Cat's Paw Read Free Page A

mind, where they could leap on her without warning. She drew a steady breath.
    ‘And I do not fear the tyrant–’
    ‘Hi, hi, hi!’ The door crashed shut on its weak hinge. ‘Hiya, Tiffany!’
    The main lights flicked on, hiding the shadows. Tiffany twisted round to wave at Susie Liu. ‘You made it, then.’
    ‘Yes. I am sorry about last week.’ Susie dug sportswear out of a holdall. ‘Sometimes my gymnastics coach can only do Fridays. I’m
sure
I packed my kit. Uh-oh.
Mother can’t have left my swimming towel in here, since
Tuesday
. . .’ From the dank towel Susie untangled a black unitard emblazoned with cat whiskers. Wrinkling her nose she
vanished behind the hessian noticeboard they used as a changing cubicle.
    Tiffany said nothing. Susie had started gymnastics a few months ago, excited to think that the skills she learned at pashki would make her a champion. In reality it wasn’t so simple.
Astonished by her vault and beam displays, the thrilled coach had bustled her onto the asymmetric bars, where she nearly snapped both elbows. There were lots of problems like that. Human and feline
gymnastics were too different, and you mixed them at your peril. Annoying Tiffany was perilous too. Susie had now missed two Cat Kin meetings in a row.
    She wasn’t the only regular absentee. Yusuf made excuses about football practice now he was on the school A-team. He came about once a fortnight. Then of course there was Olly.
    Susie reappeared, reeking of chlorine, and they warmed up with the Chasing the Bird stretch-and-lunge. Daniel arrived ahead of Cecile, with another crash of the door that made Tiffany wince. She
carried on with the warm-up, leading them through the basic stretches, Long Reach, Scratching Tree, Arch on Guard. Now and again she glanced at the door. Ben was never this late.
    So that was it. He wasn’t coming. She pushed her calf muscles to the point of pain as she recalled their quarrel on Wednesday evening. Yes, she’d said some hurtful things, but then
so had he. How dare he be sulking? She’d had an apology all ready.

    It would be wrong to blame her parents. After those awful few days last year, they could hardly behave otherwise. Mum and Dad had given her up for lost. They had pleaded on television for her
safe return, while in their imaginations she had been murdered a hundred times. When Tiffany was returned to them, apparently unhurt, they were bound to go completely crackers.
    At first this was lovely, a fairytale. Tiffany felt like Cinderella and Aladdin rolled into one. She was treated as a princess, granted breakfast in bed, pampered to within an inch of her life.
Every day brought gifts, outings, makeovers, designer-label clothes. It took time to notice that she had something in common with Rapunzel too, and it wasn’t her celebrity-salon hair.
    Mum and Dad had locked her in a tower. Sort of. If she wanted to go out, even to Avril’s house two streets away, they drove her. When she was at school, at a friend’s, or seeing a
film, her parents would phone, supposedly to check she was enjoying herself. She was under orders never to turn her mobile off, not even in cinemas. Once she left it behind and Mum had actually,
honestly, rung the police. After the first six weeks of this, Tiffany felt six years younger. Dad tried to hold her hand when they crossed the road. Soon Mum would be checking her food for small
bones.
    Still, since anything beat being ignored, she tried to enjoy it. Which was why the oddest, saddest and most unfair thing took her quite by surprise. Ben noticed it first.
    ‘Is your home phone on the blink?’ he had asked her, way back in November. He’d left a few messages that she never got. Soon afterwards he remarked, ‘I suppose your
school is still burying you with homework,’ which puzzled her because she’d had it easy leading up to Christmas. It emerged that Ben had stopped by her house, only to be told that she
was studying. Then there was the