‘Truly?’
‘Truly. I want to be.’
‘And what do you want from me?’
Oxana turns, rubs Eve’s nose with hers, and buries her face in Eve’s neck, so that her next words are too muffled to hear.
‘What?’
Oxana draws her face back an inch or two. ‘I… I want you to accept that I’m a cat, and that I’ll never be a dog. Does that make sense?’
‘Not really.’
‘Most people are dogs. Friendly, sociable, all that. And I can do it. I can make friends with people. I know what you have tosay, and I know what you can’t say, and I know when you have to shut up and listen. I know the faces you have to pull and the sounds you have to make. But it’s not natural to me. I’m not a pack animal. I’m not a dog. I’m a cat, and I walk by myself.’
‘I know, angel. I accept that.’
‘I think that’s why I got on well with Defne. She’s a cat too. A cat who thought she had to be a dog. Let me show you something.’ Swinging her bandaged feet out of bed, Oxana walks over to her still-damp trainers, and takes something out of one of them. ‘Look.’ She switches on a bedside light. ‘She gave it to me on the beach at Skila, just before you arrived.’
Eve examines the gold ring, with its tiny cameo of Medusa. ‘That’s exquisite. Wow.’
‘I think it was her way of saying thank you.’
‘For what, exactly?’
‘I… I told her to be proud of who she is, and not to waste her time trying to be anyone else.’
‘Mmm.’
‘She was unhappy. She was always comparing herself to Buse, her cool friend.’
‘And was Buse cool?’
‘Not really. Just entitled.’
‘So you were kind to her. Defne, I mean.’
Oxana shrugs. ‘Maybe.’
‘Admit it. You were kind to her. Sympathetic. You wanted to make her feel better.’
‘I recognised that she was like me in certain ways.’
Eve shakes her head. ‘You’d literally die rather than admit you’ve changed, wouldn’t you?’
Oxana looks at Eve sideways, half-smiling. Taking the Medusa ring, she slips it onto Eve’s right hand.
‘What’sthatmean?’
‘It means you can’t escape me.’
Eve gazes at the ring. ‘Twenty-four hours ago, a cat saved my life. A real cat, not a psychopathic girlfriend. And I didn’t even know it liked me.’
‘Well, then,’ Oxana says.
‘Well then what?’
‘Well then, I’ll love you in my own way. Not as a failed dog, but as a perfect cat.’