Cat Kin (18 page)

The music pounded in Ben’s ears loud enough to bruise his brain, but at least that stopped him thinking. Encased in the din from his earphones, he sleepwalked round
Clissold Park and almost didn’t see the two figures practising balances under the chestnut trees. Before he could take evasive action, Yusuf waved. Ben pulled off the earphones.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said, Hey, Ben!’

‘Hi.’

‘Look, Olly, the maestro’s here. Want to join us?’ Yusuf sat on the grass and hooked one foot behind his head. ‘We were just—ugh!—running over some basic
stuff.’

Though he’d tried to avoid them, Ben now felt glad to see them. It seemed like years since he had talked to anyone without either arguing or having to keep something a secret. With these
two, neither felt very likely. In happier circumstances, Olly would be guaranteed to make him laugh at least twice, with his clownish comments and a tone of voice that could turn the twelve times
table into a comedy sketch. And there was something disarming about Yusuf, both in his brazen un-English vowels and the way he just got on with things, to the point of risking his life in the
woods. Yusuf himself joked that he got this attitude from his father, who had once been Captain Mansour in an armoured division of Iraq’s Republican Guard (at least, Ben assumed it was a
joke). For the moment, Ben was just grateful that he had found his friends.

‘Thanks, I’ll…sit this one out,’ said Ben. His ears were still ringing and it was hard to think of a suitable lie. ‘Don’t want to wreck my jeans. I ripped
one pair already doing Chasing the Bird.’

‘Good excuse,’ grinned Olly. He winked at Yusuf. ‘I told you. Ben’s out of our league. To him we are but lemmings who fall out of trees.’

Ben flushed. ‘It’s not like that. It’s—’ It was just that his last pashki-related memory was of knocking Mum across the kitchen. If he so much as tried the simplest
Eth walk right now, he knew, he would see her face. The idea of practising a routine at the moment was unthinkable.

‘No sweat,’ said Yusuf. ‘We know it’s true.’ He straightened up, stretching luxuriously. ‘Wait up. We do have something to show you. Ol, shall we let him in
on our plan?’

Apparently this meant going to Olly’s house, a bus ride into a smarter patch of North London. Squeezing into Olly’s bedroom, which was large but a total bombsite, the three of them
picked their way through a jungle of empty boxes, paint tins, laundry piles, rolls of paper, broken CD cases and two easels.

‘Check these out,’ said Yusuf. He grabbed a pile of A3 sheets from the computer desk and spread them across the available floor space. Ben peered at them out of politeness. Someone
had been busy. Every sheet bore a laser-printed design, each one different: neon paw-prints, the silhouette of a cat’s head, a sea-green eye on a black background, several logos with fancy
lettering, saying
Cat Kin, Pasht
or
Mau
. One especially striking design showed a spray of thin, curved lines that looked familiar somehow. Ben was impressed in spite of
himself.

‘These are great, Olly. Did you do them?’

‘Yeah. Yusuf says some of the concepts are his, but he’s a big fat liar.’

‘You’re a brilliant artist.’

Olly went pink.

‘Anyway, you get the drift?’ said Yusuf. ‘Judo teams have their own uniforms, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t. This way we can make Cat Kin more of a
club.’

‘And
here
is the prototype,’ said Olly. From under his bed he pulled a black T-shirt and a pair of stretch running trousers. The shirt was printed with the curious pattern
of radiating lines. ‘Yusuf’s idea, if you believe that for one nanosecond.’

‘It’s good.’ Ben frowned, still trying to place the image.

‘It is good. In fact it’s the cat’s whiskers,’ said Yusuf.

Of course. Those lines were like the spray of hairs from a cat’s snout and eyebrows, making one imagine an invisible cat face, with only the whiskers glowing in the dark.

‘Mm.’ Ben pretended an enthusiasm he couldn’t feel. All this talk of Cat Kin only made him think again of what he’d done. The fear that Mum would never forgive him was
like a constant pain. He could imagine how those caged animals felt, with the torment of the tubes in their flanks…

No. Best not to go there.

‘He’s a hard man to impress, isn’t he?’ said Olly to Yusuf.

‘Sorry,’ said Ben. ‘It’s a great idea. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.’

‘Nothing as important as
this
, I bet,’ said Olly, feeding a CD into his computer. ‘You know that new game, Cygnus X-1? Voila! Pirated two weeks before release. I had
to kill for it, too.’

‘Dunno,’ said Ben. ‘I should be getting home.’

‘Are you crazy?’ Yusuf slapped his head playfully. ‘This is an advance copy. Not even Prince Harry has this one yet.’

It wasn’t fair to be miserable around these two. The joy of the summer holiday was still pumping through their veins and the world would be paradise for a couple more weeks yet. They
deserved to be rid of him.

‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ said Ben.

‘Okay.’ Olly and Yusuf exchanged a puzzled glance.

Riding the bus back to Dad’s in the afternoon sunshine, Ben knew he could wait no longer. He had to see Mum and sort things out. He jumped off two stops early and ran across the park. As
he wove between pushchairs and dog-walkers he tried to rehearse what he would say. ‘Sorry,’ was as far as he could get. Perhaps it was enough.

Approaching Defoe Court he glanced at the clouds. It sounded like a storm was coming. Another rumble followed the first, this one tinnier, as if it weren’t real thunder but the kind made
by stagehands using sheets of metal. He quickened his stride. Something about the view was different. A tall pylon-thing was rising behind the rows of houses. A crane. A third boom reached his ears
and this one definitely wasn’t thunder. By the time he reached his street he was sprinting.

Boom
.

