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