Without saying anything, he led me to the chequered floor as the band played a Sinatra and, to the backdrop of saxophones and a man at the microphone crooning ‘That’s Life’, Rory spun me out and back into him again. I managed this and rolled back into his arms without skittering to the floor.
‘I’ve been up and down and over and out and I know one thing…’ crooned the singer, eyebrows waggling above the microphone.
Rory lifted his arm and I twirled underneath it, catching a glimpse of his thunderous face. I tried not to care. I just had to get through the rest of the party without anything else going wrong.
‘Each time I find myself flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race…’ belted the singer, as Rory unravelled me from his chest again like a yoyo.
I felt it happening milliseconds before it actually did, as if the very moment that my right heel started sliding sent an alarm to the rest of my body to brace itself. My foot slipped from under me and then my knee, my hand and the rest of me came crashing to the floor like a chess piece knocked to its side.
Ah. Turns out something else could go wrong.
People around me stopped dancing and looked down and then Rory was crouched beside me, his hand digging into my underarm. I stood slowly, like a toddler who’d just learnt to walk, and tried my fake laugh again but it wouldn’t come. Instead, the purple lights of the marquee went blurry.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s go home.’
‘I didn’t mean to fall, I’m sorry,’ I said, as he pulled me towards the entrance, pushing through people. ‘What about my bag?’ I added, with a thick voice.
‘You sit here,’ he instructed sternly, as we reached a line of black cabs. ‘I’ll collect everything.’ He opened the door for me to climb in and then leant through the front window to speak to the driver, all polite again.
‘I’m terribly sorry but could you hang about while I get our coats?’ The driver nodded and Rory strode back towards the marquee. As I unbuckled my shoes, tears slid down my cheeks, making dark spots on the velvet of my dress. One dark spot, two dark spots, three dark spots; I counted them until they merged into one while the driver eyed me nervously in his mirror. Probably thought I was a vomit risk.
Rory came back minutes later with my coat and bags. He climbed in, gave the driver my address and sat back against the seat.
Neither of us said anything as the lights of Battersea roundabout slid past the windows and my tears stopped, eclipsed by relief at having left that marquee. Marigold and Clive were all right but the rest of them could jump in the Thames. And Octavia was a witch in lipstick. If you pulled a strand of her blonde hair, I wondered whether it would slide off to reveal a bald scalp underneath. The thought made me smile and I turned from my window to glance at Rory.
‘What on earth is funny about any of this?’ he snapped.
I sighed and fluttered my lips. ‘The whole evening? I’m sorry, I know it meant a lot to you, but…’ I sighed. ‘Those people!’
‘Those people are my colleagues,’ he said, ‘and friends. And you made a scene.’
Ah. ‘A scene’. A scene was one of Patricia’s biggest phobias too. ‘Mustn’t make a scene, darling,’ she’d told me often when I was younger, out shopping when I wanted to count the coins in her purse or whenever I’d count the street lamps out loud.
‘I didn’t mean to fall over.’
‘It wasn’t just that,’ he said, loosening the knot of his black tie while glaring at me, his eyes narrow with anger. ‘It was what you said to Octavia, and that absurd dress. And I don’t think the wine helped much either.’
For a moment, I was so winded I couldn’t answer, stunned by the power of somebody I liked so much, who was normally so charming and sunny, to reveal another, cruel side of themselves. But emboldened by the wine, I fought back. ‘Rory Dundee, don’t be such a pompous wanker!’
The taxi driver’s eyes peered nervously through his rear-view mirror again, but I carried on.
‘I’m sorry that I wore the wrong colour, but nobody died because I wore red, did they? And do you know how nervous I was before that party? Do you know how loathsome Octavia is? Every time I see her she comes up with something poisonous. And I’m sorry about the fucking shoes but I practised wearing them for half an hour last night, up and down the kitchen, like some sort of amateur supermodel, although I was wearing tracksuit bottoms. And I hate dancing. I was never any good at it. But I only did it because you wanted to and then look what happened. All I wanted,’ I said, almost hoarse by this point, ‘was to make you proud.’
