We made plans. I’d abandon GUP and find somewhere else, a place where I could learn something I really wanted to learn. If Max turned me out, I’d go to Silver’s and take my cat with me. To that end I went back to 19, fetched Mabel and put the new collar on her. I introduced her to Silver’s place and to Wim, who was lying on the sofa. Although he seemed indifferent to her, she took an immediate fancy to him and weaved in and out between his feet, rubbing her face against his legs. We’d been there no more than five minutes when Liv came out of Jonny’s room. I can’t be certain, it was just instinct, but I think she and Wim had been making love and I think it was the first time. At any rate, she had been making love and not with Jonny. Jonny was at his work in the car park. She looked at Wim as she came into the room, giving him a diffident smile. We might not have been there, for all the notice she took of us. Wim beckoned to her. When she came up to him, standing in front of him with a look of adoration on her face that was so naked and intense it was embarrassing, he bent over and kissed her on the mouth. He was smiling. I swear he was smiling throughout that kiss. He touched her shoulder lightly, opened one of the windows and climbed out. A moment later his face appeared at the closed casement, upside-down, to say he’d see us later. When I think of Wim that’s how my mind’s eye sometimes sees him, the shaven head, then the cool yellow eyes, mouth at the top.

Mabel, who’d been “marking” everything in the room with her soft cheek, approached the window and jumped onto the sill. I suppose there’s never been a cat since the world began, or since windows were invented, who, seeing an open casement, has failed to use it as a door and gone to see what’s outside. Mabel was on the mansard before we could stop her.

“Curiosity kills cats, as we know,” Silver said.

He climbed out, caught up with her as she reached the chimney stack and brought her back in his arms. He rubbed his mouth on the top of her sleek head.

“It seems strange,” I said, “that it’s safer for us up there than it is for her, yet she’s much the best climber.”

“She doesn’t know what we know,” Silver said, “and she can’t know. That’s the difference.”

“I’ll have to take her to my parents’ once Max evicts me. My mother loves cats. It would be nice and safe for her in the fields. She could go hunting something more exciting than squirrels.”