A Gift From Bob Read online

  James Bowen is the author of the bestselling A STREET

  CAT NAMED BOB and THE WORLD ACCORDING TO

  BOB. He found Bob the cat in 2007 and the pair have been

  inseparable ever since. They both live in north London.

  Also by James Bowen

  A Street Cat Named Bob

  The World According to Bob

  Bob: No Ordinary Cat

  For the Love of Bob

  Where in the World is Bob?

  My Name is Bob

  A Gift from Bob

  James Bowen

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © James and Bob Ltd and Connected Content Ltd 2014

  Illustrations © Dan Williams

  The right of James Bowen and Garry Jenkins to be identified as the

  Author of the Work has been asserted by them in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473605794

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To Penny & Mark

  I love you both forever

  To the Winters Family Clan

  In moments that felt hopeless TMB&A always

  brought sunshine & warmth to my life.

  ‘“Maybe Christmas,” the Grinch thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”’

  Dr Seuss

  ‘Time spent with cats is never wasted.’

  Sigmund Freud

  Contents

  Prologue

  Three years earlier

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Acknowledgements

  Bob Information Page

  Prologue

  London, December 2013

  It was still a few weeks before Christmas but inside the swish hotel near Trafalgar Square the party was already in full swing. The huge, mirrored ballroom was buzzing; there must have been more than two hundred people milling around, chatting and laughing. A small army of smartly dressed waiters and waitresses were circulating with trays of champagne, wine and tasty-looking canapés. Everyone was in a festive mood.

  The lunchtime gathering had been organised by one of the biggest publishers in London and was dotted with well-known authors. Every now and again I’d see a face that looked familiar, then realise I’d seen them on television or in a newspaper.

  To judge by the way they greeted each other with flamboyant hugs and kisses, a lot of the partygoers were old friends. I, on the other hand, barely knew a soul.

  A part of me felt a little bit like a gatecrasher, as if I was there on false pretences somehow. Except that I wasn’t.

  To begin with, the smart, gold-embossed card inviting me and my ‘plus one’ was still tucked inside my leather jacket, where I intended to keep it as a memento. Also, a few minutes earlier, as everyone had gathered in the room, the hostess of the party, the head of the company, had publicly thanked a few of the authors who had braved the cold weather to be there. One of the names she’d singled out had been mine. Well, mine along with that of my ‘plus one’ for the day, to be precise.

  ‘And we’re really delighted to see James Bowen, accompanied, of course, by his constant companion Bob,’ she’d said to loud applause.

  Every head in the room had seemed to turn in my direction. If they’d all been staring at me I’d have been overwhelmed with self-consciousness, but fortunately they hadn’t. As so often happened these days, all eyes had actually focussed on a point somewhere above my shoulders and the handsome, ginger cat who was perched there, staring out imperiously, like the captain of a galleon, surveying all before him. He was the star attraction. As usual.

  It was no exaggeration to say that Bob had saved my life. When I’d met him six years earlier he’d been a stray, lying injured in the hallway of my block of flats in north London. His arrival had marked a huge turning point in my troubled life. At the time I’d been a recovering heroin addict, struggling to complete a methadone programme. I was twenty-eight years old and had spent the best part of a decade sleeping rough and in homeless shelters or sheltered accommodation. I was lost. Caring for Bob had given me the impetus and incentive I needed to turn my life around. I’d done that, firstly by busking and selling the homeless magazine The Big Issue, but also by weaning myself off drugs.

  Bob was by far the most intelligent and resourceful cat I’d ever encountered. Our time together on the streets of London had been eventful but also hugely cathartic. Each day it seemed like he gave me direction, purpose, companionship and, well, a reason to smile.

  His impact had been so great that I’d been approached to write a book about our adventures together. When it had been published in March 2012, I’d not expected it to sell more than a hundred copies if I was lucky. Instead, to my utter amazement, it had become a bestseller, not just in the UK but around the world. Since then I’d written a second book about my life on the streets with Bob, as well as a children’s picture book imagining Bob’s life before we met. Between them they had sold more than one million copies in the UK alone. It had been this success that had earned Bob and myself an invitation to this particular gathering.

  With the speeches over, the party really got into top gear. The waiters were great with Bob and provided me with a couple of bowls so that I could lay out some food and some special cat milk that I’d brought along with me. Bob was always a people magnet and today was no exception. Partygoers kept coming up to us wanting to take a picture of Bob and say hello. They would congratulate me on my success and ask about my future plans. For the first time in my life I actually had some and I shared them happily. I was particularly proud of the work I was now doing for homeless and animal charities. I felt like I was giving back to people who had given me a lifeline when I’d really needed it. When people asked me how I planned to spend Christmas, I told them how Bob and I, along with my best friend Belle, were going to treat ourselves to a nice West End show and a couple of meals at smart restaurants.

