Cat Kin (16 page)

Like a sleepwalker she traipsed into the lounge, resigned to the ear-bashing she was sure to receive. Mum and Dad were watching television in ominous silence. She dropped into
an armchair and waited for the grilling to begin.

After a while Mum said, ‘Do you know if Stuart’s managing okay up there?’

‘Uh,’ said Tiffany.

‘That is, getting ready for bed,’ said Dad. ‘Rather than reaching level four of Alien War Pigs or whatever it’s called.’

‘Perhaps you’d better check on him in a minute, Peter.’

Tiffany eyed her parents, puzzled. They weren’t exactly falling over themselves to scold her for coming in so late.

‘Are you feeling okay, love?’ Mum asked, after a while.

‘Mmm.’

The television newsreader rambled on. She became transfixed by his outrageous tie.

‘You’ve lain low today, Tiffs,’ said Dad.

‘There was a ballet programme on earlier,’ said Mum. ‘I tried calling you but you had your headphones on, I think.’

Then it struck her. Neither of them had noticed she wasn’t in the house. She’d been out all evening, spent some of it locked in a maniac’s car, and all the time they’d
assumed she was upstairs. Without a word she got up and left the room.

‘Tiffany?’ Mum called after her. ‘Don’t be a stranger.’

She climbed the stairs. The bathroom light was on.

‘Hi!’ said Stuart. He spat out a mouthful of toothpaste. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Nowhere.’ It was an effort to speak. ‘Just with a friend.’

‘A boyfriend?’ Stuart grinned.

Normally she would have tickled him for that. Instead she turned away. Then she saw something that made her stomach heave. Stuart, glass of water in hand, was lifting a pill to his mouth.

‘No!’

‘Huh?’ Stuart dropped the pill and it rolled behind the loo.

‘You can’t. Er…’ She had to think. ‘I’ve told you not to drink the water from the bathroom taps. It’s from the tank. It could make you ill.’

‘Cow plops. I always drink it. So do you!’ Stuart tipped another tablet from the jar and swallowed it. Tiffany clutched at the bathroom door, woozy.

‘You won’t be taking that stuff much longer, will you?’

Stuart laughed. ‘It’s all right, I don’t mind the taste anymore. I quite like it, actually. Panthacea doesn’t make me fat like those other medicines.’

‘Listen, Stuart…’

‘Guess what. Today I managed to walk all the way to the high street
and
round the shops. I only needed the chair on the way back. And I haven’t had a cough for ages.’
He skipped out of the bathroom, steadier on his feet than he had been in months. ‘Watch out, Tiffany. Soon I’ll be strong enough to punch through cardboard like you can. How do you do
that, by the way? Show me again.’ He trailed her across the landing into her room. ‘Showme-showme-showme!’

‘Oh, go to bed!’ she yelled.

Stuart gazed at her with hurt eyes.

‘Spoilsport,’ he muttered, trudging out.

Tiffany went to bed and lay awake.

The flat was silent, but it was the kind of silence that told him Mum was home. Ben found her in the kitchen, sipping coffee. He had to resist the urge to hug her. He’d
never needed to see anyone so badly.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Is that it?’

Her expression stopped him short. No wonder. It was, after all, pretty late. And as for the shock at coming home to find him gone…

‘Mum, I’m really sorry. I—’

‘You what? You went out?’

He nodded.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know because I arrived home to an empty flat with the door wide open.’ She sniffed. ‘Mind you, at the time I didn’t think you’d
gone out. I thought someone had kidnapped you.’

Ben bit his lip. Dashing after Stanford he hadn’t thought to shut the door behind him. ‘Sorry. I—I had to leave in a hurry.’

‘No doubt, Benjamin. You had important things to do.’

‘I did! We—’ What on earth could he tell her?

‘Like getting hammered on whisky and cider at the bus-stop,’ Mum’s voice rose, ‘with those scummy kids you hang out with.’

‘
What?
’

‘Don’t you dare—’ Mum grabbed the whisky bottle off the sideboard and waved it in his face. ‘This was half full. I’m not so cracked in the head yet that I
can’t remember things. There’s only you and me living here, you idiot. Who else is going to drink it, the mice?’

‘But it wasn’t me…’ He had to tell her. It was his only way out of this. But no. He could face her anger. Better to get flayed than to tell Mum that John Stanford had
been inside their home, and could come back whenever he felt like it. Ben had no idea what that news might do to her. ‘I—I knocked it over and the lid wasn’t screwed on. I had to
mop it up.’

It was the feeblest lie he’d ever tried.

‘I can smell it on your breath from here,’ Mum shouted. Another lie, Ben thought, numbly. They bred like flies.

‘My one night of freedom,’ Mum went on, ‘when I’m meant to be getting myself together again, and you have to wreck it. Do you ever think of me for just one
moment?’

‘Mum, listen, you don’t under—’

‘I mean, who’d have kids? They start noisy and smelly, they’re cute for ten seconds and then they turn into ungrateful, thieving monsters.’ She took a step closer and
screamed in his face. ‘
Where have you been?
’

Something broke inside him. ‘If you could shut up for five seconds, you’d know by now!’

She slapped him. The left side of his face went stinging hot. The moment after that he would never clearly recall.

He blinked, stunned from the blow, and saw Mum sprawled on the floor on the other side of the kitchen. What was she doing down there? He walked towards her, only to see her cower into the
corner. She was shielding her face. A scarlet bruise was rising on her left cheekbone and three red lines ran down to her chin. Ben stared at his right hand, still hooked in a claw shape.

