Vince and Joy (23 page)

She didn’t want to get back on the merry-go-round of bars and clubs and having to be charming to stupid boys who smelled of cigarettes and wanted sex more than they let on. She didn’t want to go to another party and find herself stuck in the kitchen with the boring bloke that everyone else was avoiding, too polite to make her excuses because he’d know that she didn’t
really
need to go to the toilet and was just saying it so that she could get away.
She didn’t want to be stood up again, ever, as long as she lived, and she didn’t want to sit in a pub with her friends wondering if the man of her dreams was just around the corner.

She wanted stability. She wanted commitment.

And George was just about to offer it to her in its purest, most concentrated form.

‘You look so lovely up there,’ he said, placing her tea on the top step of the ladder.

‘Mmm,’ said Joy, wiping her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, ‘I’m sure. Paint-splattered track-suits have always been my best look.’

‘It’s a sort of Felicity Kendal thing, I suppose. The tousled hair; the tomboy demeanour. No British male can resist.’ He smiled and offered his hand to help her down the steps. ‘Well, at least I can’t. Look,’ he said, turning her round to face him, ‘I’m going to say this quickly in case I run out of steam, but did you mean what you said yesterday, about becoming a nun if this doesn’t work out?’

‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly feeling slightly breathless.

‘Good, because I feel the same way. Without the nun part – obviously, I’d become a monk. Well, an agnostic monk, anyway. And there I go, rambling again, when what I mean to say,
want
to say, is this –’ He stopped, took a deep breath in. ‘Would you like to get married? To me?’

And even though Joy had always maintained that she would never get married before her thirtieth birthday, even though she’d only known George for eight weeks
and even though she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, she looked into his green eyes, absorbed every particle of his unconditional and undisguised love for her, realized that he would never reject her, that he would always want her, that to him she would always be the girl of his dreams… and said yes.

‘Look,’ said Cass, removing herself from a decrepit-looking Afghan coat and dropping a carrier bag on to the coffee table in front of him, ‘I’ve bought you a present. Budge up.’ She shifted Vince along the sofa with her bum and reached for the bag.

Vince stared at the object for a second or two, his brain firing blanks as he tried to identify it. ‘It’s lovely,’ he said, reaching out to touch it, ‘is it a, er… does it… what is it exactly?’

‘It’s a crystal ball, doofus. A very expensive crystal ball.’ She rested the globe on a carved wooden stand and caressed it lovingly. ‘I’ve always wanted one, so I thought I may as well get the top of the range.’

‘But I thought you said it was for me?’

‘Well, it is, kind of. It’s for me to help you. It’s for finding Joy.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ He threw her one of his special ‘Cass, you are a total fruit’ looks, and flopped back into the sofa.

‘Seriously,’ she said, stroking the ball, ‘this little beauty will tell us where to look. I promise.’

He raised his eyebrows and opened a magazine.

‘Vince – work with me. Think positive. This will work.’

‘Cass, do what you want. Just don’t ask me to get involved.’

‘Yοu don’t need to – just get me that letter she wrote you. That’s all I need.’

Vince tutted, but got to his feet and retrieved the letter. When he got back Cass was constructing a roll-up while reading a paperback called
Ball Gazing for Beginners: Tapping into the Supersensory Powers of Your Subconscious.

‘Don’t you need to have years of experience to do this kind of thing?’ he asked sceptically, handing her the note.

‘No,’ she said defensively. ‘If the power’s within you, if you’ve got
the gift,
then things like this – ’ she indicated the ball – ‘are just vessels.’

Vince stifled a derisory snort and picked up his magazine. ‘Cassandra McAfee, you are full of shit.’

Cass sniffed and threw him an injured look. ‘So, if I find her, what do you want me to do? Keep it to myself?’

‘Cass, my lovely, witchy fruitcake,’ he said, putting an arm round her shoulder, ‘if you find her in that lump of glass, then I will give you a hundred pounds
and
make you godmother to our first-born child.’

‘Really?’ she smiled.

‘Yes, really.’

‘Cool,’ she said, then she turned off all the lights, lit a candle and started being spooky.

Half an hour later and all Cass had divined from thirty minutes of frantic rubbing and intense concentration was that Joy was living near a stream or possibly a river, that she was wearing something green and that she had something to do with horses – or possibly cows. She also saw red shoes, a small chair and a packet of Silk Cut.

‘So,’ said Vince, ‘sounds like Joy’s a chain-smoking milkmaid, then?’

‘Oh, stop taking the piss.’

‘No, I’m serious. If I’m going to find her, then I really need an accurate picture of her. Was she actually
milking
a cow when you saw her?’ He indicated the ball.

‘No, Vincent, she wasn’t
milking
a cow. I didn’t actually
see
her. This isn’t a fucking
video’,
she said, pointing at the crystal ball.

‘So what did you see, then?’

‘Just
stuff.
Ephemera. Like feelings, floating around.’

Vince could tell that Cass was floundering – she’d left behind the comfort zone of her tarot cards and was completely out of her depth. There was a slight edge of panic about her.

‘And even if it’s true – even if she is a milkmaid living near a stream – how does that help me track her down? She could be anywhere – maybe not even in this country. She might be milking cows in Yugoslavia or Argentina for all we know’

Cass shook her head defiantly. ‘It was definitely England,’ she said.

‘And you know that, how?’

‘Just do,’ she said sullenly.

‘Right.’ Vince nodded, and sighed.

‘Look. OK. Maybe the ball wasn’t that helpful,’ Cass conceded, ‘but I still think you should keep looking anyway. The sooner you start looking for her, the more time you’ll have together. You say you want to find this girl – but what have you actually done about it, eh? Absolutely fuck-all. I mean, you’re still going out with
Magda, for fuck’s sake. What the hell’s that all about?’

