500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(47)

“What?” said Lennox.

“I reckon . . .” She retrieved the stitching kit.

“Whoa,” said Nina. “Are you really going to stitch up that cat?”

Lennox still looked dubious.

“She’s not in pain right now,” said Lissa. “I mean . . . I could have a go . . .”

“Fix my damn cat,” came a voice from outside. “I’m holding Margaret until the police come! I’ve just made a citizen’s arrest.”

“I’ll go calm her down,” said Nina. “Also I don’t want to watch this part; I’ll faint and it’ll be disgusting.”

So Lennox held down the other end of the cat in silence, while Lissa bent to her work, quickly trying to unravel the ragged ends of severed flesh. It was rather like doing a grisly jigsaw, and Lissa found a certain satisfaction in working away with quick, neat stitches, checking the cat’s breathing from time to time, and covering each layer in disinfectant powder. Finally, and carefully, she tried to align the ear correctly. It was always going to be a bit wonky, she figured, but hopefully it would still work.

Once she’d closed the wound, trying to make sure it wasn’t pulling in a way that would cause pain, she took a ruler from the stationery drawer and carefully and tightly bound the cat’s leg to it.

“It’s not going to like that,” she observed. “But it’ll last until it gets to the vet hospital. Which is where, by the way?”

“Two hours north,” said Lennox.

“Cor,” said Lissa.

She stroked the cat’s head. It was still snoring deeply, out for the count.

“You might just be okay,” she said softly, thinking, again, of the time when she couldn’t make it okay, when she couldn’t control it. “I think you’ll be okay.”

Lennox looked at her. “Well done,” he said.

She shrugged, pleased. “Oh, it’s just like being back at A&E,” she said. “Except furrier . . .”

There was a huge commotion suddenly at the door, and they both turned around. Nina was walking in with Margaret, who had a black eye.

“What happened?!” said Lissa.

“She tried to kill my cat!” shouted Carrie from outside.

“I thought you were making a citizen’s arrest,” yelled Lissa crossly, sitting Margaret down.

“I was. Police brutality,” came an unapologetic voice as Carrie strode in.

“Right,” said Lissa. “You have to get her to the vet hospital, get her leg set properly.”

Carrie gave the trembling, cowering figure of Margaret a contemptuous glance. “I’ll be borrowing your car.”

“You shan’t,” said Nina hastily. “I’ve got to visit the warehouse anyway. I’ll take you in the bus.”

Lennox looked surprised at this but didn’t say anything as Nina bundled her out and Lissa carefully tended and cleaned Margaret’s eye.

“That’s quite nasty,” she said. “Do you want to press charges?”

“Against Carrie? She’d bewitch me and throw me down a well!” said the woman. “I’m just glad her cat’s okay, otherwise she might have burnt down my house.”

Lissa stopped. “There’s one more thing,” she said, looking severely at the old woman. Joan had an old-fashioned optician’s chart on her far wall. “Can you read me the bottom line of that chart?”

“Not without my glasses,” said the woman. “I’m blind as a bat without them.”

“And were you wearing them when you were driving?”

The woman went very quiet.

“If you don’t get your eyesight sorted out,” said Lissa gently, because what she was about to say was a complete lie, but she’d used it confidently many, many times before, “I’ll have to report you to the police and the DVLA, otherwise I’ll lose my license to practice.”

“Is that true?” said the woman, looking even more shocked. It had definitely not been her morning.

“It is,” said Lissa. “And I’ll be watching out for you.”

She stood up.

“The swelling should go down—keep this ice pack on it. And I highly recommend going to the bakery and having a cup of sweet tea and a long sit-down. Is there anyone who could drive the car home for you?”

“My son,” Margaret said quietly.

“Call him,” said Lissa. “Seriously. Nobody wants to get the police involved.”

Margaret nodded and left timidly. Lennox looked around the surgery, which appeared as if a bomb had hit it, although not necessarily hugely worse than how Joan normally left it.

“Right,” he said. “I’d better get back. Good work.”





Chapter 37


After that, although it wasn’t, of course, Lennox who’d told everyone about it, the story got out somehow—and, in fact, became rather inflated, till by the end Lissa had single-handedly brought a dead cat back to life while stopping Carrie from performing manslaughter, a fact about Carrie nobody seemed to have the slightest problem believing to be absolutely true. And just like that, it seemed, everyone said hello to her in the morning, and people were pleased to see her when she turned up and weren’t so quick to take offense if she looked sad or distracted, and she was amazed, truly, that she wasn’t anything like as lonely as she’d expected to be.