Rebecca Clarke, the estate agent, hung up the phone and stared at it for a few seconds as if it were the one to blame.
In the twentytwo years shed been in the trade shed sold everything from flats with overdue mortgages to ones with relatives still on the lease, from properties with leaky pipes to ones that looked out onto a cemetery. Once she even had a parrot in the flat that swore in three languages. But shed never had a cat listed as a burden in a contract before.
Alright, lets run through the brief again, she muttered to herself, leafing through her notebook. Twobed flat, Baker Street, third floor, sixtytwo square metres. Owner passed away in January. Heirs son and daughter from Manchester want a quick sale. They arent taking the cat, they wont hand it to a shelter, and they wont have it put down. Cat stays. Included.
She let out a sigh and typed a line that would make any solicitors stomach drop: Cat included in the price. Negotiable.
The first viewing was set for Saturday.
Rebecca opened the door and ushered in the buyer a tall woman, about fiftyfive, bundled up in a grey coat. She crossed the threshold and halted. The flat smelled exactly how a house lived in by a solitary older person does: lavender soap, a stack of timeworn books, a faint hint of valerian.
Emily Parker, the woman announced, not extending a hand. She glanced around. And wheres your bonus?
The cat sat on the windowsill in the spacious living room a massive orangewhite beast. He stared at Emily without blinking, his eyes showing no fear, no curiosity, just a weary, endless patience.
Thats the look you get from animals that have been abandoned before.
Emily walked through the flat in silence, trailing a finger over the spines of books on a shelf Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafyev, their covers soft from years of reading. She peered into the kitchen, where a detachable calendar was stuck on the 17th of January. On the sill sat three pots of limp geraniums and a bowl, immaculate and empty, perched exactly where the left leg of a stool met the floor.
Does anyone feed him? she asked without turning around.
The neighbour, Rebecca replied. Tamara Ilyich from number36 down the hall. She pops in twice a day. The heirs give her a little something for it. Not much, but they do.
Emily drifted back into the living room. The cat hadnt shifted a muscle hed folded his front paws, eyes fixed on the street. Outside, naked February poplars swayed in the wind, and a woman pushed a pram past them.
Whats his name?
Markus, the heirs had called him.
Markus, Emily repeated, flatly.
The cat didnt turn his head.
She called three days later.
Rebecca, Ive thought it over. The areas nice, the tubes 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 knocked another three hundred off.
Ill see what I can do, Rebecca said.
The heirs came down by two hundred pounds. Emily agreed.
It took three weeks to pull the paperwork together. Emily came back twice more armed with a tape measure and a notebook to check walls, jot notes, do the maths. The cat watched. When she crouched by the window the second time to inspect the radiator, Markus leapt down from the sill, trotted over and sat a halfmetre away. No closer.
Well, hello there, she said softly.
Markus gave a slow blink, then turned his gaze away.
Tamara Ilyich turned out to be a petite, wiry lady with startled eyes. She waited for Emily at the door on the day the handover papers were to be signed.
Are you the new owner? she asked.
Hope so, Emily replied.
Ill tell you about Markus, Tamara began. Nina Vass, the previous owner, was a saint. Ten years ago she rescued him, found him shivering by the entrance in November. She fed him, gave him a name, and he never left her side.
She lowered her voice a notch.
When Nina had a stroke in the kitchen, he was right there, by her head. The ambulance broke the door down, and he stayed put.
Emily stood in the doorway holding a new set of three keys two for the locks, one for the postbox that nobody would ever check now.
Hes harmless, Tamara continued. He doesnt scratch, he doesnt ruin furniture. Its just he wont come to you. Ive been feeding him for two months and hes never once come toward me. He eats when Im out. I set a bowl down, and hes gone the instant I open the door. He wont come when Im there.
Maybe hes scared?
Hes not scared. Hes waiting. Hell sit by the door at six each evening. Nina used to come home at six from her walks.
Emily moved in on Saturday. She didnt have many possessions; she was used to living compactly after twenty years as a cardiac nurse, a stint as a junior doctor, a redundancy, a cramped room in Walthamstow that had sore knees and a heavier heart. Owning a flat had been a dream for nine long years.
The movers lugged in a sofa, two wardrobes, boxes of crockery. Markus vanished. Emily found him later in the storage cupboard, curled up behind an ironing board, ears folded, massive and still.