Speech delivered, I sat back against the seat and felt a renewed wave of tears spring. But Rory just laughed.
‘What are you laughing at?’ I said, sniffing.
‘Did you actually practise in those bloody things?’
‘Yes! For ages. Mia made me.’
‘It didn’t work.’
‘I know!’
‘You might as well have worn your work shoes.’
‘I know!’
I turned my head from the window to look at him and we both smiled.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, as I shuffled along the seat towards him.
‘That’s all right,’ he said, putting his arm around me. ‘An easy mistake to make.’
I looked up at him. ‘What was?’
‘The dress.’
‘Oh. Right,’ I said, resting my cheek back against his jacket. ‘But I meant for everything.’
‘I know,’ he said, kissing the top of my head. ‘Tonight wasn’t one of our better outings but do you know what?’
‘No,’ I mumbled into his shoulder, noticing that Rory hadn’t apologized himself for being an arse yet.
‘There’ll be other parties. Tomorrow’s another day and all that.’
That, at least, sounded more like him. More optimistic. More cheerful.
‘We might just need to get you a different pair of shoes,’ he added, with a wry laugh, before brushing his lips against my hair. ‘You did look very beautiful.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You don’t now. You look a wreck.’
‘Oi!’ I sat up and playfully hit his arm.
He smiled. The full Rory smile where dimples carved into his stubble, his eyes softened and my stomach responded with a backflip. And I was about to lean in towards him for a kiss but the cab stopped, making me lurch against the seat like a bag of shopping. We were home.
‘Thank you very much,’ Rory told the driver, retrieving a note from his wallet and passing it forward. I stuffed the shoes into my bag and stepped out barefoot.
Standing behind me as I unlocked the door, he whispered into my ear, ‘I’m very much looking forward to taking this dress off you.’ It made me shiver and smile at the same time, but, seconds later, this giddiness disappeared when I pushed open my bedroom door to a sour stink. I fumbled for the light switch and saw Marmalade stretched out on the carpet, a pool of sick beside him.
‘Oh my God, Marmalade,’ I said, dropping my bag and rushing to him.
‘What is that ghastly smell?’ asked Rory.
Normally when I came home late, Marmalade was asleep on my pillow. It was a reproach. He wasn’t allowed to sleep on my bed when I was there. He had a basket at the foot of it. But if I didn’t return at a time he deemed appropriate, he’d jump up and doze on it until I was back.
He was never on the floor and I’d only once known him to throw up, years ago, after he ate a frog in the garden. But I had a word with him about that and he never did it again. This was different. He didn’t even raise his head as I stroked his stomach.
‘Christ that stinks!’ Rory added.
‘I’ll get some cleaning stuff,’ I said, standing up.
‘Don’t you want to change?’
I looked down at my dress as if surprised to find that I was still wearing it. ‘It’s fine,’ I said, making for the door. ‘Will you watch him?’
Rory nodded as he stood over Marmalade with a wrinkled
nose and shrugged off his jacket.
I raced downstairs, the folds of my dress in my fist, and rummaged under the sink for a bottle of bleach and a flannel. As the water ran warm, I squeezed a jet of bleach and Fairy Liquid into the washing-up bowl and filled it, before carrying the bowl upstairs as carefully as a Buckingham Palace footman. Couldn’t trip twice in one night.
Marmalade hadn’t moved. Rory was stretched out on my bed. Using several sheets of loo roll, I scraped the sick off the carpet, trying not to gag, and flushed the paper away.
‘At least I’m not drunk any more,’ I said to my cat, as I lowered him gently into his basket, then scrubbed at the stain with the flannel.
‘Mmm?’ murmured Rory.
As my hand scoured the spot back and forth, the stain disappeared under white suds and the smell of bleach overpowered the bile. I rinsed the flannel in the bathroom and gave the damp patch of carpet a final wipe before tipping the water down the plughole and, lazily, leaving the washing up bowl and flannel outside my bedroom door to carry down in the morning.
The door clicked shut and I turned to look at my bed. Rory was asleep on it, Marmalade was asleep at the end of it and I had a smear of sick on my dress, although at least it wasn’t my own sick.
