Chapter 22
Ember
“Can you believe the audacity of that knob?!,” Amy says over a mouthful of spag bol.
Poppy and Amy had returned earlier from their weekend at home, and naturally, we all had a lot to catch up on in gossip HQ, aka, our flat kitchen. Poppy had gone full on Nigella Lawson, opting to whip up a spag bol with a homemade sauce- homemade! – how she had the energy was beyond me, I thought it was pretty much a cardinal sin to dare to cook from scratch at uni. Amy was mid-rant to us about how she’d returned home and was on her way to her local library, only to spot her ex-boyfriend Elijah stood in front of the entrance snogging another girl with his hand down her bra.
Yikes.
“The fact he broke up with me because of ‘long distance,’ yet can still manage to come home where we both live and get hot with some other girl!,” she starts flinging her fork around so aggressively as she talks now, I’m worried she might poke someone’s eye out. “You should have seen how vigorously he was fondling her too; I couldn’t tell if he was trying to get frisky or rip her bloody nipple off,” she shouts, “and to make matters worse, in front of a library of all places? Seriously? He might as well have done it in front of a church!” As much as I want to join forces with her as part of her angry mob, I can’t help but burst into a fit of laughter when she says this.
“What did you do when you saw them?,” I ask, wiping a tear that had streamed down my face.
Amy’s face heats, “well….” Colour me intrigued.
She finally makes eye contact again before squealing, “I shouted, ‘I wouldn’t go any further if I were you, he’s got herpes. He already gave them to me!,’ I’ve never seen someone turn around so fast, he was deathly pale when he clocked who it was. The girl then accused him of cheating and slapped him across the face before storming off!” Poppy and I absolutely lose it at this point, this girl honestly has no shame. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, but I’m so glad she’s on my side, I’d hate to be one of her enemies.
We drink our way through two bottles of pinot, whilst chatting, giggling, and devouring the mountain of tomatoey-Italian deliciousness. I know it had only been a weekend, but I’d really missed them both. I guess you don’t realise how ingrained into your daily routine your flatmates become until they go home. We’d literally become like a little chosen family, and I loved that. Poppy had caught us up on her weekend, one not nearly as eventful as Amy’s, but one that was spent catching up on all of the most recent episodes of Strictly Come Dancing with her mum. When we first found out that Poppy was a Strictly fanatic, Amy and I had said we could chip in for a tv license and all watch it together on a Saturday on BBC iPlayer, so she didn’t get spoilers. However, she’d said that she’d rather wait to watch it with her mum when she visited home, as it was their bonding time where they drank wine and acted like professional judges for the evening. She called it an event. I thought that was a very cute and perfectly understandable excuse. I couldn’t ignore the flicker of jealousy I felt though, I wished I had that sort of relationship with my mum.
As if she could sense this, Poppy asks, “so, what did you get up to?,” whilst looking up at me from her plate.
I couldn’t exactly tell her that whilst she was busy getting strictly-fied and Amy was getting sweet revenge on her ex, I was cooped up all day in my room, casting a spell that was meant for Arthur, but ended up accidentally summoning a cat. I don’t think they’d see the humour in it funnily enough.
Awkwardly swishing the remnants of my wine around the bottom of my glass, I try and come up with a lie, something boring so that they’ll be less likely to pry.
“Oh, nothing really. Just did some uni work, binge watched Netflix, you know, nothing exciting,” I emphasised, giving my best nonchalant shrug.
Amy’s smile turns into a full-blown smirk, “Didn’t see Loverboy again then?”
Loverboy?
I choke on a cough, “no I haven’t seen Arthur.” Actually, come to think of it, I hadn’t heard anything from him over the weekend, apart from the brief phone call we had after…the incident.
Amy points a finger at me, “Aha! I didn’t say what his name was!”
“Very funny,” I deadpanned.
Poppy squints her eyes at me suspiciously now, “are you sure you didn’t get up to anything?”
Why did it feel like I was in an interrogation room right now.
Hopefully with calm and collectedness in my tone I reply, “Nope. Like I said, nothing, nada, zilch.”
“You have such a bad tell you know that right?,” Poppy grins.
She was onto me, but I can assure you that whatever she thought she knew, she didn’t even know the half of it.
◆◆◆
“Robert!,” I whisper-shouted to the ball of fluff that was currently chewing on one of my favourite jumpers. Granted, I had left it lying around on the floor, but that didn’t make up for the fact that my autumnal knitted jumper was now all soggy and matted with a bite sized hole missing from the turtleneck. Robert Cattinson was clearly hungry, but I could hardly go out and buy some cat food unnoticed. When Poppy and Amy had texted to say they were on their way back, there wasn’t enough time for me to pop to the supermarket and get a few more pouches of cat food, (did you know how greedy cats could be? Nope, me neither), without them realising, so I’d salvaged some more ham from the fridge, grabbed a cereal bowl, and popped it down for him by the end of my bed like a little makeshift cat bowl.
