Ten Things My Cat Hates About You

by Lottie Lucas

  “You don’t think I didn’t feel all of that as well?” Jess fires back. Her face quivers with barely leashed emotion. I can’t even begin to imagine what she’s been through these past few weeks. “It was a shock to me too, you know. Don’t you think I was scared? I needed you more than I ever have before. I needed your support, Freddie. And instead you ran away.” She breaks off, looking perilously close to tears.

  “I was always going to come back,” Freddie says desperately. He looks like a cornered animal; I’ve never seen him so terrified. “I never meant to stay away, I promise you.”

  “I gave you the benefit of the doubt,” she says sadly. “I said to myself, ‘He’s panicking; that’s natural. I’ll give him time’. I knew you were immature, Freddie; I’m not under any illusions. But I thought this would make you grow up a bit.” She balls her hand into a fist at her side. “And instead I have to come and get you! Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”

  “No!” He kneels down at her feet, taking her hands in his. “Jess, don’t. You know how much I lo—”

  “I don’t want to do this on my own.” Tears are streaming down Jess’s face. “But after this … What kind of father are you going to be? Perhaps I’m better off by myself.”

  I’ve been sitting here all of this time, but now I force myself to move. I shouldn’t be listening to this.

  “I’ll give you some space.” I edge out of the room, although neither of them look up anyway. They’re just staring into each other’s eyes, not speaking. There’s a finality about the moment which breaks my heart and I turn away, feeling intrusive.

  I pull open the front door and slip out, not even stopping to pick up a coat from the rack. I just need air. I need to think.

  “I’d stay outside if I were you,” I tell Casper, who’s sitting on the doorstep. “It’s safer out here.”

  He just gives me a bored look. I dread to think how many babies he’s fathered over the years. He probably thinks it’s no big deal.

  I set off down the street, barely aware of putting one foot in front of the other.

  How could I not have seen this coming? Of course Freddie was behaving oddly; the whole thing was odd, his turning up like that, out of the blue. I knew that.

  At once, I’m subsumed by guilt. What was it he said to me? ‘I can’t get anything past you.’ Except he did, didn’t he? I’ve been so wrapped up in myself lately, so obsessed with what I want and what’s going on in my life, that I didn’t even see what was going on right in front of me.

  Even so, I can’t understand it. The brother I know would never have done this. He would never have been so selfish and reckless.

  This is my own fault; I was supposed to be looking after him. I was supposed to make sure that we would both be okay. Clearly, I’ve failed us all.

  Mum and Dad would be so disappointed in me.

  My eyes are hot with unshed tears. I look up, trying to dispel them, and realise that I’m next to the gateway to Alexandra College. I have no recollection of how I got here; my feet must have brought me of their own accord.

  “Are you coming in, love?” the gateman enquires kindly, leaning out of his glass-fronted booth.

  I realise that I’m just standing on the pavement, staring at the facade blankly.

  “Yes,” I hear myself say. “Yes, I am.”

  Suddenly, the urge to talk to Adam is almost overwhelming. It’s almost like I subconsciously knew that’s what I needed.

  I cross the quad, following the labyrinthine corridors which I remember from my last visit. I take a couple of wrong turns, but eventually I find it. His office is tucked away at the end of the row. I knock on the door, feeling strangely nervous.

  “Come in.” His voice emerges from within.

  I poke my head around the doorframe. “Hi.”

  He’s sitting at his desk, next to a stack of essays. I can tell that he’s been at it for a while because his hair is all tousled, like he’s been running his hands through it. He does that when he’s concentrating hard on something. Or when he’s exasperated by something, come to think of it. He certainly does it an awful lot when he’s around me and, heaven knows, I’m exasperating enough.

  He looks up and for a second I see his eyes widen behind his glasses. They’re a heavy black-framed style; I’ve never seen him wear them before. They suit him. As I think that, my stomach does a little flip and I grit my teeth together, trying to quell it.