What a night.
I woke to find Rory’s fingers slowly rubbing my nipple. But the thought of sex disappeared as soon as I remembered the previous night. Marmalade! Erect nipples weren’t appropriate in this situation. I swung my legs to the carpet and squatted by his basket. I scratched his head, along his back and gently twisted his tail between my fingers and, although his ears twitched, his eyes barely opened. This wasn’t like that time with the frog in the garden. I had to ring the vet.
‘Come back to bed,’ mumbled Rory, flapping open the duvet cover.
‘I can’t, Marmalade’s sick,’ I said, reaching for my phone from my bedside table. It was nearly eight, too early for it to be open, but they did an out-of-hours service. I searched for its name and rang the number. No answer.
‘He’ll be fine,’ insisted Rory. But I couldn’t possibly climb on top of Rory and listen to him shout ‘Cowabunga!’ as Marmalade lay poorly beneath us.
‘I’m going to have a quick shower and then take him round the corner,’ I said. ‘You don’t feel like coming with me, do you?’
Rory groaned and opened one eye. ‘Sorry, darling, I would if I could but we’ve got a big meeting about European fishing policy today.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I replied, before shutting myself in the bathroom and washing my face twice to try and remove the eyeliner smeared around my eyes.
He was still in bed, apparently asleep again, when I reappeared in a towel. I pulled on jeans and a hoody and decided to text Eugene when I got to the vet. Luckily, it was his week to open the shop early. I picked up Marmalade in his basket and carried him downstairs. Mia and Ruby’s bedroom doors were both open. This wasn’t unusual for Mia. She’d have gone to work. But where was Ruby? There was no chance she’d be up at this time. I paused in her doorway, realizing that she must have stayed with Zach after their date last night. But not even that could distract me. I was consumed with worry about Marmalade.
In the kitchen, I retrieved a clean tea towel from the drawer to serve as a duvet, tucked it over him and then set off for the vet with the silliest name in all London: Paws ’n’ Claws.
I pushed open the door with my shoulder and stood second in the queue, behind a man wearing a trilby with a Labrador on a lead. The receptionist was muttering about her computer and my arms ached, so I lowered Marmalade’s basket to a seat underneath a poster offering a free worming treatment, then resumed my place behind the Labrador.
‘Good morning,’ the man said to the receptionist when she finally looked up. ‘I’m afraid my Labrador has eaten a pair of tights.’
She frowned. A veterinary receptionist presumably heard all sorts of stories involving guinea pigs and sick parrots but this seemed to perplex her.
‘A pair of your tights, sir?’
‘Good heavens no! They were my wife’s tights that he took out of the laundry room. You’re a very naughty chap, aren’t you, Brutus?’
In his defence, Brutus did look quite contrite.
The receptionist sighed and asked him to take a seat. I stepped up.
‘Morning,’ I said, ‘my cat was sick last night and doesn’t seem to be very well today. He’s not responding to much. I’ve brought him here before.’
‘Name?’ she said, in a bored voice.
‘He’s called Marmalade.’
‘Your name.’
‘Oh, sorry, Florence Fairfax.’
She tapped at her keyboard then glanced up at me again. ‘When was he first sick?’
‘Last night, when I got home.’
‘And he hasn’t been sick since?’
‘Not that I know of, no. But he hasn’t eaten anything either. Normally he’d have had his breakfast by now.’ I glanced back at his basket.
‘Take a seat and Dr Pennyworth will call you shortly.’
I sat and stroked Marmalade’s back while the man in the trilby talked to Brutus. ‘Such a silly, silly chap. What are we going to do with you, eh?’
Taking out my phone, I wrote a message to Eugene. Marmalade sick so am at vet. Will text you when am leaving, sorry xxx.
A few minutes later, a door to the right of the reception desk opened and a short, fifty-something man in a white coat said my name.
I looked from him to the man in the trilby, worried that I was queue-jumping, but stood and picked up the basket.
‘I’m Dr Pennyworth. Come on through.’
