Free The Good Mayor by Andrew Nicoll

handles and swung him into space. Then he rocked unsteadily and stamped about on the uncertain floor of his cage, mewling pitifully. Agathe put her hand flat against the bottom of the paper sack to give him the reassurance of something solid beneath his feet and blew gently into the kitten’s fur to attract his attention. “Shush, shush, shush, don’t be scared, little cat. We’ll soon have you home.” She could feel the heat of his paws even through the thick paper bag and the delicious moving weight of him, hidden and dark and enclosed and unseen against her own flesh, brought back an old memory for her. “Soon have you home. You’re like the rest of us—you just need some love. So come home with me and I’ll look after you.”

    For the second night in a row, Agathe climbed the stairs to her flat with a parcel of hope swinging from a string at her finger but,when she reached the landing, she felt it leaking away out of the bottom of the bag to lie in a puddle at her feet.

    The door of the flat was standing ajar. As Agathe went to push it open, she heard voices from inside—men’s voices. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, listening. Stopak—she recognised his snorting laughter—and then that other voice. Agathe bounced the door open and walked in. “Hektor, what a surprise! And I was hoping we’d been burgled.”

    Stopak and Hektor were sitting together at the kitchen table, a platoon of empty beer bottles standing to attention between them.

    “Aww, don’t be like that,” said Stopak. “It’s just a little celebration. Me and my new partner.” Stopak nodded the neck of the bottle in his fist across the table at Hektor.

    “Your new partner? Your new partner!” Agathe was astonished. “All of a sudden the paperhanging business is so vast you need to spread the profits round a bit, is that it? You can’t keep up with demand, is that it? And him! Why him? The things he knows about paperhanging you can count on the fingers of one foot!”

    Agathe stamped out of the room and flung herself down on her bed—the only private place in the house, someplace where at least Hektor would never venture.

    But he did. She was lying, face down on the pillow, her hair undone and piled in wanton mountains around her, her blouse loose and unbuttoned, still fuming over Stopak’s news, when Hektor came in and spoke. “It’s not like Stopak made out,” he said.

    “Hektor, go away.”

    “Look, I don’t want to bother you or anything. It’s just so you know—I’m not Stopak’s partner.”

    “Hektor, just go away.” Agathe’s voice was half-muffled by the pillow.

    “I’ll go, I’ll go. Just don’t be angry with Stopak. He did a good thing. I had a bit of bother and he helped me out. He gave me a job but I’m not his partner and I’m not looking for a share of the profits. Nothing like that. It’s just a job. Stopak’s the boss. I’m just an employee.”

    Agathe lifted her face from the pillow. She was red-eyed andtearful again. These days, Agathe acknowledged to herself that she seemed to be always upset or on the verge of being upset. She pushed her hair back into its clasp, a gesture that made her blouse gape, exposing her sensible undershirt, and she flustered over the buttons and smoothed down her skirt. “Hektor, I don’t care if he’s hired you. I don’t care if he hires Ivan the Terrible. I’m guessing he hired you because Ivan the Terrible got a better offer. Probably Ivan the Terrible would know at least as much about paperhanging as you do but I don’t care! Hektor, just go away.”

    “All right,” he said, “I’ll go. But there’s somebody else who wants to see you.”

    Agathe looked up from her last button expecting Stopak, shamefaced and shuffling. Instead, there was Hektor, holding out two paper bags. “I think he’s hungry.”

    She took the bags and said nothing. Hektor waited hopefully for a word and, when it didn’t come, he said, “By the way, we