June

Helen, nursing a gin and tonic that was ninety percent gin, had swiped right mostly because she liked Ruth’s kitchen. It was an island of five spice and oyster swirl marble, looking remarkably clean, whereas Helen’s own kitchen was the size of a broom cupboard and smelled faintly of damp dishcloths.

They met at the Event Cinemas Gold Class, where the seats reclined so far back you were practically in a state of clinical repose before the trailers even started. The film was called Incipience. It was one of those high-concept Christopher Nolan-adjacent affairs involving a lot of brass instruments blaring in minor keys and people running down corridors that turned out to be memories inside dreams inside a wardrobe.

"I have absolutely no idea who is alive and who is a metaphor," Ruth whispered about an hour in. She was a lecturer in kitchen design at the local tech, which meant she spent her days thinking about how components held to create flow. Right now, her own flow of nerves was being compromised by a third glass of Pinot Noir.

"I think the building is his mother," Helen whispered back, though she had lost the plot somewhere around the second dream-heist.

Ruth turned her head on the leather headrest. Her eyes were very bright, even in the flickering blue light of a cinematic explosion. "I honestly cannot follow this movie. Back to mine?"

"Thank God," Helen said.

Ruth’s house was exactly as advertised on the tiny screen of Helen's iPhone, only more so. It sat on the lower slopes of Mt Eden, an angular box of western red cedar and glass that managed to look both aggressive and terribly expensive.

"Did you...?" Helen gestured toward the kitchen, which was even more magnificent in three dimensions.

"Designed and installed it myself," Ruth said, kicking off her boots with a satisfying thump against the polished floorboards. "Plumbed the sink, wired the induction hob. If you want something done right, you have to do it with a spirit level and a great deal of swearing."

She put on an album—something jazzy and melancholic from the late sixties that sounded like rain on a pavement—and poured more wine. They danced, which was really just a clumsy, laughing sort of swaying near the marble island, and then they stopped dancing because they were kissing, and then the wine was left on the counter to go flat because they had tumbled into a bedroom that smelled of lavender and high-thread-count cotton.

It was an intense business, falling in love at forty-eight. It wasn’t the slow, exploratory negotiation of your twenties or the desperate nihilism of the thirties; it was an eviction notice served to your previous life. Within six weeks, they were a singular unit. A double doored cabinet.

"Move in," Ruth said one morning, her mouth pressed against Helen’s shoulder blade. "Forever. Obviously."

"Obviously," Helen said, though a cold little finger of reality poked at her ribs.

Because there was, of course, the matter of June.

June was a cat, though lately she resembled a deflated hot water bottle made of greasy black felt. Helen had acquired her during her stint as a receptionist at June’s Real Estate—an appropriate moniker given that the agency mostly dealt in damp rentals and commercial properties that smelled of old cabbage.

The cat had been a fixture of a particularly miserable two bedroom house on Clayton Street. She was a scraggly, thin waif of a thing, all ribs and yellow eyes, who had just produced yet another litter of doomed offspring in the back of a rusted garage.

"She always hangs around," the neighbour, a remarkably thin woman with an equally thin disposition, had told Helen during an open home. "Belongs to the house, not the people. Seems to live on crickets. Every time a tenant shifts out, they leave her behind. Never been doctored. Has litter after litter. Most of them die in the frost, or they just disappear."

Helen, whose heart had a dangerous habit of expanding to accommodate the broken things of the world, had looked at the cat. The cat had looked back with the flat, unblinking gaze of the utterly betrayed.

That afternoon, Helen stole a cardboard archive box from the Lundia at the back of the office, scooped up the waif, and took her home.

For the first month, June lived entirely beneath the mahogany coffee table. She was a ghost who left only the occasional small, neat deposit in a litter tray and ate her biscuits in the dead of night when the flat was silent. But slowly—infinitesimally—the perimeter shrank. As in an ancient tale, the ghost became a guest; the guest became a tenant; the tenant became a sovereign ruler.

"I won't leave you," Helen had told her, burying her face in the black fur which had eventually grown thick and glossy. "Never. Not like the others."

But time is an ungenerous landlord. By the time Helen met Ruth, June was an old, fat black cat, and the years of early neglect were presenting their bills with interest. The vet visits became more frequent and eye-wateringly expensive. First it was the teeth, which required a general anesthetic and left her with a visible white fang poking down (which to Helen was adorable). Then, far worse, came the anal glands.