  ‘Must be very different from the Christmases you spent a few years ago,’ one lady said to me. I just smiled and nodded.

  ‘Just a little.’

  At one point there was a small, very well-heeled queue waiting to meet Bob. No matter how hard I tried, I could never quite get used to this kind of attention, even though it was becoming commonplace. A few days before this, for instance, I had spent a day at a London hotel making a film for Japanese television. Back in Japan, I later learned, actors were reconstructing my life with Bob for a dramatisation of our story that was part of this television programme. I couldn’t quite get my head around that.

  A few months before this we had been on ITV receiving an award at the UK’s first televised National Animal Awards, watched by an audience of millions. In many ways my life resembled a dream. I was doing things that I wouldn’t have imagined possible, almost on a day-to-day basis. I lived in a constant state of wanting someone to pinch me.

  As
it turned out, the biggest ‘pinch me’ moment of the Christmas party came right at the end. We had been there for a couple of hours when the party began to break up. Bob was looking tired in any case, so I was ready to leave. I had knelt down to attach the lead that Bob wore when we were out on the streets together when I became aware of someone standing behind me.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to come over. Do you think he’d mind if I gave him a quick hello?’ a female voice asked.

  ‘Just a moment, please, I’m just fixing his harness,’ I said, turning around and looking up.

  I recognised the face immediately. It was the children’s author Jacqueline Wilson, a national treasure in the UK and author of dozens of classic children’s books.

  I’m not usually short of something to say, but I was lost for words. I was really flummoxed. I think I muttered something about how much I admired her, which was true, and how Belle was a huge fan of her most popular character, Tracy Beaker, which was definitely true.

  ‘I have been following your story and I think what the pair of you have achieved is fantastic,’ she said.

  We chatted a little more as we both headed out of the party and into the foyer of the building. It was such a thrill for me. I’d felt like an outsider, a usurper, but she’d made me feel like I belonged in this world.

  As usual, Bob was wearing one of the scarves that he’d been gifted by his many admirers. Stepping out into the late afternoon gloom, I adjusted it so that it protected him from the cold.

  ‘Well that was fun, wasn’t it, mate?’ I said, feeling a sense of elation that the party had gone so well.

  As so often in the past, the streets of London soon snapped me back to reality. The sky was darkening and a cutting wind was blowing down from the direction of Trafalgar Square where I could see the traditional, giant Christmas tree lit up already for the evening.

  ‘Come on, Bob, let’s get a black cab,’ I said, heading towards the Square.

  That was something else that sometimes made me pinch myself. The prospect of taking a taxi had been unthinkable not so long ago. I barely had enough money to pay for a bus some days. Even now I took cabs infrequently. I always felt guilty spending the money, even when, as on this occasion, it was justified. It had been a busy day, Bob was tired and cold and we had to meet Belle near Oxford Circus.

  The street was busy with shoppers and people starting to head home after a day’s work so it was hard to spot a cab with its yellow light on. I had just failed to flag down the umpteenth taxi when I spotted the familiar red tabard of a Big Issue seller on the corner.

  I instantly recognised the distinctive bobble hat, gloves and scarf he was wearing. The Big Issue Foundation handed out a cold weather package each winter to those long-term sellers who needed it. The man’s bearded, wind-reddened face didn’t ring any bells, however. He had long, lank grey hair and was in his fifties probably.

  I could see he had a large pile of magazines, which suggested to me he’d either just started his day or he was really struggling to sell them. From experience, I suspected the latter.

  I could also tell he was really feeling the cold. He was repeatedly stamping his feet to try to keep the blood flowing and kept blowing into his hands to try to get some warmth into his wind-chilled body.

  I walked over and gave him a £20 note. I didn’t have any loose coins.

  ‘Cheers, mate,’ he said, delighted but also looking a little confused that a random guy had given him that much money. When he offered me the change I just shook my head.

  For a moment he weighed me and Bob up. His face was wearing an expression that seemed to be asking, Why?

  ‘Really, mate, I know what it’s like. I know how cold it gets and just how hard this time of year is. Please take it, I understand the difference a few extra quid can make,’ I said.

  He had no idea who I was, which was hardly surprising. It wasn’t as if I was on television or anything like that.

  He looked sceptical, but smiled.

  ‘Trust me, I really do,’ I said.

  ‘OK, I’ll take your word for it.’

  I was just about to head off when he suddenly reached down.

  ‘Oh, wait a minute, mate, here’s something for you,’ he said, rummaging around in his rucksack.

