Chapter 4

Chapter the fourth...oh who cares

 

When Jude rolled himself out of bed and wandered his way down to the kitchen, he saw that his phone was flashing. He had a message. He had two messages. He didn’t expect to find two messages. He expected one from Alex, that was obvious, but he didn’t expect one from Lara. Probably telling him about how fantastic Alex was and how she was so lucky that he was still with her. Again.

 

He listened to the one from Alex first. Then realised that he was going to put his boyfriend before his sister and laughed a little bit at the symbolism of it all.

 

“Hey. Hope you’re alright. Really enjoyed seeing you yesterday. Perhaps we can do it again later? We could go to th- what’s that? S**t the eggs. Just get back to me, yeah?” He rang off hurriedly.

 

He was alright. And he too enjoyed meeting yesterday. It was a shame that they had to go all the way out of Cardiff but they couldn’t risk being seen. And of course, the hotel rooms in Swansea weren’t all that bad. But later might be tricky. It was the annual pub quiz and he was expected to work. He’d try and get the time off.

 

Jude went to go and feed Bryn then remembered that he had another message. Bryn would have to wait.

 

Lara was speaking very quickly.

 

“Hi Jude…s**t you’re not in. Well I just went to Sainsbury’s and I was meant to be getting soap but I didn’t get soap because I was in the toilets, which are very nice by the way, not much loo roll though and there were loads of pensioners and I made all these funny noises by accident and they all gave me funny looks but I’m pregnant.” What? “How are you anyway? How’s things going with this new boyfriend of yours? I can’t wait to meet him for a drink or something. Can I drink? I don’t know. Anyway…Bye.” She rang off a lot more hurriedly than Alex did.

 

Pregnant? How? Well it’s obvious how. He didn’t need a diagram. But… she was pregnant. He assumed it was Alex’s. This was not good. The situation that was previously ticking away quite nicely, if a little bit sordid, just became a whole lot worse.

 

Jude felt something in his abdomen do a somersault and had to sit down very quickly with his head between his knees. He breathed deeply and went to get up again. He stood all too quickly and had to put his head down again.

 

Then something heavy with four precise pressure points started walking its way around his back. Bryn could wait no longer.

 

He tried to reach round behind his back to move the cat but he wasn’t quite flexible enough. Then something tore very painfully in his left shoulder and his head was once again back between his knees. He was breathing much more heavily as he had never felt such pain.

 

After recovering, he threw caution to the wind and decided that cats always land on their feet so Bryn would be fine and so he sat up. It was then that Jude discovered that he had been lied to for 27 years by his parents and teachers as it was all too apparent that cats did not land on their feet.

 

The fat lump rolled off Jude’s back onto the table, digging his claws in all the way down. While Bryn was getting himself back on to all fours, Jude went over to get some plastic bags out of the cupboard to clean the bowl out.

 

He crouched down with a plastic bag on each hand and two more to put the old cat food in. He shook the brown pellets into one of the bags, tied it up at the top and then put it in the second bag. Next he took off his polythene gloves and threw them in as well. Once the outer bag had been tied with several knots, he threw the whole thing in the bin and went over to the drawer to get more food out.

 

Getting food for Bryn always left Jude in a pickle. He had no idea what Bryn liked the most so didn’t know what to choose. Would he appreciate tuna and haddock? Or was he more of a chicken and beef cat? Jude mulled over the decision for a while and then went for the fish because it was in a nice colour packet.

 

He put the rubber gloves on and squeezed the brown sludge into the cat bowl.

 

Once Bryn was obviously quite happy with the selection, Jude went back over to the table to ring Lara. And Alex for that matter.

 

Christ his boyfriend’s wife was having a baby and he was going to be its uncle. He laughed out loud at how complicated the whole situation seemed. Seemed? It was that bloody complicated.

 

He dialled Lara’s number and she answered almost immediately. That was odd. Apparently Millie was round and she’d brought Elliot. Lara really did not need a toddler about at the moment. This clearly wasn’t the right time to have a lengthy conversation about how best to deal with the circumstances and so they arranged to meet for coffee later. He casually asked after Alex and Lara told him that he was playing with Elliot in the garden. That would mean that Jude would have to leave a message. Good. He suggested getting together later in the pub. That way, even if he did have to work, he could get a bit of conversation over the bar. Probably not the best place to discuss such a delicate matter. But it was the best he could do at such short notice.

 

He set his phone back down on the table and then became suddenly aware that he was still wearing yesterday’s boxers. And nothing else. As if by magic, the doorbell rang and it became a military operation to get up to the bedroom without being seen through the window.

 

He dropped down to all fours and began to crawl through the hall. He thought he looked quite good until he caught sight of himself in the mirror and saw that he was moving in a way not dissimilar to Bryn after going at the catnip.

 

To get past the window, he decided that it would be a good idea to go from being on his hands and knees, to a forward roll, to his front, ready to shimmy up the stairs. It would all have been very Mission Impossible except he hit his head on the table going into the forward roll and ended up face-down on the floor. He had never looked at the carpet in such detail. There were a lot of crumbs that he had missed with the hoover. He felt a bit sick and so got back on to all fours and crept his way up the stairs.

 

Jude got past the landing and so stood upright. As he was passing the bathroom, his boxers got caught on the door handle and ended up coming down around his ankles.

 

He looked down and laughed. It was like something from a film. He stopped laughing pretty quickly when he looked up and saw that he hadn’t closed the curtains upstairs and there was an old lady over the road staring right at his naked penis. He wasn’t sure who was more mortified; him or the lady? He’d probably given her a coronary.

 

After staring straight ahead for an uncomfortable 3 minutes, he dived through the bedroom door and hid underneath the duvet. He stayed there until he got too hot and started to sweat and his balls got stuck to his leg.

 

There was a new pair of boxers in the drawer so he changed into them and looked around for some trousers and a shirt.

 

But first, he drew the curtains.