#tbh nothing melts me more than Jude interacting with cats and babies

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The trains roll along the tracks behind Michelle’s house in succession, one after another, iron wheels on iron tracks. They usually can’t be heard inside the house, but in the garden the sound of them mingles with the rustling of new leaves in the trees, the faint buzz of midges congregating beneath the canopies and catching the light just so, little glowing specs that almost remind me of fireflies.

It’s a day wasted indoors, that’s what Debra said before hauling a basket load of damp washing out onto the lawn, and that’s where she is now, pegging up bed linens as she keeps one paranoid eye upon the barbeque.

Michelle is cooking, prodding and turning the chicken skewers a bit too soon, but it doesn’t matter, because Debra insisted she would take them inside and put them in the oven afterwards anyway. She's got this fear that we’ll all go home with salmonella poisoning and waste precious exam study time being violently ill. 

Jen is nervous. The barbeque was her idea, a way for her to get closer to the girl she wants to ask to the debs without it seeming obvious about her intentions, so she’s hauled Michelle and I along to sit in and make conversation under the strict orders that if things go well then we should make an excuse and then conveniently disappear. 

I don’t know Hazel well from school, we were never in any classes together but I know vaguely that she’s the girl with that lanky skeleton man pattern all over her school bag. She is tiny with hair the colour of straw and eyes, big wide and pale blue, an intense, unblinking gaze about them as though she knows how and when you will die. 

When she appears in the garden twenty minutes late, smiling serenely with a kitten in her hand, we all pause. 

“Hello,” I say. To her or the kitten I’m not completely sure. 

“Hi, am I late?”

“No, not at all, um!” Jen gets up from the patio table and rushes to give her a side hug, being careful not to squash the kitten in the process. She scratches its tiny head with her fingernail and it purrs. “Who is this?”

“Goose,” Hazel explains, “I found him under a car in the housing estate last week and I’ve been nursing him back to health. He was so hungry, gosh.”

“He’s cute,” Jen pets him again and he strokes his downy grey fur against her fingers, his eyes closed in bliss, causing an explosion of protective adoration inside me for this little creature. It’s possible I've never seen something so cute. 

“Do you want to hold him?” Hazel asks me, and I nod, holding out my hands as she deposits the little warm ball into my hands. Such a small, fragile, trembling ball of energy he is, I've never been so keenly aware of my size, my hands are practically the length of him save for his slinky tail, pointed straight out as I nestle him in the crook of my arm. Goose mews at me, mouth clean open, four sharp teeth and dove grey eyes that look in two different directions. He’s got a weird face, like he doesn’t know he exists or where he is.  

“He’s sweet, isn’t he?” says Hazel at my shoulder.

“Yeah he’s a cool little guy. Do you think he was abandoned?”

“I don’t know, perhaps he ran away,” she reaches for him and he clambers up her sleeve, where she grabs him before he can start clawing at her hair, “he’s skittish. He doesn’t like to be alone, yet paradoxically he’s always trying to escape.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, he yearns for life on the streets,” she sighs and says to Jen, “I hope it’s okay that he’s come along, he would just be so unhappy at home.”

“No, of course! Oh my God,” Jen says with a big, dippy smile. “You can bring whatever, like, whoever you want over. We can keep him inside though if that’s better?” She’s touching her hair and smiling a lot, something I make a mental note of so that I can torture her about it later.

“I think if he’s there in the dining room and he can see me through the window he’ll be comfortable,” Hazel agrees, “I think he prefers to feel included.”

I don’t know if Goose has even a remote concept of what he does and does not prefer, but she and Jen head inside to lay some newspapers on the floor and fill a little bowl from the kitchen with water for him anyway, laying them right by the door so that he has the best view of the garden. I’m transfixed by him in there as they set things up, weaving himself between Hazel’s ankles, pushing his fuzzy cheek into the smooth leather of her Dr. Martin boot, and I grin as his claw catches in her lace, which sends him frantically swatting his paw to free it. 

“It’s so cute how much you love cats,” Michelle comments as she slaps a raw burger over the coals, “I would have never thought you were a cat person if I hadn’t witnessed it myself.”

“Well look at him! He’s just cool.”

“It’s not just him, it’s all those cats along your street! I just think it’s so funny whenever you step out of the house and they just emerge from somewhere.”

“They know they’ll get pets from me.”

“Yeah, and food.”

“Occasionally.”

She smiles over her shoulder, “Maybe when we move in together we should look for a flat that accepts pets. Then we can get a cat of our own.”

“Mm. It’s a big commitment, a cat, though, isn’t it?”

“No, we would just feed it and clean out the litter box. It’d be very easy.”

“Yeah, I dunno.”

“What don’t you know?”

“I’d have to think about it.”

“Oh, okay.”

Debra finishes hanging the washing and quickly slips back inside through the conservatory door. 

I listen to the sounds of the garden instead of talking. A lawnmower drones somewhere across the suburban fences and there is the aroma of something sweet, heady and floral under my nose each time the breeze comes. When it’s still it smells like charred meat and smoke, which is welcome because the afternoon is getting on and I haven’t eaten since before dropping Ivy off at her friend’s house at ten. 

“Are you mad at me?” Michelle says. 

“No. I’m just hungry.” 

“Right.”

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