Karl and Sara both enjoyed the event too. And Karl took the opportunity to chat with Sara about her feelings for Dan.
‘Just tell him how you feel!’ he urged her. Wanting to encourage her, he’d begun to make not-so-subtle hints to Dan about Sara’s secret crush, but there was only so much a wingman could do. He thought his two colleagues would be great together and was trying to play matchmaker. ‘You tell him,’ he told Sara now, ‘or I will …’
But Sara wasn’t sure she was ready for that. What if Dan didn’t feel the same?
‘Don’t, Karl,’ she pleaded. ‘There’s plenty of time. I’ll tell him when I’m good and ready …’
Eventually, the rush for the Felix bags died down and the giveaway day came to an end. It had been a resounding success. ‘Well done, TransPennine Express!’ people wrote on social media. ‘Well done to the ladies for organising this! This is what a train company is all about. Well done, Huddersfield!’ The two Angelas were tickled pink to see such praise, feeling a warm glow that people had taken the day in exactly the way they’d intended.
It had been such a success that they decided to reserve a stack of bags and do it all again the next day. So, as Angela Dunn packed up at the end of her shift, she left the cloth-covered table and the Felix picture on display, and simply returned the big black suggestion box to the table. It was better placed there than on the counter, as there wasn’t really room for it there when the shutters were closed. Angela carefully adjusted its position on the centre of the black cloth. She would move it again in the morning.
The following day, they decided to start the giveaway later, so Angela began her shift by working behind the desk in the booking office. She was still buzzing from the day before, absent-mindedly smiling to herself every now and again as she remembered each child’s joy. She had one such smile on her face when a lady came up to the desk to speak with her.
As she looked at the woman, Angela felt her previously happy expression slide straight off her face. The lady was clearly absolutely distraught. She had grey curly hair and glasses and was wearing a classic green mac. Even as Angela watched, the lady’s tears dripped down her cheeks and on to the collar of her coat, staining it as dark as the woman’s mood.
‘Can I help you?’ Angela asked, concerned. ‘Are you all right?’
But the woman silently shook her head. ‘I-I can’t believe it,’ she eventually managed to say.
‘Believe what?’ Angela asked.
The woman swallowed hard, trying desperately to contain her emotion. ‘When did she die?’ she asked, her voice breaking on the final word.
Angela furrowed her brow. She had no idea who the woman was talking about.
The woman began sobbing again. ‘W-when did Felix die?’ she asked, struggling to speak through her tears. ‘When did your lovely little station cat die?’
14. Mystic Mog
Angela spoke gently to her. ‘There’s nowt wrong with our Felix,’ she said. ‘She’s still around, I promise you. She’s not dead.’
The woman blinked in shock, salty tears still caught in her lashes. She placed a hand on her chest, as though feeling for her broken heart that was now slowly being mended. ‘Oh, thank God for that,’ she said, with feeling. ‘But – but what’s all this, then? I really thought she’d gone.’
Angela looked to where the lady was pointing, at the giveaway table. She saw the sombre black pawprints leading up to the table. She saw the royal purple cloth covered over with its mournful black neighbour. She saw the huge picture of Felix behind the table … and then she saw the big black suggestion box slap bang in the middle of this ‘shrine’.
‘I thought her ashes were in that box,’ explained the lady.
Well, on reflection, you could see why. If you didn’t know about the giveaway, it did rather look as though the station cat was formally lying in state …
‘Oh, no, no, no!’ Angela reassured her. They both started to giggle at the mix-up. ‘We were just doing an event for her, that’s all. This was all left over from yesterday. Felix is alive, I promise you!’
‘Thank goodness for that!’ the woman exclaimed, and her face was suddenly sunny again.
For Angela, the woman’s heartfelt emotion was yet another example of how deeply Felix’s fans cared for her. As the summer drew on, Angela felt a continued connection to them, and a continued desire to do more to help. Though the Felix postcards they’d made for the gift bags had originally been intended just for the giveaway day, Angela now suggested that they become a permanent feature at the station. All the team members felt bad if people called for Felix when she wasn’t available, but Angela hit on the idea of giving them a postcard of her instead. She printed a series of them, all featuring stunning black-and-white shots of the black-and-white cat, with slogans such as ‘Sorry I missed you’ printed on them. Angie Hunte joined in as well, arranging for Felix pens and pencils to be made. ‘I’ve borrowed the senior pest controller’s pen!’ ran the slogan on the biros, which also featured Felix’s fluffy face. It made the team so happy to be able to give visitors something, even if it wasn’t time with Felix herself.
Angela wondered what more she could do as Felix’s lady-in-waiting. Working in the office one day, her eye fell on yet another delivery that had arrived for Felix. Though Angela had taken charge of Felix’s birthday gifts and charity donations, no one really had responsibility for all the post that she received. And people didn’t just send packets of Dreamies or cat food, which were easily donated to a cat charity if Felix couldn’t use them – they sent expressions of love, such as hand-drawn pictures, handmade quilts featuring Felix’s face, and even hand-knitted pigeons to represent her long-time foe Percy. People spent hours, if not weeks or months, crafting things for her, and it didn’t seem right to Angela that they largely languished forgotten at the station, perhaps eventually to be thrown away in a clear-out and dismissed as clutter. She felt someone should be caring for this growing collection of memorabilia. They did not have enough space in the booking office to display it all, as new things arrived almost every day, so only a very few items could ever end up in there; in truth, the room was already full to bursting.
So, that summer, Angela started taking the artworks home. She hoped one day that there might be a display she could create somewhere at the station in Felix’s honour to commemorate all these bits and pieces. Until then, Angela packaged up the knitted items with love and securely transported them home.
That August, she surveyed her house, wondering where on earth she could keep it all so that her own home did not become cluttered. Then she had an idea. Arms fully laden, she climbed the stairs and pulled open the doors of the wardrobe in her bedroom. There was an empty drawer in there, she knew, where her ex-husband had once kept his shirts.