The estate agent, Margaret Sinclair, hung up the phone and stared at it a moment longer, as if the device itself were to blame.
For twentytwo years she had sold flats riddled with arrears, with tenants listed on the title, with leaking pipes and a view of the local cemetery. Once shed even shown a property with a parrot that cursed in three languages. But never before had a cat been listed as a encumbrance in the contract.
Right, lets run through the terms again, she muttered to herself, flipping through her notebook. Twobed flat on Baker Street, third floor, sixtytwo square metres. Owner died in January. Heirs a son and a daughter from Bristol want a quick sale. The cat isnt being reclaimed, it isnt going to a shelter, and they wont allow it to be put down. The cat is included.
She sighed and added a clause that would make any solicitors stomach churn: Price includes cat. Negotiation permitted.
The first viewing was set for Saturday.
Margaret opened the door and let her client in a tall woman of about fiftyfive, swathed in a grey coat. She crossed the threshold and halted. The flat smelled as homes of longstanding, solitary elders do: lavender soap, dustridden books, a faint hint of valerian.
Eleanor Whitmore, the woman introduced herself without extending a hand, scanning the rooms. And where is this bonus?
The cat perched on the windowsill of the spacious living room a massive, gingerwhite creature. He stared at Eleanor without blinking, his gaze stripped of fear or curiosity, holding only an endless, weary patience.
Thats the look of those who have already been abandoned.
Eleanor moved silently through the flat, trailing a fingertip over the spines of books on the shelf Chekhov, Paustovsky, Astafiev, their covers softened to dust. She peered into the kitchen, where a tearoff calendar was stuck on the seventeenth of January. On the sill sat three pots of wilted geraniums and a bowl, pristine and empty, positioned exactly at the left leg of a stool.
Does anyone feed him? she asked, not turning around.
The neighbour, Margaret replied. Agnes Miller from Flat 36. She drops by twice a day. The heirs pay her a little, but they do pay.
Eleanor returned to the living room. The cat had not shifted front paws tucked, eyes fixed on the courtyard where bare February poplars swayed in the wind, and between them a woman pushed a pram.
Whats his name?
Marquis, the heirs had decided.
Marquis, Eleanor repeated, expression flat.
The cat kept his head still.
Three days later she called.
Margaret, Ive thought about it. The areas nice, the tubes close. But the price is still above market, even with the extra. The place needs work new wallpaper, linoleum. Id take it if you knock off another three hundred pounds.
Ill see what I can do.
The heirs reduced the price by two hundred. Eleanor agreed.
The paperwork stretched over three weeks. Eleanor returned twice more measuring with a tape, noting numbers in her notebook, imagining renovations. The cat watched. The second time she crouched by the window to check the radiator, he leapt from the sill, padded over a halfmetre and settled beside her.
Hello there, she said softly.
Marquis flickered his eyes once, slowly, then turned away.
When the day of signing arrived, Agnes Miller turned out to be a slight, dryskinned woman with startled eyes. She waited for Eleanor at the door.
Are you the new owner? she asked.
I hope so, Eleanor replied.
Agnes began her tale. Nora Whitfield, the previous owner, was a saint. Ten years ago she rescued Marquis from the stairwell, where hed been left shivering in November. She fed him, gave him a roof, and he never left her side.
She lowered her voice. When she collapsed from a stroke in the kitchen, he lay right beside her head. The ambulance forced the door open, but he stayed there, never moving.
Eleanor stood in the doorway, clutching a ring of new keys three in total: two for the locks, one for the postbox that now gathered dust.
Hes harmless, Agnes continued. He doesnt scratch, he doesnt ruin furniture. He just refuses to come near people. I feed him for two months and he never approaches me. He eats when Im out, then disappears behind the door. He never comes near me.
Maybe hes scared, Eleanor suggested.
He isnt scared, Agnes said. Hes waiting. Every evening, around six, he sits by the door and watches. Nora used to return from her walks at six.
Eleanor moved in on Saturday. She owned few possessions; she was used to compact living after twenty years as a cardiac nurse, a stint as a junior doctor, a layoff, a cramped room in Birley that had ruined both knees and spirit. Buying a home had been a dream for nine years, a plan that finally turned into reality.
