Cat's Paw (5 page)

Pretending to trip, he turned it into a Corkscrew Flick. Clumsy as it was, it broke the arm-lock and he spun clear of his captor and ran. Or tried to. Three strides later came a crippling pain
in his neck, Kevin’s fingers, hard as pincers. He fell to his knees and out came all his breath in one whoosh. Kevin knelt on his chest, pointing the knife.

‘Let’s try again,’ Kevin panted.

Now that wasn’t meant to happen. For a moment Ben could only lie there in shock. It was as if he had tried to eat a cupcake and broken his teeth. He didn’t even struggle as Kevin
hauled him upright.

A shove forced him forwards into the twilight ahead. Some sort of broad passage. It looked a bit like a street at night. Lighting came from desk lamps, table lamps or orange workmen’s
lamps, spaced between shapes like tumbledown houses. They were dens, built from cardboard boxes and bundled with blankets. Some of the bundles snored. Other nests lay empty, littered with sweet
wrappers, socks and the occasional comic or children’s book. The floor was concrete and, oddly, just half the width of the passageway. A deep ditch ran alongside, cutting them off from the
left-hand wall, which curved up to become the roof. At last he understood what he was looking at.

‘It’s a platform.’

‘Platform 2,’ said Kevin.

‘This is a Tube station.’ Wonder distracted him. There was the platform edge; the rails; the doors to staff offices. A blank oblong where he would expect to see a Tube map. And
there, upon his left hand side, was the familiar roundel: the red circle with the blue crossbar that bore its station’s name in neat white letters.

HERMITAGE

Ben searched his brain. ‘
Hermitage?
There’s no such station as Hermitage!’

‘Then you can’t be here. Get it?’

His eyes ran across the tiles, patterns of blue and grey punctuated with signs. White words on black told him NO SMOKING. Around the next corner a larger banner pointed back TO THE TRAINS. Every
detail was stranger for being so familiar. He was staring at a black arrow and the words PLATFORM 1 when Kevin pushed him through an archway labelled NO WAY OUT.

They entered an even dingier space. Ben recognised it as an escalator hall. He looked for the escalators and saw twin ravines sloping up into darkness, gutted hollows where the metal steps
should have been. A tall black girl bounded from the shadows. From her trainers to her baseball cap she wore more brands than a shop window, her jacket still sporting its price tag. The only
garment without a logo was her black silk headscarf, which gave her the look of a pirate.

‘Hey Kev. Is this him?’

Kevin tightened his hold. ‘Stay there, Antonia. He’s a live one.’

‘Yeah, I heard. Jeep says he hurt Alec. Kicked him or somefin’.’

‘That’s not all. He followed their team into the tunnel. Jeep managed to take him down but Alec’s still walking funny.’

She laughed. ‘So what is it? This guy’s like us?’

‘No. You can tell he’s not. But there’s something about him. I have to show him to the Ferret.’

The girl flicked her springy hair. ‘Na. He’s in one of his Pits. Seeing no-one.’

‘Except me, he means. He always sees me.’

‘I seriously wouldn’t.’

‘Oh, get a spine. Come and stand sentry.’

He dragged Ben by the collar to the far side of the escalators and stopped outside a door that was set into the wall beneath the stairs. ‘Stand there. Face that wall. Antonia’s
watching you.’

Kevin twisted the doorknob and went in. Ben dithered. Should he run? As puny as he felt right now, he could surely fight his way past one girl. Then he changed his mind.

He had never heard the scream of someone being murdered, but it probably sounded much like this. His skin gathered itself up in bumps. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Antonia cowering. The
shriek tore the darkness, more animal than human, yet the real terror came when the echoes returned from the tunnels and he caught the mangled remains of two words: ‘
GO
AWAY.
’

Kevin stepped from the doorway and shut it. He looked different. Ben realised this was because his freckles had disappeared. Now his face was a single shade of pale.

