by Holly Webb
For Annelie
And Harvey,
her gorgeous, stripy, tigerish cat
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
More Books by Holly Webb
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Back Ads
Sneak Peek of The Chocolate Dog
About the Author
Copyright
“I just keep thinking about him.” Kate’s mum smiled. “The stupidest things. Like him always complaining that the tea wasn’t strong enough.”
Auntie Lyn let out a snort of laughter. “Dad only drank tea if it was strong enough to take the paint off the mugs. Who knows what it did to his insides? He must have had a cast-iron stomach.”
Kate listened to them talking over her head, and blinked worriedly. Was that what had happened? All those mugs of tea had done something awful to Granddad’s stomach? But Mum and Auntie Lyn were laughing, so it couldn’t be true.
She wanted to join in – to say that Granddad was brilliant at dunking biscuits, and his biscuits never fell apart in his tea, ever. He let Kate dunk them too, but she always whipped them out again after a couple of seconds, just in case they crumbled. And actually because she didn’t really like the taste of tea. She only did it because Granddad did.
She wanted to say it, but somehow the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. She just stayed sitting silently on the sofa, between Mum and Auntie Lyn, listening.
All those stories. Her dad was telling them too, and Mrs Eversley, Granddad’s friend from down the road. And a couple of other people – relatives who’d come for the funeral. Mum had told Kate who they were, but there were so many people around, and she just couldn’t remember. They’d all known Granddad, and everyone seemed to have something to say.
Granddad wearing odd shoes to the supermarket. Granddad flying a kite with Kate in the park – everyone looked at her when Dad said that, but Kate still couldn’t say anything. Granddad taking ages to walk down the street on sunny days, because he had to stop and say hello to all the sunbathing cats.
That made Kate smile. It was so true. He’d nearly made her and Molly late for school, a few weeks back. That black cat from the house on the corner had rolled on its back on the dusty pavement, and then followed them down the street. They’d had to stop and shoo it home, just in case it tried to cross the road.
Kate smiled, and then bit her bottom lip hard to make herself stop. She mustn’t smile. Granddad was dead. How could she be happy?
She didn’t understand how everyone could tell stories and laugh. Her words were building up inside her, all the things she wanted to say too, but couldn’t. They hurt, deep inside her chest, much more than her bitten lip did.
Granddad had walked them to school every day, and usually he picked them up again too. That was making Kate feel even worse. What would happen after the Easter holidays, when they went back to school? Who would pick them up now? Kate sank her chin down under the neck of her best cardigan and tried not to cry any more. Her eyes were aching.
She supposed it was mean to be worrying about who was going to take them to school and back. It seemed selfish, but she couldn’t help thinking about it. Granddad had always been there, and now he wasn’t.
Until a week ago, he’d lived in the little flat that used to be the garage at the side of Kate’s house. He’d been there for four years, half as long as Kate had been alive. And even before that he’d lived close by, in the house he’d shared with Kate’s Gran, five minutes’ walk away. Kate didn’t remember Gran much at all, as she had died when Kate was only a baby. Granddad had been lonely living on his own, so he’d come to live with them. Now it felt to Kate as if he’d always been there.
Granddad had cooked tea sometimes too, if Mum and Dad had to work really late. He made brilliant cheese on toast. (Which was lucky, because it was all he ever made, that and toffee. But Kate didn’t mind – they were two of her favourite things.)
The voices went on murmuring over her head, and still her stories were locked away inside her. Kate felt as though she couldn’t stand it any longer. She wriggled out from between her mum and Auntie Lyn, and threaded her way through everyone’s legs.
“Are you all right, Kate?” her mum asked, turning away from listening to Mrs Eversley for a moment.
“Mmm. Just going upstairs for a bit.”
“Molly’s upstairs too,” her mum suggested. “You could go and sit with her.”
