Demeter wished she had worn shoes. But Amy had been painting her toes for her all morning.
Demeter stepped inside her Aunt’s house and felt the once immaculate tiles, sticky with despair. Each room smelt of incomplete meals: onions in the hall; mashed vegetables in the lounge; fish in the kitchen. Demeter wondered if her Aunt. in the end, had ever bothered to feed herself real food at all.
Her mother was looking again in her dark bag for a set of keys and though her daughter knew they were in her own pocket, she let the search go on as it had halted the tears. A cat came in through the kitchen door and stood watching this repetitive opening and closing of a bag. Demeter sat on her haunches and the grey cat came nearer and nearer and then changed its mind and shot past them upstairs.
Crap with cats aren’t I?
Her mother didn’t answer as she was still in her bag wondering if this time, with a very deep deep breath, she would find what she was looking for. But of course what she wanted to find was impossible, buried a week before in a church yard with black earth and songs from a childhood long ago. All things bright and beautiful, All creatures bright and small… She reached for Demeter and started to cry.
Upstairs, the cat was now sitting happily on the broad knee of a man who neither of the women had ever met. But they were about to and Tom shifted his knees slightly to move the cat and then stood up. He was still a handsome man. The living were so noisy he remembered and he walked towards the stairs the cat following him because there was something about the man that held promise.
Demeter took her mouth out of her mother’s hair and looked up. Cinamon and cat. And a tall figure in the doorway who smiled at her shyly and held out the largest hand she had ever seen.