  “Clara. I didn’t expect …” He pushes his chair away from the desk. “I’m sorry, I’m in the middle of marking, hence why it’s such a tip in here.”

  Hence. Only Adam would use a word like hence so casually. It makes me want to smile. I was right; just being in his presence makes the hollow feeling inside me abate slightly.

  “I didn’t know you wore glasses,” I say shyly.

  “I do when I’ve been squinting at first year essays for the past three days. I gave up on vanity yesterday afternoon and took my contacts out.”

  “Oh.” For the first time, it occurs to me that I shouldn’t have just waltzed in here like this. Of course he’s busy. He has work to do; he doesn’t want me interrupting him. “Sorry. I should leave …”

  “Not at all. I could do with a break, anyway.” He picks up a small travel kettle which is plugged in on a side table by the window. “Tea?”

  I settle back against the desk, feeling ridiculously pleased that he wants me to stay. He has a way of making me feel like I’m always important.

  “Obviously. What else happens at four o’clock in this country?”

  “You weren’t at the museum today?” His back is to me as he picks two tea bags out of the box and drops them into the cups.

  “Not all day; I left early. It’s sort of … Well, let’s just say it’s been an eventful afternoon.”

  “Nothing to do with your veterinary friend, I hope?” He asks lightly enough, but he’s gone very still. There’s a tension about his shoulders as he holds the kettle poised over the cups.

  “God, no.” I actually find myself laughing at the absurdity of it. “Josh is the last thing on my mind, believe me.”

  Only two days ago, our breakup seemed like the end of the world. But now it just seems infinitely small and unimportant.

  Adam places the tea on the desk next to me. “Want to talk about it?”

  He seems perfectly earnest, but suddenly I feel reticent. After all, hasn’t he heard enough about my problems? He doesn’t need to get tangled up in any more.

  “It’s a long story,” I hedge, picking up my tea.

  He smiles wryly. “I’m a Classics professor, remember? I’m used to long stories. The Roman Empire lasted for 1,500 years, after all.”

  Chapter 27

  The next few days are manic. Strange, manic and … oddly wonderful.

  I didn’t know what to expect when I finally got home that night. Freddie’s severed head rolling down the garden path, perhaps? As it was, I found them snuggled up together on the sofa, lost in each other’s eyes. I simply picked up Casper, who was glaring disgustedly at them from the doorway, and quietly made myself scarce upstairs.

  The next morning I came down early to find the kettle on and Freddie already up, sitting at the kitchen table reading a book. I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t still dreaming, but no—he even offered me a cup of tea. A changed man, indeed. And it turned out that the book in question was the baby book which Oscar saw him reading in the bookshop (it seems that I owe Oscar an apology for doubting his word. Probably best paid in chocolate.); he bought it after all, so at least he was telling the truth when he said he was planning to go back. I can’t tell you how much that reassured me. I knew he would pull through in the end. After all, whatever his faults, Freddie has a good heart. We all know that. I think it’s a large part of the reason why Jess decided to give him another chance.

  And, to his credit, he’s not wasting it. I’ve never seen my brother so motivated. He’s doing everything in his power to be t
he best soon-to-be father possible. When he’d finished that first baby book, he went off to the library and came home with a stack more. He’s used the money they’d been saving for their travels and gone on a shopping spree; my house has turned into an obstacle course of baby paraphernalia. If I’m not stepping over boxes, I’m ducking beneath the old dismantled cot Freddie managed to reclaim from one of the neighbours, which is propped across the hallway at a drunken angle.

  I have to say, I’m rather looking forward to having my house back. To think that I ever bewailed living on my own.

  I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s great having them here. And, believe me, I’m more pleased than anyone that Freddie is taking all of this so seriously. He seems to have grown up before my eyes in the past few days.

