Chapter Two (the chapters are tiny)

She creeps into the cottage in darkness as usual, savouring the anonymity of it, leaving off the light until the last possible moment. Keys are flung down, the fridge pours light onto the sheet metal worksurface and shimmers upwards onto the brickwork. The cat opens his mouth wide enough for his head to snap off and squeaks by mistake with the effort of it. "hello Audrey" she croons.

The morning had been fragmentary, piercing winter light, particles dancing like Parisian Spring. Everything had started to come apart, her mind disintegrating as she tried to concentrate. There was a tiny grave inside her mind on a hillside, lush green in another place, sea close, cottage nestling. The tiny stone had a name she couldn't read and it asked her not to forget it, to remember. There was something useful in this place she didn't know, this dead infant that wasn't hers and a tragedy she didn't own that was claiming her imagination for reasons she didn'tyet understand. The cottage near the grave was beamed and smoky with woodsmoke and there was a friendly presence, and elderly woman. She watched the scene with interest, surprised by its clarity. It was as familiar as that white Church on the hill she visited sometimes in her sleep. It had a particular feeling, nameless of course.

Audrey was yet another victim of an absent-minded vet and had been lumbered with a sexual identity crisis in his early kittenhood. He was quite 'Hepburn' in fact but he was in denial, like most cats, about his true identity. She had given him a diamante collar anyway. Perhaps he had regarded this as a final act of cruelty against his vulnerable psyche and had developed into an adolescent phase of sulking and stropping whenever his biscuits ran out. Crunchies are poured, diamante clicks against crockery, the purring begins. Legs are circled, marmalade hairs on black tights. She wonders why it all broke into her head today, the nameless stuff, but it had, and Audrey certainly couldn't care less.