Vague memories of a purring warm lump sitting on my lap during family visits to my great-aunt percolate to the surface. (Ellis Billington’s Fluffy I can safely discount. We are discussing standard-issue, non-supernatural felines, after all, not the alien-in-a-cat-suit kind.) “Not personally, but I’ve had visiting rights—”

“Oh, good. Well, I think it’d be really nice to know that when things go bump in the night it’s just a cat knocking over the glassware to hear it shatter, so why not?” She knocks back half the contents of her wine glass in one. “Yes, let’s do that.”

It suddenly dawns on me that I know about as much about looking after a pet cat as I know about flying a jet fighter: it’s all MEOW DAKKA-DAKKA ZOOM to me. “Um. I think we need to do some research first. Vets, food, that sort of thing?”

“No, Bob.” She smiles at last. “You need to do some research. Litter tray duties, remember?”

“Oh bloody hell.” It slowly dawns on me that while she can’t justify berating me over Pete anymore, she can still extract a cold revenge: making me responsible for a small furry life-form’s well-being, meanwhile adding an extra kilogram or two of ballast to help anchor her fraying connection to normality. “Well, I suppose so . . .” I finish my wine. “But if I’m looking after it, I get to choose what we adopt. Okay?”

• • •

AFTER WE DO THE WASHING-UP, I GET TO SPEND THE REST OF the evening reading FAQs on cat maintenance on the web. It takes about half an hour to come to the unwelcome realization that they’re almost as complex as home-brew gaming PCs, and have even more failure modes. (When your gaming PC malfunctions it doesn’t stealthily dump core in your shoes.) But I have made my bed and I must lie in it, so I pencil in a date at the nearest RSPCA shelter for next Saturday.

On the other hand, for the first time in nearly a month I don’t get to sleep on the sofa-bed in the spare room. So perhaps the worst is over.

• • •

TWO DAYS LATER I’M IN THE OFFICE, WORKING ON A PILE OF virtual paperwork (you would not believe how many hoops you have to jump through to gain access to the NHS’s core statistical data warehouse if you’re not a sixteen-headed committee from a designated Strategic Health Authority), when there’s a knock on my door. I hit “save” and look up, then mash my finger on the button that flips the red “secret” light to green. (What I’m working on isn’t actually secret in the first place; just mildly embarrassing. But secrecy is a reflex.)

“Come in,” I call as the door opens, then I do a double take. “Pete?”