It was a foul, oily odour, like old fish crossed with unwashed drains, that leaked from her whenever she slept. And June slept everywhere. Helen became a woman possessed by laundry. She bought towels by the dozen from two dollar shops, tucking them under June’s rear end like napkins under a messy toddler. But June was a restless sleeper; she would migrate three centimetres to the left in the middle of the night, leaving a dark, pungent circle directly onto the 250 thread cotton sheets.

To compound matters, the market turned. June’s Real Estate downsized, which was a polite way of saying Helen was handed a cardboard box—coincidentally similar to the one she’d stolen for June—and told that her services as a receptionist were no longer required.

Suddenly, there was no money for the special veterinary biscuits. There was no money for the gland expressions. There was only the agency, which offered two days of temp work a week calling up farmers for research.

So when Ruth pleaded with her to move into the cedar box on the slopes of the hill, it wasn’t just a victory for romance; it was a financial rescue mission.

The cedar box, however, was not designed for a leaking cat.

For the first three months, love carried them over the bumps. They were intoxicated by each other, by the novelty of shared breakfasts and the way their toothbrushes looked together in the ceramic holder. But Ruth was a lecturer in kitchen design, which meant she spent her professional life pretending the world was a map of efficient workflows, seamless ergonomics, and predictable boundaries. At first her questions of Helen were large and conceptual, like a CAD blueprint. Why do you love me? How do I love you? What is this synergy we have Leni?

But the universe, she was discovering, didn’t care for the strict dimensions of a well-planned kitchen triangle. It had other plans, and they were shaped like a cat.

Gradually, the high-concept design questions were replaced, almost seamlessly, by a barrage of minor, domestic indictments foretelling a breakdown of spatial flow. Helen, why did you leave the milk out? Helen, love, why is this saucer here? And—most urgently, as she stared at the armchair—Leni, by what absurd structural defect does black fur permanently fuse itself to green velvet? (The answer, she was beginning to realize, was that it wasn't a defect at all. One simply surrendered to the fur.)

As the weeks passed, June grew slower. She stopped jumping from bar stool to marble island, which was a mercy, but she took to sleeping on the rug directly under the heat pump, her breath coming in short, rattling wheezes. The smell—that thick, oily, prehistoric stench—seemed to bake into the underfloor heating.

One Tuesday morning in late autumn, the solidity of the household finally gave way.

Ruth was standing by the kettle, her face pale, a stack of unmarked exam papers balanced precariously on the edge of the counter. She had a lecture at nine, a faculty meeting at eleven, and she had just discovered a greasy, greyish smudge on the sleeve of her cotton shirt where she had leaned against the sofa.

"The kind thing to do is to put her down, Helen," Ruth said. Her voice was too quiet, which was always worse than shouting.

Helen froze, a mug of black coffee halfway to her mouth. "What?"

"She’s old. She’s sick. She… stinks." Ruth rubbed her temples, where a vein was pulsing like a tiny wire. "The house is becoming unlivable. I can't sleep in our bed without smelling her. It’s disgusting. You’re letting her suffer because you’re too sentimental to see that she’s reached the end of her shelf life."

Shelf life. The words felt cold, like steel instruments.

"She’s not a tin of tomatoes," Helen whispered. “ She is my friend and I will never let her down. Not after all she’s been through.”

"It’s her or me, Helen. I mean it. It’s been nearly six months We can end it now before it just hurts too much." Ruth looked instantly horrified by her own words—the sheer, tragic melodrama of the ultimatum hanging between them like a bad piece of theatre. Neither of them wanted to break up. The last months had been a revelation, a sudden, bright clearing in the forest of mid-life loneliness. The thought of Helen going back to the damp flat, to the double gin and tonics, was unendurable for both of them.

Ruth grabbed her briefcase quickly, her eyes wide with a mixture of anger and panic. "I have to go. We'll... we'll talk tonight."

The front door didn't just close; it slammed with a concussive boom that vibrated through the cedar framing.

Helen sat on the floor. June was watching her from beneath the armchair, her yellow eyes heavy-lidded. She gave a low, rumbling purr. It was that weird purr she’d had since her Clayton Street days—one breath in, but no sound on the breath out. A half-finished engine.

