I’m still a tiny bit snippy with her for whole birthday standing-up thing, but still … It’s the season of goodwill; I’m prepared to forgive this one, tiny blip.
And, yeeessssss! That’s when I see it! Her car, her pride and joy, an ancient, battered little banger of a run-around Mazda that she insists on calling Doris, neatly parked right outside her house. It’s the miracle of Christmas! She is home and all is well! Wait till you see, I’ll knock her up out of bed now and everything will be fine, the birthday will be salvaged and we’ll still have a lovely Christmas Eve together. Just wait till you see. How could I ever have doubted her? Jubilantly, I hammer on her door.
But there’s no answer. Knock again, wait. Ring the doorbell, wait some more. Knock again, ring again, nothing.
On cue, worry sweat restarts.
‘Kitty?’ I yell through the letterbox. ‘It’s me. You awake? Come on, love, get your lazy arse out of bed and let me in, will you? It’s bloody freezing out here!’
Silence.
OK then, hope you’re decent girlfriend, ’cos I’m coming in …
Kitty’s due to go away with Simon on Stephen’s Day and – thank you, God! – she gave me a spare key to her house when I saw her last, so I could nip in and feed the stray cat who drops in from time to time, while she’s away. I fish her keys out from the bowels of my handbag and just as I’m letting myself in, out of nowhere fresh worry suddenly strikes.
Supposing she was broken into last night? And suppose she was in some way hurt and is now lying unconscious in a heap on the floor inside?
Another wave of panic, as yet more worry sweat starts pumping out of me with a vengeance. Must smell like bin day at a meat factory by now.
Fling the hall door open, calling out her name. But the alarm is on, beep-beeping away at me. So, no break-in then. Which is good news. I mean, ’course it’s good news; obviously no burglars have been here, for one thing. But if the alarm is on, it means Kitty’s not here, simple as. She only ever switches it on when she goes out; know this for a fact.
I punch in the code she gave me to silence shagging thing, then look around, taking v. deep breaths and trying my level best to stay nice and calm. The whole house is worryingly quiet. Don’t think I’ve ever been in this house when it’s so scarily silent before.
‘Kitty? Are you here? It’s me!’ I call out, but I know it’s a useless waste of time. Wherever she is, it’s not here.
Place is so, so silent, a bit like the Marie Celeste. I head down the tiny hallway and into her cosy little galley kitchen-cum-living room, straight ahead. And as you’d expect from Kitty, and probably on account of the mentally long shifts she works, the place is complete, Cath Kidston chaos. Even when she claims to have tidied up a bit, the house still looks identical. Not a hit-by-a-bomb mess, more like general disorganisation, but in way that’s somehow full of charm, if that makes any sense. Books she’s been studying for her evening classes are abandoned on the ironing board and a mountain of dirty washing is dumped beside the machine, that kind of thing.
V., v. weird and a bit spooky. Like Kitty’s presence is somehow everywhere even though she’s not. There’s a pile of dirty dishes still on the kitchen table, but with Kitty you can never tell if it’s breakfast dishes or late-night supper. Often both are the same thing in this house, pizza being a case in point. (Leftover pizza is a big staple of any waitress’s diet, I’m reliably informed. Can’t blame them either, the hours they work to support themselves, let’s face it, they need the carbs.)
Starting to feel bit shifty now for snooping. Remind myself that if you were to go into my flat whenever I’m not expecting anyone, I’m not sure quite how tip-like place would be, but knickers lying strewn around the floor and knackered greying bras shoved down the backs of radiators, would be a v. definite given.
Sorry. Meant to say my ex-flat.
Keep forgetting.
Over in the corner, a Christmas tree is up; a proper real one, none of your fake, tinselly crap for our Kitty. A beautiful, perfectly symmetrical tree that smells like pine toilet freshener, but in a nice way. She told me she and Simon chose it together last weekend; apparently he insisted. Presents are littered round underneath it, some still in the bags and waiting to be wrapped. I’m well impressed; still haven’t even got round to buying half my presents yet, but then being smashed broke and unemployed tends to be something of a major impediment to Christmas shopping.
Next thing, there’s a sharp banging noise from behind me and I let out an involuntary yelp. Jump round to see who or what the hell it is, but it’s OK, it’s not an axe-wielding psycho, only Magic, the adorable tabby cat Kitty found on street outside starving and sick, so she took her in and nursed her back to full health. But then, Kitty’s v. like that: a natural magnet for waifs and strays.
Magic lets herself in through a cat flap at the back door and immediately heads over to me, curling herself round my ankles.
I pick her up and pet her gently.
‘Hey, Magic! Where is she? Where’s your mommy? Have you seen her? Any ideas?’
The cat just licks her lips at me and jumps down, strutting over to the cupboard under the sink where I know Kitty keeps tins of Whiskas, then glares imperiously at me as much as to say, ‘Haven’t the first clue, love. Now would you stop talking to a mute animal like a complete moron and just feed me?’
So I do, and while Magic’s wolfing down a bowlful of cat food, I take a good nose around the house. Just in case there’s something, anything that might give me some idea of where Kitty could be. I head into her tiny study, the only other room downstairs and have a good gander at the noticeboard on the wall, littered with Post-it notes. Maybe some really important appointment she had this morning that she forgot all about till the very last minute, then had to rush off to?
Nothing out of the ordinary, though. Just row upon row of yellow stickers all covered in her scrawly handwriting with hastily scribbled reminders like, ‘Collect dry-cleaning.’ ‘Root out passport and check expiration date.’ ‘Pay phone bill or will get cut off.’ ‘Cancel papers.’ ‘Put out bins!!’ No indication she’d anything urgent on at all today, not a single thing.
So then I check upstairs, but it’s exactly the same thing: absolutely nothing strikes me as odd. Hard to tell if the bed has been slept in or not. It’s unmade, but then Kitty’s not really the bed-making type. There’s a big pile of her clothes carelessly flung across a chair by the wardrobe; a bright red plastic mac, pink flowery leggings and a load of T-shirts. December, I know, sub-zero outside, I know, but this is honestly the kind of thing Kitty would go out in without giving it a second thought. She’s by a mile the nuttiest dresser I’ve ever seen. Like she just falls out of the bed first thing every morning and does a wardrobe lucky dip, grabbing whatever comes to hand without, God forbid, doing anything as conventional as colour co-ordinating. And still, by the way, managing to look stunningly fab in an artless, couldn’t-particularly-be-bothered kind of way, not like a candidate for care in the community, as someone like me surely would.
‘Kitty, where the hell are you?’ I say aloud, then slump down onto the bed, so I can have a good think. Nowhere that she’s supposed to be, and yet her car is here. So if Kitty did stay here last night, then got up as normal this morning … why didn’t she just drive to the Sanctuary to meet me? She always drives everywhere around Dublin, except to work, because she reckons it would physically choke her to have to pay for the shagging parking.
