Fright

The cat died.

It took me three weeks to find out. Three weeks because I didn't really want to ask. And it was only after I had found an excuse to look around the conservatory, in vain, for her box, only after I had scanned the ground outside the back door for her bowl, only when I saw that the house was conspicuously empty of cat. It was only then I asked - casually, I hoped - while I set out the table for lunch.

She would have died anyway, the vet had told my dad. She had something wrong with her chest, from when she was very young, a bone curved the wrong way. It had begun to press upon her lungs.

The next fright would have killed her, my dad explained. A dog, or a screaming child.

So it didn't matter. It didn't matter whether she went to the vet.

Its logic finds me out, this refrain, over and over again.

It didn't matter.

And I who thought I could save her.

Save her. Saviour.

Anything but.

In the changing room at a department store, later, I stood in front of the mirror for too long. I don't even remember what I was thinking. I was late to meet someone but I still stood, looking at myself, looking at nothing.

Then I hang the clothes back on their hangers, put my coat on and button it up, pack my things back in my bag. I take a last look in the mirror, and leave.

I think of her out in the bushes, her death waiting around the next corner.

Puss, puss, puss, puss. Here, puss-puss.

She would have died anyway.