Cat's Paw Read Free Page B

time Ben said ‘Hi!’ to her father in the supermarket. Peter Maine veered off into the frozen section.
    ‘You’re imagining things,’ Tiffany protested. ‘My mum and dad think you’re a hero. Why would they start treating you funny?’ Why indeed. Yes, in their first
rush of joy at having her back, they had hailed Ben as her rescuer. He was the bright lad who placed a vital call to a helpline (they didn’t know he had done rather more than that). And there
was the problem. Every time they looked at him, they relived those hellish hours. And surely they wondered. Tiffany’s made-up story of her kidnapping had never quite hung together. Was there
more that they didn’t know? Could this boy have been somehow at fault? Might their daughter have been safer if she had never known Ben Gallagher? Annoyingly: yes.
    Soon it was as obvious as a tiger at the table. On Wednesday evening Tiffany came downstairs to find Mum on the doorstep, telling Ben she wasn’t in. Ben glared at them both and stalked off
into the mist. Tiffany caught him up in Crusoe Crescent.
    ‘I can take a hint,’ said Ben.
    ‘She didn’t mean it,’ said Tiffany.
    ‘You don’t want me to come round any more?’
    ‘Yes! I mean, no! I mean–’
    ‘Any idea why they hate me so much?’
    ‘They don’t–’ It went on like this for a while. Presently Tiffany saw Mum skulking nearby.
    ‘Huh.’ Ben had noticed too. ‘I’m glad my parents aren’t like yours.’
    ‘They just worry a lot. They care.’
    ‘You’re fifty metres from your front door.’ He lowered his voice. ‘On Christmas Eve you climbed with me up the church steeple to look down on all the lights. When the
midnight bells rang we nearly fell off. I’ll go and tell your mum about that.’
    ‘Don’t you dare.’
    ‘Tiffany, I can’t believe you’d let them do this.’
    Nor could she. Every day she felt a part of her soul pining, staring out as if through a locked cat-flap. But then, she wasn’t her parents’ cat. ‘I’m their
daughter,’ said Tiffany.
    ‘After all the trouble I went through to save you from that cage,’ Ben hissed, ‘you’re letting mummy and daddy keep you in another one.’ His face flushed – he
had visibly bitten his tongue. And Tiffany was spitting mad.
    ‘After all
you
went through?’ she cried. ‘You have
no idea
–’ She saw Mum hurrying their way and froze her with a look. ‘Ben, you can’t
imagine what it was like in there. What it’s like for me still. Do you ever faint at school? Do you have to sleep with the ear of your old
teddy bear
stuffed in your mouth, to stop the
noise when you wake in the night? No. Because it’s all about
you
, isn’t it? It’s what
you
suffered. Well, I hope for your sake you never suffer like that.’
    In rushed Mum, the referee.
    ‘Enough now. Sweetheart, you’re making yourself upset.’ She pulled Tiffany by the arm. Ben might have been invisible.
    ‘So,’ Ben spluttered, ‘so tell me. Tell me what it was like. I’m about the only person you can!’
    ‘Ben,’ said Tiffany’s mother, ‘goodbye.’
    As she was led away, Tiffany wheeled round.
    ‘And you’d better hope it never does happen to you,’ she sobbed. ‘Because if it does, you – you won’t get any help from me.’
    She had a foreboding, at the time, that these were the last words she would ever say to him. Which of course was silly.

    ‘Picture the row of tall posts in your mind. You are standing on the first.’
    Kneeling in the Sitting Cat pose, Tiffany watched the others tiptoe with closed eyes around the hall. They should all have been experts at Eth-walking by now. It worried her that most of them
seemed to have got worse.
    ‘You
must
step precisely on the top.’ The more she strove to sound commanding, the more Daniel’s face creased with locked-in laughter. Without Ben here they didn’t
seem to take her so seriously. ‘When I tell you, step to the next imaginary post!’
    The door of the church hall