"She knows," Helen said to the empty room. "You know, don't you?"

Helen remembered reading an article once, in a doctor’s waiting room, about drowning. It had been written by a man who had survived a boating accident on Lake Rotorua. He had described it as remarkably pleasant, once the initial panic passed. A total surrender. How your whole life floats before you like an old film—perhaps like Incipience, but easier to follow—and you cannot breathe in or out, so you simply retreat into a peaceful, dark sleep. No more vets. No more buckets in the shed. No more being left behind.

She went out into the garden. The air was crisp, smelling of woodsmoke and damp earth. Beneath the large jasmine bush where June liked to lie during the warm afternoons (and hunt for the occasional cricket), Helen began to dig. She started with the small trowel Ruth kept for her herbs then switched to a spade. The earth was soft, full of fat worms and decaying leaves. She made the hole small enough for a little furry bundle, but deep enough—very deep, she made sure of that—so that the neighbour’s lab couldn't come snuffling around later. She wanted June to stay where she was put. This time.

When she went back inside, she picked the cat up. June felt strangely heavy, like a sack of damp flour, completely boneless in her old age. Helen carried her out to the garden and showed her the dark opening in the soil.

"See?" Helen whispered, stroking the triangular space between June’s ears. "Your final resting place. No more moving. No more towels."

June purred her one-sided purr, her chin with it's solitary fang resting heavily against Helen’s cheek.

Inside again, Helen turned on the bath taps. She adjusted the crossheads until the water was perfectly warm—the temperature of a comfortable bed. She found an old tin of dried catnip in the back of the pantry, its scent faded but still potent enough to make a cat’s eyes widen. She unscrewed the lid and scattered the green flakes across the surface of the water. They floated like tiny lily pads. A kaleidoscopic dream, she thought. A beautiful, green, swirling exit.

Then, she went to the kitchen, gently carried June into the bathroom, and lowered her like a baby over the steaming tub. June’s back legs twitched, sensing the moisture, her claws catching slightly on Helen’s jumper.

Later out in the garden,Helen stood over the deep, neat rectangle beneath the jasmine bush, her hands filthy, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she dragged the spade backward and forward, shoving the earth back into the grave. Ruth cannot know. She patted the dirt flat, smoothing it over with hands that had just smoothed June’s fur, until it looked as though nothing had ever been disturbed, weeping so hard the tears fell into the dust and turned it to mud. Everything was love. Why did she have to choose?

The cedar box was quiet when Ruth returned at six. The evening light had turned the windows into sheets of gold. She carried a heavy paper bag from the boutique pet shop near the college. Inside was a sixty dollar bottle of industrial strength enzymatic deodoriser and three different brochures for comprehensive pet insurance that covered "pre-existing geriatric conditions." Her face was lined with guilt.

Helen was sitting on the sofa in the dark.

"I'm so sorry," Ruth said, dropping the bag and dropping to her knees by the sofa. "I was stressed. The department head is being a fascist about the budget, and I took it out on you. And on her. I don't want you to leave. Never. I don't want her to go. We'll buy more towels."

Helen began to cry—great, silent, shaking sobs that came from somewhere deep in her chest. Ruth pulled her down, wrapping her arms around her, wiping away the tears with the sleeve of her coat.

"I know," Helen wept, looking not at Ruth, but at the dark space beneath the armchair. "I know. It's just... I've made my choice. And everything changes now, doesn't it?"

"It's just a pause," Ruth murmured, kissing her hair. "We’re a unit. Together we can bear the load."

From beneath the armchair, a small, dark shadow detached itself. It moved slowly, its back legs slightly stiff, its coat smelling faintly of old fish and damp earth. It wove its way between Ruth’s ankles, leaving a light streak of black hair on her trousers, and then crossed over to rub its lopsided face against Helen’s shin.

June gave her strange, broken purr. One breath in. No breath out.

Ruth stood up and walked down the short corridor toward the bathroom. Helen stayed on the sofa, her hand resting on the cat's warm, solid head.

From the end of the hall, the bathroom door creaked open.

"Helen?" Ruth’s voice carried clearly over the quiet house, sounding puzzled, slightly sharp, and perfectly logical. "Why is the bath full of cold water, Leni? And why on earth is it covered in catnip?”