I responded by showing the family how to have fun. I didn’t need TV or a computer. A cardboard box was my favourite, and TammyLee made one with little doors and holes I could pop in and out of and dark corners where I could hide toys and treasures. That summer, I developed a lot of new skills. Like opening zips on handbags. A zip made me dance with excitement if it had a toggle I could pull. The fun was in discovering the amazing stuff inside handbags … soft things and shiny things. Lipstick cases were what I liked. Those were fantastic to chase across the floor and under the sofa.
Best of all were the squeals of laughter from visitors when I cheekily opened a new handbag, put my paw inside and took things out. If there was a money purse, I pulled it out between my teeth, as if it was a piece of chicken, and that always raised the loudest laugh. Then I circled round it, working out how to get it open, and I usually succeeded. The pound coins were brilliant for batting across the polished wood floor. I meowed at TammyLee, until she picked one up and cleverly made it spin or roll for me to chase. But after one incident, I wasn’t allowed the bits of crackly paper. I’d shredded a banknote and even Amber had disapproved.
‘You’re pushing your luck,’ she said. ‘I used to chew shoes and books if I could get one, and once, Max actually growled at me, as if he wanted to be a dog, and he smacked me with his newspaper. Money, and shoes, and books are important to humans.’
Summer rolled on, and Amber and I were carefree and happy. TammyLee was on holiday, and she took us out every day to the park and along the river.
I still loved the river, despite my ordeal, but now I was very, very wary. The sound of boys’ voices made me hide, or run to TammyLee, who could carry me. Amber chased any dogs who barked at me, and I soon worked out a route high in the trees, as if I were a monkey, running and leaping through the branches. It was great.
I hoped that one day, we would meet Kaye and Rocky. I watched women with pushchairs from my perches in the trees. I planned to go racing over to them, and sit on Rocky’s lap. Then TammyLee would have to collect me, and she’d meet Rocky.
But it didn’t happen. Kay and Rocky were nowhere to be seen.
Everywhere we went on those days of golden sun, TammyLee carried in her heart the shadow of her lost baby, and the guilt of what she had done. It was hard for me to keep believing I could bring them together.
‘There is a plan,’ my angel said. ‘You don’t need to do anything, Tallulah. The love you are giving is precious and healing for TammyLee.’
I’d established a place in the garden where I talked to my angel regularly. It was under an apple tree, where I often settled down in the dappled sunlight to sleep and to listen to the buzz of wasps clustered around the fallen apples.
‘Watch the swallows,’ my angel said, ‘and when you see them gathering on the wires, they are leaving and, this autumn, everything will change, not just for you, but for the whole community. There will be a time of change, a time when you must stay indoors, away from the river.’
‘Why?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘I like the river and so does Amber.’
‘It looks tranquil now,’ said my angel, ‘but in the winter it will roar like a lion, and the water will be tawny gold and foaming, like the mane of a lion.’
‘But why?’
‘Because it will be winter.’
Winter. I remembered winter in Gretel’s garden. The soil knobbly and locked together with ice crystals so that I couldn’t scratch it up when I needed to. The lawn with blue shadows on crisp white grass. The trees coated in ice. The birds desperate and hungry, easy to catch. What did winter have to do with a lion?
‘Be happy while you can,’ said my angel. ‘Before the winter, TammyLee will have something very hard to deal with. It could go either way … like when you were ill, you were caught in the golden land between life and death, a land that sparkles and sustains, but sends you back to live your life and do the task you agreed. Believe me, TammyLee will need your love.’
‘So … lots of purring, and stay away from the river. Is that it?’ I asked.
‘That’s it, for now.’
Soon after I had watched the swallows leaving on their long journey, I noticed a change in TammyLee’s routine.
She had started college, part-time, training to be a hairdresser.
‘Wasting your life. Wasting it,’ Max ranted at her. ‘Doing people’s HAIR, for goodness’ sake. Subscribing to vanity. When you were bright enough to go to university.’
At first, TammyLee argued with him, but mostly she rolled her eyes and ignored him.
‘I can’t wait to get away from Dad,’ she told me in private, ‘get my own flat and have some peace. I only stay here because of Mum. She needs me, and I love her, Tallulah. I wish she could get better.’