Chapter 5
Dear Adam
You might not be the best person to answer this, but I don’t know who else to talk to. And my problem isn’t about a girl, but – actually, it is. Only she’s my daughter. My wife passed away a year ago and I miss her more than I can say. Now it’s just my little girl and me. She’s twelve and she’s my world. We do loads of stuff together – I take her to football matches (and watch her play – she’s a cracking midfielder), we cook together, I help with her homework – all the stuff it feels right to do as a dad. But here’s the thing – now she’s getting older, I don’t know how to help her with all the stuff girls go through at this age. You know – puberty, periods, all those things. Even though we talk about everything else, I feel so awkward about raising this with her.
What should a father do in this situation?
Jonno, London
My mind was taken off my problems by Wednesday – not by anything lovely, but by the gloom of an impending visit to the dentist. I spent much of the afternoon fretting about cavities and periodontitis, so I was barely able to focus on the messages that were still trickling into my inbox at a steady pace from Adam’s correspondents.
Then my eyes lit on one that made a bit more sense to me. As soon as I read Jonno’s email, my heart went out to him. Here was a bloke who really cared about the woman in his life – even if she was still only a child. She’d lost her mother and he’d lost the person who I could tell just from reading his message had been his other half.
I copied and pasted his message into a fresh Word document and read it through again, thinking of my own father. He hadn’t had to raise Amelie and me on his own – our mum had been there the whole time. But if he had, I knew he’d have done his best. And something about Jonno’s email told me he’d do his best, too.
Hesitantly, my fingers clumsy on the keyboard so I made loads of mistakes and had to delete and retype almost every word, I started to write.
Dear Jonno
It’s a privilege to answer your letter in the first ever Ask Adam column. Your love for your late wife and your daughter shines through in your words, and it’s clear to me how lucky you are to have each other in your lives.
You sound like a great dad, but I get how daunting it must feel to be accompanying your daughter on the journey she’s going through. Do you have women in your life you can reach out to for support – your female friends and family, her teachers, even a trusted colleague? If your daughter asks questions you can’t answer right there and then, don’t be scared to admit that, and tell her you’ll help her find the answers.
Keep talking to her, keep loving her, and I bet everything will work out okay. You’ve got this.
I’m very sorry for your loss.
Best wishes, Adam
By the time I’d finished, I felt as knackered as if I’d written a dissertation instead of just a hundred and fifty words. I could have carried on for longer, but the length of the Ask Adam columns had already been agreed, and I didn’t want some ruthless sub-editor cutting down my reply to make it fit in the allocated space.
I pressed Print, hurrying over to the printer and hovering over it, then taking the sheet of paper back to my desk and reading it over and over. It felt like enough – but at the same time, not nearly enough.
‘Ross,’ I asked, ‘have you got a second to look at something?’
He glanced up from his screen. ‘Sure. Hand it over.’
I slid the sheet of paper across the desks between us. Ross took it and looked at it, and I saw his face change from interested and curious to kind of closed. He picked up a red pen and made a couple of small marks on the page, then passed it back to me.
His corrections were minor – a rogue typing error, a comma in the wrong place.
‘What do you reckon?’ I asked. ‘Is it okay?’
He shrugged. ‘Looks all right to me. Why don’t you show Greg?’
‘Yes, I will, but – what do you think?’
‘I’m not the best person to ask. It’s fine, Lucy. Good job.’
He turned back to his work, and I heard his fingers rattling the keys. Just the previous day, things between us had seemed fine – we”d been bantering over coffee, even. But now he seemed cold, as if I’d done something to offend him. I had no idea what that could be, but clearly I wasn’t going to get the validation I sought from him. So I made the corrections, printed the page out again and left it on Greg’s desk.
Then I spent twenty minutes flossing and brushing my teeth before reminding Greg of the reason for my early departure, and leaving the office.
After a mercifully drama-free appointment spent having metal spikes dug into my gums and listening to a lecture about brushing for a minimum of two minutes twice a day and cutting down on coffee, there didn’t seem to be much point going back to the office. I’d head home, I decided, and do a couple of hours work on the sofa – or, more likely, doom-scrolling through websites about feline dentistry and wondering whether I should be brushing Astro’s teeth as well as my own.
But, when I opened the door to my flat bearing a pack of special tooth-friendly treats from the pet shop, my cat didn’t meet me at the door as usual.
