“I’m sorry to leave you, Tiggs,” she said. “Let me get sorted, and I’ll come back for you. I think you’ll like your new home, there are plenty of places to explore. You’ll be a seaside cat instead of a town cat, how do you like that?”

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle rolled onto her back and stretched before pulling herself back into a coil and going to sleep.

With the last box loaded into the car, Annie took one final look around the place. She heard the key turn in the lock and the front door close softly. Oh, shit! she thought. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, who had been padding along beside Annie on her farewell tour, retreated into the airing cupboard.

“Coward,” said Annie as Tiggs’s ginger tail disappeared between the louvered doors.

She heard Max’s footsteps walking from room to room downstairs and finally the creak of the tread on the stairs. He saw her and planted himself at the top of the stairs, one hand on the wall, the other gripping the newel post, casually blocking her exit.

“I couldn’t let you leave without saying something,” he said. “And now I don’t know what to say.”

“I think it’s all been said before,” she said.

“I guess I’d always hoped we’d find each other again,” said Max.

“Not in the places you’ve been looking,” said Annie.

Max looked at the carpet. “I don’t want to fight,” he said. “I came to tell you again that I’m not giving up on us. We’ve been through too much. You hate me now, and I don’t blame you. I hate me too. But I’m going to make it right.”

“I don’t hate you, Max,” said Annie. “Hate requires much bigger feelings than I have for you. And you can’t make this right. It’s too broken. Let’s just move on with our lives and stop pretending we shouldn’t have called time ten years ago.”

“Did you say good-bye to Tiggs?” asked Max.

“Yes,” said Annie. “I’ll come back for her in a few weeks.”

“You can’t take her,” said Max.

“What do you mean I can’t take her? She’s my cat!”

“She’s my cat too,” said Max.

“You don’t even like her!”

“I do like her,” said Max. “She just doesn’t like me! Maybe we’ll bond over your desertion.”

“You deserted our marriage long before I did!” said Annie, her hackles rising. This was precisely why she hadn’t wanted to see Max.

“I don’t want to go tit-for-tat with you,” said Max quietly. “It’s painful enough without petty insults adding to the sting.”

It was remarkable how Max always managed to climb up to the moral high ground even when his ethics were in sinking sand. Annie concentrated on breathing and resisting the urge to push Max down the stairs.