The Cat Next Door by Marian Babson

retraced her steps as far as the entrance driveway; now something at the edge of her peripheral vision caught her attention. There was something familiar about the figure walking past the lowered bar and towards her. It couldn’t be …
    â€˜Nan!’ It was. ‘What are you doing here? Have you seen Chloe? How is she?’
    â€˜Margot!’ Nan seemed equally disbelieving. ‘What are you doing here?’
    â€˜I asked you first.’ The childish rejoinder made them both smile ruefully. ‘How is Chloe? What did she say?’
    â€˜Nothing. I didn’t see her. I just brought her some clothes – they’re allowed to wear their own, you know. No prison uniform for women. And I thought she might want her navy blue suit to wear at … at the trial.’
    â€˜And did she?’
    â€˜I hope so. I sent it in and waited. She didn’t send it back.’ Nan dabbed with a fingertip at the corner of her eyes and blinked hard.
    â€˜We thought you’d gone shopping.’ Margot hadn’t meant to sound accusing, but Nan gave her an old-fashioned look.
    â€˜I’ll do my shopping now. Here.’ She took Margot’s arm and walked her down towards the shopping centre on the main road. ‘Where nobody knows me. It will be easier. I can get more done without people stopping me to talk … or having to watch them avoiding me.’

    The words brought another sharp insight into what the family had been enduring.
    â€˜And why are you here?’ Nan gave her no time to think about it.
    â€˜I’m not sure,’ Margot confessed. ‘I just felt I wanted to see for myself … where Chloe …’
    â€˜We’ve all felt like that,’ Nan said. ‘At one time or another, every one of us has …’ Nan’s mouth twisted wryly, ‘made the pilgrimage. But, as we told you, she won’t see any of us.’
    â€˜I know. I didn’t try. I just wanted to see the place.’
    â€˜We’ve got the green light.’ They had come to a crossroads, shops and stores stretched out in four directions, people thronged the pavements. They joined the crowd surging across the street and Nan continued straight on.
    â€˜We’ll start here.’ A fruit and vegetable stall spread itself across a street corner. Nan briskly removed a wheeled shopping bag from her shoulder bag and snapped it open. ‘We’ll get the fruit and veg from the outdoor markets,’ she told Margot, ‘and pick up the meat at the supermarket. The car’s in the supermarket parking garage. You’re driving back with me, aren’t you.’ It was a statement, not a question.
    â€˜Yes, oh, yes.’ Margot suddenly realised how much she had been dreading the endless flights of stairs she would encounter on the way home. It made her dizzy to think of it. ‘I’ll be glad to avoid all those stairs.’
    â€˜Are you sure you’re all right?’ Nan picked up sharply on the unguarded comment. ‘You haven’t looked at all well since you’ve got here.’
    â€˜Jet lag.’ How much longer would she be able to go on using that excuse? ‘It’s really hit me hard this time.’
    â€˜I don’t know much about jet lag,’ Nan admitted. ‘With all her travelling, Claudia never suffered from it.’
    â€˜Claudia was an enthusiastic traveller.’
    â€˜Yes, and I don’t know whether it makes it better or
worse that she was so happy the night she … She’d just returned from what she said was the holiday of her life.’ Nan smiled wryly. ‘Even though Kingsley wasn’t with her. She was cock-a-hoop and on top of the world, already planning her next holiday in that place. It wouldn’t have suited me at all, somewhere in the Balkans, with people shooting at each other – although she said that was in another part of the mountains. She raved about those mountains, that