1.
.
Pedro always made some changes to the apartment before I arrived. He also left a bottle of wine for me in the fridge. He knew I liked white, but he was at pains to remind me that I was welcome to any red I found. I arrived later than expected. My flight was delayed from Manchester Airport. I decided at the airport not to worry. I had a Guinness. It was too cold. I wondered if that sensitive toothpaste was doing anything. My teeth felt just as sensitive, maybe even more sensitive. The flight itself was uneventful. I took my time getting up from my seat, removing my bag from the overhead locker. I smiled at the attendant; they smiled back. I got a taxi to Pedro’s. I got the key. The code for the lockbox was 1-9-6-6. There was a smell of lavender when I entered Pedro’s apartment. There was a new candle on the coffee table. Maybe I would light it. In the kitchen area – the apartment was open plan – I found the wine and poured a glass. I went to bed. I slept in Pedro’s bed. He always put on fresh sheets, and at the end of the week, I put the bedding I had used into the basket, then I remade the bed with fresh sheets. I hadn’t seen Pedro in two years, but these rituals, enacted every February, reminded me that he was, in many ways, my closest friend.
.

*

.
I never asked if the code had any special meaning. I never had trouble remembering it. It was the World Cup. It was the Beatles’ Revolver. It was as easy to remember as 1066. I had the super deluxe edition of Revolver; someone bought it for me when it came out. It was released the week of my birthday. I haven’t listened to it. I always thought that when James was older, seven or eight, I would introduce him to John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I would imagine us in the car, without Carrie, and I’d put on Pepper’s. He’d ask for ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ again. That would be his favourite, and then he’d listen to ‘A Day in the Life’ one day, when he was thirteen, and realise that was his new favourite. We’d drive to McDonald’s. He’d get a Happy Meal. I put the box set at the back of my wardrobe. Our friend Henry had sent it to me. He had also sent a birthday card, but I hadn’t opened it.
.

*
.

I had brought the first volume of Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler with me to Barcelona. Volume One begins in 1889 and ends in 1936, with the dictator securing Total Power of the German states. I read up to the Night of the Long Knives.
.
I had a shower, then remembered I had forgotten to bring any razors or shaving foam. The second volume covered the war years and was a couple of hundred pages longer than the first volume. I wondered if I’d bother to read it. Maybe I’d leave things in 1936. I set the first task for the day. I left the apartment and bought a can of shaving gel and a five pack of disposable razors. I shaved. I read a few more pages and gave up. I made myself a coffee. Pedro made a song and dance out of coffee. He had not one but two machines, and a grinder, and I remember that one night, during the week we stayed with him, he went through the whole process just to make Carrie a black coffee. He gave it to her in a diddy white cup. I can see her taking it from him, the way she held it with both hands. It wouldn’t have been the night it happened, not the actual night. We would have been with the hospital people, and the police, and we would have been too busy. It would have been one of the other nights. We met Pedro by chance at the hospital – he was alone. He’d been mugged.
.
I drank my coffee. I checked the weather and the BBC News app. I opened the top story: Epsom College Head Emma Pattison found dead with husband and daughter. The wi-fi in Pedro’s apartment loaded the news instantly.
.

*
.

Someone put their foot in it, or they thought they had. It was a dinner party, although no one called it that. I drove us that night and I remember looking at my hands on the wheel, then watching as the left hand disappeared to change gears, and I found it amazing that it knew what to do, without me having to watch it. We had both been prescribed Temazepam. It helped Carrie. There were people at the party we didn’t know very well. We had dinner, then drinks in the living room, which they called the lounge. Jackie asked if I wanted another beer, and she poured a bottle of Budweiser into a glass for me. It was at this point I realised I probably shouldn’t be drinking. It would not be advised. It was on the news that one of Jamie Bulger’s killers was up for parole, or maybe one of the two boys (I cannot picture them as men) had offended again. They were going through the process of putting him away before releasing him with another new identity. I hadn’t taken in the details. It might have been a parole hearing. It didn’t matter. Jackie said, ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’ No one else spoke. The people we didn’t know very well, I assumed they knew what we’d been through. That night, we stayed at Jackie and Peter’s for too long, and I carried on drinking. Jackie was drinking too. We were alone. ‘How old are you both, anyway?’ I told her. ‘That’s no age,’ she said, ‘no age at all.’ Her implication being, there is plenty of time: try again.
.

*
.

I was about to go to bed, when I heard a loud noise from the spare room. I was making a green tea. Maybe I’ll make it to the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, I thought. In the spare room, there was a large cat on the floor by the bed. It was its largeness, not its fatness (although it was fat), which was most striking. It looked too big for a cat. There was something too human about its face, as well. I sometimes thought this when I looked at dogs, not that I ever had a dog. I had a vague memory of crying to my mum about a dog. When she got it out of me, I was apparently upset about the people trapped inside dogs. She said it frightened her.
.
The cat purred. I backed away and closed the door behind me. I made my green tea, but instead of going to bed, I sent an email to Pedro from my phone. He replied before ten. He said he’d found the cat in the street. He said there was food under the sink. He apologised for not mentioning it to me. I knew it was unbelievable; there was something he wasn’t telling me. But I didn’t care. There was no cat food under the sink, none that I could see. I set myself another task. I left the building in my pyjamas. The late-night shop was opposite Pedro’s place. I asked if they had any cat food. I used Google Translate on my phone for ‘cat food’, but we got there in the end. They had a 25kg bag, which I paid for and carried back up to the apartment.
.

