Page 11 of The Love Hack

Hesitantly, my fingers clumsy on the keyboard so I made loads of mistakes and had to delete and retype almost every word, I started to write.

Dear Jonno

It’s a privilege to answer your letter in the first ever Ask Adam column. Your love for your late wife and your daughter shines through in your words, and it’s clear to me how lucky you are to have each other in your lives.

You sound like a great dad, but I get how daunting it must feel to be accompanying your daughter on the journey she’s going through. Do you have women in your life you can reach out to for support – your female friends and family, her teachers, even a trusted colleague? If your daughter asks questions you can’t answer right there and then, don’t be scared to admit that, and tell her you’ll help her find the answers.

Keep talking to her, keep loving her, and I bet everything will work out okay. You’ve got this.

I’m very sorry for your loss.

Best wishes, Adam

By the time I’d finished, I felt as knackered as if I’d written a dissertation instead of just a hundred and fifty words. I could have carried on for longer, but the length of the Ask Adam columns had already been agreed, and I didn’t want some ruthless sub-editor cutting down my reply to make it fit in the allocated space.

I pressed Print, hurrying over to the printer and hovering over it, then taking the sheet of paper back to my desk and reading it over and over. It felt like enough – but at the same time, not nearly enough.

‘Ross,’ I asked, ‘have you got a second to look at something?’

He glanced up from his screen. ‘Sure. Hand it over.’

I slid the sheet of paper across the desks between us. Ross took it and looked at it, and I saw his face change from interested and curious to kind of closed. He picked up a red pen and made a couple of small marks on the page, then passed it back to me.

His corrections were minor – a rogue typing error, a comma in the wrong place.

‘What do you reckon?’ I asked. ‘Is it okay?’

He shrugged. ‘Looks all right to me. Why don’t you show Greg?’

‘Yes, I will, but – what do you think?’

‘I’m not the best person to ask. It’s fine, Lucy. Good job.’

He turned back to his work, and I heard his fingers rattling the keys. Just the previous day, things between us had seemed fine – we'd been bantering over coffee, even. But now he seemed cold, as if I’d done something to offend him. I had no idea what that could be, but clearly I wasn’t going to get the validation I sought from him. So I made the corrections, printed the page out again and left it on Greg’s desk.

Then I spent twenty minutes flossing and brushing my teeth before reminding Greg of the reason for my early departure, and leaving the office.

After a mercifully drama-free appointment spent having metal spikes dug into my gums and listening to a lecture about brushing for a minimum of two minutes twice a day and cutting down on coffee, there didn’t seem to be much point going back to the office. I’d head home, I decided, and do a couple of hours work on the sofa – or, more likely, doom-scrolling through websites about feline dentistry and wondering whether I should be brushing Astro’s teeth as well as my own.

But, when I opened the door to my flat bearing a pack of special tooth-friendly treats from the pet shop, my cat didn’t meet me at the door as usual.

‘Astro?’ I called, dumping my bag on the kitchen counter and heading through to the living room and then the bedroom, ‘Where are you?’

There was no response. It was about half an hour earlier than I usually arrived home – perhaps he was sleeping in some specially designated afternoon nap spot I didn’t know about? I checked everywhere I could think of – under the bed, in the wardrobe in case he’d got stuck there, out on the balcony. But no grey furry form emerged.

My puzzlement turning to worry, I left the flat again and walked down the road a bit, calling, rattling treats and looking under parked cars. There was no need to panic, I told myself; it was still going to be light for a couple of hours. It was not unheard of – although unusual – for Astro to hop the few feet down from the balcony and take himself off for a potter in the neighbouring gardens.

But he never went far, or stayed out long. He’d always been an unadventurous, homebody sort of cat. His formative months spent sleeping rough had clearly convinced him that the outdoor life wasn’t for the likes of him, and the idea that he was out somewhere, lost and afraid, made me afraid too.

By six thirty, there was still no sign of him. I rattled treats, checked in neighbouring gardens and walked the length of my quiet street again and again, calling for him.

There was no answering meow.

Reluctantly, I ventured further – down towards the main road, where I could hear the evening traffic – buses, cars, lorries, speeding bicycles – building up. There was a park where people let dogs play off their leads. There was an MOT garage with all sorts of dangerous places where he could have got injured or trapped. There were shops with wheelie bins out the back where foxes and other, more streetwise cats foraged after dark.

It was no place for Astro. But I had to keep looking, because I didn’t know what else to do. If I hadn’t found him by nightfall, I decided, I’d return home and post on social media, perhaps design some posters to print out at work in the morning, probably call my mum and have a cry.

For now, though, I kept walking, looking, calling and increasingly panicking.

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