By Charlie Lyndhurst
Wickford, Essex, Sasha Droxford stared at the message she’d received on one of her mostly dormant social media accounts she’d set up for Fluffy Paws Cat Sanctuary.
Lucky L Legs-Crossed: I think I am your son I’d like to meet you
She read it twice, knowing with absolute certainty she had no children and no partner, so this must be some random person on the internet trying to trick her.
Sasha had been the manager and owner of this cat sanctuary for more than a decade, she thought she’d seen and heard everything, and was, for the avoidance of doubt, very tired and pretty much done with most things. She peered closer at the computer screen, reading the message again: I think I am your son…
She sat back in surprise; the chair sprang forwards slightly. Except… What if… The air left her lungs, as if she’d been winded. An icy chill of possibility, of realisation, ran down her spine. Could it be real? The initial, but what did the Legs-Crossed bit mean? She’d been told the name had no bearing on… well, anything.
Sasha shook her head, absolutely impossible, the chances were a million to one, worse, in fact. She knew this to be the case because… reasons. Anyway, this was the problem with the internet, setting up an account for Fluffy Paws, one moment you’re tweeting, or posting, or whatever it was about stray cats needing their fur-ever home, and then you’re sitting at your computer staring at a message from someone crossing their legs. Not to mention one without any full stops.
Sasha wasn’t quite sure how she’d ended up here, but life seemed to have given her this furrow to plough, so she must continue. With a sigh, confused, and exhausted by social media and computers, she clicked the message away. Gone and out of sight, out of mind.
Unbelievable. Fluffy Paws Cat Sanctuary was in Wickford, a London commuter town with a love of roundabouts that was, for some, rather too close to the orbit of Basildon, or Bas Vegas, as the locals named it. This was on account of the roundabout announcing in two-metre-high white letters its name as people entered Basildon on both directions of the main arterial road. Sasha had once thought that rather amusing, but now it had become background, like so many things she no longer noticed.
Returning to the spreadsheet showing the income and expenditure of Fluffy Paws Cat Sanctuary, she sighed, long and low. She was no great whizz with figures, but even she could see they were, for want of a more delicate phrase, absolutely up shit creek without a paddle this month. With over fifteen thousand pounds of vets’ bills still awaiting payment,
