“Then don’t,” Cathy tells her flatly. Cathy is frightened too, but her fear manifests differently. Suzie looks like a little rabbit staring down the barrel of a hunter’s gun. Cathy’s fear is an ugly, blunt weapon that makes her sweat and want to fight. She grits her teeth and pushes the door open.
Cathy can’t remember the last time she was in Hazel’s bedroom but it seems smaller than she remembers. The bed is positioned differently, the old curtains with the cheerful print replaced with plain white linen. The scent of fresh paint still lingers, and something else beneath it, pungent and bitter. Cathy wrinkles her nose, and behind her Suzie exclaims, “Ugh, what is that horrible smell?”
Cathy doesn’t know, but it pinches at her, adding to her deep sense of unease. The room is a mess, bedcovers peeled back, crumpled towels hanging over chairs, still damp. Drawers have been pulled out and emptied, as if in a hurry. There are toiletries scattered across the dressing table and lying beneath them, a large brown envelope printed with Hazel’s name and her parents’ address. Cathy doesn’t pick it up. She knows an official letter whenshe sees one, God knows there’ve been enough court summonses and bailiffs’ letters through the door in her time.
She points it out to Suzie. “Divorce papers. She mentioned they’d arrived on the phone.”
Suzie brushes aside the litter of eyeliners and hair spray to lift it up. She turns it over to inspect the seal. “She hasn’t opened it.”
“No? She told me th—” Cathy holds her hand up for silence. “Wait. You hear that?”
Suzie listens. There is a scratching sound. It’s coming from the wardrobe. Their heads turn slowly to look at it.
Suzie lifts the screwdriver out in front of her as if it is a sword. “There’s something in there,” she whispers. “Open it.”
Cathy can’t move. It’s as though all her limbs are frozen, rooting her to the spot. It’s not just that smell—heavy and fecal, like an open sewer pipe—it’s all of it. It’s her sister not showing up to meet her yesterday and the unopened envelope and the empty cat bowls and—
The empty cat bowls.
“Oh fuck!” Cathy cries out as another sound—a mewl, she recognizes—seeps out through the closed wardrobe. She crosses the room in two long strides and flings the doors open, finding nothing except empty clothes hangers rattling on the rail and a small black suitcase, pushed right up toward the back. Cathy reaches in, her heart in her mouth, the smell getting stronger, bestial. Matted fur and ammonia harsh enough to make her eyes water and her throat burn.
“Cathy?”
Cathy doesn’t answer. She hauls the suitcase out, trying to be careful but clumsy in her rush to get to the locks and open it. The mewing is louder, more urgent. It’s a wheelie case, one with a handle that pops out of the top, and Cathy sits it up straight as she strugglesto find the zips, swearing under her breath. Suzie has a hand clamped over her mouth, face skinned pale, the color of cream cheese.
“Help me, for fuck’s sake,” Cathy snaps, and Suzie kneels beside her, expertly popping the little padlock holding the zips together with the handle of her screwdriver. Cathy is too anxious to be impressed. She unzips the case to reveal a dark, huddled mass of damp and matted fur, the gleam of narrow, glassy eyes. Suzie screams.
“How long do you think they’ve been there?”
Suzie is still very pale, even in the kitchen with all the lights blazing. Cathy hands her a cup of tea, her own hands shaking only very slightly. She lights another cigarette, her third.
“Can’t be longer than twenty-four hours, Suzie. My mum would lose her mind if anything had happened to them. Thank God we found them when we did.”
Both women look at the two Persian cats on the floor beside them. They have been bathed—an ordeal they endured with only minimal fuss and a very feline disdain—and have just finished eating, licking their paws with identical sandpaper tongues. Suzie can’t tell them apart; they are both gimlet eyed and snubby nosed, but with their fur damp and sticking to their bodies they look goblinesque.
“Poor things.” She sips her tea.
Cathy gives a dry, humorless laugh. “Well, at least we know it wasn’t a burglary. These particular cats are pedigrees—they’re the most valuable things in the whole house. It’s not like Mum even tries to hide how much they’re worth, which must be at least ten thousand each. Probably more.”
Suzie’s phone flashes, a concerned message from Teddy. It’s the fourth one he’s sent.
Where R U, it’s late?
She turns it over. Can’t face him right now.
“Do you think Laurence Mitchell put the cats in there?”
“Maybe.” Cathy shrugs. “It crossed my mind.”
She isn’t convinced, though. Suzie can tell. There is a beat, silent bar the rasping of the cats’ tongues. Suzie’s phone vibrates again. She ignores it. Right now all she wants to do is sink her hands into steaming hot water and scour them until they burn.
“Do you think we should call the police?”
Cathy laughs until she almost starts coughing. “If you think the police are coming over here because someone tried to murder a couple of cats, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.”
“Well, we’ve got to dosomething! Have you tried calling Hazel?”
Now Cathy looks at her, incredulous. “Of course I have! It just goes straight to her answering service. Honestly, Suzie, what a stupid question.”