  But the conversation … If I have to hear one more debate on wooden versus silicone teething rings, or self-soothing versus a pacifier, or swaddling versus a sleep sack, I’m going to go stark raving mad. When you’re having a baby everything seems to be versus everything else. Even Jess looks bemused by most of it. She just shrugs and goes off for a nap.

  She went off for a particularly calculated nap yesterday afternoon, leaving Freddie and me alone for the first time since it all happened.

  “I should have just told you the truth ages ago.” He hovered by the fridge, hands shoved in his pockets. “But I just couldn’t … I didn’t want you to be ashamed of me.”

  “Ashamed of you?” I stared at him. “What do you mean? I could never be ashamed of you. You’re my little brother, and whatever …”

  “Yes, but you’ve handled everything so well,” he burst out. “After Mum and Dad … You’ve got past it, made a life they’d be proud of. How can I admit to you that I feel like I’m drowning most of the time?”

  “You think I’ve got past it?” My face was numb with shock. “Freddie, I will never get past it. It hurts every day. I’m just doing my best to carry on with life. I get things wrong too, believe me. Josh was a case in point, and that’s just a recent example.”

  “Yes, but you wouldn’t have done something like this,” he said bitterly.

  I looked at my brother, his anguished face, and immediately I saw how much he regretted it. What was the point in making him feel worse?

  “Neither of us are perfect,” I said softly. “Perhaps we should just leave it at that.”

  “I would have stayed, you know,” he said suddenly. “I still feel terrible that I left you with all of that. It wasn’t fair.”

  I sighed. I’d known we’d come back to this at some point.

  “You had to go to university, Freddie. You had your whole life ahead of you. They were holding your place.”

  “I could have deferred,” he said, and I saw that same stubbornness in his face that I recognise in myself sometimes. “I could have helped you sell the house, deal with all the paperwork. You didn’t need to do it on your own.”

  “I wanted to protect you,” I confessed. “I saw you as my responsibility.”

  “Exactly, and you still do. But I was eighteen when they died, Clara. Not a lot younger than you. I was an adult, not a child. You don’t need to feel responsible for everything I do.”

  His words so closely echoed what Adam had told me in his office that day that I could only stare at him in amazement.

  “Thank God Jess has taken me back.” He sighed gustily. “You know that Mum and Dad split up for a while, before they got married? He told me once, a couple of years before they died.”

  “Wait … What? No, I never knew that.” I pushed myself away from the counter. “What happened?”

  I can’t believe it. My parents—their relationship was perfect. They never even fought.

  Freddie just shrugged. “He didn’t go into details. All he said was that it was hard at the time, but ultimately it made them stronger. I hope I’ll be able to say the same to our baby about Jess and me one day.”

  “I’m sure you will.” I put a hand on his arm. “And you know I’ll be here for whatever you need. Although you seem to have most it sorted out already,” I added with a wry glance around my cramped kitchen. “Do you really need all of this stuff right now?”

  “All right, so I might have been a bit precipitate,” he admitted defensively. “But there’s just so little time … Heather says that you can never be too prepared.”

  One of the first things I did once everything had settled was send the two of them off to see Heather; after all, she’s been in the same sort of situation herself. She’s been amazing, although the problem now is that every other sentence begins with “Heather says …”

  “You’ll certainly be that,” I remarked drily.

  I shouldn’t have mocked him, really. Because I can see why he’s panicking; it turns out that Jess is actually five months pregnant. Five months! Apparently she didn’t even realise for the first three and a half, and then, when you add on Freddie’s untimely disappearance …

  But never mind that. I promised to put it in the past.

  Anyway, the upshot is that I’m absolutely exhausted, and I’m not even the one having this baby. Jess and Freddie seem to be on a high, though. They’ve taken the whole thing in their stride, whereas I still haven’t even had the chance to sit down and process the fact that I’m going to be an aunt.

  The only one who shares some of my perplexity is Casper. He spends most of his time outside, terrorising anything smaller than himself. And a few things which are bigger too. I had to stop him from going after a fox last night.

