She smelled the shoes heaped up in the entrance hall and violently sneezed, and when she walked into the living room she stopped and looked around, and her tail slowly lifted as if she could sense something there that she didn’t like at all. Jim went through to the kitchen with his bags of groceries, but then he came back to see what she thought. ‘Well, TT, how does it grab you? It’s kind of well-worn, I’ll admit. Decrepit, even. But it has atmosphere, doesn’t it?’ Tibbles padded across the hearthrug and looked up at the painting of the man with the black cloth draped over his head. She stared at it, unmoving, although both of her ears were pricked up. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Jim after a while. ‘I’m going to see if Genevieve Frost can sell it for me.’ Tibbles turned around and looked at him, and gave him a querying miaow. ‘OK, we can leave it up if you like. But Vinnie says it gives him nightmares, and it’ll probably give me nightmares, too, especially after six beers and a quattro staggione pizza with extra jalapeno peppers.’ Tibbles gave a more dismissive miaow, as if she didn’t want to discuss what Jim was like after six beers and a quattro staggione pizza with extra jalapeno peppers.
