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struggling for breath, it was suddenly possible to believe him. There wasn’t much of a decision to make. I slipped on my shoes — still wet from the sea — and went downstairs with the picture.
    When I opened the big steel fridge, the light and the cold flooded the kitchen. The tuna salad was still in there, under tin foil. I took it out and made my way quickly through the house and into the cool street.
    The pavement still held a little of the day’s heat, and the streetlights looked like honey and lemon Lockets. I wandered around and sucked my lips to make that noise that pet people make. I’d left the front door open, and I could hear Uncle Robert talking on the phone, outright panic in his voice now.
He must be calling the ambulance
, I thought.
    “Here, kitty,” I said. I took the foil off the salad and picked out the flakes of tuna, crumbled them between my fingers. “Here, kitty, kitty. Come on. Please, come on.”
    I was shaking now. I suddenly had a vision of Max as a little boy, his big shaggy hair. “Come on, you stupid cat!” I shouted into the street.
    The cat came out from between two cars, meowing, its mouth so wide I could see its pink tongue. I shook some tuna off my hand onto the pavement, and the cat licked it up. I put out my fingers, and it chewed at the little gray bits of fish. Its teeth were like hot needles, but I didn’t mind.
    “There you go, puss,” I said.
    I smoothed out the drawing on my thigh and saw the scene for the last time.
    A workman in a cap.
    A scruffy-looking man in his thirties.
    An old woman behind a half-open door, terrified.
    A dog, a cat.
    “I’m very sorry, but this has got to be done,” I said as I showed the drawing to the cat. I was struck suddenly by how mad this was. As if
this
could kill anything. As if
I
could save Max. The cat lifted one front leg and pawed at the picture, but then got back to the important business of eating its surprise fish supper. I held the picture out until my arm got tired, and I felt a sort of calm come over me. The street was so peaceful. Just the swish of leaves and the hiss of cars from the main road. Somehow I knew it had worked.
    The doomed cat walked past me, pressing its body against my shin, like they do. I stood up in time to see Robert stomping out into the front garden in his flip-flops, his mobile phone pressed to his ear. “I called eight minutes ago,” he was saying. “We’re a four-minute drive from the hospital. . . . What? Yes, I understand that, but this is terrible. Our boy is . . . Yes. I know you are. I’m sorry. Two minutes, OK. Thank you.”
    He ended the call and put his head in his hands. Then he saw me. “Frances. What are you doing? Are you . . . ? You’re feeding a cat. Frances, Max is very sick. I hardly think this is the time to . . .”
    I smiled at him and walked over. “He’s gonna be all right, Uncle Robert. It’s gonna be fine. I promise.”
    He looked at me in a sort of dumb shock. It was like all of the fight had gone out of him, and he had accepted that he had no control over the world.
He
didn’t. I put my hand on his arm because I felt sorry for him, and then I walked back into the house and up the stairs. I didn’t rush. With every moment that passed, I became more certain that there was no longer any cause for alarm. Sure enough, when I got to the landing, Max was slumped against the bath with a sopping facecloth on his forehead, and Auntie Lizzie was running her fingers through his wet hair. It looked like he was meditating. Perfectly well, perfectly at peace.
    I went to bed, shuddering. The ambulance arrived, then left. I lay there, exhausted and sleepless.

In the morning, I sneaked into Max’s room and sat on his bed. If you looked hard enough, you could see the clues to the little boy he used to be: the windup false teeth on his bedside table, the corner of a wall chart identifying different kinds of beetles sticking out from under his Death Cab for Cutie poster, a box in