Sheri soon made herself very much at home and, being older, was quick to take on the role of mother and boss where little Tinker was concerned. Often I would come home to find them curled up together at the end of my bed or sharing a bowl of food, nose to nose. They rarely scrapped, although chasing around the place at high speed became a favourite game and I had to move a few ornaments and vases out of the way, to make sure they didn’t get broken.

Now the cats were happy in each other’s company and starting to explore their new garden with easy access through their newly installed cat flap, I felt able to spend more time at the centre. I soon added Thursday to my regular shifts.

Thursday was the one day of the week that Simon Grey came in as a volunteer. I’d heard his name, of course, from some of the others, but our paths hadn’t crossed before. Now he stood in front of me, wearing an old jacket and a pair of huge green willies. He had a bag of straw hefted over his shoulder.

“Pleased to meet you at last, Jan.” he shook my hand and laid the straw down. “It’s you we have to thank for sorting out the office, I understand. So nice to be able to find the right forms and not have to fight my way through the mounds of paper that used to litter the place. You must be some kind of miracle worker!”

I blushed. I might be in my fifties, but compliments were still a surprise.

“Not at all. Just organised after years of office work, and glad to keep my hand in now that part of my life is over. How about you? Are you retired, too?”

He nodded.

“Police force, but I took retirement a couple of years back. Coming here gets me out in the fresh air and gives me a bit of exercise. I’m not one for the gym far too boring. Besides, I like the animals. I used to handle police dogs, and always had one at home with me. But since I lost Elsie…”

“Your wife?”

“No. Elsie was my last dog. A real beauty. Retired with me, but died just six months ago, poor thing. no, there’s no wife. Never met the right woman!”

I saw a lot of Simon after that. He was there every Thursday, working outdoors most of the time, but he’d usually pop into the little cabin for a coffee mid-morning, and sit and chat for a while. It was he who told me about the old tortoise that had just been brought in. Someone had found it wandering at the bottom of their garden and didn’t know how to look after it.

“We’ll happily do that for you,” Simon had told them, taking the large cardboard box and peering inside. “Wow, he’s a beauty, and no mistake!”

Simon put the box on the desk in front of me as he drank his coffee.

“I’ll leave the old fellow here for a short while if that’s OK with you, while I sort him out some proper living quarters and some food.”

When he’d gone, I looked inside. There was something calming about a tortoise. Slow and plodding, as if there was nothing worth hurrying for.

This one was big, with very distinctive markings on his shell, and he was munching on a cabbage leaf, quite unperturbed about finding himself in this new and strange environment.

I smiled. He reminded me very much of old Timmy, the tortoise we’d briefly had and lost when I was a girl. He’d had markings just like these.

In fact, the more I looked at him, the more I began to convince myself that this was Timmy. But surely that couldn’t be, could it? Not after 40 years?

There were some animal books on the shelves. I’d catalogued them all not so long ago, and sorted them into order, according to animal type and breed.

It took seconds to lay my hands on the tortoise book, and soon I was absorbed in reading all about these magnificent creatures.

Tortoises are one of the longest lived animals. They can live up to one hundred and fifty years. They don’t travel very fast or very far.

“Simon!” I gabbled as soon as he came back into the room. “I lost a tortoise just like this one once. Do you think it’s possible that this could be him? The markings are just the same.”

“Slow down, Jan. start at the beginning. There’s no rush. This one isn’t going anywhere in a hurry!”

I was being silly, of course. There was no way of proving the tortoise’s identity, of knowing where he had come from or how long he had been lost.

But I knew, just as I had with Sheri, that I had to have him.

“I want to take him home with me, Simon.”

“Well, wouldn’t you like to think about it first?”

“No! Please don’t bother settling him into a pen. I have a huge back garden for him to live in, and with the help of this book I can make sure he gets the right things to eat, and…”

“And a proper shelter to hibernate in? And foolproof fencing so he can’t escape again?”

“OK. I know I have a lot to learn, but if it is Timmy I feel I owe it to him.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Well, I want him anyway.”

“In that case, if you’re sure, we’ll get the rehoming forms filled in, run it past Rose and I will personally escort you both home. I can inspect the garden fence for you, and help to plug up any gaps. How does that sound?”

“Perfect. But on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“That you stay for dinner.”

Lorna almost drops her biscuit as she splutters crumbs in disbelief.

“You’ve what?” she says.

“I’ve started dating,” I say again. “His name is Simon.”

“That’s what I thought you said. Well, you’re a dark horse, aren’t you?”

I feel Tinker jump up on to my lap. Sheri tries to do the same to my sister.

“Get down,” she says, brushing the cat away. “You’ll get hairs on my skirt.”

“She doesn’t mean any harm.”

“Honestly, Jan, this house is turning into some kind of menagerie lately. I’m dreading what might turn up next! Which brings me back to what we were just talking about before this… this animal interrupted us. Now, tell me all about this elusive Simon. And when am I going to meet him?”

“Any minute now, actually. He’s dropping by with Molly.”

“Molly? Who’s Molly?”

“His puppy. He’s only recently got her from the centre. A sweet little mongrel nobody else seemed to want. But we did.”

“We? So, it’s we already, is it?”

I think ahead to the day when we will merge our lives, our homes and our pets together under one very warm and welcoming roof.

Simon has asked me to marry him. It seems he had met the right woman at last, and I know for certain that I’ve met the right man. All we have to do now is introduce Molly to Timmy and the cats, and get their seal of approval.

Hopefully they’ll accept her and love her as easily as they did each other.

“It’s always going to be ‘we’ from now on. Lorna,” I tell my sister.

I pick Tinker up from my lap to rub his little white tipped ear.

If it weren’t for him turning up on that unremarkable day, none of the quite remarkable changes that followed would ever have happened.

“In fact, thanks to this little minx and the joy he has brought into my life,” I say as I hear the doorbell ring, “I don’t think I will ever feel lonely again.”