He saw walls, strangely familiar but topped by ragged summits. He saw windows, empty of glass, and through them holes of sky. He saw bricks heaped like snowdrifts. A giant metal pear hung by a
hawser from the tip of the crane. As he watched, the pear swung, languid as a handbag, into the fourth storey of the block. The wall coughed dust and shifted out of line. Another thump from the
wrecking ball and the brickwork buckled, showering in chunks to the ground.

Boom
.

The pavement seemed to move under him like the deck of a boat. Where was he? He should have been standing outside his flat. Somehow he had taken a wrong turning and ended up at a building site.
Instead of a block of apartments there was a semi-ruin.

Then his brain woke up and pointed out that they were demolishing his home.

‘Mum!’ Mechanical roars drowned him out. ‘Mum! Where are you?’

He ran into a chain-link fence that sprang before him like a spider’s web. The crane’s caterpillar treads had ploughed up the tiny gardens. Somewhere in the mud lay Mum’s
cherished basil, rosemary and sage.

Between skips and parked trucks he saw the dust-smeared windows. It looked like the flat was empty. Of course it would be. They couldn’t knock down a building with someone still inside it.
Could they?

‘Mum!’ he yelled, so loud it hurt.

‘Oi!’ A man in a hard hat waved at him. ‘Clear off. Ain’t you kids got no sense of danger?’

She had gone. But all his stuff would be in there. His clothes, his books, his computer, his favourite duvet cover. Would Mum have bothered to save any of it?

He backed away, hypnotised by the swing of the wrecking ball. His eyes slid down the crane’s neck to the orange cab, emblazoned with the name
Horton and Forrester
. The driver sat
tweaking levers as if playing a computer game. Ben watched a fissure open up in the wall and found himself staring into his bedroom. He peeled his hands from the fence and fled.

Something bulky flumped through the letterbox. Stuart heaved himself off the sofa and hurried into the hall. Tiffany heard his grumble of disappointment and relaxed.

‘Not come yet?’ she asked.

‘Just some of Dad’s stupid CDs.’ He flopped onto the sofa with a dry cough. ‘If it doesn’t come soon I’ll end up back in hospital.’

‘You don’t seem bad today,’ Tiffany said, as brightly as she could.

‘I soon will be,’ said Stuart, ‘once the last lot wears off.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Know what I think? I think Mum accidentally threw the jars away when she
cleaned out the bathroom. Not that she’ll own up to it.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’

Tiffany turned up the television. This had been the most uncomfortable fortnight of her life. When Stuart first complained he couldn’t find his medicine, the first thing Mum did was ask
Tiffany. And after searching the whole house she did everything but accuse her outright. Finally Dad took Tiffany aside and asked her to think, carefully, if she might have put Stuart’s pills
anywhere…at which point Tiffany had to shout that they blamed her for everything and that she wasn’t her brother’s drug-dealer. That shut them up. It helped that Stuart was on
her side. ‘Of course Tiffany can’t have lost them,’ he told his parents. ‘She never loses anything. Not even her swimming goggles,
Dad
.’

Once every room and dustbin had been ransacked, her parents gave up and ordered a fresh course of Panthacea from the Only Nature’s Own website. The price had risen to seventy pounds a
pack. Tiffany squirmed in silence. She’d just managed to put more money into Doctor Cobb’s pocket. And soon she’d have another batch to hide.
You can hide a hundred
batches
, sneered a nasty inner voice.
Those cats will still be caged.

On Sunday Tiffany woke late and headed hungrily downstairs. Mum was ironing.

‘Hi!’ Tiffany poured oat crunchies and drowned them in milk. She glanced at Mum to see why she hadn’t answered. On the ironing board was something purple.

‘Isn’t that your nice silk blouse?’ said Tiffany. ‘The one you were looking for?’

‘Yes.’

‘You found it, then.’ Tiffany was puzzled by Mum’s stony face. ‘Where was it?’

Dad appeared in the doorway. He held three little boxes and a jar.

‘ I found it,’ he said. ‘In the attic.’

The bowl slipped from her hand. Milk and china smashed across the floor. She groped for the nearest sink cloth.

‘Leave that.’ Dad put the Panthacea on the sideboard and came close, lifting her chin so she had to look him in the face. ‘I’m not going to ask
if
you did
it,’ he said, ‘that’s clear enough. I’m not going to ask
how
you did it, though I confess you’ve got me puzzled. What I want to know, Tiffany, is
why?’

She tried to turn her head aside. The look in Dad’s eyes was unbearable, it was one she had never seen before. He held her fast. ‘Talk to me, girl. Why did you hide your
brother’s medicine?’

‘What were you thinking?’ Mum burst out.

‘Are you trying to get back at him for some silly—’ Dad couldn’t even finish the sentence. ‘Because if you are—’

The time had come. She had to tell. But, but…if she told them the truth they might never believe her, and if they did believe her it would be worse. Stuart would know what he had been
swallowing these past months. The terrible way the pills were made. Her throat closed till she could barely breathe.

‘Young lady, you’re not leaving this room till you’ve explained yourself,’ said Mum. But Tiffany had tuned out. She couldn’t take her eyes off Stuart, who had
entered the kitchen holding a book to his chest.

‘Tiffany?’ said Stuart. ‘You were only playing a joke, weren’t you?’

She stared at the floor. The patterns on the tiles blurred with tears.

‘Don’t you want me to get well, then?’ Stuart asked. ‘Do you only like me when I’m ill, or something?’

She pushed Dad’s hand away with a violence that made him gasp in surprise. She ran past Stuart, down the hall and out into the street.

‘Should we have let her do that?’ murmured Dad, agonisingly clear to her feline hearing. ‘Better to ground her.’

‘And give her what she wants? It’s attention seeking, Peter. Jealousy’s a terrible thing.’ A sigh. ‘And I thought she adored Stuart.’