Cat

The first time I saw Cat was a moment of terror so pure, so profound, I was stunned, unable to think, let alone move. Like a rabbit caught in the glare of headlights, I was helpless before my fate.

But Cat was no rabbit. Her eyes - Cat's eyes - were dark wells that seemed to me capable of absorbing all brightness, all mirth, and reflect only anger and pain. And yet they were also beautiful eyes, large Audrey Hepburn eyes that bewitched, eyes that with tears trembling artfully in the corners could seem so full of innocence.

`Such a nice girl,' people would say, unaware of how vicious, how spiteful, was the mind behind.

She did not shout at me that night, did not threaten to call the cops, nor did she show fear, or run away, all of which reactions I could have understood. Instead she just looked at me, no trace of judgement in her expression, drawing occasionally at her cigarette.

There was about her features something Mediterranean, perhaps the slight pout to her lips and the dark, dark hair cut rebelliously short. She was, she told me later, the product of a holiday romance, a souvenir from Spain. Of her father she knew only his name: `Carlos' - and even that was far from certain.

She could perhaps have been pretty, and perhaps she had been once, but between the chain-smoking and a diet of black coffee with more than a passing resemblance to molasses, she lacked the vigour that makes thin girls into supermodels.

That first night there was not even a shadow of glamour. Her black jeans and black poloneck were torn, revealing blood and scars, and the right side of her face was badly bruised, and as my panic subsided I began to suspect that her own concerns and grievances overrode any consideration of my own guilt.

The sound of sirens in the distance broke our mutual study, and she beckoned me to follow - and I, I who had never before trusted a soul, obeyed. From the shadows a block away we watched the warehouse burn, and I was happy, rejoicing in the beauty of fire, in the dancing of flames licking ever higher and hotter. The fire engines arrived too late.

I don't think we ever became any closer than we were that night, united by that spectacle of destruction. We did not speak, and although we had never met before we sat together with the comfortable intimacy of close friendship.

No, we lived in different worlds, and the only passion we shared was in fire. I would pour the kerosene and she would light the match, but even then our needs differed. For me the fire itself was the end; Cat, however, was driven by her desire for vengeance against those who had wounded her.

It was a hunger that could never be sated. She could never inflict enough harm against `him', `he' being her step-father, whose name I never learned. She spoke of him with depths of detestation that chilled me. How was such a loathing even possible? How had a seventeen year old girl learned such hatred?

None of this troubled us that first night. I think that was the happiest moment of my life.