The movers lugged in a sofa, two wardrobes, boxes of crockery. Marquis vanished. Eleanor found him later, curled behind an ironing board in the storage cupboard, ears pinned, massive and motionless.
I get it, she whispered. Its hard for you. Its hard for me too.
She placed a bowl at the left leg of the stool, exactly where the old one had stood, and closed the kitchen door.
In the morning the bowl was empty.
A month passed. They lived side by side the same walls, different worlds.
Eleanor rose at six, sipped coffee, and went on night duty. She took a job at the community clinic on Union Street not cardiology, but something. Every evening she left a long, silvering strand of hair across the bowl; when she saw it on the floor, she knew Marquis had eaten.
At night she sank into an armchair by the window, reading the same books left by Nora: Chekhov, now full of tiny pencil notes in the margins exclamation marks, single words like yes, exactly, me too. The annotations felt like a strange recognition, as if a stranger were thinking exactly as she did.
Marquis, meanwhile, camped in the hallway by the front door, precisely at six each evening, waiting.
In late March Eleanor fell ill. A nightlong flu hit her with a fever of thirtynine, sore throat, aching joints. She called in, took paracetamol, and lay down. She couldnt rise to eat, nor to feed the cat.
Marquis, she croaked from the bedroom. Im sorry. I cant.
Silence.
She slipped into a heavy, sticky dream, her head buzzing. She awoke feeling something press against her legs a warm, measured weight.
Marquis lay across the foot of the bed, curled like a loaf, eyes fixed on her without blinking, solemn and attentive. For once he was not in the hallway, not in the cupboard, not behind the ironing board. He was there, on her.
Eleanor stayed still, fearing that any movement would send him away. She stared, and he stared back, a wordless communion where nothing needed to be spoken.
You already know, she whispered.
Marquis pressed his ears down, rested his head on his paws, and closed his eyes.
He stayed.
For three days she was sick, and for three days he rested at her feet, venturing only to the bowl when she finally mustered the strength to pour food. On the third day, when her temperature fell and she sat wrapped in a blanket with a mug of broth, Marquis hopped onto the stool, settled beside her, and purred.
Softly, raspily, as if relearning a forgotten song.
Eleanor set down her mug, removed her glasses, and extended a hand, palm up.
Marquis sniffed her fingertips, nudged his forehead against her palm.
She wept not from sentimentality, but from a sudden, clear realization: she had bought someone elses life, their books, their cat, because there was not enough of her own to fill the void. And he remained in someone elses life, with someone else, because there was nowhere else for him. Two encumbrances, two addons, two extra beings rolled into the price.
Now they sat together in the kitchen, a cat fifteen catyears old and a woman fiftysix human years old, sharing a quiet warmth.
Marquis purred, and Eleanor rested her hand on his heavy head, contemplating that perhaps this was what it meant to wait without asking, to receive without seeking. It arrived, unbidden.
Come May, Eleanor stripped the old floral wallpaper tiny brown blossoms that had darkened the room and painted the walls a soft, milky cream. She left the linoleum for now; money was still tight, but it no longer mattered. The flat no longer felt foreign; she didnt notice the exact moment it changed.
Noras books stayed on the shelf; Eleanor added a few of her own, about a dozen. Chekhov with the pencil notes remained in its place; she would open it in the evenings and read not the stories but the marginal yes, exactly, me too, nodding along.
She threw away the dead geraniums and later planted fresh ones on the same sill where Marquis had first perched. He now chose that spot less often, preferring the armchair beside her or her lap when the night stretched long and the book was good.
He no longer trotted to the door at six.
In June Margaret Sinclair, the estate agent, ran into Eleanor at the local Tesco on Baker Street. Eleanor stood in line with a bag of cat food and a bottle of kefir.
Hows the flat? Margaret asked. Regret anything?
No.
And the cat?
Eleanor paused, shifting the food from one hand to the other.
You know, Margaret, she said, they lowered the price too much. It should have been higher.
Margaret laughed. Eleanor did not.
At home, Marquis waited by the hallway, near the shoes. When the lock clicked, he lifted his head, flickered his eyes once, slowly.
Thats how you greet those you have truly waited for.