‘Mum,’ he whispered. ‘Are you hurt?’

Not taking her eyes off him, Mum groped for the sideboard and pulled herself upright.

‘Out.’

‘Mum,’ Ben pleaded. ‘I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what got into me. I never—’

‘Out!’ she cried. ‘Get out! How dare you? How dare you hit your mother?’

Ben clutched at his head. This was not happening.

‘You’re not sleeping under this roof!’ Mum advanced, breathing hard. He retreated before her, confused, terrified.

‘No, Mum.’

‘Get to your father’s!’ she bellowed. ‘Go on, run to him. A right pair you make. A right pair of thugs. I wouldn’t take it from him and I’m damned if
I’m taking it from you. Get out of my home!’

Moments later he was standing on the pavement, transfixed by the light shining from their kitchen window, the last glimmer of life in the empty block. The wind had turned chilly. He folded his
arms, wishing Mum had given him time to put on a coat or at least a sweater. Maybe if he stood here long enough the world would pop back to the way it was meant to be, like a crushed rubber ball.
At length the light went out. He shivered some more. Nothing else changed.

Her words continued to ricochet round his head, striking sparks in the great black cloud of his confusion.
A right pair you make…I wouldn’t take it from him
. What did that
mean? Could he pretend he didn’t know? Come to that, how could he let four years pass and never once ask Dad exactly why he and Mum weren’t together anymore? Maybe it was because he
hadn’t needed to. The little scar by Mum’s eye never came from walking into any door.

He turned his back on Defoe Court and began to drift along the street like the blown scraps of litter, hardly knowing or caring where he was going.

And now, just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, Ben had disappeared. Tiffany had been round to his flat twice in the past three days, only to be told by a
voice on the entry phone (presumably his mother) that he wasn’t in. At last she found his mobile number scrawled on the cinema ticket she’d been using as a bookmark. She dialled, sure
no-one would answer. Someone cautiously said, ‘Yeah?’

‘Ben?’

‘Oh. Hi, Tiffany. How’s it going?’

‘What do you mean, how’s it going? It’s all going to hell in a cat carrier. As if you didn’t know. Have you been avoiding me?’

‘No. Nothing like that.’ Ben sounded tired. ‘I’m staying at my Dad’s. Family stuff. You don’t want to know.’

She got the impression that he meant it this time.

‘Ben, we need to talk. You said we could do something about those poor cats.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like anything!’ She almost shouted it. ‘We can’t let it happen. All those leopards and tigers and things, in those cages with tubes stuck in them. They can’t turn
round, they can’t lie down, they can’t even sleep.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Ben, please. We’re their only chance.’

She waited.

‘What do you think I am?’ said Ben. ‘You think I don’t care? That stuff they’re doing makes me sick. They should get life in prison.’

‘So let’s do it!’ said Tiffany. ‘We’ll tell the police together. All they have to do is look inside that factory.’

‘The factory that everyone knows is empty.’

‘Just one
look
,’ she cried. ‘That’s all it takes. We could make something up. Say there are drug dealers squatting there. That’s the truth,
anyway.’

‘Maybe,’ said Ben. ‘But Tiffany, we’ve got to be careful. My Mum tried calling the police before, about a Stanford thing. It didn’t do any good.’

‘This is different.’

‘But what if Stanford knows someone in the police force? What if he can get away with anything because his friends cover it up? The only thing we’d do is give away who we are and
where we live. You
don’t
want Stanford knowing where you live.’

‘I’ll take the risk. If it means stopping Doctor Cobb.’

‘Think about it,’ urged Ben. ‘Look, I’ll…I’ll call you back later. We’ll work out a story, maybe. Don’t do anything stupid yet.’

‘When shall I do something stupid?’ she replied.

There was a seething kind of silence.

‘Look, just wait, okay?’ Ben hissed. ‘This isn’t my only major problem right now.’

‘Why? What’s more important than this?’

‘I’ll tell you another time,’ said Ben. The line went dead.

She sat with the phone in her lap for several minutes. She couldn’t believe it. Ben had chickened out. There was no other explanation. That was why he’d been avoiding her. She was
halfway through redialling his number when she stopped and threw the phone at her pillow. She was wasting her time. The person she really needed to talk to wasn’t even in the country.

No Ben, no Mrs Powell. What about the other members of the Cat Kin? She had Cecile’s number, and Susie’s. She wavered, then tried the second one.

‘Hello you!’ said Susie, sounding surprised. Apart from furtive chats at school in corridors or the dining room, they had hardly spoken to one another outside of the class.

‘Hi.’ Tiffany bit her lip.

‘Hello?’ said Susie again. Tiffany found she’d been staring mutely into space.

‘Susie,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a problem. Maybe you can, uh, give me some advice.’

‘Oh, me too!’ said Susie, as if a problem was the latest gadget. ‘My father and big brother want us all to holiday in Wales next year, can you believe that? White water
rafting, and they know perfectly well that I can’t even swim, or at least not very well, only four lengths in a warm pool. And in
Wales
. As if it won’t be rainy enough here.
I’ll make Dad change his mind so we can go home to Hong Kong instead. I can’t bear the countryside, can you? A big old waste of space. And I really don’t know about white water
rafting. It sounds very stupid and risky, quite dangerous and rather boring too.
In a minute!
’