Alfie The Holiday Cat

Chapter Fifteen

‘So, here’s what I thought we’d do,’ Jonathan said to Matt and Tomasz. They had arrived the previous evening and everyone had been pleased to see them, especially me. It had been a fraught week and although it ended well, I thought having the guys around might just bolster everyone’s mood. It was funny how much I actually missed them. I knew the others did too from the way they talked. We, like that funny flock of sheep, were a family and it didn’t feel quite right when part of our family were missing.

I looked worriedly at Tomasz but he showed no sign of being anything but his usual self. I did notice Franceska shooting him worried glances at times but they didn’t talk about it, or if they did it was out of earshot of everyone, including me. He didn’t mention the problems at the restaurant to anyone and I secretly hoped that maybe he had sorted them out already.

‘What?’ Matt asked, looking suspicious. It was Saturday afternoon and Polly, Claire and Franceska had gone to a spa; the men had agreed they needed a well-deserved break and some pampering. Well, I could have done with some too, but then clearly cat pampering wasn’t on the cards! George and I were going to keep our eyes and ears open today, it was time to move ‘project Andrea’ on, in that I needed to find out just what she was up to, so I knew what we were dealing with and what we would need to do about it. Gilbert being onboard was reassuring, as was having our men back, even if only for a couple of days.

‘OK, so we are going to go round to see this Andrea and sort out, once and for all, the situation with her, the children and our house.’ Jonathan looked pleased with himself.

‘You are sure that’s a good idea?’ Tomasz looked uncertain, and I agreed with him. I thought it was possibly a terrible idea.

‘Our wives might string us up if we go and see her behind their backs,’ Matt pointed out. Again, I agreed.

‘No, but you see, it’s not behind their backs. They are going to be having a lovely time and we will sort this situation out and be heroes when they return.’

I licked my paws; this wasn’t going to end well.

‘Jon, I have to take Aleksy and Tommy paddleboarding this afternoon, or at least stand on the beach and watch them, I promised,’ Tomasz said, looking relieved. He had a get out of jail — or Andrea — card. Matt shot him an annoyed look.

‘OK, well we will both go and take the younger children.’

‘I don’t know—’ Matt started.

‘Perhaps not a good idea to take Toby — he was very upset and maybe he will be more upset by seeing them?’ Tomasz made an excellent point.

‘Um, maybe you’re right, can you take Toby with you?’ Jonathan asked. Which possibly wasn’t what Tomasz meant.

‘Well, I guess …’ He shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

‘The thing is, Jon, if Toby goes, Henry will want to go too,’ Matt persisted.

‘Oh, Tomasz won’t mind. Right, I’ll get the girls ready and we’ll be off.’

Tomasz and Matt looked at each other and both shook their heads. But I knew, as did they, there was no arguing with Jonathan when he made his mind up.

I was torn. I wanted to go and see the boys on their paddleboards. They were these flat things which looked a bit like ironing boards without legs and floated in the water while you stood on them and paddled. But I knew I would really need to go with the others to Andrea’s, and of course George would want to go too, in the hope of seeing Chanel. Paddleboarding would have to wait for another day, as I saw Tomasz, clutching Toby and Henry’s hands, set off with Aleksy and Tommy who were in their wetsuits ready to go.

As Jonathan, Matt and the girls headed next door, I shuffled through the hedge. I assumed that George would already be there. It seemed silly to go the long way round when we didn’t need to. I joined them at the front door, where there was no sign of George. I was a bit surprised as Jonathan petted me.

‘Glad you decided to join us, after all I am sure you think this is a good idea,’ he said.

‘Yowl.’ I really didn’t.

There was a flash of annoyance on Andrea’s face as she opened the door, followed by a moment where she rearranged her features into a smile.

‘Well this is a nice surprise,’ she said. Chanel hissed nastily. Goodness, she didn’t waste any time. I was almost glad that George wasn’t here.

