The Perfect Widow. A.M. Castle

over the jar of instant. His eyes dropped down to the granules – the fancy kind, mind you, I’d been treating myself – and did another curious double take. Clue number two.

      ‘I expect you’re too busy to get settled?’ he said, offering me a way out. But out of what? I didn’t get it. The flat was pristine, orderly. I hated mess, I’d put all that behind me and I proved it every time I undid a fresh bottle of bleach. What was his problem? Because there clearly was one.

      I brought the coffees over to the bench. I only sat on it to eat, so the hardness didn’t bother me. I read my books in bed. He sat on the edge, put his cup somewhat nervously on the floor. I didn’t think to offer biscuits. Well, I didn’t have any. Extra carbohydrates were definitely not on my agenda, and the list of visitors I’d had back to my flat was short. Him. I had no graceful preparations ready, even though I’d decided tonight was going to be his night. Well, that’s not quite true. I’d painted my toenails, shaved my legs. But the flat? Fine as it was, I’d thought. But I’d been wrong.

      ‘No cushions. I like it. Uncluttered,’ he said, shifting uncomfortably. I made a mental note. Buy cushions. ‘Where do you hide the telly? Radio? Hi-fi? Speakers?’

      I shook my head briefly. I’d decided against these distractions long ago. Although those Disney princesses had danced their way through my childhood, lulling me and blotting out so much, once I had the choice I opted for my books. I didn’t want the drone of the telly a moment longer. There was too much to get on with to waste my time on inessentials. Sometimes it meant I had to bluff my way, when some series or other was all the rage, and it was the only topic the girls at work could talk about. Not that I hung around with them much, but there were times in the canteen or as they passed my desk. There was enough in the newspapers to tell me pretty much everything I’d ever need to know about trashy TV.

      I learned to make the right sort of comments, keep the conversation going, though it wasn’t really safe to offer a major opinion. The one time I had, something had been awry. I couldn’t work out what – well, I’d never seen the show. Tumbleweed for a moment, a week of strange looks, then we were back to normal. But I never risked it again.

      As for music, well, I’d never got it. When you’ve been brought up with paper-thin walls, when the dubious heavy metal choices of the man living three floors down became the beat that your glass of orange squash danced to, not having sounds in your life was a blessed relief. I wallowed in the velvety luxury of silence. Same thing went for cooking. The idea of anything that lingered – fish, curry – revolted me. I’d hated the stenches of the stairwells. Even when it wasn’t effluent, other people’s cooking smelt nearly as bad to me. I loved my microwave. You only needed to use a plastic fork – prick the film, then shovel the food in. Throw the lot away afterwards, all done. How great was that?

      Anything that impinged on me from outside, I hated. No mess, no fuss. Plenty of space around me, all the exits clear. After growing up in the Tower of Babel, I hardly ever raised my voice. Patrick, later, accused me of faking my tone, like Margaret Thatcher, but that was always real.

      Pete, still looking around my flat like a drowning man casting about for something to latch on to, piped up at last.

      ‘Well, I can see what you do like. Books.’ He sounded overawed, and now I looked around in my turn. I thought of my library as a kind of comfort blanket. But maybe it was daunting, if you weren’t a reader. I’d had the sense to kick the self-help section under my bed that morning, when I’d decided it was Pete’s lucky day, but otherwise the full might of all the knowledge I wanted or needed was staring down at us from serried ranks of Billy bookshelves that I’d picked up from Ikea, braving the maze of families and cheap meatballs, and assembled myself – not without peril to my manicure.

      ‘Books do furnish a room,’ I said gently, knowing that, despite an education I’d begun to suspect was quite expensive, the reference would probably fly several miles over his head.

      At that point, my cat, Mephisto, strolled in and saved the day. Black and fluffy, from a distance Mephs looked the business and could pass for a Persian cross. Close up, you noticed his battered ear, the gash over his eye which had left the trace of a scar, even the fact that his fur was more of a dark rusty brown than true black. Like his mistress, he wasn’t quite what he seemed. But unlike me he had bags of swagger. Pete dropped to his knees and started cooing, while both Mephs and I looked on in surprise.

      ‘I didn’t take you for a cat person?’ Pete said, looking up from where he was now giving Mephisto a full belly-rub. The cat had not hung about long before capitulating. He was now emitting the special low humming sound I’d thought he saved just for me.

      ‘Mmm,’ I said, non-committal. It wasn’t the moment to disabuse him. I just hadn’t been able to leave the cat with my mother when push came to shove. One of her hook-ups had given it to her – as a joke, I was pretty sure. She wasn’t fit to look after a child, we all knew that much. Why burden her with an animal as well?

      Anyway, despite my better judgement, Mephs and I had been together ever since my final flit from her place. There’d been no time to be organised. I’d just grabbed what I could and I’d run. At the last minute, Mephs had miaowed. I’d looked under the sofa, wasting precious seconds, and seen the green glass of his eyes. I couldn’t leave him. I’d grabbed him and shoved him unceremoniously into my backpack, and that was that, we were together.

      Unlike his namesake, this Mephistopheles had never promised me the world, just a load of hairballs and the occasional scratch to keep me in line. He’d definitely fulfilled his side of the bargain. He’d been the king of our old estate, but I’d forced him to become an indoor cat with a litter box and a view out of our new tenth floor window on the other side of town, take it or leave it. Well, I could hardly cut a cat flap in our front door. I was pretty sure it was against all the council regulations to have a pet, though I didn’t look too closely. That would have interfered with my pleas of ignorance if we got caught.

      Lugging cat food home with my frozen lasagnes was a chore. But I loved the old dear, and I’d thought he was equally discerning. I now saw, as he writhed and purred for Pete, that he was a shameless old tart who’d go with anyone. Wonder who he got that from? I thought sourly.

      But Mephisto’s appearance had saved the day. Pete relaxed completely. Keeping an animal had, oddly enough, proved I was human.