‘Okay.’ Kevin’s voice was husky. ‘He’ll see you later.’

He grabbed Ben by the sleeve and dismissed Antonia with a grunt. All the way back to the stationmaster’s office that was serving as his jail cell, Ben could feel himself trembling. And he
didn’t know whether it was comforting, or more frightening still, that most of this quivering seemed to be coming not from him, but from the grip of Kevin’s own hands.

Tiffany had been in airing cupboards less stuffy than this travel agency. Watching her mum browsing a whole quilt of holiday brochures, she was seized by a yawn that made her
jaw crack.

‘Not boring you, I hope?’ said Dad, who looked bored himself.

‘Maybe she didn’t sleep well last night.’ Stuart smirked. ‘You look terrible.’

Tiffany sighed, ‘S’my impression of you.’

‘Oi. Squabbles will cease,’ said Mum. ‘Give me ideas. Where do you fancy going?’

‘Disney World!’ said Stuart, as always.

‘We did mention Italy,’ said Dad.

‘Devon,’ mumbled someone. Tiffany realised it was her.

‘
Devon?
’ Mum scoffed.

‘Uh. . . Cornwall?’

‘Dearest, I don’t work all hours for the Mayor of London just to go on British beach holidays. Pass me the California one.’

‘No,
Florida
,’ pleaded Stuart.

‘There’s always pony trekking in Dartmoor.’

‘Please ignore my daughter.’ Mum managed to scowl at Tiffany while beaming at the flustered travel agent. ‘Her brain has got jammed in one corner of England.’

In the end they packed the brochures in bags and drove them home. All the way, Tiffany yawned.

‘Busy night?’ murmured Stuart.

She looked at him sharply. ‘Rufus kept me awake, if you must know. Miaowing.’

‘Ah.’

Probably he was only baiting her. In truth, she had slept much less than her cat. Squirming among wrinkled sheets, she had skidded around on the surface of sleep unable to break through. A
nameless dread lay in her stomach. By 1a.m. she could barely close her eyes. In despair she grabbed some tracksuit leggings and a sweatshirt and spent an hour walking rooftops, returning only when
she lost sight of her own. It didn’t help. By the time dawn seeped through the curtains, she was just about throttling her pillow.

Dad set to marinating salmon for dinner while Mum studied the brochures. All this talk of holidays jogged Tiffany’s memory.

‘I have to take in my cheque on Monday. For Paris.’

Mum paused. ‘Paris?’

‘You know. My school trip.’

‘I thought that wasn’t till Easter?’ said Dad.

‘Yes, and they need the money now.’ The conversation missed another beat. Tiffany smelt a rat. ‘You said I could! You promised!’

‘Let’s discuss this without going berserk, okay?’ said Dad.

‘We already did discuss it.’

‘You know there was a school trip recently,’ Mum remarked, ‘where a boy got drowned by a freak wave because his teachers were too busy playing beach volleyball.’

Tiffany was going to ask how many freak waves struck Paris when Dad chimed in.

‘You’ve never stayed away from home by yourself before, Truffle. At least, not – Ouch! Blood and
sand
.’ He had grated away a sliver of his knuckle on the lemon
zester. As he ran the bleeding finger under the tap, the unspoken end of his sentence hung in the air.
Not intentionally.

‘All the French sets are going,’ Tiffany pleaded. ‘Everyone is.’
Everyone
included Susie, Yusuf and Olly from Cat Kin. Yusuf had been helping her get ready. Being
outrageously good at languages (he often answered his home phone in Arabic) he had forced Tiffany to improve by speaking only French when they met at lunchtimes for a chat.

‘Well.’ Mum thinned her lips. ‘We’ll look into it some more.’

