I was asleep on top of the piano when I realised it was summer again. It felt like six years since I’d seen the sun. I opened my eyes and saw the sharp beam struck across the room, falling warmly on my chest. I rolled over in it, letting it touch every inch of my body. I knew it wasn’t a dream because I was still here. 

I saw Scarlet stirring in the old breadbox on the window sill. Her black ears flickered, her yellow eyes opened. I watched as she realised. The sun. The summer.
I climbed down the shoe rack that hung from the back of the door, trying not to wake anyone else. I could hear Scarlet following me quietly. We padded under the dining table and squeezed through the kitchen door and out onto the roof.

Jane was sat in her chair at the end of the roof, among her potted plants, she had her gardening gloves on and her clippers in one hand, she looked like she was sleeping, but it was too far to tell.

“Good morning,” came Clive’s low, hanging voice.

He looked down at Scarlet and I from the plastic garden table, where he always sat, summer or no summer.

“The summer, I think. About time.” he said, jumping down on to the chair and the floor, rubbing warmly passed Scarlet meandering out among the maze of potted plants on the tar roof and out of sight.

“The sun!” his voice boomed out.

Scarlet looked at me and furled a lip into a crooked smile. We jumped up onto the table and lay together in the sun for an hour. The others gradually joined us from inside.

“It’s the summer, it’s the summer,” said Charlie, as he bounded out of the cat-flap. Charlie was barely one but was already the size of a shed, and about as manoeuvrable. He moved and spoke in long straight lines.

“I love the sun. I love it because it’s warm. I love being warm and I like being outside. I like being outside and being warm,” said Charlie.

We watched as he struggled through the pots to Jane, he jumped into her lap startling her. She forgave him quickly patting his big stupid head.

“Richard is coming today,” said Clive, who’d appeared on the seat of the chair next to the table.

“Who is Richard?” said Scarlet.
“Richard is a man from the Royal British Legion. He paid for the new kitchen,” I said.
“Jane is fond of Richard Scarlet, he’s been away, she’s been telling me,” said Clive.
“Why does she tell you?” said Scarlet scowling jealously.
“She likes to tell me things. I’ve been here longest.”
“She never strokes you!”
“No, she prefers talking to me. One doesn’t stroke an equal.”
“An equal doesn’t eat out of a bowl on the kitchen floor,” I said.
Clive laughed and batted a paw at my head. “You’re right there lad.” But I didn’t understand why he found it funny.

Jane was walking over followed by Charlie and the rest of them. She looked nice. She was wearing her straw summer hat and new flowery blouse. She picked up Clive as she passed the table.

“Not long till Richard arrives Clivey,” she said squeezing his slack skin.

They trooped inside leaving me and Scarlet. I stood over her as she rolled on her back, the sun throwing shadows down her face. “Finally! I never though they’d leave,” I said, smiling into her eyes. She looked at me expressionless.

“Don’t get you,” she said.

I sighed and bounced to the floor. I’d forgotten about days like this. Everything was white in the sun, the asbestos roofs of the warehouses, the cars on Holloway Road, it all looked so hard and clean. Scarlet wouldn’t ever understand me, but surrounded by sun it didn’t seem important.

I was flat on my back on top of a van in the courtyard when the doorbell rang. It always seemed odd to me that hiding behind those three same fickle notes could be anyone.
Scarlet was chasing the reflection from a wind chime as I went inside.

I didn’t recognise Richard at first. He was a tall man with thick shoulders, he had red pocked skin that hung down around his ears. Sticky out ears that looked like frozen cod. He had warm eyes that looked achingly incongruous his blunt, brutish face.
“You look so well Richard, so well,” said Jane, alternately hugging him and grasping his shoulders.
“You too. You look so well. How have you been?”
“I’ve been good, I only got back from Australia yesterday,”
 ”Yes of course, how is Jenny and the kids?”
“She’s great, she’s finally found a job. The kids are great, brown as buttons, Rick is getting to be quite a strapping lad. Wow, Jane were there always this many cats?”
“When did you last come, February. Yes I think so.”

Everyone was there peering at Richard. I felt embarrassed to be part of it, but it was too late.”No, just Clive, Claire, Bernard, Charlie, Scarlet and Snoggles.”

Snoggles is my brother. He hates his name. Every time he hears it he tries to wriggle out of his collar, even though the tag is tucked under his chin he says he can see it.
“Snoggles?” said Richard raising a thick wiry old eyebrow.
“Ha, I let Marianne name her.”
“Good choice. How are they all?”
“Yeah, they’re great. Settling in. Michael’s enjoying his job and girls have made friends at school.”

