. She simply stared, he stared back, and between them settled a wordless understanding.
You already know this, she whispered.
Marley pressed his ears down, rested his head on his paws, and closed his eyes.
He didnt go anywhere.
She was ill for three days; Marley stayed at her feet the whole time, only venturing to his bowl when she forced herself to rise and pour food. On the third day, when her temperature finally fell and she was wrapped in a blanket with a mug of broth, Marley hopped onto the stool, settled next to her, and began to purr.
A low, hoarse rumble, as if hed forgotten how to purr and was now learning it again.
Eleanor set her mug down, lifted her glasses, and slowly extended her hand, palm up.
Marley sniffed her fingertips, then nudged his forehead against her palm.
She wept. Not out of sentimentality she rarely cried that way but because a simple, clear truth hit her: she had bought a life that wasnt hers, with books that werent hers and a cat that wasnt hers, simply because her own life didnt have enough room. And the cat remained in a life that wasnt his, with a woman who couldnt claim him fully. Two burdens, two addons, two extra beings slipped into the price.
Now they sat together in the kitchen, a fifteenyearold cat and a fiftysixyearold woman, sharing a quiet heat.
Marleys purrs filled the room as Eleanor rested her hand on his massive, heavy head, realizing perhaps this was the thing you never ask for, never look for, never beg for, yet it arrives anyway.
By May she stripped the old mustardfloral wallpaper, the kind that made the flat look darker than it was, and painted the walls a warm, milky cream. She left the linoleum in place money was still tight, but it didnt matter. The flat no longer felt foreign; she hadnt even noticed the exact moment it became hers.
Hildas books stayed on the shelf, and Eleanor added a handful of her own about a dozen or so. Chekhov with his marginal notes kept its spot. Occasionally she opened it at night and read not the story but the side notes other peoples yes, exactly, me too and nodded.
She tossed the dead geraniums as soon as she moved in; they were beyond rescue. Only now did she plant fresh ones on the same windowsill where Marley had first perched during the viewing. He still used it, but more often he chose the armchair beside her, or her lap when the evening stretched long and the book was good.
At six he stopped waiting at the door.
In June, Megan Smith bumped into Eleanor at the local Tesco on Baker Street. Eleanor stood in line, clutching a bag of cat food and a bottle of kefir.
Hows the flat? Megan asked. Happy with the purchase?
Not a bit, Eleanor replied.
And the cat?
Eleanor paused, shifting the cat food from one hand to the other.
You know, Megan, she said, they lowered the price for nothing. They should have raised it.
Megan laughed. Eleanor didnt.
At home, Marley waited by the entryway, perched on a pair of slippers his new favourite spot. When the lock clicked, he lifted his head, gave a slow blink, and the moment lingered.
Thats how you greet someone youve been waiting for all your life.