The main thing that was proving to be a problem with our little living arrangement was the toilet situation. I’d popped to Pets at Home and bought him a small litter tray but cleaning it out was proving to be a challenge, not only for the sake of my nostrils, which felt on the brink of destruction every time I scooped out his business, but also because it meant that I had to try and sneak down a black bin liner full of cat litter to the courtyard and chuck it in the communal bin shed. I’d genuinely nearly vomited every time I’d gone down there, the pungency making my eyes stream with water. I didn’t envy bin men let me tell you, it takes a special kind of breed. Every time I’d heard him fumbling about in the tray, my heart rate would pick up massively, it was so loud, and I was concerned that if I didn’t immediately pick it up and throw it out, the smell would permeate throughout the flat…and I definitely didn’t want anyone to think it was my doing.
“Robert no!” My voice went up an octave higher now, being mindful not to shout too loudly so that everyone could hear me. He’d got the zoomies and was now racing around my room and ensuite like he was trying to give Mo Farrah a run for his money. I know it makes me sound like an awful person, keeping an animal cooped up in a box room, but there was no way I was taking him to a shelter only to be kept in an even smaller cage, and I couldn’t exactly let him out into the wild for someone else to find him and take him in as a stray, our accommodation is literally on a main road and judging by his inability to stop running into my bedroom walls, I doubt he’d make it out alive. As if you could cue the slapstick piano music, I chased him round and round the room in circles until I finally managed to lure him towards me with a piece of ham that he’d left in his bowl.
I scooped him up in my arms and propped him on my lap, “what was all that about eh?,” I say scratching under his chin, “time to rest now.” Once his eyes began to flutter shut and his purr grew softer, I gently move him from my lap and onto the bed.
“Ember, are you okay? I heard shouting,” Poppy asks through the door.
Oh, bloody brilliant.
“Yeah I’m fine!,” I chirp, praying to anyone who will listen that she doesn’t come in here. Stupidly, I forgot to lock the door, meaning that one turn of that handle, and she’d be in.
“Who’s Robert?,” Amy says inquisitively.
Amy’s there too? Do they come as a package deal now?
My palms are clamming up and my pulse is throbbing as I try and find anything I can to disguise Robert, whilst also trying not to wake him up. If I wake him, it’s game over.
I quickly kick the bowl of ham under the bed, “Uh- I just read that Robert Pattinson and Suki Waterhouse are expecting a baby, I can’t believe it, you know I love him!,” I shout towards the door, facepalming that I couldn’t think of a better excuse.
The door handle turns now. Poppy and Amy barge in, confused smiles on their faces.
I immediately dive in front of Robert, hoping that I’d successfully camouflaged him among some of my black childhood teddy bears.
“It’s heartbreaking I know,” says Poppy, helping herself to a seat at my desk.
Amy chuckles, “I mean, it’s cute that they’re all loved up and having a baby and I’m happy for them, but I swear every Cedric Diggory and Edward Cullen fan just died a little inside when they found out.”
I awkwardly laugh, feeling the sweat pooling down my forehead, “yeah, as if we had a chance anyway.”
Poppy and Amy obviously clock on to my uncomfortable shifting, offering me matching looks of concern.
“You’ve been acting really weird since we came back Emb, is everything all right? Did something happen whilst we were gone?,” Poppy questions, getting up from her seat to join me on the bed.
I don’t know how I’m going to blag my way out of this one. The longer their eyes bore into me, the more anxious I become. It doesn’t help that Poppy told me I had a tell earlier. I hate it when people say that because nine times out of ten, they then won’t tell you what that tell is. I sat there, mentally scanning the common list of tells.
Eye twitches? Nail biting? Skin scratching?
Either way, I make a conscious effort to avoid them all.
Yaaawwn.
By the sound of that squeak, Robert was obviously starting to wake up. I needed to get them out now.
“Yeah I’m all good!,” I beam, standing up to usher them out of the door. “Guess I’m just a little stressed about some of my uni work, but you know, as the Spanish say, que sera, sera!”
“W-wait!,” Poppy and Amy shout in unison as I practically shove them out the room. But before I can make sure their feet are fully out of the door, I’m graced with quite possibly the loudest, neediest Meow, I’ve heard so far.
Thanks for that Rob.
With a mirrored turn of their heads, as if they’re on the same weird psychic wavelength, they both scream, “is that a cat?!”
I gulp and consider telling them that they were merely imagining things, but I wasn’t going to add gaslighting to my list of terrible traits, so I ultimately decide to give up the ghost. I was already far too exhausted to keep up the fa?ade anyway. Hesitantly, I step out of their way, giving them a full view of the furry culprit who was currently staring at them with wide eyes, cuddled up among the teddies.
Amy immediately pushes past me, making a B-line towards the bed. “Oh my god he’s so cute!,” she gushes, “what’s his name?”
“Uhm-Robert Cattinson.” I mumble. That sounded a lot cringier than I anticipated when said aloud.
Amy sniggers, “so that’s why you were shouting that name!,” she starts manically petting him now whilst putting on those really high-pitched voices that every cat owner has definitely done at least once in their lifetime, “you were on about this adorable little guy.”