‘Look, Andrea,’ Jonathan started. Matt stared at me, and I knew what he was thinking. ‘We thought it might be a good idea to clear the air. I know there have been a few problems.’

‘Really? I wasn’t aware of any problems,’ she countered. I had to admire her composure, as she was blatantly lying.

‘Well you know the thing about you saying you want the cottage, and then the incident yesterday with your girls upsetting Toby, I thought we should have a reasonable chat and sort it out.’

‘Me too,’ Summer said. ‘I want to sort it out,’ she said, without any idea what she was talking about.

‘And me,’ Martha added. Matt shook his head.

Andrea shrugged. ‘Look, the girls are out at the moment, but why don’t you come in, I’ve got some fresh lemonade in the kitchen and we can have a civilised chat. I do find standing on the doorstep a little bit common.’

‘Thank you, we’d love to come in,’ Jonathan said. Andrea stood back and Martha and Summer went in eagerly, Jonathan behind them with Matt reluctantly bringing up the rear.

‘Oh.’ Andrea stopped. ‘I’d rather your cat didn’t come in, it does so upset Chanel.’ She shut the door on me, almost catching my paw in the process.

I knew the kitchen was round the back, so I decided to go and see if I could hear any of their conversation. I struck gold, as one of the kitchen windows was open and, although I didn’t dare jump up on the windowsill, because I’d probably be shooed away, I found a point by the open window where I could hear everything, even if I couldn’t see it.

Andrea was speaking. ‘I am so sorry about Toby, you see it was a bit of a misunderstanding. My girls are so sweet but some of the other village children have been unfair, refusing to let them join in their games with your children and, well, they were ever so upset as you can imagine. I know it was wrong of Savannah to accidentally throw some sand at Toby but she was very emotional and you know what children are like.’

‘How do you accidentally throw sand at someone?’ Matt asked, just as I thought the same.

‘Well you know, it wasn’t malicious. I have told the girls that even if everyone is being horrible to them they must rise above it and not react.’

‘Our children are not horrible though, I can assure you of that,’ Jonathan said.

‘Well, of course they probably don’t mean to be, but being left out is very hurtful,’ Andrea persisted. I wished I could see Jonathan and Matt’s faces, I hoped that they weren’t buying this rubbish but I feared they might be.

‘How about we speak to our children and tell them to be nice to your girls and you do the same?’ Jonathan suggested.

Really? It would be that easy? Sometimes I wondered about my humans.

‘But not me, you don’t need to speak to me,’ Summer said.

‘She’s adorable,’ Andrea laughed. ‘And so pretty, both of you are very pretty girls.’

‘Well thank you,’ Matt said. Oh goodness they were falling for it. ‘But what about the house?’ he quickly added. Phew. ‘You said you wanted it no matter what it cost.’

‘Oh I did, and I meant financially. You see, I have tried to have a reasonable chat with your wives. I hate to sound sexist but I do find men much easier to deal with in these matters,’ Andrea chirped. She sounded as if she was flirting with both Jonathan and Matt, which I was annoyed about. ‘I would love that house, the village means so much to me and my family and we really don’t like the idea of houses here being used only for holidays, it diminishes our community, and of course I like to do my bit for the community. I would love to own Seabreeze, and if I did it would really be to help the village.’ She almost sounded believable, I thought, but I didn’t trust her at all.

‘Yes but we are three families who will be sharing the cottage, so it will be used a lot of the time. And we love this place, and will be spending money locally, so that’s surely good for the village?’ Jonathan added.

‘Of course and if your wife, or wives, had explained it as simply as that I would have been delighted. I mean, I just want you to know that you are all very welcome here and I am the first to open my arms to new people, but if you ever change your mind the offer is there.’

‘You are very reasonable,’ Jonathan said. ‘Is your husband around? Maybe you could both come over for drinks one evening?’

‘That would be lovely, only my husband is travelling a lot for business at the moment, so he’s barely here, but hopefully later in the summer, before you all go back to London.’

