I look at his elderly gray cat, who is sitting on the sill of his living room window staring at me with yellow eyes that seem to glow in the dark. Matilda had lived next door for a good few years before Miles arrived and he inherited her when his gran died. It's possible she is the oldest and meanest cat on earth. Her demeanor is always the same: disdain bordering on sudden outbursts of unprovoked violence.
"It's safest just to always assume the worst with Matilda," Miles tells me. "Anyway, I promised Gran I'd take care of her, and she's basically all the family I've got now. That's all."
"Not all," I tell him. "You have me, the sister you never wanted! Anyway, I'll sort it. I'll give Rory a serious talking-to. But tomorrow, because you and Kelly are gonna make me go out again tomorrow and it takes effort, Milesington. It takes effort for a woman of my age and I need my sleep."
"Eugenie Wilson," he says, shaking his head. "You are only as old as you feel."
"Which is eighty-six," I say. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," he says, standing there while it takes me several attempts to get my key in the lock. He's still there when I fall in through the front door. His face is still there even when I close the door, smiling at me with that sweet, rare smile.
Finally, I am home.
The upshot is that I go in through my front door a crucial ten minutes later than I otherwise would have done, which makes this whole thing Miles's fault, if you ask me. But I don't hold a grudge. That's a lie, by the way.
Ecstatic, Rory greets me as if I have just returned from a year-long journey in the Congo and not just popped out for dinner with the family, hurling his whole great waggy self at me as he woofs with unbridled joy and wiggles his butt, his tail thumping and whirling so fast that if we had lived in a cartoon he would probably have taken off like a helicopter.
"Hey, boy!" I hook my arms around his neck and slide down the wall to sit on the floor with him as he licks my ear. "Who's a good boy? Hey? Who's a good boy? You are! You are! You are the bestest boy there is, yes, you are! Yes, you are! My little darling boy. Yes, you are!"
Rory continues to dance around my feet as, remembering Miles's gift in my hand, I climb to standing, more than a little unsteady, Rory tripping and blocking me in turn as I basically tumble into the living room. Carrying it as if it might detonate I place Miles's lovely gift on the dining table and then flumph onto the sofa. Rory bounds up beside me, leans into me, and rolls his head back to gaze at me with adoring, mismatched eyes, one dark brown and one ice blue like the big goofy weirdo he is.
"I know, Rory," I tell him as I rub his tummy with one hand and reach for the remote control with the other. "This is not our usual Friday night of takeaway and telly, is it? I'm sorry, darling, I missed you too." I kiss him on the nose and turn on the TV. "Still time to watch something on catch-up, though, hey? No work tomorrow..."
The thing is, I'm thinking as I search for something mindless to watch, that Nanna Maria, Mum, and Dad can't stop worrying about me because they think I am lonely and sad. Nanna Maria and Mum found the love of their lives when they were twenty years old, and I am not even looking for a casual snog off Bumble—they just don't get it.
They just don't understand that I gave up on all that stuff a decade ago. It's not for me. I'm better off alone. I like my job, despite my boss being my clinically insane Nanna. I like my little house, I am grateful for my friends, and most of all I love my loopy, funny, crazy dog, Rory. And he loves me right back, unconditionally. As far as I'm concerned, I have everything I need and I'm at minimal risk of life-altering heartbreak and misery.
Just then the alarm goes off on my phone, and because I am tired and tipsy and I can't remember why I set it in the first place I turn it off.
"I wish you were a human, Rory," I say absently as I scratch his ears. "Then maybe my family would see they can stop worrying about me being lonely when really I am not lonely at all."
That was my first mistake, Reader. But it was not the last one. Oh no, not by a long, long, long, long way.
