Monty had had better birthdays. He'd also had much, much worse birthdays, granted, but comparing his fifty-fourth to his thirty-fourth only served to highlight the saddest similarity: he was alone. And now he was older and creakier and, owing to a recent lapse in self-discipline, a little bit fatter, which made the being alone part all the harder to swallow.
He flipped through the TV channels absently and with a mild sense of self-loathing. He ought to have been reading, inventing, doing something other stewing on the sofa in his pyjamas, but he was already two and a half beers in, and the only thing that was going to motivate him to move was finishing the third one. Perhaps he should get a cat, he thought. No - terrible idea. A hypoallergenic cat? Better, but it was too big a commitment. Besides, he wasn't quite over the shock of finding Isolde dead in the bottom of her cage. And how on earth was he going to replace that owl?
He wasn't aware that he was drifting off until he was groggily awakened by his mobile phone chirping. Saveli, probably, asking how he was. She had been in contact all day, to make up for not being able to visit. The girls had come down with a virus and Monty had insisted he didn't mind. He reached for his phone and squinted at the screen.
Christ. An emergency. What emergency? Cyndi hadn't specified, only that he needed to come at once. Judging by the spelling, she had written it in a hurry. Christ - Monty was still in his pyjamas. He rolled off the sofa and started in a run up the stairs.
Hang on. Cogs of suspicion whirred, or tried to whir against the flow of beer. It was his birthday. And would Cyndi really have alerted him of an emergency via text message? It smelled like a set-up. But that didn't necessarily mean it was a set-up, and he didn't have the mental clarity to think into it. There might have been an emergency. Better safe than sorry.
He threw on a jumper over the top of his pyjama shirt, dialling Cyndi's number at the same time. He didn't wait to find out if she would pick up before he apparated to a quiet spot a little way down her street, which had exactly the sort of effect on his phone signal as you would expect. As the house came into view he sped up. This had better not be a set-up. No, it had better be a set-up. As long as Cyndi was OK.
He reached the door and knocked in a hurry.
Godmods approved