‘Hiss,’ a voice interrupted my eavesdropping. I looked up to see Chanel at the window. ‘You’ve heard enough, you can go now,’ she said.

With that she was gone.

I decided to find George. He would be furious about missing Chanel but then it was probably a good thing. It seemed that the more awful she was to him, the more he liked her. I checked the cottage but there was no sign of him, so I went to sit on the car bonnet. From there I spotted the others on the beach and saw that George was with them. Aleksy and Tommy were in the water with their paddleboards and Tomasz was on the sand with Henry and Toby, watching, with George standing next to them. I ran across to the beach, dodging all the families sitting on the sand, before reaching the shore and greeting them all. Tommy, who was standing on the board, paddled over to us, jumped off and came to see us.

‘Alfie, did you see me? I am getting really good.’

‘Not as good as Aleksy,’ Henry said, innocently, which made Tommy scowl.

‘I am as good as him.’ He puffed out his chest. Tommy was more competitive than Aleksy, who was the more sensitive of the brothers. It was a surprise to everyone that Aleksy was so good at paddleboarding, but nice, because with most sports he was in Tommy’s shadow a bit.

‘Come on, it’s not a competition,’ Tomasz said.

‘Well, watch me, I’ll show you how good I am.’ Tommy brought the board up to the shore while he huffed at us all. I was rubbing against Toby’s leg when Tommy started pushing the board back into the water.

‘Oh look, George is on the board!’ Toby exclaimed.

‘Meow,’ I said, angrily. He must have jumped on the board and as Tommy had been pushing it back in the water, looking at us and telling us to watch him, he obviously hadn’t noticed him. Oh my nerves had been shot to pieces in the last few days. This was too much. I yowled as much as I could, and then Tommy finally turned round and noticed George.

‘Tommy, bring George back,’ Tomasz yelled as loudly as he could. Tommy didn’t turn round though. Instead he got on the board, on his knees, and started paddling, wobbling everywhere. George was standing on the front of the board and if I didn’t know better I would have said he was enjoying himself. He stood, watching the water, not huddling close to Tommy, which was what I would be doing. It was apparent that Tommy wasn’t great with the paddleboard, which was rocking quite violently, and then there was a huge splash.

‘MEOW!’ I shouted. What about George? Thankfully, he was still on the board as Tommy’s head emerged from the water.

‘He has very good balance, Tomasz,’ Henry said.

‘He does, even for a cat,’ Tomasz agreed.

Aleksy paddled over to them and I watched, horrified, as George looked over at him, then leapt from one board to the other. As Aleksy turned his board around and headed back to the shore, I could hear both boys laughing, although the wind was making it sound faint. I was glad to see George was on Aleksy’s board now — it made me feel a bit more reassured.

George made the shore safely, where Tomasz used a towel to dry him off a bit, before we all headed home.

‘George, you shouldn’t have done that,’ I chastised as soon as we were alone. ‘Cats are not meant to go near water.’

‘I love water, Dad,’ George said excitedly.

What? Whoever heard of a cat who liked water?

‘And I love paddleboarding,’ he went on. ‘It was so much fun. You should try it.’

‘Not unless I can paddleboard on dry land,’ I replied, giving up. George was a stubborn kitten and now it seemed that, as well as liking Chanel, which was bad for him, he liked water, which was even worse for him. I had no idea what to do about that.

If only humans could be as sensible as I was. Tomasz and Matt were right, as was I. The women were furious that they had gone to speak to Andrea, and they were, quite rightly, refusing to buy her reasonable act.

‘She’s going to talk to the girls and make sure they are nice but she said they’re being left out as well, which upsets them,’ Jonathan said.

‘That’s not true.’ Franceska was angry. ‘Aleksy, he tell me what they say to them, they are nasty and they tried to get all the children not to play.’

‘Maybe their mother is just fooled by them,’ Matt suggested.

