She hadn't wanted to face Marcus when he came round to get his things, so she had boxed up the few meagre possessions that he'd deigned to leave at her place on the couple of nights a week he spent with her. Several sets of underwear, a couple of jumpers, a novel and some artsy self-improvement manual, a fairly rank toothbrush, a CD or two – that was pretty much all there was to show for two years together. She hardly every stayed over at his place so she knew he wouldn't have a similar box of her stuff; if he did, then she could live without it.
She left the box in front of the door to her flat and listened out when he arrived, waiting to see if he would knock or not. She could almost hear his fist hovering in mid-air for a few seconds before he bent to pick up the box, deciding against seeing Phoebe for one last time. There was a clink as he dropped his key through the letterbox, and she exhaled with relief as she heard his footsteps retreating down the hall.
Phoebe hoped that box would sit in Marcus' flat for a few weeks before he bothered to unpack it. Right at the bottom she had put in a little present from Arnie – one of his finest poops, freshly scooped from his litter tray and bagged up as a special parting gift. She'd teach him to say he'd never liked cats. She giggled as she imagined his reaction when he eventually found it.
Good effort, Phoebe-human. That bloke was a tosser, Arnie purred from his position of comfort on the sofa, reaching out a soft paw to touch her leg.
Two weeks later, Phoebe couldn't help the immense satisfaction she felt on hearing on the grapevine that Marcus had lost his job in the latest round of the bank's redundancy programme. Apparently he'd been marched from the premises with his few pathetic possessions in a cardboard box. Another box, another parting. No cat poop this time, though, probably.
Boy, what she would have given to have been there to see the look on his face. What goes around comes around, Marcus, she'd thought.
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Hand On Heart: Sequel to Head Over Heels Page 29
