​We buried our tabby cat in the triangular flowerbed. I wrapped her in a metre of material; festooned in guitars, bought in Brighton's Lanes. The cat had actually been a piano player. Wearing herself around his shoulders, she had enjoyed whispering into  my husband's ear. I had been ignored until she chose to lie beneath the piano stool and live life's final bars. It was me who discovered her furry finish.
      Later that same day we sat on a park bench dropping cake crumbs into our laps and sipping coffee through plastic lids. The wooden seat was licked green with lichen. Its brass label announced that Thomas and Flo had enjoyed this view. What  did the couple watch now, together in the next world?  Above our heads birds tweeted to each other as they flew from bush to tree to bush.  A hungry robin pecked between our sensible shoes while the swollen river gloried in its muddy freedom. Carrier bags, shopping trolleys and bobbing plastic bottles had been swept further downstream, on to the sea and out of sight.
     Something moved in the bushes on the far bank. A flash of pure white amongst the greens which locked the eye. I nudged my husband and we watched as the muntjac deer turned its delicate head towards us and stared. No one seemed to breathe. Then silently it melted, wraithlike, into the undergrowth. The striped markings on its face made something catch in my throat.
    We walked on through sunken rose gardens where bruised blooms awaited execution. Like children with a beach ball we passed the pleasure of sighting the deer back and forth. The muntjac had intrigued us both. A shout halted our happiness,
“Look out you fools!” An elderly man cycled towards us, his knuckles pale and skeletal as they gripped the handlebars. Passing between us he muttered under his breath. I felt glad to see him go.
     Daylight began to dim around us and birdsong quietened. Scents of jasmine and clove pinks filled the evening. Our footsteps echoed as curtains twitched closed, blocking out the last of the light. Pennies on the eyelids of a corpse.
     The house seemed cold when we arrived home. I noticed the cat's bowls; standing to attention on the drainer, waiting for the meal which would never come. Gathering them up I pushed them to the back of a cupboard, behind light bulbs and shoe polish.  That decision would be for another day.  Hearing the television begin to chatter, I perched on the piano stall. Ivory keys, cream with age and years of children's practice, glowed in the gloom. As I licked my finger to rub away the muddy paw marks along the keyboard, the cat walked quietly through my thoughts.