Kate nodded, but she knew that she wouldn’t. Molly’s bedroom door would be tight shut, and if Kate interrupted her she’d probably get yelled at. She climbed the stairs wearily, wondering what to do. She was tired, but it was too early to go to bed – it was only about six o’clock. On a usual day, Mum and Dad would just be getting home from work. Kate would have been pottering around the garden with Granddad, or sitting at the kitchen table doing her homework, or drawing. She stopped on the top step of the stairs, sniffing.
Molly’s door was shut, and there was a notice on it that said Go Away, in very large black letters. And underneath in smaller pink letters it said, This means you. There was no point even asking if she could be with her sister. But as Kate pushed her own bedroom door, just next to Molly’s, she already knew she couldn’t stay in there either. Her room was full of things that she ought to want to be doing, like her jewellery kit, and a book of disgusting science experiments. But Granddad had bought her that – he’d promised to help her with it. And her fingers felt too tired and sausage-like for threading beads today.
She jumped as Molly’s bedroom door opened, very suddenly, and her sister glared out, red-eyed and grumpy. “What do you want? Why are you just standing there?”
“I’m not…” Kate said at once, even though she was. “I’m standing in my room. Go away.” She took a small step further into her room, to make it true, and Molly sighed huffily and whisked back. Kate heard the bedsprings wheeze as Molly flung herself down.
Kate stood in the doorway, and sighed at her room. Usually she loved to curl up on the scruffy old armchair by the window. Even if she was in a bad mood, or she’d had a fight with Molly, the faded plush fabric and musty smell made her feel better. Today, it wasn’t enough.
But there was a striped, droopy-whiskered face squashed between the cushions. Kate picked up Amos, and hugged him tight. He was saggy, and his fur stuck up in odd spikes from being squashed under Kate’s chin when she was asleep, but he still looked proud, and brave, and wise, like a real tiger.
It was silly, Kate thought, sniffing again, that Amos could make her feel so much better and so much worse at the same time. He always made her happy, because he was her favourite toy, her best and most special thing. But Amos had been a present from Granddad, two years’ ago. He even looked like Granddad, a little bit, with the same fabulous furry eyebrows over his yellow marbley eyes. Grandad’s eyes had peered out from under his eyebrows just like that, the last time she’d seen him. They’d been in the shed, Granddad humming to himself and looking at his seed catalogues, and Kate sitting next to him writing. Another story about a brave, fierce princess, and her pet tiger. She had been writing it for months, in episodes, and with pictures too. Granddad had read Kate’s story, and twitched his eyebrows at all the best bits.
She would go to the shed, Kate decided, brushing Amos’s furry eyebrows against her cheek. She could even look at the seed catalogues. She loved them – the pictures of the flowers were nice enough, but the names were brillian
t. Most of her characters’ names had come out of Granddad’s catalogues. Her princess was called Gloriosa (Glory for short), and the evil witch who kept trying to steal Amos was called Scabiosa. Scabiosa were actually quite pretty flowers, like fluffy little pom-poms. But they sounded wart-encrusted and witch-like.
“Where are you going?” Molly growled, as Kate passed her door again.
“Downstairs.” It was true, even if she wasn’t planning to stay there…
“Why’ve you got that ratty toy tiger? You’re eight, not four. You’re too big to be carrying toys around.”
Kate stared back at Molly, wondering why she had to be so mean. Molly had toys as well – a whole shelf full of dolls that she swore she didn’t ever play with, but she still wouldn’t let Mum give them to the charity shop. And they weren’t dusty, either, like things that never got touched. Kate knew that Molly brushed their hair, and held them – but only when she was sure no one could see her. Maybe when she was ten she wouldn’t want Amos, Kate thought, and tears burned her eyes again. She didn’t want to be that old. That horrible.
“You look like a baby,” Molly snapped, propping herself up on her elbows and glaring at Kate. “Oh, stop crying! You ought to throw that stupid old thing away.” She wriggled upright, reaching out as though she was going to snatch Amos, and Kate darted away with a frightened squeak.