Poppy crosses her arms now, obviously not sharing Amy’s level of feline-enthusiasm. “Okay, want to tell me where it came from?,” she asks sharply.
I know I said I didn’t want to lie, but I could hardly tell her the truth could I?
“I walked into town on Saturday and found him sat by the river,” yeah that sounds reasonable. “He wouldn’t stop meowing and looked really dirty. I thought he might be a stray.”
Poppy looks like she’s doing her best to believe me, but with a clipped tone, still says, “you can’t just assume he’s a stray and take him, what if his owners are searching for him now because they think he’s missing?.” I mean, she is right. Obviously, I know he’s not a stray and in usual circumstances, I wouldn’t just steal a random cat off the street, but this was the best excuse I could come up with among the circumstances. Even if it meant Poppy would think that I was a horrible cat thief for the time being, it was a far better alternative than her finding out the reality.
“You can’t keep him here. If maintenance come and do an inspection and find him, we could all be fined.” Gah, why did she always have to be right. I hadn’t even considered maintenance inspections.
Either way, I didn’t have time to worry about that. I’d find a way, I had to. It was my doing, and the poor cat was just the one caught in the crossfire. Largely sensing that Poppy wasn’t going to let this go, I had to embarrassingly plead my case like a desperate child concocting a list to their parents of all the reasons why they think they should have a new pet.
“Pops, I promise I’ll look after him. I feed him and clean his litter. You just have to trust that I know what I’m doing okay? He’s a stray, I just know. Of course, I wouldn’t have taken him otherwise,” I exhale, “and as for maintenance, leave them to me, I can handle them.”
She rolls her eyes now, “and what happens when we move out after first year? Does he just tag along in one of your storage boxes?” God, I didn’t realise how pissed off this was going to make her. I hated lying to her, I really did.
“Guess we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” I shrug.
Puffing out a sigh of defeat, she finally says, “Fine. But I won’t take any responsibility for this if you get caught.”
I nod in agreement, “you have my word.”
Thankfully, the uncomfortable tension between Poppy and I is broken by the blare of her ringtone. Scrambling in the back pocket of her jeans, she finally answers the phone.
“Hey, are you okay?,” she says with a chirp, her clipped tone now a distant memory. Considering by the grin on her face, I’m almost 100% sure that unless Robert Pattinson has called her to say that he’s decided to leave Suki for her, that it must be none other than Sam. They’d decided to make it official around a month ago now, and were so hopelessly into each other, it was sickening sometimes.
It’s like my bedroom had quickly become the love shack, I’ve got Poppy on one side phone-flirting with Sam and then Amy on the other cooing over the cat. I’ve never felt more single.
“Oh, yeah that’s fine. I’m with her right now hang on,” Poppy waves her phone in my face, “he wants to speak to you.”
“Me?,” I mouth. She nods quickly followed by a shrug.
“Hey Sam, it’s Ember, what’s up?”
I sense a slight discomfort from the other end of the line, “You all right? Sorry for the random call. I’m just-uh-a bit worried about Arthur.”
My stomach drops. Something’s happened to him. “Oh? Is he okay?,” I ask, a bit too pleadingly.
“Well, he’s not left his room in two days and when I say two days, I literally mean, two days. He says he’s been bogged down with loads of uni work and in his defence, from what I could see from his room, there was a shit ton of paper everywhere. But he looked awful. He’s not been eating either. I think he’s struggling quite badly but doesn’t want to tell me, I just wondered if he’d said anything to you?,” Sam asks, his voice laced with concern.
He hadn’t left his room in two days? He hadn’t eaten?
A huge wave of worry washes over me. After our heart to heart, I knew he’d been struggling. Especially since his parents visit, which was a major contributory factor in me wanting to do the spell in the first place, but this sounded like he’d spiralled. Badly. If he was at a point now where he felt he couldn’t even tell Sam the extent of what was going on, I don’t think I had much hope either if I reached out. No. Now more than ever, I needed to get this spell right. I would get it right, this time. I’d figure out what went wrong with the last one and I would perfect it if it was the last thing I did.
Determination takes over me. I lift my chin up and take a breath before replying, “Oh god, that sounds awful. I knew he had some trouble when his parents came to visit him and he wasn’t in a good place then, but I didn’t realise it had got worse. He hasn’t been in touch since.” I knew on a technical level I had spoken to him briefly since then, but I thought it was better to tell a little white lie, rather than to admit to Sam that I woke him up at midnight to check I hadn’t accidentally cursed him.
“Shit. I hope he’s okay. I’ll keep checking in on him where I can, but I just don’t want him to think I’m being annoying. Don’t want him to shut down completely,” Sam replies.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll reach out and see if he wants to chat too, the ball is in his court then. I think that’s the best thing we can do for him right now, to remind him that we’re here and to let him come to us when he’s ready,” I assure.
I did really mean that. The spell, (I hoped), was going to make things work towards his favour and in return, make him happier. It was going to give him the break he needed and this time, I’d make sure of it, even if I had to conjure up all the cats in the world to get there.