Twenty-seven hours before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat on her dilapidated sofa scrolling through other peopleโs happy lives, waiting for something to happen. And then, out of nowhere, something actually did.
Someone, for whatever peculiar reason, rang her doorbell.
She wondered for a moment if she shouldnโt get the door at all. She was, a๎er all, already in her night clothes even though it was only nine p.m. She felt self-conscious about her over-sized ECO WORRIER T-shirt and her tartan pyjama bottoms.
She put on her slippers, to be slightly more civilised, and discovered that the person at the door was a man, and one she recognised.
He was tall and gangly and boyish, with a kind face, but his eyes were sharp and bright, like they could see through things.
It was good to see him, if a little surprising, especially as he was wearing sports gear and he looked hot and sweaty despite the cold, rainy weather.
๎ขe juxtaposition between them made her feel even more slovenly than she had done ๏ฌve seconds earlier.
But sheโd been feeling lonely. And though sheโd studied enough existential philosophy to believe loneliness was a fundamental part of being a human in an essentially meaningless universe, it was good to see him.
โAsh,โ she said, smiling. โItโs Ash, isnโt it?โ โYes. It is.โ
โWhat are you doing here? Itโs good to see you.โ
A few weeks ago sheโd been sat playing her electric piano and heโd run down Bancro๎ย Avenue and had seen her in the window here at 33A and
given her a little wave. He had once โ years ago โ asked her out for a co๏ฌee. Maybe he was about to do that again.
โItโs good to see you too,โ he said, but his tense forehead didnโt show it.
When sheโd spoken to him in the shop, heโd always sounded breezy, but now his voice contained something heavy. He scratched his brow. Made another sound but didnโt quite manage a full word.
โYou running?โ A pointless question. He was clearly out for a run. But he seemed relieved, momentarily, to have something trivial to say.
โYeah. Iโm doing the Bedford Half. Itโs this Sunday.โ
โOh right. Great. I was thinking of doing a half-marathon and then I remembered I hate running.โ
๎ขis had sounded funnier in her head than it did as actual words being vocalised out of her mouth. She didnโt even hate running. But still, she was perturbed to see the seriousness of his expression.ย ๎ขe silence went beyond awkward into something else.
โYou told me you had a cat,โ he said eventually. โYes. I have a cat.โ
โI remembered his name. Voltaire. A ginger tabby?โ
โYeah. I call him Volts. He ๏ฌnds Voltaire a bit pretentious. It turns out heโs not massively into eighteenth-century French philosophy and literature. Heโs quite down-to-earth. You know. For a cat.โ
Ash looked down at her slippers. โIโm afraid I think heโs dead.โ โWhat?โ
โHeโs lying very still by the side of the road. I saw the name on the collar, I think a car might have hit him. Iโm sorry, Nora.โ
She was so scared of her sudden switch in emotions right then that she kept smiling, as if the smile could keep her in the world she had just been in, the one where Volts was alive and where this man sheโd sold guitar songbooks to had rung her doorbell for another reason.
Ash, she remembered, was a surgeon. Not a veterinary one, a general human one. If he said something was dead it was, in all probability, dead.
โIโm so sorry.โ
Nora had a familiar sense of grief. Only the sertraline stopped her crying. โOh God.โ
She stepped out onto the wet cracked paving slabs of Bancro๎ย Avenue, hardly breathing, and saw the poor ginger-furred creature lying on the rain-glossed tarmac beside the kerb. His head grazed the side of the pavement and his legs were back as if in mid-gallop, chasing some imaginary bird.
โOh Volts. Oh no. Oh God.โ
She knew she should be experiencing pity and despair for her feline friend โ and she was โ but she had to acknowledge something else. As she stared at Voltaireโs still and peaceful expression โ that total absence of pain โ there was an inescapable feeling brewing in the darkness.
Envy.
