Cat's Paw

by Nick Green

  Oh, she saw what this was about. It was a nice try. It wouldn’t work.

  ‘Fine, I’ll do it. They’re gone.’

  She plucked out the first pin fiercely. That was easy. The second was harder, for it was stuck in very deep. On the third, her bloodless fingers couldn’t get a grip. She tugged. She tugged some more. The pin wobbled like a loose tooth. She resolved to do the others first and come back to that one. All at once her hand went heavy.

  ‘Forget it! I’m not in the mood for your silly games.’

  She stormed from his room and flopped back into bed. Then she felt suddenly hungry and had to nip downstairs for a bowl of corn flakes.

  At the weekend Ben called on Olly. Apart from an egg-sized lump on his head he seemed in good spirits, and his parents had virtually ignored his curious injuries. ‘In the Sanders family,’ he explained, ‘we have accidents. Dad says I take after Clumsy Uncle Bob.’ Olly had heard from Yusuf, whose leg, to the despair of his football coach, was in plaster. They talked for a while in Olly’s bedroom about all that had happened. Ben had hoped that talking might help. It didn’t seem to.

  The tower that had blown up too soon became a local news sensation. A week later the story went national, when the diggers clearing the rubble uncovered the pulverised remains of two people. Ben couldn’t bear it, switching off whenever the report came on.

  On Monday, trudging home from school in the drizzle, a flutter in a rubbish bin made him stop. He fished out a sodden page of newspaper and scanned it, wondering what had caught his eye. Then he saw the second story. Soap star’s son ‘returns from the dead’. He read it and reread it to make doubly sure. The details were few. Tony Sherwood, better known as teacher Keith Grogan in Eastenders… his son, missing since the age of ten…tearful reunion… A photo of Tony Sherwood’s character but not his son.

  Ben folded the wet newspaper into his schoolbag. He no longer noticed the rain. Thomas had made it home. Ben did something he hadn’t done for years – he jumped in a puddle. Mum would moan about his trousers and even that would feel good. He paused before the next puddle. There was still Hannah. What about her? In his heart, he knew that she too would be all right. Either Thomas’s family would help her or, more likely, she herself had already plucked up the courage to ask someone where Cambridge was, and had found her way back to the house she’d once left to go shopping with her mum. Here was her finger, reaching for the doorbell.

  Ben didn’t jump in the second puddle, though, because his phone rang. It was Tiffany.

  ‘I’ll tell you what else I’m glad to see the back of,’ she snapped.

  Ben got the impression that he’d missed the first half of this argument.

  ‘Er, what?’

  ‘Hiring that crummy church hall,’ said Tiffany. ‘Week after week. It was always me who had to phone the warden, and then squeeze the money out of you lot. At least that’s the end of that.’

  ‘But what about–’ Ben was going to mention the cemetery chapel, then remembered that this had been Geoff’s idea. ‘What if we did start classes again? I could do all that stuff.’

  ‘You? You’d forget after two weeks.’

  ‘Okay then,’ said Ben. ‘How about this week and next week?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘All you have to do is turn up. I’ll book the hall and everyone will be there. Guaranteed.’

  ‘Yusuf’s got a broken leg.’

  ‘Exactly. No more football practice.’

  ‘Hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘And Olly will not be late.’

  ‘Ha. I’ll believe that when I see it.’

  ‘You’ve got to be there to see it,’ Ben pointed out. ‘There’s just one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Don’t forget to bring your three pounds.’

  At last, she laughed.

  Ben relished his new role of club secretary for about five minutes, after which it made him want to climb the walls as he tried to fit it in with school, homework, the arcade, and spending as much time as he could with Mum and Dad. It amazed him that Tiffany hadn’t complained about it more. In that first lesson the Cat Kin mostly just talked, but it felt right to be meeting again. Olly spent much of the second class decorating Yusuf’s cast with graffiti. Still, Ben had lasted his two weeks, and then he managed a third.

  It was Wednesday lunchtime. Tired of sandwiches he left the school grounds in search of proper junk food. He bought a Cornish pasty from the shop on the corner. When he came out he saw a cat. It was sitting, amusingly, on the warm leather of a motorcycle seat. It swivelled its head to look at him.

  ‘Jim?’

  Ben was proud to admit that usually he couldn’t tell one cat from another. But this cat, Mrs Powell’s cat, he could have picked out of a line-up. The frosty coat ingrained with black, the bewitching olivine eyes. But Jim should still be in Dartmoor, shouldn’t he? Two hundred miles from here.

  ‘Jim!’ It was him. Ben went and stroked his head. He got a mild electric shock, which he was used to, and in return Jim took a corner of his Cornish pasty. He looked half-starved.

  How could this cat be here? There was only one explanation. When his owner never came home, Jim had started to wander. And his homing instinct – his Oshtian Compass – had guided him off the moors, through the fields, lanes, villages and towns, all the way back to east London, his old home. He was trying to find the flat he had shared with Mrs Powell. A wave of pity caught Ben off guard. He wished he could tell this animal that his journey had been in vain, that his old home wouldn’t have him back, and that his friend was dead.

  Abruptly Jim sprang from the motorbike’s seat and onto a garden wall. Ben made up his mind. He couldn’t let this orphan roam the city streets. Back at home he had a real family now. What better way to make it complete?

  ‘Puss-puss!’ he said. ‘C’mon, Jim. Come with me.’ Jim turned his stare upon him. For a moment gratitude glinted in those gemstone eyes. Then his tail swished and he trotted along the wall – the wrong way.

  ‘Jim!’ Ben called. ‘Here, kitty. Cornish pasty! Nice pasty!’

  The cat glanced back and gave a funny sort of blink. Almost, unless Ben imagined it, a wink. Then in one bound Jim crossed to a fence, flowed over it and dropped out of sight.

  Ben ran behind the terrace and saw an empty alley. He called Jim’s name, over and over, until he felt like a twit and stopped. He bit into the remains of his lunch.

  That had looked like a cat who knew precisely where he was going.

  Ben chewed, brushing away crumbs, while one car passed after another. He ought to tell Tiffany. What, though, could he tell her? It might not mean very much.

  Fingering his phone, he saw the time. Afternoon classes would start in fifteen minutes and he still had homework to finish. Ben tossed the pasty wrapper into a rubbish bin and hurried back to school.

  THE END

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