Sleight of Hand (40 page)

“I go to work one morning, and I forget a window. And in the evening, she is gone.”

“God, I can't believe it,” I say. “I love that cat … I lov
ed
her.”

“I know. But she's probably OK babe.”

“How?
How could she be OK? How can a cat that's scared of sand, lost on a beach, be OK?”

“Maybe she find another house and someone is feeding her.”

“The nearest house is miles away.”

“Or she hunts perhaps. Mice. There are lots of mice. And big juicy rats.”

I tut. “Paloma wouldn't hurt a fly. She plays with spiders but even those she lets go. She's ancient Ricardo. She must be seventeen or eighteen. That's like being sixty or seventy or something.”

I imagine Paloma in the Colombian rainforest calling out to me, lost and alone. My vision mists with tears. “I'm sorry. I know it's stupid,” I say. “But I'm really fucking upset about this. I saved her from the cat's home. She's lived everywhere I ever lived. She's known all my boyfriends. God, I shouldn't have left her. I shouldn't have taken her to Colombia in the first place. She must have thought I'd abandoned her. She probably went looking for me.”

Ricardo stares at me wide-eyed. He looks shocked. “I'm sorry babe,” he says, reaching out and stroking my shoulder.

“Well I hope you looked bloody hard for her,” I say, my voice quivering slightly.

“I did,” Ricardo says. “Believe me. I did.”

I cup my hands above my nose and stare miserably into the fire.

“We'll get another cat one day babe,” Ricardo says.

I give him a look of utter hatred. I think it's the stupidest thing he has ever said.

You seemed so sad Chupy and to be perfectly honest, it started to irritate the hell out of me. Because, sure, you liked Paloma, and sure, you had had her for a long time, and sure, she was a very nice cat. But Jesus babe, she was
a cat
and in the great scheme of things, compared with what happens on fur farms and in abattoirs, and in pharmaceutical labs worldwide – let alone the misery of humans – I just couldn't see what all the fuss was about. It seemed out of all proportion. If you're going to get all bent out of shape babe, then worry about something big – worry about war or famine for God's sake.

Of course, I knew that you'd be upset. At the moment I put her out on the porch and locked the front door it crossed my mind that I was storing up some kind of trouble for the future. But I thought you'd be disappointed and I thought that I would come up with some reassuring story about neighbours or mice and that somehow I would talk that problem away.

But I had been running around like crazy babe. I had moved our excess stuff into storage and packed cases for my trip; I had quit my job and found someone to replace me at the health centre; I had booked tickets and transferred funds. And all of this whilst watching the car park in case Carlos' men turned up to cut my dick off.

I had so much on that the brutal truth is that I didn't think about Paloma until the minute I was
leaving the house, and even then I didn't think about her for long.

If I had, I could easily have come up with a better solution. That's what's so stupid. I could have taken her to Maria's place, I could even have left her with Max. But I didn't babe. I put her on the porch and waved her goodbye as I drove off.

In that week before Christmas I tried to see her through your eyes. I tried to understand. I didn't have a choice because no matter what we were doing – buying a Christmas tree, or filling stockings at Poundland, or driving Jenny to London or emptying her sick bucket, you looked sad. And whenever I asked you what was wrong it was always the bloody cat. You were imagining her slowly starving to death on the porch. You were picturing her hiding from predators in the forest. You were thinking about her crying at the door to come in, waiting eternally for your return. My guess was that she would have died in the first couple of days. Lost animals don't die of hunger babe, they die of thirst, and that doesn't take long, especially not in thirty-five degrees. I couldn't work out whether telling you that would make things better or worse, so I said nothing.

And though such fuss seemed like a crazy over-reaction to me, I could see that your sadness was real, and I could see that I had let you down, so I phoned Maria and asked her to go out to the house to look, and though she, like me, thought it was a lot of fuss for a cat, she did – three times I think. But she didn't find any sign of Paloma, sun-dried or otherwise.

And all I could do was sit and watch you with your long face, and try not to get too angry about it. All I could do was to be as nice as I could and wait for you to forget about the stupid cat.