I get it, she whispered to him. Its hard for you. Its hard for me too.
She placed a bowl by the left leg of the stool, exactly where the old one had been, and slipped out, closing the kitchen door behind her.
In the morning the bowl was empty.
A month later they were living side by side the same walls, different worlds.
Emily rose at six, brewed coffee in the kitchen, and headed off to her night shift. Shed taken a job at the clinic on Union Street not cardiology, but a decent post after a year of unemployment.
Markus only appeared in the kitchen after the lock clicked. She knew that because shed left a long, greying strand of hair across the bowl each night. If the hair was on the floor, hed eaten.
In the evenings shed settle into the armchair by the window and read the books that Nina had left on the shelf Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafyev, all softened with pencil notes in the margins: exclamation points, single words like yes, exactly, me too. Reading those scribbles made her feel a strange recognition, as if a woman shed never met was thinking exactly like her.
Meanwhile Markus waited in the hallway, by the front door, every evening at six sharp.
By the end of March Emily fell ill. A nightlong flu crashed through her thirtynine degrees, sore throat, joints aching all over. She rang in sick, took some paracetamol and collapsed back onto the bed. Getting up to eat was impossible, let alone to feed the cat.
Markus, she croaked from the bedroom, sorry, I cant right now.
Silence.
She drifted into a heavy, sticky sleep with a buzzing head. She woke to a pressure on her feet not heavy, just a warm, steady weight.
Markus was there, curled like a loaf at the foot of the bed, staring at her without blinking, serious and attentive. For the first time in a month he wasnt in the hallway, the cupboard, or behind the ironing board. He was right there.
Emily didnt move. She was afraid that if she did, hed slip away. She just watched, and he watched back, and between them lay a wordless understanding.
You already know this, she whispered.
Markus pressed his ears down, tucked his head on his paws and closed his eyes.
He didnt go.
She was ill for three days; he stayed by her feet the whole time, only leaving to nosh at his bowl when she finally forced herself up to refill it. On the third day, when her temperature finally fell and she was wrapped in a blanket on the kitchen chair with a mug of broth, Markus hopped onto the stool, settled beside her and began to purr.
A quiet, hoarse purr, as if hed forgotten how and was now relearning it.
Emily set her mug down, took off her glasses, and reached out slowly, palm up.
Markus sniffed her fingers, then nudged his head against her hand.
She wept. Not out of sentimentality she never cried that way but because a simple, clear truth hit her: shed bought a life that wasnt hers, with books that werent hers and a cat that wasnt hers, because there wasnt enough room for her own. And the cat had stayed in a life that wasnt his, with a woman who wasnt his, because there was nowhere else for him to go. Two extra fixtures, two extra addons, two unwanted beings bundled into the price.
Now they sat together in the kitchen, one cat close to his fifteenth year, the other a woman in her fiftysixth, both warm in each others company.
Markus purred, and Emily rested her palm on his big, heavy head, thinking perhaps this was it the moment you dont ask for anything, you dont look for it, yet it shows up anyway.
By May Emily stripped out the old floral wallpaper the tiny brownflower pattern that made the place feel darker than it was and painted the walls a warm, milky cream. She left the linoleum for now money was still tight but the flat no longer felt foreign. She didnt notice when the shift happened.
Ninas books stayed on the shelf. Emily added a dozen or so of her own. Chekhov with the pencilled marginalia stayed in its old spot. Occasionally shed open it at night and read not the story but the stray yes, exactly, me too scribbles, and nod.
She tossed the dead geraniums the moment she moved in they were beyond rescue and only just now planted fresh ones on the same windowsill where Markus had first perched. Now he spent more time on the armchair beside her, or on her lap if the evening stretched long and the book was good.
He stopped visiting the door at six.
In June Rebecca Clarke, the estate agent, bumped into Emily at the local Tesco on Baker Street. Emily was in line, a bag of cat food in one hand and a bottle of kefir in the other.
So, hows the flat? Rebecca asked. Happy with it?
No regrets, Emily said.
And the cat?
She paused, shifting the cat food from one hand to the other.
You know, Rebecca, she said, they actually undervalued it by dropping the price. They shouldve kept it higher.
Rebecca laughed. Emily didnt.
At home Markus waited by the shoes, his new favourite spot. When the lock clicked, he lifted his head, gave a slow blink, and that was how they greeted those who had truly been waiting for them.
