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He had once tried to learn to tango from a book containing diagrams of feet, but had failed to get as far as Lesson Two. ‘Another drink?’ he offered – a bid to make amends to Stella for his obvious lack of enthusiasm about her choice of gift.
    ‘No, better not. Every one of these’ – she pointed to her glass – ‘is at least another hundred calories. Anyway, I must push off. There’s a load of stuff I need to prepare for tomorrow.’
    ‘OK,’ he said, disappointed. Despite the seasonal excesses – a maddeningly jaunty Good King Wenceslas was now trilling out, full-volume – he much preferred this cosy pub and Stella’s company to his lonely, chilly flat. On the other hand, he had homework, too: he had to teach himself to flirt in sixteen challenging chapters.  

chapter four
    ‘Excuse me,’ Eric said. ‘I wondered if you’d seen a ginger cat? It’s gone missing, you see and …’
    The small, black-haired woman standing in the doorway was gazing at him in total incomprehension. Indonesian, by the looks of her, or possibly Vietnamese. A pity he didn’t speak a host of other languages – Bengali, Hindi, Cantonese, Arabic, Malay … Almost everybody he’d asked so far had been not just foreign but non-English-speaking, too.
    ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter.’ He backed away, sorry that he’d scared her. She’d looked seriously alarmed, as if he were a bailiff, come to cart off all the furniture.
    Turning up his coat collar against the driving rain, he trudged on to the next doorway. He’d reached only the second storey of the huge council block opposite his flat, which meant five more floors to go. Although, on reflection, it was probably a complete waste of time. Most people were out, or perhaps had learned through bitter experience never to open their front doors in such a dodgy area, for fear of burglary or assault. The few who had appeared either failed to understand him or slammed the door in his face – apart from one pugnacious Asian who had launched into a tirade about filthy, germy cats that should never be allowed inside a human home, so the more that went missing, the better.
    After four more fruitless calls, he decided to try his luck in the local shops, starting with the Indian corner-store.
    ‘I’ve lost my cat,’ he began.
    ‘You lost your cash? Sorry, we don’t cash cheques here, but Costcutters may be able to help you out.’
    ‘No, not my cash – my cat .’
    ‘Can’t help,’ the man said brusquely, cutting off the conversation as a customer walked in – a woman with three kids and a pushchair.
    Well, Eric shrugged, he was obviously unwelcome here, but at least they knew him at the café. Having ventured in, he found Hanif and Abdullah sitting at a table playing draughts.
    ‘No customers?’ he asked.
    Hanif grimaced. ‘People stay at home in this weather.’
    If only Charlie had, thought Eric, increasingly concerned about the cat. She had disappeared yesterday evening and, at twelve years old, was too decrepit to be out on such a stormy night. He had searched the entire area, in vain, returning only in the early hours. And, to make things worse, she was a cat from a rescue-centre and, before he and Christine had taken her on, they’d been questioned almost as closely as if about to adopt a child: did they have a garden, and prior experience of cats; how dangerous was their road; would they agree to fit a cat-flap? Eventually, they’d been given the all-clear, although, of course, the volunteer who came round to check the premises hadn’t known that he and Charlie shared a bond, in the form of their early history.
    Hanif handed him the menu. ‘What can I get you? Coffee? Tea? A fry-up ?’
    ‘Sorry. I can’t stay. I’ve lost my cat and wondered if you’d seen it?’
    Both men shook their heads.
    ‘Is it male or female?’ Abdullah enquired.
    ‘Female.’
    ‘Pity,’ Hanif said. ‘Males come back. Females don’t.’
    Too right, Eric mused, his mind