The way Jenny's health deteriorated once she started chemo, my guess was that a far bigger grief would soon be pushing Paloma out of the picture and though that wasn't in
any
way something I wanted, I did feel a certain sense of relief that the coming grief, at least, wouldn't be my fault.

As bad luck would have it, Christmas week coincides with chemo week. Jenny starts taking her pills three days before christmas, and by mid morning on the twenty-second, she is green and sickly and confined to her bed.

Ricardo, who, up until now, has had only my word to go on, is visibly stunned by just how quickly her health fades. “It's not right babe,” he keeps saying. “We need to talk to Professor Twat.”

I remind him that both Florent who administers the same treatment to a number of patients, and Batt himself seem to consider these side effects to be normal. “Plus,” I tell him. “As soon as it's over she's fine again.” But Ricardo's concern exacerbates my own, and this added to everything else leaves me feeling sometimes that my back is about to break beneath the weight of it all. Because on top of Jenny's illness, which dominates every moment of the day, I am also trying to work out what exactly we need to do to legally ensure that I, or perhaps
we
, get Sarah should Jenny actually die. And that's a hell of a complicated business. And one hell of an emotionally loaded one.

In addition, Tom's illness is playing on my mind. Now that a few days have passed, my anger with him has become tempered with concern at how he might be coping. I can't help but feel that I should, in some way, be there for him. And with Ricardo by my side, I can't see any way that I can.

And as if all that wasn't enough there is, of course, Paloma's shadow. It's cast right across my
brain. I do my best to push it away but the image of her, skinny, scared, alone, hungry, thirsty, and above all waiting, trusting, convinced that, like every time before, I will come back for her is a tough one to shake.

It strikes me as absurd and perhaps even shameful – considering the struggles and sorrow around me – that it should have such leverage over me. Jenny's illness is clearly catastrophic by comparison. Sarah's future is more important. Tom's troubles are more life-destroying. But Paloma is special precisely because Paloma is – or perhaps was – a dumb animal. Though that should perhaps make her troubles less important, it makes my responsibility for them total. She has no reason or understanding of her situation. She has no options. Her life experience as a pet was one of total dependency and her trust in my ability to look after her absolute. I can't help but be convinced that no matter what efforts Ricardo may have made, if only
I
had been there I could have found her. And by not being there I have fundamentally betrayed that trust.

The contrast between the dark shadows filling my brain and the manufactured fun around me couldn't be greater though. With the unspoken acknowledgement that this could be Jenny's last winter, Christmas has taken on a terrifying poignancy and Ricardo and I compete to try to make it the most perfect Christmas anyone could have.

We buy the biggest most expensive tree that we can physically fit inside the lounge. We smother it with lights and baubles and garlands of every colour, transforming it into a gaudy mess beyond Sarah's wildest hopes. The neighbours' silver tree looks positively zen by comparison.

And we buy Sarah so many stocking fillers that we have to switch from stockings to pillow cases to hold them all.

There's something undeniably hysterical about the whole frenzy of preparation, and though no-one mentions it, I'm pretty sure that we're all suffering from the same
Perfect Christmas Syndrome
. If it's to be Jenny's last Christmas then it has to be perfect. If it's to be Sarah's last Christmas with her mother then the memories have to be as big and as shiny as possible. And there's a superstitious feeling which is hard to nail down that perhaps, if we can just make Christmas perfect enough, then everything else will be OK. If we can just get the tree and the gifts and the food
just so
, then Jenny will be fine, won't she?

Maybe when there are things you can't control, it's normal to get really obsessed with those that you can.

On Christmas Eve Jenny comes downstairs looking surprisingly fresh.

“Hum, someone's having a better day,” I comment.

“Amazing what a bit of Christmas cheer will do for you,” Jenny says. “Well, what a ton of makeup will do. I do feel OK though.”

“So, what do you think?” I ask, waving towards the tree.

“Amazing. Have you added
more
decorations?”

“Just some presents. The ones that wouldn't fit in the stockings.”

