I hadn’t bought alcohol. At home we’d have wine delivered from the local wine merchant and Tom would stock up the drinks cupboard with whiskey and gin and liqueurs. I don’t think he’d had a day without a drink in all the time I’d known him. Usually I’d join him, to blur the edges of my life. I didn’t want anything like that here, though. I’d drunk enough at the hotel to last me a good while. I didn’t want to drink myself into a stupor now. Not now. I’d escaped that life. I needed to be wide-awake for my new life.

I packed up all the empty bags and packaging and went out to the alley at the back of the shops where all the bins were kept. I found mine with my flat number painted on it and was just about to open it when something brushed past me. I screamed, thinking of mice and rats and foxes.

When I stepped back from the bin and looked around I saw a cat was hiding between two bins, watching me. It had a coat of matted black fur and as I turned toward it, it ran down the alley to where a bin had overflowed. It started to scratch and pull at a bag of food there and I realized it was starving.

I thought of the cat that Fiona and I had had when we were growing up and how spoiled and loved he was. “Haven’t you got a home to go to?” I asked gently. I stooped to see whether it wore a collar. It didn’t, just a scratch on its ear that looked as though it wasn’t healing properly. “Are you hungry?”

Slowly it came toward me and sniffed. I held my hand out and felt its tongue flick out to lick me. It turned then and started to root in the bag of rubbish, found a piece of meat, and shot away into its place between the bins to eat it. I watched for a while, wanting to stroke its fur, to give it food and water, but I shook myself. It was clearly living on the streets.

Reluctantly I left it alone but when I went for a walk that evening, I found the cat in the street, roaming around, sniffing in the gutters for food. On impulse I bought a few packets of cat food from the corner shop. I took a couple of foil containers from my kitchen and filled one with water, the other with food. I knew I shouldn’t feed a stray cat; it would think it belonged to me, but I couldn’t bear to think of it hungry. I took the containers down to the lamppost outside my house and watched from the doorway as the cat devoured the food.

It looked desperate. I recognized that look. It was how I felt, too.

CHAPTER 14