The Secret Kitten (6 page)

“If you don’t want me to come—” Sara started to say, sounding a bit hurt.

“It isn’t that! I do want you to, I really do!”

“You just had to say no – I thought we were friends!”

“We are!” Lucy said anxiously. “It’s just – not today. Another day!”

Sara nodded, but she still looked really disappointed. She grabbed her mum’s hand and pulled her away down the street, leaving Lucy and William and Gran staring at each other in confusion.

“Lucy, whatever’s the matter? Wasn’t that Sara, that nice girl who lives on Foxglove Way? Have you fallen out with her?”

“Yes.” Lucy sniffed. “She wanted to come to our house.”

“Well, why didn’t you let her? She
could have had dinner with us.”

“It wasn’t that. I can’t explain. Please can we go home?” Lucy reached out and took Gran’s hand. “Please.”

“All right.” But Gran still sounded worried and she kept hold of Lucy’s hand as they walked on. Lucy could tell she hadn’t finished asking about what had happened. “Lucy, was Sara asking about a kitten?” she said at last, as they walked past the alleyway. “I thought I heard her say something about visiting a kitten…”

Lucy swallowed. “But we haven’t got a kitten,” she pointed out, trying to sound cheerful.

“Lucy…” Gran pulled her hand gently to make her stop. “Just go on ahead for a minute, William. Look,
you can take my keys. Go and open the front door. We’ll follow you.” She watched as William walked on ahead and then she followed, walking along slowly with Lucy’s hand held tight in hers. “Lucy, did you tell Sara you had a kitten?”

Lucy didn’t say anything. How could she explain?

Gran went on thoughtfully. “Sometimes it’s hard, when you really want to make friends – you make up stories. Little stories to make yourself sound more interesting. Everyone does it sometimes, Lucy, it’s all right.”

Lucy gaped up at her. “How did you know?”

“Like I said, everyone does it. But almost everyone gets found out, too,
Lucy love. You’re going to have to explain to Sara and say you’re sorry, you know.”

Lucy kicked at the pavement with her foot. “I know,” she muttered. But inside she was saying,
I didn’t make it up. It wasn’t a lie. Well, it was when I first said it. But now I’m lying to you instead… I wish we’d told you about Catkin in the first place. What am I going to do?

“Are you that desperate for a kitten?” Gran asked suddenly.

Lucy blinked, shocked out of her worries. “Um. I would love one. But Dad said you didn’t like pets. Because they were dirty.”

Gran sniffed. “Well, I do like everything to be clean,” she agreed.
“But a little cat… Maybe we could think about it.”

Lucy swallowed hard and tried to smile. Somehow she had to explain to Gran that they had a little cat already…

When they got back to the house, Gran made hot chocolate and she even put marshmallows on the top, as a treat. She let Lucy and William take it upstairs, though she did say they had to be careful not to spill any.

“Dinner will be in about an hour,” she reminded them. “Your dad’s working late tonight, so we’re not waiting for him today.”

Lucy and William carried the hot chocolate upstairs to Lucy’s room, with the sandwiches they’d both saved from
lunch. At the top of the steps, outside the door, they stopped and looked at each other worriedly. Somehow Lucy felt convinced that the kitten wouldn’t be there. Perhaps they had imagined it all. She reached out and turned the handle, peering cautiously around the door.

Over in the wardrobe, the kitten lifted her head and yawned. Then she looked up at them and nosed at the empty plastic pot, clearly hoping for some tea.

“Hello,” Lucy whispered, starting to shred up her sandwich. “Did you miss us?”

Catkin yawned again and, very faintly, Lucy heard her purr.

“You’re pleased to see us! You’re actually purring. Oh, Catkin. If only we could show you to Gran right now, I’m sure she’d want to keep you.” She patted Catkin’s head, loving the feeling of the silky fur under her fingers. “This weekend, somehow, we’ll find a way to tell her. We have to.”

Chapter Seven

When Lucy and William’s dad got home late that night, he sat across the kitchen table from their gran, eating his dinner.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, as he wiped a bit of bread round his plate to mop up the gravy. “You’ve hardly said anything since I got home, Mum.”

Gran sighed and put down her mug
of tea. “I’m just a bit worried about Lucy. I’m not sure she’s settling all that well with the other girls at school. She had a bit of an argument with one of them this afternoon, just as I was picking her up. She didn’t want to talk about it very much, but it seems as though she’d told this girl – Sara, her name is – that we had a kitten.”

Dad stared at her. “But why on earth would she say that?”

Gran shrugged. “To fit in? To make herself a bit more exciting? We’re asking a lot of them, you know, starting at a new school.”

