Human Remains

still lived with his parents, like lots of young people these days who couldn’t get a foot on the housing ladder.
    ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you want to come in for a coffee? You look as if you could do with one. I could make you some lunch?’
    ‘Thanks, but I really need to go home.’
    He made no signs of undoing his seatbelt or leaving my car. For a moment I had a sudden spark of fear, and wondered if he’d invited me in for something more than coffee. I was so bad at reading situations like this: my default position was always that nobody found me sexually attractive and therefore anyone who showed an interest in me was probably dangerous.
    He half-turned in his seat towards me. I shrank back a little towards the door.
    ‘Look,’ he said, ‘can I give you a call later? Just to see how you’re doing?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘My battery’s nearly out.’
    ‘Oh, right,’ he said, looking at me as if he wanted to ask if I’d ever heard of magic things called chargers. At last he unclipped his seatbelt and opened the door. ‘See you soon, then,’ he said, leaning in. ‘And thanks for the lift.’
    ‘Bye.’
    As soon as he’d slammed the door shut I pulled away from the kerb.
     
     
    There was nowhere to park, of course, anywhere near the house. I walked back from Howard Street, head down, thinking about my mum. It was all I could think about now. Whatever he’d said – Sam – it had failed to register.
    I could see the cat standing at the corner, her tail flashing from side to side, in greeting or petulance, it was hard to tell. When I got closer she stood and waited for me as though she’d reached the edge of her known universe and to cross the road was beyond her, sliding her body affectionately against the greasy metal pole of the street-light, territory marked by a hundred dogs before her.
    ‘Hello, puss-puss,’ I said quietly, and she meowed in response, rubbing against my ankle as soon as she could and then running in front of me, rolling on the ground and running again, showing me the way home. As we got through the door she scampered joyously towards the kitchen.
    But it turned out she’d got a takeaway. A dead mouse, neatly dissected with the most succulent innards, tail and feet left for me to enjoy.
     
     
    I woke up completely disorientated. I was on my bed, fully dressed, and the cat was asleep in the crook of my knees. It was ten past three and the daylight was fading already. I sat up quickly, and checked my mobile phone, which I’d left charging by my bed. There were no missed calls.
    I rang the hospital from my mobile, and when I finally got through to someone on the Stroke Unit they couldn’t tell me very much beyond that my mother was ‘comfortable’; there was ‘no change’. I said I would come in as soon as I could, and the nurse – or whoever she was – told me to take my time.
    I asked again if they would call me if anything happened. Even though she claimed to have my mobile phone number on file, I gave it to her again and she repeated it back slowly enough to be writing it down.
    After that I sat still for a moment, wondering what was coming next. The central heating had gone off and the air felt chilly, a little damp. It was as though the house didn’t want me to be here either, was pushing me towards the door, a phantom hand on my back trying to restore order to an environment where there was none.
    Downstairs, the cat was in the hall, meowing at the kitchen door and pulling at the carpet with her claws. I creaked my way down the stairs, yawning, and when I opened the door the cat shot in ahead of me, mewling at me over her shoulder as though she hadn’t eaten in weeks. For a treat I squeezed a sachet of expensive wet cat food into her clean bowl even though it wasn’t technically anywhere near her usual feeding time, and boiled the kettle while she went at it delicately, licking at the gravy and then picking the morsels off one by one.
    While I was waiting for the kettle I called work, using Kate’s direct dial number to bypass the switchboard.
    ‘Intel, Kate speaking.’
    There was an official Media Services-sanctioned greeting to use when answering the phone, but neither of us could ever remember it when put under the pressure of a ringing phone. More often than not I was so distracted when I picked up a call that I would just say ‘Hello?’ and hope it wasn’t someone too official on the other end of the phone.
    ‘It’s me,’ I