‘Astro?’ I called, dumping my bag on the kitchen counter and heading through to the living room and then the bedroom, ‘Where are you?’
There was no response. It was about half an hour earlier than I usually arrived home – perhaps he was sleeping in some specially designated afternoon nap spot I didn’t know about? I checked everywhere I could think of – under the bed, in the wardrobe in case he’d got stuck there, out on the balcony. But no grey furry form emerged.
My puzzlement turning to worry, I left the flat again and walked down the road a bit, calling, rattling treats and looking under parked cars. There was no need to panic, I told myself; it was still going to be light for a couple of hours. It was not unheard of – although unusual – for Astro to hop the few feet down from the balcony and take himself off for a potter in the neighbouring gardens.
But he never went far, or stayed out long. He’d always been an unadventurous, homebody sort of cat. His formative months spent sleeping rough had clearly convinced him that the outdoor life wasn’t for the likes of him, and the idea that he was out somewhere, lost and afraid, made me afraid too.
By six thirty, there was still no sign of him. I rattled treats, checked in neighbouring gardens and walked the length of my quiet street again and again, calling for him.
There was no answering meow.
Reluctantly, I ventured further – down towards the main road, where I could hear the evening traffic – buses, cars, lorries, speeding bicycles – building up. There was a park where people let dogs play off their leads. There was an MOT garage with all sorts of dangerous places where he could have got injured or trapped. There were shops with wheelie bins out the back where foxes and other, more streetwise cats foraged after dark.
It was no place for Astro. But I had to keep looking, because I didn’t know what else to do. If I hadn’t found him by nightfall, I decided, I’d return home and post on social media, perhaps design some posters to print out at work in the morning, probably call my mum and have a cry.
For now, though, I kept walking, looking, calling and increasingly panicking.
By now, I’d exhausted the front gardens of neighbouring houses, the open space surrounding the next-door block of flats, the kids’ playground and the car park behind the supermarket. Only the main road was left.
My heart in my mouth, imagining Astro’s fluffy form limp and crushed by a passing car, I turned the corner. My throat hurt from calling and from the lump of impending tears. I didn’t want to lose him – I didn’t think I could bear it. He was my best friend, my companion, my responsibility.
Then, walking down the road towards me, I saw a familiar figure.
The long, denim-clad legs, the mid-brown hair sticking up at the front, the T-shirt with a Nine-Inch Nails album cover on it, which I’d seen only that morning – although it felt like a lifetime ago.
It was Ross, on his way home to the flat that was only a few minutes’ walk from mine. But more familiar still – although bewilderingly strange out of context – was the grey, furry form he had cradled over his shoulder.
I broke into a run, sprinting the short distance until I reached him, arriving panting and tearful.
‘Lucy! There you are. Are you okay?’
‘Just about. Not really. What the hell are you doing with Astro?’ Then I realised how bad that sounded, and hastily added, ‘Is he hurt?’
Ross nodded, turning around so I could see my cat’s face, disgruntled but unharmed. When he recognised me, he tried to wriggle out of Ross’s arms. His hold was precarious, I realised, because he was carrying not only his laptop bag and the cat, but also a brown paper bag from which a familiar smell emerged, savoury and vinegary, making my mouth water when before it had been dry.
‘He’s fine. Here, can you grab him without letting him go?’
Carefully, he passed Astro to me. The cat protested briefly, but allowed himself to settle in my arms. Overwhelmed with relief, I tried to squeeze him hard enough not to let him go, but not so hard as to hurt him.
‘Where was he? How did you find him? I need to get him home.’
‘I tried calling you.’ Ross fell into step next to me. ‘But you weren’t answering.’
‘No – I must’ve left my phone in the flat. I came out in a rush when he wasn’t home.’
‘I stopped off at the chip shop to get some dinner,’ Ross explained. ‘And he was there. Carol there said he visits a couple of afternoons a week, just at teatime, and they give him a bit of cod.’
‘They what? My cat’s been sneaking out for takeaways and I never knew?’
Ross laughed. ‘I recognised him from the photo on your desk, and then I saw your name on his collar. I thought I’d better bring him back, because it’s not safe out there – you know.’
Hearing the roar of the road behind me, I felt my knees threaten to dissolve into jelly. ‘I know.’