“No!”
Kate ran down the stairs in a rush. She’d meant to creep down, step by step, to make sure Mum or Dad didn’t hear her. She didn’t want to explain why she was going outside. Kate had a feeling that Mum would say sitting in Granddad’s shed was silly – or wrong, somehow. She couldn’t see why. It was just like telling stories about him, except that she wanted to be in the story instead, with all the things that reminded her of Granddad.
No one heard her, even though she’d forgotten to tiptoe. They were too busy talking. Kate hurried past the living-room door and into the kitchen. Then she peered out of the back door at the garden. It looked brighter than the house. Less miserable. And a lot less full of people that Kate had to be polite to.
The sun was low and golden, and Kate could smell the wallflowers that Granddad had planted along the path that wound through the garden. There were bees bumbling slowly in and out of them, and she loved the way they zigzagged about, as though nothing mattered but that honey-sweet smell. Did bumblebees even look where they were going? she wondered. What would happen if they crashed into each other? Bumblebees were practically all whisker and fluff, so perhaps they could feel each other coming. And even if they did crash, Kate thought, as she went on down the path, it would be like bumper cars. They’d just bounce off each other.
Granddad had told her that cats used their whiskers to measure if they could get through a hole without getting stuck. If their whiskers went through, he said, the rest of them would. Though they hadn’t been sure if that would apply to Fat Ginger, the cat next-door-but-one. He had average-sized whiskers, but the rest of him was enormous. Even his tail was fat. But then Molly had pointed out that she couldn’t see Fat Ginger making the effort to try to get through a hole anyway, unless there was a great big bowl of food on the other side.
The shed door creaked as she opened it, and Kate looked up at the can of WD-40 on the shelf. Granddad put it on the hinges when they squeaked, and Kate always reminded him when it needed doing. Just for a second, she turned round to look up at him following her down the path, to see if he’d noticed. But he wasn’t there, of course.
That was the point.
Kate gulped and swallowed a few times, trying to get past the strange feeling in her throat. Was it all right just to spray the stuff on the door herself? She had promised never to touch the tools or the bottles and jars in the shed without Granddad there to help. But everything had changed now. Mum and Dad wouldn’t remember the squeaky door.
She didn’t do it. She reached up for the can – touched it, even. It was dusty, and tacky with grease, and she could feel the cool liquid sloshing inside it. But then she put it back. Granddad hardly ever yelled, but he could be serious. If he’d seen her messing, his eyebrows would have met in the middle, the way they did when he was worried, or upset, or cross.
Kate pushed the can to the back of the shelf behind the cat treats, and rubbed her fingers clean on a tissue from her pocket. Mum had been handing them out all day.
Then she curled up on the dusty wooden floor, next to the bench with all the flowerpots on it. There was a canvas chair in the shed for Granddad to sit in while he was looking at his seed catalogues, or sometimes just reading the newspaper, and looking out of the shed door at the garden. Granddad said it was the best view of the rose bushes, out of the door of the shed. But Kate always sat on the floor, even if Granddad wasn’t there. Her pencils were on the bottom shelf of the potting bench, and her notebook.
She balanced Amos on the seat of the chair, looking down at her like Granddad did. But she didn’t get out her notebook. She couldn’t think of a story, at all. Even all the ideas she’d had before, the ones she’d been saving up, seemed to be stuck inside her. Just like the stories about Granddad. Everything was jumbled up and set in a thick, sticky mess in her head.
Kate leaned back, resting her head against the wall of the shed and looking over at Amos. His paws were hanging down over the edge of the chair, folded over each other. Great, fat, floppy, lounging paws, like a real tiger. He was a real tiger too, of course.
Somewhere in India, an enormous Amos was prowling around in the forest, or sprawled over a branch high up in a great tree. Granddad had bought Kate a bit of Amos for her birthday, two years ago, after they had seen a tiger at the zoo and Kate had cried. She cried partly because he was so lovely, and so furry and striped, and she wanted him – but also because he had looked so bored.