They walked into the kitchen, Jane had linked his arm and was patting his hand. “Now you must tell me all about Australia, what did you do? Where did you go?”
She clicked the kettle on and gleamed her dentures at him in a smile I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t understand what she was doing, but I didn’t feel comfortable. Not wanting to miss the sun, and not particularly enjoying Richard’s presence. I wandered, out onto the roof, the sun was listing across the tops of the high-rise flats but it was still swealtering hot.

I never liked guests, I don’t even like it when Jane talks to the neighbours. I found Clive dosing in the shade of Jane’s chair. He looked small and old there in the shadows. His eye winked open just as I was about to jump on his tail. 

“I don’t like Richard,” I said scratching my face on the coarse seam of the chair’s cushion. “Why? He’s nice to Jane. Jane needs more than us cats Richard. Do you know what they call her?”
“Who?”
“The neighbours, Michael, everyone — they call her the cat lady.”
“So?”

Clive sat back on his hind legs, like a human. “They’re saying she’s a loner.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with that, you’re a loner.” 

“Ha. Not by choice my boy.” he said, his thick whiskers drooping.
Clive left me in the sun.

Jane and Richard came out into the garden, I left her chair as she sat down and splayed-out on the floor. He plonked down opposite in a crumbling plastic garden chair. 

“I met someone Jane. In Australia,” he said, fixing Jane with a grin.
“Met someone, who?” said Jane, trying to hide her distress.
“A woman Jane. Jenny’s next door neighbour. We got on ever so well. Things progressed, as they do. Well, she asked me to move in!”
“Move in!? You’ve only known this woman two minutes.”
“Six months! I was away for six months Jane.”
“Move in, you’re 73-years-old Richard. You can’t carry on like this.”
“Carry on like what?” he said, his face turned a fearful puce. His eyebrows hitched towards one another in an angry scowl.
“You know what I mean,” said Jane pulling at the hand he rested on his knee.
“No, no I’m not sure that I do. All my age does Jane is serve to encourage move quicker.”
“I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that. It’s just,”
“I don’t understand. I erm…” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll be back on Monday with the builders to access the stairs. I’m moving to Australia in a week, so I’ll pass your case onto a colleague at the legion.”
“Don’t,” said Jane grabbing his trousers, tears, rolling one after another down her cheeks, not that he’d noticed. He was through the kitchen and out the front door before they fell into her lap.

I sat there watching her and she collapsed in her chair. Her hands with the backs facing each other pushed into her chest folding it in on itself, her chin tucked down. She gasped for air. I looked for help, but Clive was already on the way, he shot across the tarred roof, arriving at her ankles he glared at me. He pawed out, at her ankles.

“Go away you stupid cat,” said Jane lashing a foot out at him. It missed his head by an inch, but he didn’t move. We stayed there with her until it was dark and well after that. We stayed with her until the phone rang in the house and she went to answer it. 
The next morning Jane watered the plants and rang Paula, but Michael answered. She rang back later and Jane cried again, holding her face in the hall, tears snook out from between her fingers and fell into her fluffy slippers, that sucked them up.
Jane didn’t get out of bed the next day. I caught a rat and ate it in the loft, I shared it with Scarlet but she told everyone later and they made me sleep outside, but I snook in through Jane’s window and slept on her bed.

The next day Scarlet was gone — she disappearedin the night. She’d done it before, but it always sent everyone into a frenzy. Charlie spent the whole day contriving outlandish scenarios she might have got herself into. Gangsters using her a collateral. Laundering money through cats. Jane got up about noon and fed us, she sat in the dinning room sorting photos into albums and then went to Morrisons. She came back and went to bed. She hadn’t noticed Scarlet had gone.

The sun was unflinching over the next few weeks, and the plants on the roof were growing like crazy. Jane sat in her chair, reading and drinking coffee during the days and watched TV at night. She didn’t stroke us, or pick any of us up, or even talk to us for weeks.

Three weeks had passed before she spoke to me.

“Where’s old Scarlet hey Bernie?”

I looked up at her.

“You don’t know do you hey? Just off somewhere no doubt. Having some fun? Got a funny feeling she won’t be back this time. Feel like she’s tracked down a nice family with two kids and big grassy garden — they’ll have taken her in, and she’ll have forgotten all about us.”

She was smiling as she picked me up. 

“The daft cow,” she said. 

She took me onto the roof and we sat in her chair together. I flicked my tail and rolled in her lap and she rubbed my belly.

A girl from next door brought over a glass of Sangria and chatted with Jane about the plants and she looked happy.

(Sorry about the horrendous formatting, it just wouldn’t work.)