The Kitten Hunt (13 page)

Dad was standing in the kitchen. He did not say hello, and he did not look happy to see me. In fact, he was glar ing at me. Then he raised one hand and dangled . . . a dead mouse in my face!

‘AAARGH!’ I screamed.

‘EEEEK!’ Jazz screamed.

‘And that’s not all,’ said Dad, as if in answer to a perfectly serious question. ‘This one was by the back door, but I’ve also had one on my laptop keyboard, one in
the kitchen sink and one in my jacket pocket!’

I had stopped screaming and was staring at the mouse in total and utter horrified silence. What was Kaboodle up to?

‘It’s that cat!’ Jazz blurted out. ‘I told you, Bertie.’

I shook my head at her quickly and mouthed, ‘No!’ but she didn’t get the hint.

‘I
told
you he was bringing you presents!’

‘What?’ Dad asked, in his slow and dangerous voice that he reserves for occasions when I am in so much trouble, I don’t know how much. Occasions such as this, for example.

‘Remember that cat you saw me with the other day, Mr Fletcher? And you thought it was mine? Well, I say cat, but it’s more of a kitten really, and the thing is, it’s not
actually completely mine . . .’ Jazz was babbling now, and backing away from the mouse that Dad was still waving in our faces, as if he was trying to hypnotize us with it. Meanwhile I was
waving my hands violently at Jazz and mouth-ing, ‘NOOO!’

But Jazz wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the mouse and wibbling, ‘Yeah, it’s definitely not my cat. Mum doesn’t like them, you see. Her sister used to have one
and . . . anyway—’

DRIIIING!

The doorbell. I grabbed Jazz by the hand to stop her from saying anything more to Dad,and ran to answer the door.

‘Hello, sweetie!’

Pinkella!

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked rudely. I couldn’t help it – the words came out of their own accord.

Pinkella’s mouth crumpled. ‘You might well a-a-ask,’ she sobbed.

Holy Stromboli! This was all I needed right now.

I would have slammed the door in her face,had she not already walked right into my house uninvited and dropping big fat mascara-coated tears all over the carpet.

Dad came through at the sound of the weeping and wailing and said, ‘What on earth . . . .’

Pinkella blinked at him through her melting make-up and waved a hand in front of her face as if to hide her distress. ‘I-I’m so s-so-sorry to descend on you like this,’ she
stammered. ‘I’m afraid I’m having a terrible day.’

‘Join the club,’ Dad muttered.

I might have said the same, had I not been in full-on panic overdrive. How was I going to get out of this one?

‘If it’s your kitten you’re worried about, Ms P, it’s OK. He’s probably here somewhere,’ said Jazz unhelpfully.

‘No, it’s not that. Wa it a minute – why would Kaboodle be
here
?’ Pinkella asked, her voice suddenly dangerously under control and her finely plucked eyebrows
meeting together in a scary frown.

By now my levels of panic had risen to completely unmanageable proportions and I could not do anything other than stare at the disaster unfolding before me, my mouth open like a frightened
frog.

Dad put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Bertie?’

I turned to look at him, willing myself to come up with a plausible and brilliant explanation, when I felt something soft and warm wind itself round my legs.

‘Miaow? Anything the matter?’ asked Kaboodle.

‘You could say that,’ I hissed at him, glancing nervously at the two grown-ups who were waiting for an answer from me. ‘The cat is, as they say, well and truly out of the
bag.’

‘S
o, let me get this straight,’ Dad said, sitting across from me at the kitchen table and fixing me with a
you’d-better-be-telling-me-the-truth-this-time stare ‘You set up a Pet-Sitting Service without telling me, and Jazz has been in on this from the start?’ He glared at Jazz as he
said this.

‘Yeah, I, er – actually I was the brains behind all this, Mr F, Jazz mumbled, staring at the table-top.

I shot her a questioning look, but she ignored me. From the look on Dad’s face, I don’t think he believed her anyway. What was he going to do? Stop me and Jazz from hanging out
together? Make me give up seeing Kaboodle? Put me under house arrest? Silence reigned as I struggled to think of anything to say to defend myself.

Thankfully Pinkella came to my rescue. ‘I don’t think you should be too hard on the girls, Mr Fletcher,’ she said. ‘Your daughter has actually been very resourceful, if
you think about it. And her rates were really quite reasonable—’

‘Her WHAT? You were CHARGING MONEY?’ Dad bellowed, making all of us, Kaboodle included, jump in our seats.

‘It’s all right,’ Pinkella said, a bit nervously. ‘I
offered
to pay Roberta. It’s only a pound a day, which is incredibly cheap – especially compared
with the cat hotel.’