The tiger had been walking back and forth along the glass wall of his enclosure, as though he was trying to find a way out. It was a very good zoo, Granddad had explained. The cages were big – so big that you couldn’t always see the animals if they didn’t feel like it, which Kate could quite understand. Who would want to have a window in their bedroom, so people could stare in, even when you were sulking? But even with his carefully planted habitat, and his pool, and his tiny, pretty forest, Kate was sure the tiger was miserable.
So for Christmas, Granddad had bought her a wild tiger. They sent money for him to be looked after, and protected from poachers, and every few months Kate got a letter, with photos of Amos and the other tigers in the national park. Kate had loved her own soft Amos ever since she had unwrapped the paw-print paper Granddad had done him up in. And she didn’t care if she was too old to cuddle him. Not much, anyway…
If the real Amos ever met Molly, he’d probably eat her.
It was quite warm in the shed – the low evening sun was shining through the little window, sending sun and shadow stripes across the grimy floor. One of the bumblebees had followed her down the garden, and now it was blundering in and out of the bars of sunlight, gently buzzing.
She had been right to come down here, Kate thought sleepily. It had been such an odd, miserable sort of day, and it seemed to have been going on for ages. Kate was so tired that even leaning against the wooden wall of the shed felt comfortable. She yawned and rubbed her sticky eyes. She had been awake so early, worrying about the funeral. Today was supposed to have been all about Granddad, but she hadn’t felt like it was the Granddad she knew. Now she could almost imagine that he was standing next to her, humming to himself as he potted up seedlings. It was a good way to remember him.
The sunlit stripes shimmered and reformed, like the light flickering through branches on a forest floor. Kate blinked, and the bumblebee buzzed louder. It was almost roaring now, Kate thought, like a tiny aeroplane, or a … or a tiger…
He came slinking through the shadow patches and out behind the old deckchairs in the corner, huge and heavy-shouldered, his head hanging
low.
Kate was too surprised to run, or scream, or do anything sensible. She just stared, as the enormous cat padded towards her on his great velvety paws. His eyes were like her cuddly Amos’s eyes, Kate noticed – just the same yellowish colour. But this was a real tiger, and the eyes shone like golden lamps in the dim evening light of the shed.
The tiger stood over her for a moment, and Kate wondered if he was hungry. She didn’t have anything a tiger might like to eat. Only a few cat treats. Not even a tin of cat food. He could probably eat that with the tin still on, she thought, shivering a little as he yawned, and showed his teeth and the bright pinkness of his tongue. Or perhaps he’d prefer to eat her.
But the tiger simply nudged Kate out of the way, squashing her into the corner of the potting bench. Then he slumped down beside her with a thump that shook the shed. He looked at her, curled up against the wall, and bumped her with his nose, the way the cats in the street did. His nose was just like a cat’s too, she noticed – apricot-pink and the same shape, with a sprawling fan of white whiskers.
His nose was damp and soft when he brushed against her cheek. Kate closed her eyes, and then opened them again, expecting that the tiger would have disappeared. There couldn’t actually be a tiger in her shed. But he was still there, gazing at her expectantly – and purring. A deep, throaty sort of purr. Like Fat Ginger, only about a hundred times bigger.
All the information she’d had from the tiger charity had said how fierce and dangerous they were. How the keepers in the parks had to dart them with sleeping drugs if they wanted to do medical checks on them – there was no way the tigers would let people come close. Except that this one was snuggling up next to her like a pet cat. Maybe he was a trained tiger, from a circus, or something like that, Kate thought, cautiously lifting her hand to stroke his muzzle, even though she knew it was stupid. He could bite her hand off. But he had hair sticking out of his ears, like Granddad did… Kate reached out her fingers, and closed her eyes.