‘Oh, Jesus, Cass – will you please get off my case. You’re doing my brain in.’

‘No, I’m serious. What the fuck are you doing going out with Magda when you don’t love her and you love somebody else?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, lamely. ‘I don’t know. It just wasn’t the right time to finish it. But when the time’s right, I will finish it,
then
I’ll start looking for Joy. One thing at a time…’

‘Yes, but – ’

‘No, yes but. Just not. OK? When I’m ready, I’ll start looking for Joy.’

Cass was about to answer back, when the familiar sound of Madeleine’s claws clacking against the wooden floors distracted her.

‘Oh,’ she said, turning to glance at the cat, ‘it’s you.’

The relationship between Cass and Madeleine had soured somewhat over the course of the past few weeks, as the latter’s absences had grown longer and more frequent. There was no doubt in Cass’s mind that Madeleine was now living a double life. She had entered into an unauthorized shared-ownership arrangement with some overperfumed woman in the local vicinity and was patently quite happy with this situation.

Cass, on the other hand, was deeply hurt and very confused.

‘It’s just bad etiquette,’ she sniffed. ‘Anyone who knows anything about cats knows that you just
don’t
feed someone else’s cat. It’s rude.’

‘How do you know they’re feeding her?’

‘Oh, of course they are. Why else would she be spending all that time there? At the end of the day, cats are mercenary creatures – they’re only where the food’s at.’

‘Maybe you should try feeding her something else, then.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Cass said, throwing her hands up in exasperation. ‘She already gets tuna chunks and roast bloody chicken – what the fuck more could she want?’

‘Have you tried Whiskas?’

‘I am not feeding my cat that manufactured gunk – it’s nothing but cereal and additives mixed up with a bit of meat juice.’

Madeleine had come to a halt in the middle of the room and was in the latter stages of grooming her haunches. She sat for a while, licking her lips and appraising the lap options on the sofa, looking from Vince to Cass and back again, before trotting towards Vince and landing on his knees with a loud and contented purr.

This latest betrayal seemed to tip Cass over the edge.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That is it! I am taking tomorrow off work and I am going to follow that fucking cat everywhere she fucking well goes. I am going to find this Obsession woman and I am going to have
very, very
strong words with her. I’m prepared to have a fist fight, if necessary.’

Vince stared at her and sniggered. ‘Don’t you mean a cat fight?’

‘Ha, ha. Very funny.’ She kicked his leg with the heel of a socked foot. ‘I’m serious, Vince. I want my cat back. And I’m going to get her back. By any means necessary.’
And with that she got to her feet and stalked theatrically out of the room.

Vince and Madeleine exchanged a bemused glance and carried on watching the telly.

Cass followed the tip of Madeleine’s orange tail as it skipped over garden walls, disappeared under hedges and scooted round corners.

The cat came to rest for a while on top of a wheelie bin, surveying the lay of the land before continuing on her way.

As she reached 44 Wilberforce Road, she slowed her pace slightly, stopping again on the front lawn to arrange herself for a moment, before striding up the front steps and scratching furiously at the front door.

Cass tensed, waiting for someone to come to the door, but after a minute or two Madeleine leapt on to a wall, where she stretched out and adopted a ‘happy-to-wait’ pose.

Cass felt sick. Who was this woman who was so special that Madeleine was happy to sit outside in the damp cold of a November afternoon waiting for her to return?

The minutes ticked by slowly enough for Cass to watch the entire contents of the flat next door being packed into a removal van and driven away, but finally, at half past one, a couple stopped outside the house and turned to go in. Cass caught her breath, feeling like a suspicious wife about to witness her husband’s infidelity.

The woman was one of those women with skinny ankles who got progressively wider the higher up you
got, like an upside-down triangle. She was wearing an old 1950s print summer dress, with thick black tights, a vintage astrakhan coat and red plimsolls. She also had a kind of Margo Leadbetter turban thing on her head and was smoking a blue cigarette through blood-red lips.

Her boyfriend was about four inches shorter than her, a foot or two narrower and dressed in ripped jeans, a fringed suede cowboy jacket and a grubby baseball cap. His hair was long and lank and parted in the middle, and he appeared to have no eyebrows to speak of.

They were the sort of people who looked like they didn’t change their bed sheets unless they spilled something on them. Cass shuddered. ‘Please, don’t let it be them. Please, don’t let it be them,’ she muttered under her breath as they mounted the front steps.

‘Mou-Shou! Darling!’ The large woman swooped upon Madeleine and enveloped her in a cloud of cigarette smoke, upon which Madeleine raised herself on to her tiptoes, stretched and allowed the repellent woman to pick her up and carry her inside.

The door slammed behind the trio and Cass jumped slightly.

Mou-Shou?

They called her cat Mou-Shou?

She shook her head in disbelief and numbly lifted herself off the garden wall. She was so furious she could barely remember how to breathe. She was so furious in fact that she could do nothing other than turn around and walk home very, very slowly, thinking about all the things she wished she’d said to the pair of freaks who’d stolen her cat.

Julia peered disconsolately at Joy from beneath the plastic cap covering her hair, which was in the process of being virulently hennaed. ‘But you can’t possibly move out. You’re the best lodger I’ve ever had. Bella, tell her. Tell her she can’t move out.’

Bella lifted the edge of the plastic cap and pulled out a lock of copper hair, turning it to the light to examine it before tucking it back under the plastic. ‘Julia says you can’t move out,’ he said. ‘So therefore you can’t move out.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ said Joy, ‘but it just seems a bit strange to be engaged to someone and not living with them. And obviously I had no idea when I moved in here that I’d be getting married three months later.’