my palm, and he’d slept in my room every night since.
‘You ready, Florence?’ said Dr Pennyworth, and because I couldn’t bring myself to actually say yes, I just nodded.
He lifted the syringe and it was done. Seconds later, I felt him go.
I let out another whale noise as Dr Pennyworth took him and Zach wrapped me in a hug. Luckily, his shoulder absorbed a lot of the sound, otherwise those in the waiting room might have called the police. It was a hell of a racket but who are any of us to judge another when their heart breaks? Zach stood patiently and solid. He handed me tissues when I eventually pulled back and noticed a trail of snot stretching from my nose to his jacket. He helped me answer Dr Pennyworth’s cremation questions. His arm remained around me while I paid at the reception desk, which was fortunate as otherwise I might have crumpled to the floor. He walked me home and offered to buy a bottle of wine, but all I wanted by that point was to get in the bath and weep by myself.
‘It’s all right, but thank you,’ I said, hugging him again on my doorstep.
‘Text me any time, OK?’
I nodded, let myself back into the house and let out another sob when I saw the untouched ramekin of condensed milk on the kitchen floor.
Chapter Nine
THE NEXT FEW DAYS felt heavy with sadness and getting through each one was like wading through quicksand. Rory was in Berlin. He’d finally called me, the evening after putting Marmalade down, to say he had to go to away again for work.
‘Darling, I’ll be back soon!’ he said, assuming my tears were for him.
I explained that I was more upset because I’d had to put my cat down.
‘I know, sweetheart, but at the end of the day you have to remember, he was just a cat.’
A huge bunch of cream roses arrived at the shop the following day as an apology.
Sorry about the cat. Can I sweep you out for a special dinner on Friday? Rory X
Friday was my birthday, but the thought of that wasn’t perking me up much either. There was too much pressure on adult birthdays. ‘Did you have a nice birthday?’ people ask and you have to reply positively to avoid disappointing them. ‘Yeah, a great time, thanks, I got a book and a rude card about ageing from Scribbler!’ Birthdays peak at around seven or eight, when you have a cake, balloons, mandatory presents from everybody at your party (otherwise why did you ask them?), and perhaps a magician. After that, it’s downhill. Adult birthdays make you feel like a junkie who’s clean but fondly remembers his first hit. Someone in the office uses petty cash to buy you a Colin the Caterpillar and you gather round the printer for a dutiful rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, but it’s nowhere near as thrilling as the princess cake you had when you turned seven.
As usual, I hadn’t planned anything this year, figuring I’d just text a few people a couple of days in advance and see if anyone was up for a drink. This was my theory: if I didn’t make a big spectacle out of my birthday, I couldn’t be disappointed when I ended up counting beer mats in the pub. But I felt lifted by the idea of dinner with Rory, to make things feel more normal after the rockiness of the ball and to close a terrible week. So we made up via messages and he said he’d book an Italian restaurant that did ‘sensational ossobuco’. I assumed this was a cheese but Google told me it was veal.
On Tuesday, I opened a box of deliveries in the shop to find Norris had ordered several copies of a new cartoon book called How To Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting To Kill You, which set me off again. The next afternoon, Mrs Delaney appeared while I was having another weep behind the till and asked if it was ‘boyfriend trouble’. Eugene quickly escorted her to the gardening section.
He, Norris and Zach were all weirdly nice to me that week, like husbands who’d been caught shagging the nanny. Cups of tea kept appearing at the till. So much tea I had to ask them to stop in the end because that many cups meant multiple trips to the loo. Eugene cleaned the kitchen every day, Norris didn’t shout and there were no Rory the Tory