‘I told you we should have asked for more,’ Jazz muttered.

I held my breath, waiting for another explosion from Dad.

He shook his head at me. ‘And Mr Smythe – how much is that poor man paying for his hamsters to be looked after?’

I couldn’t speak. My mouth had gone as furry as Kaboodle’s coat.

‘Two pounds,’ Jazz announced. Thanks for that, Jazz, I thought gloomily. ‘There are two hamsters, you see,’ she burbled, keen to make the point that everything was fair
and above board.

Dad squeezed his eyes tight shut and pressed the sides of his head with his fingertips as if he were getting a headache. ‘Well, Bertie, now this is all out in the open, you know what you
are going to have to do, don’t you?’

I nodded miserably. I did know, only too well. But Dad told me anyway. ‘You are going to tell Ms Pinkington that you are very sorry for taking her money and that you will not be offering
your “services” again, and you will go and see Mr Smythe when he comes back and tell him the same thing. And you will not accept a penny from either of them. Do I make myself clear? Oh,
and I suppose this explains all your mysterious phone calls? We ll, you can hand over your mobile right now. You obviously can’t be trusted with it.’

This was excruciating. But I just nodded, fished in my jeans for my phone and made a determined effort not to catch Jazz’s eye. I could just about see her from under my mad hair. She was
rubbing her fingers and thumb together furiously and mouth-ing, ‘She owes us!’

‘Go on, then,’ said Dad, pocketing my mobile and rocking back on his chair and folding his arms.

‘I’m sorry, Ms Pinkington,’ I said quietly. Then I sighed. ‘The thing is, Dad, I wasn’t doing it for the money.’

Dad shook his head again,this time in complete disbelief. ‘You
weren’t
doing it for the money! What on earth
were
you doing it for?’

‘Tell him, Bertie,’ Kaboodle mewed.

But I didn’t need any prompting from a kitten – from anyone, in fact. It was pretty clear to me that it was time to come clean.

‘I just want a pet,’ I said grumpily. ‘I’ve always wanted a pet.’

Dad let out a long breath. ‘Why?’ he asked, leaning towards me. ‘What’s the big deal?’

I shut my eyes. ‘You don’t get it, do you? I need someone – something – to keep me company, Dad.’

I looked up to see that Dad had gone red and was looking very uncomfortable indeed.

Pinkella went as pink as her floaty dress and stammered, ‘This – er – this obviously isn’t a good time for you. You need to talk things over as a – as a family.
Kaboodle and I will leave you to it, won’t we, sweetums?’

‘Shame. I was rather enjoying myself,’ he purred, fixing me with a round yellow stare.

He might as well have scratched me – how dare he enjoy all this! I vented my irritation on Pinkella. ‘Why are
you
home so early, anyway?’ I demanded. ‘You told me
to look after Kaboodle for two weeks. It’s only been two days.’

Under normal circumstances I would have been told off for speaking in that Tone of Voice, but these circumstances were so far from normal, we might as well have been standing at the North Pole
in our underwear singing ‘God Save the Queen’.

Pinkella fluttered her eye lashes rapidly, sniffed and said, ‘There was a change of plan. That’s what I was coming to tell you, before this – before your father . . . Oh, I may
as well just tell you,’ she said, sniffing again. ‘The director who was doing the auditions for the film told me that I wasn’t right for the part.’ She hesitated. ‘And
when I asked him why, he . . . he . . .’ Her face went into crumpled-up mode. ‘He said I was too – old!’ she whispered, her eyes wide in horror.

Jazz caught my eye and mouthed, ‘And too pink!’

The scowl on my face melted and I was overcome with a plummeting sense of guilt. Pinkella might be strange, but that didn’t mean I was glad the director had upset her so much.

I grimaced to Jazz to keep quiet and said reluctantly to Pinkella, ‘Oh, that’s – er – that’s awful. I’m really sorry. So you didn’t get the part
then?’

‘I’ll put the kettle on, Ms Pinkington—’ Dad offered.

‘F-Fenella,’ she hiccuped.

‘Sorry?’ said Dad.

‘Fenella – call me Fenella,’ she managed, before tears welled up in her mascara-ed eyes and began trickling into rivers of black down her face.

‘Right,’ said Dad. He looked as if he was wishing a natural disaster of cataclysmic proportions would occur right then and there in the kitchen and forcibly remove him from this
embarrassing situation.

‘Bertie – we’ll talk about you later,’ he said to me hastily. ‘Why don’t you see Jazz home?’