Dad’s shoulders slumped. “I suppose so. But I thought it was the best thing to do…”

“I still think it is.” Gran reached over and patted his hand. “But I’m wondering if a pet would help Lucy settle.”

“You don’t like pets!”

“Whatever gave you that idea? I wouldn’t want a dog, I couldn’t manage the walking, but I love cats!” Gran smiled at him, a little sadly. “Actually, I suppose we didn’t have any pets when you were younger, did we? I haven’t had a cat of my own for a long time.
Not since Catkin died. He was twenty, you know, and I’d had him since I was a little girl. I didn’t want another cat for a while after that and somehow then it just never seemed to be the right time. But I wouldn’t mind a cat now. Especially with Lucy and Wiliam to help look after it.”

“Well, it would be wonderful for Lucy,” Dad agreed. “I always said no before, because we were out of the house all the time.” He got up and took his plate over to the dishwasher. “I’ll go and check on her. I know she’ll probably be asleep, but I just want to see that she’s all right…”

Catkin woke up as the morning light shone into Lucy’s room. She didn’t
have any blinds yet and the morning was bright and sunny. The kitten stretched blissfully, padding her paws into a patch of sun just outside the wardrobe. Then she hunched up the other way, arching her back like a spitting witch’s cat and stepped delicately out into Lucy’s bedroom.

Lucy was still fast asleep, huddled up under her duvet, so Catkin jumped up on to the bed to sniff at her. She smelled interesting, like breakfast and warm sunshine. But she didn’t wake up when Catkin dabbed a chilly nose against her ear – only muttered and turned over, which made the duvet shift alarmingly. Catkin sprang down before she slid off and sat on the rug.

When she’d washed her ears thoroughly, both sides, she stalked off across the room. Something was different and she hadn’t quite worked out what it was. There was something in the air, something fresh and new.

The door was open!

Lucy had shut it carefully, of course,
when she came upstairs to bed. But then her dad had come up to check on her. Catkin and Lucy had both been fast asleep and neither of them had seen that he had left the door ajar. Just wide enough for a small, determined paw to hook it open.

Catkin nosed her way out and started to hop carefully – front feet, then back feet – down the stairs. It felt unfamiliar. Then she trotted along the landing, sniffing curiously at the different doors. She padded into William’s room, but a wobbly pile of books slid over when she nudged it, so she darted out again and set off down the next flight of stairs to the bottom. She sniffed her way carefully down the hallway and into the kitchen.

Most of the food was shut away in cupboards, but Dad had left a loaf of bread out on the counter and Catkin could smell it. She sat on the floor, staring up and thinking…

Lucy woke up when the sunny patch from the window moved round on to her bed. She blinked sleepily, wondering why it was that she felt so happy and scared all at the same time. Then she sat up straight, remembering.

Catkin!

Today they
had
to find a way to tell Gran and Dad what had happened, and make them see that Catkin needed
to stay with them.

The kitten wasn’t sitting on the windowsill the way she had been the day before, so Lucy kneeled up in bed and leaned over to peer into the wardrobe. “Catkin,” she called. “Puss, puss, puss…”

But no little kitten face appeared and Lucy’s heart began to beat faster. “Where did you go?” she murmured. She hopped out of bed and crouched down to check underneath, but there was nothing there except dust. No Catkin hiding in the cardboard boxes, or behind the little bookshelf by the door.

The open door.

Lucy gasped. “I shut it!” she whispered to herself. “I know I did. Oh no.” She hurried down the stairs,
going as fast as she could on tiptoe, so as not to wake Dad or Gran. She dashed into William’s room.

“Wake up! William, wake up! Have you seen Catkin? I don’t know where she is.”

William stared at her sleepily, blinking like an owl, and then he squeaked and jumped out of bed.

“Where would she go?”

“Shh! I don’t know, maybe the kitchen?”

William nodded. “Definitely the kitchen.”

They hurried down the stairs, freezing to a stop every time one of them creaked. The house was old and they hadn’t had time to learn which stairs to step over.

“Dad’ll hear us,” Lucy whispered miserably. “Hurry up, we have to find her and get her back into my room.” She kneeled down on the kitchen floor, looking around. She hadn’t noticed how many tiny, kitten-sized hiding places there were in here before. On the chairs, under the table. Down the side of the oven. “Oh! What if she’s
climbed into the washing machine?” Lucy gasped. “I read about a cat who did that once.”

But the washing machine was empty and so were all the other spots they could think of. Lucy sat down on the floor, looking helpless. “I can’t think of anywhere else,” she murmured. “All the windows are closed, aren’t they?”

William nodded. “It was cold last night. Unless – Gran always sleeps with her bedroom window open.”

A large tear spilled down the side of Lucy’s nose. “Maybe she went out that way, then. She didn’t want to stay. Catkin’s gone!”