*
.

It wasn’t long after the dinner party that I started doing the weekly shop. It was something Carrie did, and she said she enjoyed it. The planning of the meals. The getting of the ingredients. She’d collect James from school and take him on a Monday evening, and he didn’t mind. She made it fun for him. He was allowed to pick a treat. It meant that when I got home from work on a Monday, the cupboards were always stocked. We’d have a big meal, lots of chicken, and Carrie would prepare leftovers for Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday it was curry night, and on Friday we usually had fish and chips, or a takeaway. I tried my best, those first few times. I made lists. I even planned meals. I got ingredients. I discovered that the toilets at Tesco were a good place to cry, for me at least. I had found I couldn’t cry at home. It was odd, but I couldn’t. Even when Carrie was asleep, knocked out, I couldn’t muster myself. But in Tesco toilets, I wept. This would have been about five months after Barcelona.
.
To get to crying, I would think about James’ fifth birthday, when I bought him a toy electric guitar – he even took it to bed with him, and from our room you could hear the sound effects from the guitar, when he turned it on by accident in the middle of the night.
.

*
.

I tipped more La Mito into the cereal bowl. I took it into the spare room. The cat had not ventured out. I opened the curtains to let in a little light. The cat didn’t look injured, and I wondered what its life had been like on the streets. I tried to imagine Pedro rescuing the cat, but I couldn’t. I felt fine leaving it to its own devices, while I carried on my week in Barcelona.
.
I checked on the Sagrada Familia, and I went to a restaurant for lunch, alone. I went to a gallery. I saw a painting with a cat, and although it looked nothing like the cat, I felt that I should return to the apartment to see how it was getting on. When I got in, I saw it was waiting for me by the armchair, and when I sat down, he paused before making the jump onto my lap.
.

*
.

On a practical level, nothing changed when Carrie left. We’d been living separately, albeit together, for six months. I would phone her mum every evening at the start, and she would say that Carrie was resting. ‘She’s in bed.’ I didn’t ask if I could see her, or even if I could talk to her. I was close with my in-laws. These calls continued until Christmas, and then, in the New Year, Carrie’s mum told me that Carrie had found her own place, that she’d moved out. ‘Right.’ I went to Barcelona in February, on the anniversary. I wouldn’t have said it helped, but it felt like the right thing to do. There was nothing else to do.
.

2.
.
She spoke over me. ‘Hello – Pedro?’ The voice sounded almost Mancunian.
.
‘Pedro’s on holiday. I’m sorry.’ I was struck by the formality. ‘Is there anything I can help with?’
.
‘Is there a cat with you?’
.
‘There is, actually.’
.
‘Good, can you let me in then, please?’
.
‘Okay, one second.’
.
I pressed the button to release the door below, then put the receiver back in its cradle on the wall.
.
As I waited, I wondered if she’d said hello, or just ‘Oh – Pedro.’
.
She shuffled past me into Pedro’s apartment. I followed her. The cat had spent the morning in the spare room. She turned.
.
‘Where is it, please?’
.
‘In there,’ I said. I had tried to make the room nice for him. I’d found a basket in the flea market, near the Gothic Quarter.
.
‘Bastard.’ She then swore in Catalan. Finally, she moved us to the kitchen space. She lit a cigarette and leaned against the counter. She shook the packet.
.
Maybe she was offering, but I didn’t say anything.
.
‘You’re English?’
.
‘Is it obvious?’ But of course, it was, and I had made myself sound sarcastic.
.
‘He said he would try for an English boy, eventually. I thought he was kidding.’
.
‘It’s your cat?’
.
‘It’s my mother’s. You and Pedro, you’re?’ She made what I would have described as a schoolboy gesture.
.
‘I’m married.’
.
‘It’s alright – I don’t want to know, really.’
.
‘Why does Pedro have your cat?’
.
‘Where is he?’
.
‘Ibiza,’ I said.
.
‘We broke up. I think he took it from my mother to make a point, to hurt me, or to get my attention.’ I noticed she had listed three options. To hurt her. To get her attention. To make a point. I remembered learning about the rule of three at school, and I realised that it was probably a universal thing – or maybe she only used three examples when she spoke English. She said her name was Marcy.
.

*
.

I was in One Stop, the New Year after Carrie left, and I saw James’ face on the front of a newspaper. It was one of the red tops. I saw the headline. I took the paper to the till, along with my bread and can of Irn-Bru. The person at the till did not comment on the paper. For all he knew, I was a regular Sun reader. At home, I left the paper. I put it to one side, literally, on the coffee table. I finished my jobs. I folded the washing, which had dried overnight, and I walked the vacuum around the living room, before dragging it upstairs against its will.
.