I sighed and nodded. And then I remembered Houdini and Mr Nibbles. ‘Er, can I ask you something?’ I asked Dad, eyeing Ms P, who was working herself up into a volcano of tears and
snot.

‘Yes?’ Dad snapped.

‘Can I feed the hamsters before I come home? Mr S won’t be back till tomorrow.’

‘All right, all right,’ Dad said again, pushing a box of tissues nervously at Pinkella. Her weeping had increased alarmingly in volume. ‘But be quick!’

I made sure Kaboodle wasn’t going to follow us. No chance of that – Pinkella had pinned him down firmly on to her lap with one bejewelled hand. He shot me a final pleading glance,
but I was out of there too fast to hear him speak. Jazz and I ran out of the house, slamming the door behind us.

We raced round to Mr Smythe’s, where Jazz cleaned out the cage while I kept hold of Houdini and Mr Nibbles. They scurried around in the palms of my hands and twitched
their cute little whiskery noses at me.

‘Poor little guys,’ I crooned weakly. ‘You must be starving. I’m so sorry.’

They squeaked and preened their faces and looked as sweet as ever. It was no good though, I just wasn’t as excited about looking after them as I had been before. I was too preoccupied with
what Dad was going to say to me later, once Pinkella had gone home. And of course she would take Kaboodle with her. So that was that. No more having him all to myself. No more snuggling on my duvet
in the night. The Pet-Sitting Service really was over, I realized, especially since I’d lost my phone now as well. I would not be getting any more calls and life would go back to being the
same old boring, useless load of—

‘Hey, don’t, Bertie!’ Ja zz came over and gently took Houdini and Mr Nibbles from me. ‘It’ll be all right. Don’t cry.’

I was making too much of a habit of this, I thought grimly through my tears.

She put the hamsters safely in their clean cage, topped up their food,then gave me the kind of hug that only a best mate can. ‘Listen, this is all my fault. I’ve been a useless best
friend from start to finish over this pet-sitting thing, and now I’ve landed you in it with your dad.’

I shook my head and wiped my eyes. ‘Nah,’ I said as breezily as I could. ‘This is my mess and it’s up to me to clear it up.’

We finished up at Mr Smythe’s and I walked Jazz home, before trudging slowly back to my place.

I went round the back of the house, as I knew Dad would be in, waiting for me. The back door was open, and as I came closer I could hear voices.

‘Oh, you are a sweetie, Marvin,’ Pinkella was twittering.

Pinkella was still in the kitchen with Dad! Surely she should have gone home by now?

I don’t know what made me do it, but I crept quietly up to the doorway so that I could listen in.

‘So when shall we get together, Marvin?’

I don’t believe it! I thought. He’s told her his pen name instead of his real one. I couldn’t help sniggering quietly at that. Hang on a minute, though – what did she
mean, ‘get together’?

I leaned in to get my ear as close to the door as possible.

‘Let’s see,’ I heard Dad say. ‘I’m not too busy at the moment –’ Not too busy? You’re always busy, I thought. – ‘I could do Friday
after work.’

‘What about Roberta?’ Pinkella asked.

‘Oh, that’s OK. She’ll probably be wanting to stay over at Jazz’s anyway,’ said Dad.

My stomach turned to lead. What was going on? I shut the back door silently behind me and whizzed into the kitchen just in time to see Pinkella start in surprise.

‘Oh, Bertie!’ said Dad, going purple as he leaped up from the table and sent his chair rocking on to its back legs. ‘Blimey, you gave us a fright!’

Us?

Kaboodle was still on Pinkella’s lap, curled up like an apostrophe. He yawned extravagantly and stretched out his front legs when I came in.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘N-nothing,’ said Dad, a bit too quickly.

‘Nothing at all, sweetie,’ said Pinkella, grinning wildly and cradling Kaboodle in her arms.

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Kaboodle indignantly. ‘I have no idea. I was having a lovely dream about hamsters though . . . ’

‘Don’t—!’ I warned him.

‘Don’t what?’ asked Dad, looking puzzled.

‘Oh, forget it,’ I snapped and shot Kaboodle a look which I hoped said, ‘You and I will have words later.’

Pinkella blushed and flicking her hair back over one chiffony shoulder, she announced, ‘Well, it’s been awfully kind of you to look after Kaboodle so well, Roberta darling.
I’ve left the money I owe you on the table, dear. No – I insist,’ she added, catching Dad’s eye. ‘And thank you, Marvin, for the tea. We’ll be off now.’
And she scuttled out of the back door clutching Kaboodle to her chest.