“In the stockings which are pillow cases?”

“Yeah.”

“You're crazy.”

“Sure. But it's all cheap tat. Kids love opening presents. Anyway, I did when I was a kid.”

“She'll love it,” Jenny says, smiling. “Where is she by the way?”

“Out with Ricardo. They went to the corner shop. He suddenly realised that we don't have any chicken soup.”

Jenny pulls a face. “Chicken soup?”

I shrug. “Apparently you can't possibly have Christmas without chicken soup. Not if you're Colombian.”

“Yuck.”

“I know.”

Jenny crosses to the tree and rearranges a garland. “Actually I wanted to ask you something,” she says. “A favour.”

“Sure. Anything.”

What Jenny asks for is to spend the evening alone with her daughter. She loves Christmas Eve, she says. She loves how excited Sarah gets. And she feels an unexpected need to spend it alone with her daughter. As this is clearly another symptom of
Perfect Christmas Syndrome
I agree immediately.

“As long as you feel well enough, I'd love to get out for a Christmas pint,” I say.

After high-tea of sandwiches, scones and mince-pies, plus added chicken soup for Ricardo, we walk up to the Beach Tavern. Were it not for the risk of bumping into Tom I would have headed into Brighton, but there is no way I'm going to risk having Tom neutron-bomb our Christmas Eve. At least this way I can drink.

The pub is packed with a young raucous crowd. It's not until we have been served that I realise that virtually no-one is speaking English.

Ricardo, sipping a pint of lager, frowns. Noticing the same thing he asks, “They speak English Chupy?”

“No. Something eastern European. Polish maybe,” I say, hearing a guttural ‘R' sound behind me.

“Yes,” a guy beside me laughs, raising his glass to me. “Tonight you are in Warsaw.”

“How brilliant,” I say, feigning enthusiasm. “I always wanted to spend Christmas in Warsaw.”

In fact, despite my own prejudices – which are mainly to do with the old Pope and Poland's rich reputation for homophobia – they turn out to be an open friendly crowd. Richard – spelt somehow with a z – introduces us to his twin brother André - equally spelt with a z - and within minutes we are surrounded by half a coach-load of Poles, inexplicably in Pevensey Bay for Christmas Eve. Seeing us ironically as “local” colour, they surround us and bombard us with questions about the region.

At eleven-fifteen, I am fighting to get to the bar when someone blows a whistle and shouts something in Polish and within a minute, the crowd at the bar has vanished. It's as if someone has pulled a plug.

Ricardo and I take our drinks to a window-seat and watch as the coach, filled with waving arms, manoeuvres and pulls away.

“Nice guys,” Ricardo says.

“Yeah.”

“I feel a bit drunk. It's nice,” he says.

I grin at him. “Me too. It's been a while, hasn't it? Those z-twins were sexy weren't they?”

Ricardo wide-eyes me and nods.

“Straight, but sexy,” I say.

“You think?” he asks.

I shrug.

“Not so many girls on the bus,” Ricardo points out.

“No. But definitely straight. What a weird trip though.”

“Yes. Why here?” Ricardo asks. “Why this little place?”

“The barman's wife is Polish …” I say with a shrug.

“The pregnant one?”

“Yeah. So I guess she arranged to cater for them all or something. Crazy that they're all off to church though. I mean, imagine being on a coach trip that includes midnight mass. That's just bizarre.”

“Well, it's an important one,” Ricardo says.

“Midnight mass?”

“Yes. The miracle of the virgin birth Chupy,” Ricardo says with a shrug. “If you're Christian, they don't come much bigger.”

I laugh. “Yeah. I wonder if any of them actually believe it though.” Ricardo frowns at me, so I say, “The virgin birth, I mean. Nowadays.”

“I think it's quite well documented babe,” he says.

I grin at him, convinced that he's winding me up. “Yeah, right,” I laugh.

“You don't believe?” he asks, dead-pan.

“Well of course I don't. I'm not Catholic.”

“OK, but you're Christian. So it's the same.”