*
.

It took the two of us to carry Columbus out of the spare room, he was so heavy. Pedro must have had help. I believed Marcy’s story more than I believed Pedro’s.
.
‘Is he named after the monument?’ I asked. Marcy said, ‘No, after the man.’
.
Marcy opened the door, and I held him, then we shared the weight, and he lay between us, a solid lump. Because of this, we had to walk side by side the whole way, making sure we were more or less in sync. ‘Should we get a taxi?’ I asked. Marcy said we were nearly there. Marcy’s mother lived on the ground floor of a building located in one of the oldest quarters in the city. ‘Do you say flat, or apartment?’ I asked. So far, Marcy had answered all my questions bluntly, and I had asked quite a few. She said, ‘I don’t know – I think apartment.’ I told her, ‘Because when I’m at home, I say flat, but when I’m here, I think I say apartment, or at least, I think apartment.’ She didn’t reply to this, but it wasn’t a question after all.
.
It was dark in the hallway. Marcy switched on lights as we went. I stepped over two dogs. At the end of the hall, there were two steps leading up to the kitchen. On the top step, there was another dog. Was it cooler on the step? Later, I would wonder why these dogs were so casual. The other four were all in the living room with Marcy’s mother. We found her in her chair. Her head was back, there was sick down her front.
.
There was a red Tiffany lamp, or what I thought looked like a Tiffany lamp, by the armchair. Marcy turned it on. She went to the chair. Columbus was by my feet, then he rounded me and started to push gently against my calf. Marcy’s mother’s legs were white, all the blood had gone out of them. She was eighty-nine. When did I learn this – her age? If I had said to Marcy, she had a good innings, what would she have said back?
.

*
.

Before we had James, we had spoken for several years about having a baby. It had taken Carrie longer to speak about it casually. When I would talk about our baby, it would be in this sort of statement: ‘When we have children, it probably won’t grow up with physical media, it’ll all be digital, streaming.’ Or something like this: ‘When we have a baby, all the Beatles will probably be dead.’ As it was, Paul and Ringo were still around when James was born. They outlived him, in fact. I think Carrie understood that a baby was a mewing, writhing, shitting machine. But a machine with a soul – something that will grow and grow. And perhaps I understood this too, but not in the same way, I’m sure. She knew it was true, and that was different. The whole eighteen years, and the rest. I never had those fears, because I was unaware. I thought it would work.
.
When the body was back in England, we had a funeral. Holy Trinity. The church was next to a park. I found Carrie on a bench. I had undone the first button of my shirt to avoid suffocating myself. I didn’t know what she was thinking, and I didn’t ask. ‘Is there anything you need?’ This was my new catchphrase. It had replaced, ‘Do we need to put a load on?’, ‘I’ll do the pots’, and ‘How are we for milk?’
.
‘I want you to find who did it and take out their eyes and make them eat them.’
.
‘Okay, I will have to find them first.’ We walked back inside the church, spoke to the last of the people we needed to speak to, then we went home and slept.
.

*
.

The next two days I spent with the dogs. I got to know them pretty well. Around six, I would return to Pedro’s apartment. Marcy phoned me. She said she wanted to talk about nothing. I asked her if she knew about the rule of three in speech and writing. ‘I understand, I’ve just never thought of it,’ she paused to think, ‘consciously. Do you?’ I told her I didn’t, at least I didn’t think so.
.
Her cousin came one morning and sat himself in Marcy’s mother’s armchair. He shook my hand while I was trying to empty Columbus’ litter tray. He asked why I was here, and when I said I was here to help, he said, ‘No, why in Barcelona?’
.
‘I come every year.’
.
‘Why?’
.
‘My son was killed here.’
.
He said nothing. He rung his hands and asked my name. He left and I didn’t see him again.
.

*
.

Pedro was due back on Tuesday. On Monday, we went for a walk. ‘I’d like to wreck the place,’ Marcy said. ‘Destroy it.’ We went back to the apartment. I packed my things before we started turning over Pedro’s place. The coffee machines with their embossed logos, I decided I would attack them first. I started by dropping them from waist height. I took a steak knife and jammed it through a chrome opening, then started to slice at the alloy. I was on my knees. I cut my palm. Marcy came over with a wet flannel. She pressed it firmly into my hand, asked what on earth I’d been thinking. ‘Is that something your mum said?’
.
‘What?’
.
‘What on earth..?’
.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
.
My injury sort of ground things to a halt. We lost our energy. We made the apartment tidy again. I even put on that fresh set of linen, so Pedro would come back to a nice, comfy bed. Marcy drove me to the airport, hugged me goodbye, and we wished each other good luck. I scrolled through my camera roll. I had taken photos of each of Marcy’s mother’s dogs. Columbus made eight. ‘He’s a dog in a cat’s body, that’s what my mother thought, that’s what she always said.’
.
.
.