Searching

The full moon made a bright hole in the black sky as Laura stepped out, barefoot.

‘Jasper,’ she called softly, her feet flattening the cool grass as she trod.

Where was that cat?

Laura stopped.

The muted miaow had come from inside the weeping willow which, in the darkness, stood hunched and caped in the centre of the lawn.

She fed her hand through the rattling curtain and parted it, clutching her belly, still aching with six years’ loss. An eerie child, luminous, translucent, hollow-eyed, with flint-sharp cheekbones, sat cradling the black cat – Richard’s idea of compensation.