He ushered me into a room which smelt of pine disinfectant and I laid Marmalade’s basket down on a metal table.
Dr Pennyworth turned to his own computer in the corner and read from the screen without looking at me. ‘He was sick last night, and isn’t any better this morning, is that right?’
‘Yes. But he was only sick once.’ Suddenly, in this stark room of medical waste bins and boxes of disposable gloves, I felt the need to reassure him that it couldn’t be that serious.
‘And how old is he?’
‘Seventeen,’ I said as Dr Pennyworth snapped on a pair of blue plastic gloves and gently opened Marmalade’s mouth to feel inside.
‘Lost a few teeth, haven’t we, my friend.’ He examined the rest of Marmalade’s body before lifting him from his basket and on to a set of scales.
‘He’s on the light side. How’s his eating?’
‘All right. He has his biscuits and half a packet of Whiskas every morning.’
‘And no change recently?’
I was about to shake my head but, actually, in the past couple of weeks, I’d found a small mound of biscuits left in his bowl every morning. I’d assumed he’d been filling up on snacks in the garden, and I’d been so distracted with the petition, and Rory, that I hadn’t worried. ‘He’s been leaving more recently. Not a huge amount. Just a few biscuits.’
Dr Pennyworth frowned at Marmalade then lifted him back into his basket. ‘I think the best way forward is a couple of tests.’
‘What kind of tests?’
‘Blood tests to check thyroid and liver function. It may be that he’s just dehydrated. But he is thin. And, at his age, it depends on how far you’re willing to go.’
‘To go for what?’ A note of panic had crept into my voice.
Dr Pennyworth pressed his lips together before answering. ‘It tends to be a matter of cost at this age.’
‘What do you mean?’ My voice had become strangely shrill.
‘Well, there’s a cost to all this and at a certain stage, I advise people to try and weigh up the quality of life.’
‘Can we do the blood tests?’ I said, as the first tears slipped down my cheeks.
‘Of course.’
‘And can I wait?’
‘Sure, it only takes a couple of minutes and then we should have the results back…’ he paused and looked at hi
s watch, ‘probably after lunch.’
I nodded and wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. ‘Sorry.’
‘Not at all. Here, have one of these.’ Dr Pennyworth reached for a box of tissues next to his computer. I took a handful and blew my nose as he opened a cupboard behind him and pulled out an electric razor.
‘If you could keep hold, I’m going to shave a small patch of fur. Got him?’
I nodded and he flicked the razor on. Marmalade barely flinched as the blades ran over his neck.
‘Keep him there and I’ll take his blood.’ Dr Pennyworth opened a different cupboard and retrieved a syringe in a plastic packet. I stared at Marmalade’s back. He tensed under my fingers but it only took a few seconds.
‘There we go. All done,’ said Dr Pennyworth, dropping the little tube into a silver dish.
‘So will you call me or…’ I trailed off.
‘Alison will give you a ring when we have the results.’
I blew my nose again before stuffing the tissues into my pocket and scooping up his basket. ‘Thank you’ I said, as he opened the door for me. Brutus and his owner were still sitting there but I was beyond caring what I looked like and wailed the whole walk home, my tears dropping on to Marmalade’s back. Poor cat. He hated the rain and refused to go out in it, but he didn’t even seem to notice, which only made me cry harder. It had been a bad twenty-four hours.
At home, I poured a can of condensed milk into a ramekin and laid Marmalade’s basket down next to it, but he wasn’t interested. Then I texted Eugene saying I wouldn’t be in and sent one line to Rory: Vet taken some blood tests but not sure how hopeful he is xxx. That was also the evening I was supposed to be seeing Gwendolyn for my last session, so I emailed her and asked to postpone it.
‘So there’s one good thing about all this,’ I said to him, putting my phone down on the kitchen counter and staring at the basket, willing him to get up and snake his way around my legs or nose through the cat flap to menace the sparrows outside. He didn’t, so I carried him to the living room where we sat on the sofa watching Eamonn Holmes interview a real-life ghostbuster.
The Wish List: Escape with the most hilarious and feel-good read of 2020! Page 24