Chapter 6
In contrast, Noah did not have a peaceful night.
It was partly due to the fact that he was sleeping in the same single bed that had been in his grandfather’s spare room for the past twenty-five years.
It was a foot too short for him and about six inches too narrow and he only just managed to save himself from falling out and hitting the varnished floorboards of the spare room in the wee hours of the morning by force of will alone.
He was a bad sleeper at the best of times, unable to allow his brain to switch off even when he wasn’t stressed.
He usually poured a lot of this into his work, and it had driven his success, but as the dawn broke gently through the small, mullioned windows of his grandfather’s cottage, he wished he invested more time in trying to be mindful.
He remembered an old girlfriend of his swearing by yoga to aid a full night’s sleep; pity he hadn’t taken her up on the offer of a few sessions together, but something about yoga pants and throat breathing made him feel the ick. They’d split soon after.
‘Shit…’ he muttered as he tried to get comfortable on the very lumpy pillow.
He’d given some thought to sleeping in his grandfather’s old bed but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
Even though Jack hadn’t lived in the house for the four months prior to his death, there was something ghostly about the place, especially the bedroom.
It wasn’t a room he frequented when his grandfather was alive, and he didn’t feel as though he should intrude, even now.
Plus the fact that Monty had always guarded the space like a territorial lion, and he’d been on the wrong side of that particular cat’s claws too often to push his luck.
Lying there, watching the daylight infringe on the room, little by little, Noah’s mind started to wander.
Even though the room was small and the bed even smaller, and he hadn’t slept well, he was beginning to feel a sense of relaxation that he hadn’t felt for a long time.
Perhaps it was the sheer bliss of slowing down, of not living life at a hundred miles an hour for a change, but it was as if the Somerset air was expanding his lungs, filling his bloodstream with positive rural vibes instead of the lungfuls of mildly polluted air he was used to breathing in the city.
Better than any ULEZ zone, he thought and was surprised to find himself smiling.
That smile abruptly vanished when he thought about what he had to do today.
The chatty bartender at the pub last night had unwittingly put her finger on his main reason for being here; not that she knew it.
But in a way, he thought, she’d been right.
Monty might just be a cat, but he was a part of his grandfather’s life and had been company for Jack in his later years.
Noah knew he owed Monty the certainty of a future one way or the other, even if that future was becoming a long-term resident of the Purrfect Paws Cattery.
It wasn’t going to be cheap though, he realised.
Before he’d come down to Lower Brambleton he had gone through the bills for the last couple of months and realised that full-time long-term boarding for a cat as old as Monty was going to cost a small fortune.
But what was the alternative? Put the old boy down?
Get a cat basket and take him back to his flat in London, thus dooming him to be an indoor cat for the rest of his life?
Try and re-home him? That didn’t seem fair at eighteen years of age.
Monty had only had one careful and loving owner: his grandfather.
Would it really be fair to uproot him at his time of life?
He resolved to talk things through with Mollie Wakefield, the owner of the cattery, and to see what she advised.
Mollie and his grandfather had been good friends over the years and he was sure that she would be able to provide some useful insight into what happened next.
All the same, he thought, it wouldn’t be an easy decision to make.
Noah rolled over again and tried to get comfortable in the small bed.
It was no use; if he was going to spend another night here, he might have to bite the bullet and sleep in his grandfather’s bed.
This one was definitely no good. After another hour’s tossing and turning, he decided to admit defeat and make a cup of coffee.
He needed the caffeine hit and he was beginning to get hungry.
Dinner at the pub seemed an awfully long time ago at the break of dawn.
When he got downstairs to the kitchen, he was reduced to rooting through what was left of the non-perishable supplies in his grandfather’s cupboards until he found an ancient jar of Mellow Bird’s instant coffee powder.
For a moment he debated whether that was actually better than nothing, before the need for caffeine of any sort made the decision for him.
Wincing as he dug into the jar and poured water from the newly boiled kettle into a mug, he topped it off with cold water and took the mug over to the extremely small red Formica-topped kitchen table that stood with an air of melancholy in the corner of the kitchen.
His grandfather had always insisted on eating at the table, even when it was only him.
Noah remembered, with a pang so sharp it surprised him, that when he’d stayed with Jack it had been his responsibility to lay the table every evening with knives, forks, his grandfather’s cruet set and cotton napkins that matched the white tablecloth.
He’d laughed at Jack’s insistence on ironing the tablecloth and the napkins every time they were washed, but the old man had been in the army for years, and that need for order and precision dominated his life, even long after he’d retired.
Noah pulled out the chair and sat at the drop-leaved table, wrapping his hands around the mug.
The sun was pre-rise, and the view from the kitchen window faced east. To the far horizon, the sky was turning pink at the edges, presaging another warm day to come.
It was cooler here, in the West Country, than in the claustrophobic heat of the city, but the warmth was there, beginning to encroach on the day.
Noah braced himself and took a sip of the coffee.
Single-blend Italian it was not, he thought with a wince.
But, risking a second glug, he couldn’t help a smile.
The taste took him back to sharing a cuppa with his grandfather at this table.
No matter how much he’d tried to persuade Jack to invest in a decent coffee machine, his grandfather had drunk Mellow Bird’s to the end.
There was something comforting in that, even if the actual taste wasn’t to Noah’s liking.
Perhaps it was the same with Monty. The cat definitely wouldn’t be Noah’s first choice of companion, but he felt he owed it to his grandfather to come up with some kind of solution. He hoped that Mollie would be able to offer him one.
Noah had arranged to go to Purrfect Paws at nine o’clock.
That seemed very far away, as he watched the sun slowly rising over the top of the tall trees at the bottom of his grandfather’s garden.
Unaccustomed to enforced lack of activity, Noah wondered what to do with the hours between now and then.
Perhaps a walk might clear his head? The past couple of days in London had been unbearably hot, and a heatwave had been predicted for the next few days.
The stone walls of the cottage would protect him somewhat, but he was glad he didn’t have that much to do while he was staying here.
Knocking back the last of his coffee, he decided to take a shower and have a quick walk.
He hoped that the beautiful scenery and fresh air of Lower Brambleton would help to clear his head.