‘He’s a such a great cat,’ Ross enthused. ‘He let me pick him up, no problem. I was going to take him back to mine and give him some of my scampi if I couldn’t get hold of you – I didn’t know your address and I didn’t want to just abandon him.’
‘He would’ve never wanted to leave,’ I said, pushing aside the thought that, if Ross had invited me back to his for scampi and chips, neither would I.
‘I know, right? I’m crazy about scampi – I’ve been obsessed with it ever since I moved here from the States – it’s not a thing there. But how awkward would that have been? “Dear Adam, I rescued my colleague’s cat and now she’s accusing me of abduction.”’
I laughed, the release of tension making the joke funnier than it might have been. ‘“Dear Adam, my colleague, my cat and myself have found ourselves in a thrupple. How can we make this work for all of us?’
Ross grinned. ‘And what would Adam have said to that?’
I looked sideways at him, over Astro’s soft head. Now that we were nearing home, he was starting to wriggle in my arms, eager to prove that he knew his own way back and didn’t need to be carried. But I kept hold of him, as if he was providing a shield between Ross and me – or between myself and my feelings.
‘“Negotiating space for a third individual within your primary partnership can be satisfying for all parties,”’ I began, trying to channel the Adam persona that I’d discovered only the day before. ‘“Such relationships are challenging, but they can also be rewarding. Open and honest communication is…” Here’s my flat now.’
‘Damn,’ Ross said. ‘I wanted to know how that was going to end.’
‘I guess you’ll have to wait until someone writes to Adam with that exact question, then.’ Feeling myself starting to blush, I buried my face in Astro’s fur and kissed him, relief that he was okay flooding through me all over again.
Ross reached out to scratch my cat behind the ears, in just the spot he liked. ‘What’ll you do about his takeaways?’
‘Shit.’ It had only just occurred to me that this was something Astro had done before, and therefore something he was likely to do again. ‘I don’t know. I can’t let him – it’s not safe.’
Ross nodded. ‘I wouldn’t be too keen on the idea if he was my cat. He’s pretty special.’
‘He is.’ Confident now that Astro wouldn’t run off, I gently put him down, and he twined around our legs, rubbing his cheeks against us and purring. ‘He’s just the best.’
I gave him a quick run-down of Astro’s history, keeping it brief because I knew that once I started talking about him, it took me ages to stop.
‘Maybe you could ring them and tell them not to serve him again if he turns up,’ Ross suggested.
‘Like being banned from your local Wetherspoons?’
‘I guess. I’d be gutted if Spoons banned me, though.’
I laughed, pleased and surprised – I’d taken Ross to be more a fancy-cocktail-bar kind of guy.
‘Maybe I should keep him indoors for a week or so, at least while I’m out,’ I mused. ‘Maybe he’ll forget about it then.’
‘Especially if you got takeaway from there and shared it with him,’ Ross suggested. ‘Then he’d get the gain without the potential pain.’
I felt an involuntary shiver of dread. ‘Don’t even say that.’
‘Sorry.’ Ross squatted down and fussed Astro some more. ‘We don’t want anything bad to happen to you, do we? You must be a sensible cat and do what your mum says.’
Astro made a beeline for the brown paper bag and began sniffing it eagerly.
‘Come on now, you leave Ross’s dinner alone,’ I scolded. ‘Sorry. It’ll be getting cold – we’ve kept you ages.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ He grinned up at me, then stood easily, lifting the bag out of Astro’s reach. I wasn’t sure why he’d been so weird that morning, when I”d showed him my answer to Jonno’s letter, but the weirdness seemed to have well and truly passed. ‘It’s been worth it.’
‘Thanks so much,’ I said. ‘Honestly, I’m so grateful to you for rescuing him. Anything could have happened.’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t mention it.’
‘Well… I guess I’ll see you in the office tomorrow. Enjoy your scampi.’
‘I will.’ He turned to go, slowly, as if he wasn’t quite ready. ‘They’re on Deliveroo, you know. You could order in for you and Astro.’
‘They are? Technology for the win, right?’
‘Technology for the win,’ he agreed.
Then he looked at me for a second and reached up as if he was going to – something. Shake my hand? Hug me? But at the last moment, it turned into a fist bump.
My knuckles only touched his for the briefest moment, but it felt as intimate as a kiss.