‘I’m just going to the bathroom, Caroline,’ I heard Laura say after quite a while. ‘And when I come back, Oliver’s going to have to go. No fuss, please, otherwise he’ll have to stop coming altogether.’
‘OK,’ Caroline said reluctantly. ‘Sorry, Oliver,’ she whispered to me as the door closed quietly behind Laura. ‘She’s worried about my dad, you see. Maybe I should get brave enough to tell him about you, but since I’ve been ill he tends to get upset about things.’
There was the sound of the door opening again. Laura coming back, I supposed. I made the fatal mistake of getting up and having a stretch, before turning round to settle myself back down again. To my surprise, Caroline pushed me down quite hard under the blanket, giving a little gasp.
‘Daddy!’
I froze. I had a horrible feeling my tail was half out of the blanket. A frightened little mew escaped from my lips.
‘What the hell?’ came this loud, cross voice. Footsteps thumped across the floor. The blanket was lifted off us, and a huge paw grabbed me round the back of my neck. I was suddenly reminded so horrifyingly of being grabbed in the same way by that very first scary man in my life, when I was only a tiny kitten, that I screeched in terror and dug my claws into the skin of the man’s other paw.
‘Ouch! Let go, you horrible, vicious thing.’ He flung me off himself and I landed, shaking with fear, on the floor near the glass door.
‘Let me out! Let me out!’ I cried out to Caroline in Cat, but even if she could have understood me, she was too busy crying herself.
‘Daddy, you didn’t have to do that. You’ve hurt him.’
‘I’ll hurt him a lot more if I ever see him in this house again. What on earth was Laura thinking of, letting you have an animal in here with you? LAURA!’ he shouted – and she came running in, red in the face and trembling almost as much as I was.
‘I’m sorry, Julian. I didn’t think it’d do any harm – he’s a nice clean little cat, he has a collar on…’
‘I wouldn’t care if he had a dinner jacket on. You know perfectly well I do not allow animals in my house, and especially not on my daughter’s sickbed.’
‘It’s not a sickbed, Daddy, it’s a sofa. I’m not as sick as I was, I’m getting better,’ Caroline cried.
‘You’re still susceptible to germs, you know that. Your immunity is low. You’re not supposed to mix with people, never mind dirty, flea-ridden animals.’
Flea-ridden? If I hadn’t been in a state of such abject terror, I’d have jumped up and clawed him again for being so rude.
‘Julian, I really think you’re overreacting,’ Laura started to say, but he turned on her angrily.
‘Overreacting? Can I remind you that this is my daughter, my only child, the only person I have left to care about in my life? Wasn’t it enough that she had to have this bloody awful illness and go through months of treatment that made her sick and weak and…’
‘And she’s getting better, Julian. Yes, she’s still weak, but she’s getting stronger every day. You’ve got to stop treating her like an invalid. She wants to make friends, she needs company. It’s only people with colds and germs she needs to keep away from, not everybody. She was going crazy with boredom until Oliver started visiting.’
‘Oliver? That animal? You mean to tell me this has been a regular occurrence – he’s been coming here all the time, encouraged by you, behind my back?’ For a minute I thought he was going to grab hold of Laura by the neck like he did with me, but Caroline spoke up.
‘It’s not Laura’s fault, Daddy. I made her let him in. It’s true, I was bored. It’s been lovely seeing Oliver every day. I feel better because of him.’
The man just ignored her, though, and carried on shouting at poor Laura.
‘I employ you to care for my daughter, not to put her health at risk by letting cats into my house. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. I’m very sorry, Julian. I won’t let the cat in again.’
Everyone seemed to have forgotten I was still in the room.
‘You’d better not,’ he said in a quieter voice that somehow sounded even more dangerous than the shouting. ‘Or you’ll be out on your ear. Plenty of other nurses would jump at a nice little job like this.’ He glanced across the room and finally noticed me quivering in the corner by the doors. ‘Let that cat out now and don’t let me ever see it here again.’
Caroline was still crying, and I could tell Laura was shaking as she opened the door for me. But I’m afraid I was too terrified for my own life to stop and give either of them a purr or a tail-wave in goodbye. I shot straight out of the door and round the other side of the house. I wasn’t even going to risk running back down the driveway until I was sure that angry man was nowhere around – I’d feel too exposed out in the open. There was a wooden shed just round the corner of the building that gave me a vague memory of the place I was born in. The door was ajar, so I crept inside, found a dark little spot behind some flower pots, and lay there panting and mewing softly to myself, waiting for my heartbeat to settle back down.
You’ll find, as you get older, little Charlie, that stress does funny things to us cats. Once I’d calmed down a bit and felt relatively safe, I must have gone straight off to sleep. The next thing I was aware of was a man’s voice. I stiffened, immediately scared again, but soon realised this was a different man, a younger one with a quieter voice.
‘So he didn’t actually throw the poor little cat out of the door?’ he was saying.
‘No. But he grabbed him round the neck.’ I sat up in surprise. It was Laura, the nurse. I could see her in the doorway of the shed, but I could only see the back view of the young man. ‘And when the cat dug his claws in – you couldn’t blame him! – Julian dropped him. He wasn’t hurt, but it must have really scared him.’ I heard her sigh. ‘And it was all my fault.’
‘Oh, don’t say that. You were only trying to do your best for the child, weren’t you?’
‘Of course I was. The cat was giving her so much pleasure. If only Julian would relent and let her have some company – other than me, I mean. She needs other youngsters to chat to.’
‘She doesn’t know any kids round here, though, does she? I mean, she hasn’t been to school since they moved here. She was in hospital, and since she came out, she’s been…’
‘Lying on the sofa, poor little love. No, I thought it’d be good for her to meet some of the children in the village. But when I suggested that to Julian, it was almost as bad as when he found the cat. Anyone would think all the kids in Little Broomford are carriers of some deadly disease.’
‘He’s being unreasonable, if you ask me.’
There was a silence for a moment.
‘Well,’ Laura said, ‘I know that’s how it seems. And he did really upset me – and Caroline – about the cat. But you know, it’s only because he’s been so frightened of losing her. He told me, when he first took me on, that since his wife died, Caroline is all he’s got, and the shock of her cancer nearly killed him. I know he seems like a bully sometimes but the poor man’s been through a lot.’
‘That’s no excuse,’ the man said. ‘And as for threatening you with the sack – he’s an idiot. He’d be lost without you caring for his daughter. Six days a week, while he works in London. Not many people would do it. He should be grateful you haven’t walked out on him.’