  My one anchoring point of sanity is Adam, who calls to see how we’re getting on. It’s like being a teenager again, lying on my bed talking on the phone for an hour at a time. I don’t know why, but I always seem to retreat to my room; I suppose I don’t want Jess and Freddie to get any ideas. I know what they’re like; they’ll be planning our wedding before I’ve even had a chance to refute that there’s anything romantic between us.

  And there isn’t. We’re just friends. That’s all. Women and men can be friends.

  I mean … there is one small, irritating thing. Every time his name comes up on my phone screen, I get this warm, fluttering feeling in my chest.

  But, you know, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything. Adam and I could never be right for one another. Imagine the arguments, for one thing. And what would happen with Casper? He’d probably leave home in umbrage.

  Not that any of this matters. Because we’re just friends.

  And that’s fine. That’s all I need.

  For the first time since I lost my parents, life feels like it’s working out. I hadn’t realised just how much I’d been clinging on by my fingernails, forcing myself to believe that I was coping. That nothing mattered. Now, I can see that it’s okay if things matter, so long as I keep it all in perspective. If this baby has taught me anything, it’s that life is here and now. Even if it’s unexpected; sometimes that’s how the best things happen, when you’re not looking. I don’t want to miss any more moments because I’m so busy scanning the horizon for something which, if it’s meant to come into my life, will do so in its own time anyway.

  And … that’s as deep as I’m going to get. For now.

  “What do you think, Clara?” Freddie asks, bringing me back to the present. He turns his laptop around so I can see the screen. A photo of a red-bricked Edwardian house meets my eye. “It’s four bedrooms, detached, decent-sized garden …”

  “A new house has just come up here in Cambridge.” Jess taps at her phone, her brow dented with concentration. Her nails are painted a vibrant red; she borrowed it off me the day after she and Freddie made up. I take it as a sign that all is well in the world again. “It’s a two-bedroom terrace, only a couple of streets away from here. It’s pretty; it has one of those little wooden canopy porches above the door. I love those.”

  “Yes, but only two bedrooms?” Freddie scoots across the sofa, peering at the small screen. “Is that really going to be big enough for the baby?”

 
“Of course it is! It’ll only be a tiny thing; how much room could it need?”

  “Yes, but what about afterwards?” Freddie insists. “I assume we’ll want more at some point. Then we’ll have to move again.”

  “More?” Jess manages in a strangled voice. “Let’s get this one out of the way first, shall we?”

  I scratch Casper behind the ears, letting their voices wash over me.

  When Jess finally told her parents, who live permanently in Dubai, they immediately offered to pay for the deposit on a house as a baby gift. Which, whilst a lovely gesture, has only incited a fierce debate on where to live. It always goes exactly the same way. Allow me to outline:

  Manchester is near their friends.

  But Cambridge is near me and, seeing as I’m the only family member either still alive and/or living in this country, I’m considered quite important. If I do say so myself.

  Ah, but then Manchester is so much cheaper. They can get a family-sized home for the same price as a poky terrace here. A poky terrace much like the one we’re in now, as Freddie so graciously pointed out, during one of their more heated discussions on the topic.

  Manchester is also bigger and more cosmopolitan. Better to raise children in the city, where there’s lots to do.

  But Cambridge is smaller and more intimate. Better to raise children in the country, where it’s a more laid-back lifestyle. (Their words, not mine. If they really think Cambridge counts as ‘the countryside’, then they really have been living in a big city for too long.)

  But Manchester …

  Anyway, never mind. You get the gist. It only ever goes round and round in circles, anyway.

  As if to elucidate my point, they’re still going now.

  “But Jess,” Freddie’s saying urgently, “think about the garden. The baby’s going to need a garden to run around in.”

  “Not for a while. And this has a garden.” Jess stabs at the screen, bringing up a picture of an uninspiring bare lawn. “Yes, it’s small. But Cambridge has loads of green space. We’ll take it to the park to run off steam.”