Is She Really Going Out with Him?

Chapter 15

Google searches:

How to stop yourself from having a crush on someone

Men opening jars

Ryan Stirling opening jars

Paul Hollywood opening jars

*Erases search history*

When I get home from work, I open the front door and see Katniss, curled into a strange position on the stairs. She doesn’t look normal, her body too rigid, too straight, too…I run forward to touch her, find her cold, and jump back. Oh God, she’s dead. A shiver goes through me. Poor Katniss. Sitting on the floor in the hall, I just stare at her familiar black-and-white fur. How many times has she curled onto my lap, the sound of her soft purr the backing track to my evening? I’m only grateful I didn’t walk through the door with Ethan. He will be devastated, as will Jess.

What am I supposed to do now? Do I take her to the vet? How do I get her there? Am I supposed to pick her up and carry her? The idea turns my stomach. Should I bury her in the garden? With my hand shaking, I google “What do I do with a dead cat?” just as my phone rings. It’s the office, probably Jonathan with notes on my Hay piece.

“Hello,” I say, my voice quiet.

“Where did you go? I wanted to talk to you.” It’s not Jonathan, it’s Will. Without meaning to, I let out a small sob. “What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice immediately shifting to concern.

“My cat died. I just walked in the door and found her dead. I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I’m too upset to think about how weird it is that Will Havers is coming to my house to help me with my dead cat. All I can think about is how upset the children are going to be, how I don’t want them to see her. What if this was my fault? What if I left too much food out? Maybe Noah poisoned her in revenge for the hedge. No, that’s ridiculous, Noah loves animals. Katniss was quite old, maybe it was simply her time.

When Will arrives twenty minutes later I haven’t moved from the hall floor. I let him in and nod toward the rigid furry mass on the stairs. Wordlessly, Will ushers me through to the kitchen, makes me a cup of tea, starts opening cupboards until he finds an empty cardboard box, then disappears back into the hall.

“I’m sorry,” he says gently. “Shall I drive you to the vet? Or I can deal with it if you’d rather not go.”

With a nod, I stand up to get a coat. “Thank you, I’ll come.”

—

The vet is sympathetic. He asks how old she is, but I don’t know because we got her as a rescue. The vet guesses she was about twelve and says that’s a good age for a cat. He says he can try to determine the cause of death if that’s what I want, and I say that I do. As the vet is talking to me, Will reaches out to hold my hand and this makes me want to burst into tears. Will being kind and supportive is even more confusing than Will being irritating or flirtatious.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Humphries,” says the vet, handing me Katniss’s collar.

“It’s Ms. Appleby now,” I say quietly.

“Sorry, I’ll be sure to update our files,” says the vet with a nod.

Back in the car, Will and I sit in silence.

“I need to pick up Ethan from school in twenty minutes,” I say eventually.

“I’ll drive you,” Will offers, and I look up at him in surprise.

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I want to.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask. “I’m not giving you your chair back.”

Will shrugs, a dimple forming on his cheek. He reaches across the car, takes my hand, and squeezes it. The firm warmth of his skin is so comforting, but beneath that, there is another feeling refusing to be dampened.

“I like you. Is that enough of a reason?” he says, and I feel myself smiling.

While Will drives me to Ethan’s school, he starts singing “Build Me Up Buttercup” quietly to himself.

“You’re always singing that song,” I tell him.

“Am I? Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I like it.” As I look out of the window I see a ginger cat walking along a wall and it conjures a fresh wave of grief over Katniss. “Do you have pets?” I ask Will, hoping conversation might distract me.

“My brother has a tortoise, but he’s pretty antisocial. He hides in the garden for weeks.” He pauses, then goes on.

“We had a dog when I was a child. Well, he was Mum’s dog, really, but she let Simon name him, so he got called Big Dog.” This makes me smile.

“So you shouted ‘Big Dog’ when you took him for walks?”

“We called him BD. He was a Bernese mountain dog, so he really was big. Simon must have been four or five; he wanted to train him to be a real mountain rescue dog. He’d get me to play dead somewhere in the house, then BD would have to find me.” Will smiles at the memory. “He was the worst rescue dog, he’d just lick my face until I stopped pretending.”

“Sounds like a good technique to me,” I say.

Watching Will, I see his face pass through a spectrum of emotions—fond recollection morphing into something more painful.

“When Mum died, BD stood sentry in the hall for weeks,” he tells me. “He didn’t understand that she wasn’t coming home. One day, Simon pulled a beanbag into the hall and joined the dog’s vigil. Dad didn’t think it was healthy, tried to get them to do something else, but they wouldn’t. One night, after a particularly miserable dinner, none of us knew what to do with ourselves, least of all Dad. Simon had laid out cushions in the hall. He wanted us to sit with him. So, we did. We all sat on the floor with the dog and we talked about Mum. It was the first time we’d seen Dad smile in months.” Will pauses, lost in thought for a moment. “Maybe BD wasn’t such a bad rescue dog after all.”

“That’s a lovely story,” I say, touched. We share a look, a smile of understanding. Then his phone rings and I see a face flash on the screen, a photo of the beautiful blonde he rode home from Hay with. He rejects the call, then shifts uncomfortably, checking and rechecking the rearview mirror as though this woman might be behind us. She calls again, I see her name on the screen—Deedee. Will answers the call, flicking it onto speakerphone and laying the phone in his lap. He rubs his neck, and I get the feeling he doesn’t want to talk to this woman in front of me.

“Hey you,” comes the woman’s voice.

“Hey, Deedee, I can’t talk right now, I’m in the car with a colleague. Can I call you back in a bit?”

“Sure, hon, speak later.” Her voice is perky, and she has an accent I can’t pinpoint.

Will looks across the car at me, his face apologetic, his eyes guilty.

“Who was that?” I ask, unable to help myself.

“No one. Nothing that can’t wait,” he says with a tight smile. “Listen, I’m sorry if I confused things in Hay, I have a habit of doing that.” His eyes are now trained on the rearview mirror. What does he mean, that he has a habit of getting women to strip for him or a habit of confusing things?

“It’s fine, I’m not confused,” I say, because now it all makes sense. He’s started seeing this woman. Now he’s trying to let me down gently to avoid any awkwardness at work.

“I really like you, Anna. Our dinner on Friday was—”

“It’s fine,” I say, cutting him off, not needing him to spell it out. “We both had too much to drink, let’s leave it at that.” He shifts in his chair, frowning at my response. He should be pleased I just made this conversation a whole lot easier for him. I shoot him a broad smile so that he knows I really am fine about it. “I appreciated having a friend today, Will. Thank you.”

—

Ethan and Jess take the news about Katniss better than I thought they would.

“She was old, Mum. It was her time,” says Jess in a gentle, comforting voice.

“She wasn’t that old,” I tell them.

“She was blind,” says Jess.

“Only in one eye.”

“Now she’s with Katsu in cat heaven,” Ethan says, nodding, his little brow furrowed into a pensive frown. I was braced for their misery, but they appear to be the ones comforting me.

“It’s okay, Mum,” says Jess, rubbing my back with the same circular motion I use on them when they’re sick. “She was a great cat.”

“Shall we watch The Aristocats ?” Ethan suggests. “It’s what Katniss would have wanted.”

“Good idea,” I tell him. Then, after throwing a pizza in the oven, I take the cat litter, the cat bed, and Katniss’s scratch pole out to the garage. The children snuggle up beside me on the sofa, and we have dinner in front of the TV, watching The Aristocats . For once, I let myself cry in front of Jess and Ethan. The tears are 98 percent about the cat, maybe 2 percent about Deedee.