I had heard enough. The café, which for so long had been my safe place, my haven from danger, suddenly felt claustrophobic. The room was airless, the heat from the stove made my fur itch, and Linda’s voice was as grating to my ears as her long fingernails on the Specials board. My head began to swim as I felt a wave of nausea rise from my stomach to the back of my throat. I tore across the café and out through the cat flap and did not stop running until I reached the alleyway.
It was a relief to leave behind the café’s stifling atmosphere, its fawning customers and, of course, Ming. The November wind felt biting, but I took a few deep lungfuls of icy air, waiting for my nausea to subside. I found Jasper in the churchyard, prowling among the headstones. He looked surprised to see me; my withdrawn manner had also kept him at a distance, and we had not met for our usual evening stroll for several days.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked solicitously, sidling up to me.
‘Yes, fine,’ I snapped; but I felt my facade of indifference start to crumble beneath his concerned scrutiny. ‘No, not really,’ I admitted, dropping my gaze to the ground.
Jasper sat down beside me on the carpet of dry leaves and we remained in silence for a few moments, listening to the magpies cawing in the branches of the horse chestnut above us.
‘Is it . . . Ming?’ he began, tentatively. I let out a snort at the mention of her name, aware that the tip of my tail had begun to twitch angrily by my feet. The remorse I had been feeling about Eddie seemed to evaporate, and anger swept in to take its place.
‘Ooh, Ming, what a gorgeous name! Oh, isn’t she beautiful! So elegant!’ I mimicked, while Jasper listened patiently. ‘More like stuck-up, stand-offish and rude, if you ask me.’ My tail was now thrashing so hard that the dry leaves on the ground rustled noisily. Jasper’s body remained still and his face composed, as he contemplated the moss-covered gravestones ahead of us.
‘I know it’s a shock,’ he began in a careful, measured tone, ‘but it can’t be easy for her—’
I felt my stomach clench and turned sharply to face him. ‘Can’t be easy for her?’ I interrupted, incredulously. ‘What, exactly, can’t be easy for her? Having a café full of people drooling over her? Having her every whim catered for by Debbie and Linda? Having the whole of Stourton think she’s the most beautiful creature ever to grace this town? Oh, it must be really difficult for her,’ I spat.
I paused for breath as Jasper sat in restrained silence, waiting for me to finish.
‘Do you know,’ I continued, feeling my cheeks burn, ‘she has been here a week and she has not said one word since she arrived. Not one word.’ I paused for emphasis, hoping to see some acknowledgment of Ming’s indisputable rudeness, but Jasper’s face remained impassive. ‘At least she hasn’t said one word to me,’ I added, suddenly seized by a cold pang of suspicion. I narrowed my eyes as the thought entered my mind that, perhaps, it was only me that Ming hadn’t deigned to speak to. Did she chat happily to Jasper and the kittens when I was not around? Was this how they had spent Sunday morning, while I had been visiting Margery? A shiver went through me, as though someone had poured ice down my back.
Jasper’s face was still infuriatingly blank. ‘I think maybe she just needs time to settle in,’ he said calmly, deftly evading the question that hung, unspoken, in the air between us.
I looked away in disgust. His reply seemed to confirm my worst fears: Ming’s haughty demeanour was reserved for me alone. For all I knew, she and Jasper might already be firm friends . . . or more. Did that explain why the kittens were so relaxed around her, because they were following their father’s lead? My heart began to race as the implications hit me. Ming was playing a game, of that I was sure. She was trying to isolate me from Jasper and the kittens. She was planning to take my place – not just in the café, but in my own family.
The kittens were sweet-natured and trusting; was it any surprise they had been taken in by Ming? But I was disappointed by Jasper’s gullibility, his inability to see the situation for what it was. It was typical of him to be chivalrous, to give other cats the benefit of the doubt. Such generosity was one of the qualities I loved about him, but right now I found it maddening. It was one thing for him to be chivalrous towards me, quite another to be chivalrous towards a beautiful Siamese impostor.
Mustering what remained of my dignity, I stood up to leave. ‘Besides, she’s not perfect, you know,’ I hissed, throwing a cursory glance over my shoulder. ‘Have you noticed how she squints?’
As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew how they must sound: petulant and spiteful. But I didn’t care. Jasper could think what he liked about Ming, but I knew the truth.
11
Although, like all the cats at Molly’s, Ming was free to come and go as she pleased, she seemed content to spend almost all of her time in the café. She only ever went outside under cover of darkness, slipping out through the cat flap to answer the call of nature, and her brief forays into the flat were similarly fleeting: she crept upstairs at mealtimes to lurk in the hallway until the rest of us had finished eating, before swiftly polishing off whatever food was left in the bowls. Then she would slink back downstairs to take her usual place on the cat-tree platform.
Her pointed face and deep-blue eyes seemed only to convey two expressions: serene contemplation or mild curiosity; and, although she never sought out physical contact, she would purr gratefully if Debbie tickled her enormous chocolate-brown ears. I watched her obsessively, torn apart by some confused emotion that seemed to combine fascination, envy and contempt all at the same time. I was convinced there was something untrustworthy about Ming’s implacable self-containment, and the fact that I was the only one who could see it simply made matters worse.
Since the hissing incident with Eddie, the kittens and Jasper had been wary around me. I desperately wanted to talk to my kittens, but feared that if I tried to explain how I felt about Ming, they would dismiss my concerns in the same way Jasper had, telling me I’d misunderstood her and that she was just settling in. So instead I allowed the rift between us to deepen, and became increasingly preoccupied with nursing my secret grievances.
Whilst Ming’s arrival had brought agony for me, it seemed to have marked a turning point for Linda. Gone was the furtive shopaholic, prone to melodramatic outbursts of tears; in her place was a newly confident woman whose smugness and constant air of triumph were almost more than I could bear. Since Ming’s debut in the café, Linda’s face had worn a permanent self-satisfied grin, and in the evenings she crowed endlessly about the roaring success Ming had proved to be, how she had been right all along, and how Ming was just what the cat café needed.
I sensed that Debbie and Sophie were both starting to tire of Linda’s self-congratulatory monologues. Every now and then I saw them exchange weary glances behind Linda’s back, as she piped up with yet another reason why Ming joining the café had been a ‘commercial masterstroke’. I studied Debbie’s face closely on these occasions, praying she would cut Linda off and announce that Molly’s had been doing just fine before Ming arrived, and would continue to do so if she left. Instead, Debbie listened with patient forbearance and a polite half-smile.