Kitty

Moving Home

Moving Home

Kitty finished her coffee and rinsed the cup, placing it on the draining board. She picked up her phone and fired off a text to her son, Olly.

Good morning! Day started well. House already looking like a storage depot, but getting there. If I collapse under a mountain of boxes, please use your key and come rescue me. In which case, please feed the cat. X

Smiling, she placed her mum’s hairbrush back into the vanity case and thought it might be time for her shower. She trod the stairs and reached into her bedroom to grab her dressing gown from the hook on the back of her door. Her phone buzzed in her pocket; a response:

We have a cat?!

She laughed. He was funny.

The cardboard box sitting at the back of the door was in the way, Kitty kicked it with her foot and as the flap moved, she was drawn to the navy corner of a book that she had not seen for some time. She gathered it into her hands like a precious thing and sat on the corner of the bed, running her fingers over the gold embossed words ‘Vaizey College Year Book 1981’ She chuckled, as she flicked through the pages, each picture, phrase, comment or joke a reminder that took her right back to that place and time. She laughed at the group shots of her peers with backcombed fringes, the pushed up sleeves, narrow ties and skirts rolled above the knee, an insight into how they tried and failed to modify their rather dull bottle green uniform. There were faces and names she had not considered for some time, years even. She turned the page and her heart jumped in her chest at the sight of a young, blonde man in full cricket whites with a bat slung over his shoulder and a wide smile. Angus… it was sometimes possible for her to forget how very handsome he was and the way it had made her feel to be in his company, her desperate adoration of him and the way she craved the feeling of his mouth on hers. She read the print below the image: ‘Angus Thompson. Tatum’s House. Captain of the Cricket 1st XI.’ She noted the way the other boys looked at him with something close to hero worship and realised he was only a couple of years younger than Olly was now. This was scary at two levels, firstly she remembered how grown up they felt when they were in fact mere pups and secondly how fast she had rocketed into adulthood. She hoped that things for Olly would move more slowly, that he’d have more time to live a little, to enjoy himself. Not that he seemed to be having any difficulty in that department. Someone had taken a biro to the year book page and scrawled ‘scholarship boy!’ in ink with an arrow pointed towards Angus. Kitty closed the book. It was a sharp reminder of the nature and hierarchy of Vaizey and that Angus’ route into its hallowed corridors, not from family money or the old boy network, but because he was a grammar school boy who was smart and who worked hard. This, as then, the thing she admired about him the most.