‘They need the cheque on Monday!’ She was talking to brick walls. Tiffany flounced out of the kitchen. It made her feel righteous, so she flounced up the stairs too, through her
bedroom door, and with one last flounce flopped down on her bed. Oh, to have the one cat talent that eluded her: sleep. She was exhausted. Only this wasn’t just tiredness. It was an itching
of the mind, a sense that something, somewhere, was terribly wrong.

‘Ben...
Doesn’t answer. Please leave a message at the tone.
’ She must have absent-mindedly picked up her phone and dialled Ben’s number. But wait a minute. He
still hadn’t said he was sorry, had he? Let him be the one who called. Dropping the phone on her bedside table, she happened to glance through the window. She saw a man.

He was standing quite still on the opposite pavement, looking up at her. Well, surely not at
her
, but at this row of houses. He stood with one hand hooked in his jeans pocket, pushing
aside the hem of the black leather jacket that hung below his belt. Moppish brown hair, flecked with grey, tumbled to his collar. With his stubbly face he might have been a tramp, but somehow
Tiffany knew he wasn’t. Their eyes met and she caught a glint of blue, and then he was walking off down the street. She stared after him, feeling cold, then came to her senses. Perhaps he
hadn’t been staring up here at all. Perhaps he’d stood there only a moment, reading a For Sale sign or something. She had to stop being so jumpy.

‘What’s the matter with you, Tiffany Maine?’ she said to her wardrobe mirror.

The wardrobe creaked in reply.

She yanked open the door and pulled Stuart out by the nose. ‘You! You had your warning.’

‘Leggo! Ow! You mustn’t, I’m an invalid –’ Stuart’s squeals were muffled by the duvet she bundled over his head, really very gently in spite of her temper.
When he was trussed at the foot of the bed she glowered over him.

‘Spies are being shot.’

Stuart cringed. It unnerved her. He looked genuinely frightened.

‘Okay, I’m not going to eat you. You shouldn’t earwig, that’s all.’ She waited for his cheeky retort. It didn’t come. ‘Sorry. Was I too
rough?’

‘I saw you.’ It was a whisper.

‘Eh?’

‘Last night. Coming home.’ Stuart took a breath and plunged in. ‘Across the roof.’

Tiffany stood silent for a long time.

‘Ah,’ she said.

Stuart struggled out of his duvet chrysalis and slumped on her bed. She sat beside him.

‘I have trouble sleeping too.’ He coughed, wetly. ‘My body gets tired so fast but I’m still wide awake in my head. So I sit near the window and do astronomy. Watch for
UFOs and stuff. And, well. You know we can see each other’s windows.’

‘You saw an Unidentified Feline Object.’

‘A what?’

‘Never mind. You saw. . .’ Enough. He had seen enough. More than she could ever explain away.

‘You. . .
jumped.
’ Stuart spoke breathlessly, as if watching it all over again. ‘From the chimney pots, down onto your flat bit of roof. I nearly screamed. I thought
you’d fallen. But you landed on your feet and hardly made a sound. And before that you walked along the narrow bit at the top. You never wobbled.’ He broke off. ‘Is it to do with
that exercise class?’

She nodded. Where to begin? To her astonishment, a tear rolled down her cheek.

‘Hey. Why are you crying?’

She didn’t know. For the life of her she didn’t know.

‘Tiffany.’ Stuart cuddled her. ‘I won’t tell. Is that what you’re upset about?’

No, it didn’t seem to be. She felt relief more than anything. The tear had a more mysterious source. Nonetheless, Stuart had a point.

‘I really won’t tell,’ he promised. ‘Not anyone. Especially not Mum and Dad. I know how these things work.’

‘Er. . . you do?’

Stuart used one of his favourite new words. ‘It’s protocol. Secret identities, all that stuff. You’re talking to the superhero expert!’

Tiffany had to laugh. ‘I’m hardly that. I learn pashki, that’s all. Because– because. . .’

‘You’re going to have to tell me everything.’ Stuart sat up like a boy in the peak of health. ‘I can’t keep half a secret or a quarter secret.’