I was waiting to hear about the Decision when the killings really started kicking off in the garden. Then there were the scary dreams about the future, like everything got mixed up somehow. I was trying to find the bus to Ipswich and I was being chased by a growling monster with sharp teeth, and I knew they were really sharp, even though the monster was behind me. The doctor on shift gave me some pills to straighten me out and sighed that ‘it must have all made an impression’ in a bored, posh voice. I’ll try not to bore you, like I bored the doctor. I’ll need to start with the flat. Shouldn’t take long. Derek used to call it ‘our humble home’ as a joke, but when we got married it was everything that we could have wanted. Best of all, seeing as we were on the ground floor of Summertown House, we had our own garden and sometimes that made me feel guilty, because the nine floors right on top of us had no outside space at all, and we never had kids, even though we’d hoped for them. That’s why I became green fingered and kept the weeds back, so the families in the flats above could look over their balconies at something nice. It wasn’t exactly … private, anyway, with all those windows looking over. Once, a plate came crashing down on the patio, missing me by inches. Gave me a shock that no one said sorry. Anyway, around the time we were all waiting for the Decision, Job came into my life. He’d been found scratching madly at a door on the fifth floor, and the news came through that the Joneses, whose youngest kid was always having those tantrums in the stairwell, had hit the central reservation on the M1, just the week they’d got to the top of the waiting list for a house. Well, I’d always loved cats, but we’d never had one because Derek was allergic, but Derek had passed by then and nobody else wanted to take it on. I didn’t know its name, but then Mrs. O’Reilly from First Communion class came back to my mind all of a sudden from those years ago. Poor Job who lost everything, his Mam and Dad, his kids, that story always made me cry. ‘The moral’, said stern old Mrs. O’Reilly in her Sunday-best voice, ‘is to be grateful before it’s too late’. So Job it was. ‘You were just about to move to a nice house with a garden’ I’d say rubbing his fur, ‘but don’t you worry, you got your garden anyway’. Problem was, Job had never been outside before and he went berserk. There’d be frogs shouting blue murder at three in the morning from behind the settee, mice on the doormat. Then, one time, he brought in a dead pigeon, plonked it on the best rug, growling at me when I tried to stop him. My heart was going crazy because the letters had started again from the council about the Decision, so I called Eddie the Activist from floor three, because Eddie always looked out for me. Kind young man, a professional activist he always said, but I’m not sure who pays him. Anyway, he always looked like he needed a haircut and a square meal, so I gave him a ring and he knocked on the door, smiling. He didn’t look too happy with the Tesco bag I handed him, but he made a joke anyway and wrapped up the body nice and quick. ‘You know, Joan’, he said, ‘it’s not looking good is it? But don’t you worry, I’m going to carry on fighting. We’re London people’. ‘I was born just down the road, never lived anywhere else’, I said and my eyes became a bit blurry then, but that was a good thing because I hated seeing the pigeon’s claws poking out from the plastic bag. I don’t want to go to Ipswich or Macclesfield, or any of those places the council’s whispering about. The next day, Job started chasing another pigeon around the garden. ‘Shoo, shoo’, I yelled from the window, but he kept on grabbing it with his mouth, and it would escape, and he would grab it again, and its wings were broken and I quite lost my appetite, although I’d burnt the lunch anyway, because of the hoo-ha. Job got bored and would occasionally rush at the pigeon and then come back in to have his nap. And the stupid bird couldn’t fly away, so he’d strut about and sit, blinking. And then, the next day, it would be the same, and then the same again and I thought: what a stupid way to die, waiting to be killed by a cat. Good thing it was none too bright. I’d have been shivering in a corner. Next day was beautiful. I remember. Spring. Job sitting on the grass, licking his paws. The pigeon, gone. I had my cuppa on the patio. There were a few feathers here and there. A relief. It was a bit early to call Eddie and I didn’t want to look at more than one corpse a week. I was sat at the kitchen table eating breakfast when the post plopped through the door. ‘Morning Jim’, I shouted as usual, but the letterbox just snapped back. The envelope was brown, boring looking, I thought, as I ripped it open. Red ink. EVICTION NOTICE, it said. The cat flap banged and in came Job with – and I remember this so clearly, like it was yesterday - a single grey feather on his neck, right by his white patch. ‘Owing to the redevelopment of your area, we are sorry to inform you …’ “We are sorry?” Can you imagine? The heartless ... ‘Oh Jobey’, I said picking him up, ‘you did have your garden’ and I cried my life out into his black fur.