He's Cancelled: A totally laugh-out-loud and uplifting romantic comedy by Sophie Ranald

Author:Sophie Ranald [Ranald, Sophie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800196520
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2021-06-22T18:30:00+00:00

Over the next few days, Grandpa’s cat established her position in our flat. After disappearing under the sofa and staying there for eight hours, driving me to distraction with worry that I’d made the wrong decision, she emerged and woke us up demanding her breakfast. Archie, who normally needed a forklift truck to get him out of bed in the mornings, sprang up as soon as he heard her meow.

‘She’s come out!’ he said. ‘She must be settling in!’

I lay back on the pillows, listening as he chatted away to Teresa, explaining that the humans were going to have to go to work and leave her in charge but that we would be back in time for her tea, and that there would be a delivery arriving that day from Amazon which might interest her.

‘You’ll have to wait for us to open the package,’ he said. ‘Because you don’t have opposable thumbs, you see.’

When I got home from football practice that evening, I found Archie surrounded by boxes. One of them had held an enormous cat tree that reached almost to the ceiling of the flat, which he was painstakingly assembling with his cordless screwdriver. Another contained an assortment of feathery, rattly, catnip-scented toys. Another was full of locally produced, organic cat food.

Teresa was watching him from the back of the sofa, an expression on her face that clearly meant, Well, I’ve got this human where I want him.

Who would have thought it? I mused. Practical Archie, going doolally over a cat.

‘You know she’s only here for a couple of weeks?’ I said.

‘Yes, but we want her to enjoy it, right? We want this to be like a stay at The Ritz, not a holiday at Butlin’s. I came back and checked on her at lunchtime, and I cooked some chicken for her tea.’

‘I’ll be able to tell Grandpa she’s making herself at home. He’ll be pleased.’

And I was pleased too. This was a side of Archie I’d never seen before – a soft, nurturing side. Watching him sit immobile on the sofa because the cat had deigned to settle down on his lap, hearing him singing to her, noticing the fastidiousness with which he washed her food bowl and cleaned out her litter tray, made me feel something I’d never felt before.

It wasn’t quite broodiness. It wasn’t the primal urge I’d heard other women describe. It was more a realisation that, when the time came, if we decided it was something we both wanted, Archie would be a loving, involved, hands-on father.

It didn’t help me answer the question in the quiz, but it reassured me all the same.

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