  The Christmas card he produced had a nativity scene on the front. He’d probably picked it up in a pound shop or a charity store. Inside it said, very simply: Merry Christmas, thank you for your support, Brian.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Hope you manage to have a good one too.’

  I would have stayed to talk a little longer but I was suddenly aware of a taxi approaching with its yellow light on. Bob was getting restless and I needed to get going. The instant I opened the door Bob bounded in, grateful for the warmth. He then curled himself up on the seat alongside me, ready for a well-deserved snooze.

  As we pulled away, I turned around and watched Brian melt into the London evening. The red and grey figure had soon become indistinguishable from the blur of coloured lights in Trafalgar Square, but I couldn’t shake the image of him – and the simple gesture he’d made – out of my mind. It stirred up a whole array of emotions and memories, some poignant, some happy, others very sad.

  It hadn’t been so long ago that I had been in exactly the same boat. For more than a decade I too had been an invisible face in the crowd, relying on the kindness of strangers. The last Christmas I’d spent working full-time on the streets was that of 2010, just three years earlier.

  As the black cab weaved its way northwards, along Regent Street with its gaudy Christmas window displays and street decorations, my mind flashed back to that year. Life on the streets had always been a struggle, but that Christmas had been particularly tough and testing. Yet I remembered how it had also been filled with important lessons; lessons that, as I dwelled on them again now, suddenly seemed even more precious given the unexpected turn that my life had taken. They were the type of lessons that no amount of money or success could have bought. And, as I prepared for another, very different type of Christmas, I knew they were lessons I must never forget.

  Three years earlier

  London, Christmas 2010

  Chapter 1

  Golden Paws

  The walk home was slow and painful.

  It had been one of the coldest Decembers on record and the day before had seen one of the biggest blizzards in twenty years. Six inches of snow had fallen in a couple of hours. Today the pavement was a shiny, rutted, iron-grey sheet of ice. It was absolutely treacherous. Each time I took a step I wondered whether my luck would hold or whether, instead, I was going to fall flat on my face. To make matters worse, every time I placed my foot down, a sharp, shooting pain worked its way up my right leg.

  It had been that leg that had brought me out today. It had been giving me trouble all month and earlier that week my doctor had confirmed what I’d suspected; the pain was a recurrence of a problem I’d suffered for a while, deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, in my upper thigh. A year or so ago I’d spent some time in hospital being treated for it. My doctor told me to take some painkillers, but warned that the best thing to do was to stay in the warm until the end of the Arctic weather.

  ‘The cold basically slows the blood down,’ he said. ‘So it helps to stay indoors.’

  ‘As if,’ I had said to myself at the time. ‘It’s a week or so before Christmas, there’s more snow in London than Siberia. How exactly am I going to eat and heat my flat if I don’t go outdoors and do some work?’

  Reluctantly, I’d taken his advice for a few days. The weather had been so intense there had been absolutely no way I could venture out. But this afternoon the throbbing had got so bad that I’d had to hobble over to the shops near my block of flats to get some more painkillers. It was a Sunday, and even though Christmas was now just six days away, a lot of the shops were closed. So I’d had to walk further to a little convenience store that had a little pharamacy.

  It was normally only a five minute walk
home, but the slippery surface meant that today it took twice as long. At one point I felt so unsteady I found myself holding on to the walls and railings as I inched my way along. When I finally reached the door of the block of flats where I had lived for the past four years or so I breathed a huge sigh of relief. It wasn’t just that I’d safely negotiated the ice rink that was my road. The wind was so cold it had begun to chill my bones; it felt good to feel the warmth of the building.

  Even better, the lift was working. We’d had a fancy new elevator with an electric display fitted earlier in the year. It had been more efficient than the old, hydraulic one which broke down all the time. I had been dreading walking up the five flights of stairs to my flat on the top floor of the building, especially given the nagging pain my leg was giving me.

  By the time the lift doors opened on the fifth floor I could feel my mood lightening. The comical sight that greeted me when I walked into my flat raised my spirits further still.

  Belle had come over to see us. Belle was, like me, a recovering addict. If her life hadn’t taken a similar wrong turn to my own, she could easily have been an artist or designer. She was always creating things from odds and ends she found. As usual at this time of the year, she had decided to make her own Christmas decorations and cards. I could see a few of them neatly stacked alongside her already. An array of card, glitter, glue, string and ribbons was now spread out on the small coffee table in the living room. It was pretty obvious that Bob had been joining in the fun; the evidence was right there in front of me.

  The first thing I noticed was lengths of ribbon everywhere. I spotted little bows on various cards Belle had made and realised Bob must have nabbed the leftover ribbons while she wasn’t looking. It was as if he’d tried to tie a bow around the entire flat; there was ribbon on the carpet, over the back of the sofa and even around the television set. He had completely run amok.