“A difficult few years,” Heather finishes quietly, placing a hand over mine. “I know.”
We lapse into silence. I fiddle with the straw in my drink. It’s paper, like they all are nowadays, decorated with a pink candy stripe. I’m staring at it so determinedly that the colours start to blur into one another. I’m pretty sure it’s making my eyes cross, so I look out of the window instead. The students are listening raptly for the most part, their heads bent over notebooks or, in the case of a few more technological types, tablets. I notice there are a couple at the back, however, who aren’t quite so swept away by their professor’s passionate lecture. They’re prodding at their phones, looking bored.
“Can we talk about something else?” I mumble at last.
She exhales slowly. “Yes, of course.” I can tell she feels bad because she pulls her watermelon iced tea back towards her and starts to drink from it stoically. It’s not much, but I know her well enough to recognise an olive branch. “What’s new at work?”
“Heather, I work in a museum . New isn’t exactly our speciality.”
I know I’m being flippant, that I’m shutting her out. But I can’t help it. I know what she’ll ask next, and I just can’t cope with anything else right now. I can’t cope with her fussing around me, trying to fix my life.
She emits a gusty sigh, plucking the laminated menu from the centre of the table to peruse the back. “I can tell I’m not going to get anything even remotely sensible out of you today. You’re in one of those moods. Do you have time for pudding?”
Now that’s a topic which is always amenable to me. It’s with no small sense of relief that I take the menu from her outstretched hand. This feels like much safer ground. Pudding, I can deal with.
“I always have time for pudding. What are we having?”
Chapter 3 Table of Contents Cover Title Page Ten Things My Cat Hates About You LOTTIE LUCAS Copyright One More Chapter a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019 Copyright © Lottie Lucas 2019 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019 Lottie Lucas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008353636 Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008353629 Version: 2019-08-16 Dedication To my husband Greg—beloved by cats everywhere. Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Acknowledgements About the Author About the Publisher
By the time I turn onto my street that evening, the sky has deepened to an inky purple, the air tinged with the promise of frost. The first star is just cresting the horizon, a pinprick of light against an otherwise blank sheet of darkness. There’s no moon, I notice. I always pay attention to the moon: where it is in the sky, how full it is. I track it through its stages, watching it wax and wane, brighten and dim, the craters emerging from and then melding back into the shadows. The steady rhythm of it, ever changing and yet unchanged, is more reassuring to me than any amount of therapy.
Despite the darkness, I have no trouble finding my house. It’s blazing like a beacon, lights shining from every window like a cottage on a Christmas card. One of the joys, I’m fast learning, of living with an ex-student who doesn’t have to pay the bills. I’d be willing to bet anything that the heating will be cranked up to maximum too.
My theory is confirmed soon enough as I open the front door, only to be blasted by a wall of heat as dense and dry as a Saharan wind.
“I’m back,” I announce, rapidly beginning to divest myself of all outerwear before I break out into a sweat. Seriously, how does this not bother him? Feeling the cold is a woman’s prerogative; everyone knows that. Men are usually just supposed to tut and turn the thermostat down when we’re not looking, or look on in disbelief as we pull on fluffy socks and dressing gowns, hot-water bottles clutched to our chests.
“We’re in here.” Freddie’s voice floats through into the hallway.
Still alive, then. I’m amazed he hasn’t boiled in his own skin.
I head into the living room, about to make a comment to that effect, but the words die on my lips. Freddie is lounging on the sofa in his favourite hoodie, a half drunk cup of tea on the coffee table in front of him, flipping through a film magazine. The TV burbles away gently in the background, the screen providing a soothing blur of flickering colour. Casper is lolling blissfully on his chair—or, I should say, the chair which he has long since commandeered as his own. It’s just too exhausting to keep hoovering the cat hair off it every day. When he sees me he rolls onto his back, exposing his furry tummy expectantly.
“Honestly, you’re like a dog,” I murmur, leaning over to give the requisite scratch. “Cats shouldn’t enjoy this.”
He just purrs even more loudly.
“Good day?” Freddie asks vaguely, still absorbed in the article he’s reading.
I look down at my brother’s scruffy head with an inward sigh. It’s hard to be annoyed with him, even if he is racking up the kind of electricity bill which I’d thought only existed in my worst nightmares.
Because … you know, it’s actually kind of nice to have someone to come home to, save a disgruntled-looking Casper or the odd dead rat. It’s nice that the house isn’t cold and dark, and that I don’t have to sit around with my coat on for half an hour while the place warms up. It’s nice that Casper has someone with him during the day. He hates being left on his own. He gets bored, I think, which is probably why he goes out of his way to cause so much mischief.
The truth is, I never planned to live alone. I’ve never been one of those people who dream of their own space, of no one bothering them. I like being bothered. I like having company. If I’m being totally honest, I never planned to be alone full stop. I’d always imagined that I’d be one of those people who falls in love young, then stays with that person for ever. I used to listen to my parents recounting how they met; my dad actually proposed the very first night he saw Mum, but she prudently suggested that they went on a date or two first. Obviously, he won her round, though, because they were engaged within a week.
I used to dream of something like that happening to me. It sounded beyond perfect.
Except, somehow, it’s just never quite happened.
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