It was mid morning before the security company arrived. I walked with them across the road to Rebecca's house, and showed them exactly where I wanted the unobtrusive CCTV cameras set up. The white kitten had somehow managed to escape from inside the house, and it came running up to me as soon as it saw me. I picked it up and draped it over my shoulder where it lay purring, while I showed the security technician what I needed. Rebecca's mother had given her permission for the installation this morning. I had phoned her at work and explained that Rebecca might need extra protection for a while after her abduction, and that she would feel more secure with a few simple precautions, and she had agreed. I could tell she was still worried about her daughter. I wondered how she would react when Rebecca and I told her tonight that we were getting married in ten day's time.
The Harding house was locked so the little cat would have to spend some time at my place until the family arrived home. I carried it back to my house as my thoughts drifted of their own accord back to Rebecca.
It couldn't have been easy going back to school so soon after all the strange things that had happened to her recently, but she had insisted in true Rebecca-style, and so she had gone. I had capitulated - I really had no business telling her what she should or shouldn't do.
Later that afternoon, when I picked her up from school, it seemed as if she had been right to insist on going. It appeared as if the normalcy of being back at school again had helped her to regain her equilibrium. But once we had been to town and she had chosen her ring, it all seemed to crumble a little, and she looked shattered, as if the effort to be normal had been an exhausting ordeal. I sent her to sleep on my bed, resisting the fleeting but fierce temptation to join her, and remembered something I needed to discuss with Fergus. I had just picked up my phone to contact him when there was a knock on my door. I opened it to reveal a worried looking Mark standing on the step.
"Have you seen my cat?" he wanted to know. "I think she got out this morning, before we went to school, and now I can't find her anywhere." He looked almost frantic.
I grinned at him. "She's upstairs sleeping with your sister. I found her loitering outside your house this morning, and brought her back here."