‘Oh God, you are such an idiot,’ Polly stormed.

‘What on earth were you thinking? Going to see her?’ Claire was practically screeching. Luckily the children were all in bed and that included George.

‘I just thought we could clear up the unpleasantness.’ Jonathan at least had the grace to look sheepish.

‘And she did explain she wanted the cottage because she couldn’t bear it to be empty so much. But when we explained it wouldn’t be, she said she was delighted for us to be her neighbours.’

‘And she said what a wonderful job you were doing with the renovations,’ Jonathan added.

‘And you believed her?’ Polly stormed.

‘Why wouldn’t we?’ Both Matt and Jonathan were looking a bit ashamed by now.

‘Honestly, a pretty face and you believe anything.’

‘I hadn’t noticed she was pretty,’ Matt said quickly.

‘Yeah right,’ Polly answered.

‘Well, she does have nice hair,’ Jonathan added and Claire swiped him.

‘You guys are deluded if you think she was actually as reasonable as you say. She’s playing you and it’s embarrassing to see that you fell for it so easily.’

‘Look, let’s just give her the benefit of the doubt. Please?’ Jonathan was red-faced and rubbing his arm where Claire had hit him a bit harder than she possibly intended.

‘If you say so, but if there is another incident then you guys cannot doubt us,’ Polly said. ‘We don’t lie and our children don’t lie. Andrea is a middle-aged mean girl and she’s bringing up her daughters to be mean girls.’

‘OK, look let’s leave it, we’re only here for a short time and I don’t want to argue,’ Matt said reasonably. ‘But honestly, if anything else happens, I promise we’ll have your backs.’

‘Yes, as long as the lady with nice hair doesn’t turn your heads yet again,’ Claire retorted.

Later, I could feel the tension in the air as Tomasz, who had cooked dinner, cleared his throat.

‘Look, guys, the timing isn’t good and I’ve tried to put it off but we have a problem.’ I almost couldn’t bear to listen.

‘What’s up, mate?’ Jonathan said. Franceska was staring at her plate and refusing to meet anyone’s questioning glances.

‘We had a flood at the restaurant, it’s not good. We have had to close and it’ll be a couple more weeks at the least, plus the insurance company is dragging its feet.’ He looked so sad my heart went out to him.

‘Oh, Tomasz, that’s terrible, we didn’t realise. Frankie, why didn’t you say?’ Polly said.

‘Because I didn’t want to make more problems,’ Franceska replied.

‘What do you mean?’ Claire asked.

‘The money we put in here, our savings, we might need it after all. I am so sorry but I have wages to pay, and the business accounts are all tied up for the time being, so I need to find some cash, and soon.’ Tomasz rubbed his head, anxiously.

‘But the insurance has to pay out,’ Matt said, reasonably.

‘Yes, eventually it will, but I and my business partner are having issues with them. Look, we love this place, and I wouldn’t want to lose it, the boys love their paddleboarding, but we do have a temporary cash flow problem and I don’t know how to fix it.’

‘Can we just bridge it, temporarily?’ Claire asked, looking at Jonathan.

‘Darling, we’d have to borrow money, which takes time, unless we go to a loan shark, I don’t think it’s feasible. Tomasz, how long do we have before you need the money and how much?’

Franceska named a figure, which meant nothing to me but everyone took a sharp intake of breath, and she started crying. Tomasz put his arm around her.

‘If there was any way, we would try to find it,’ Tomasz said. ‘But we literally have about two weeks until we are in trouble.’

‘Oh God, we can’t lose the cottage, not now,’ Claire said, tears in her eyes.

‘We are so sorry,’ Franceska said. But no one went to reassure her and the party broke up soon after.

I was very upset, so I lingered in the hope that Gilbert would appear, and he did.

‘I wanted to introduce you to our families,’ I said. ‘Although tonight wasn’t a good night.’ I wanted to Gilbert to meet them at their best and they certainly weren’t right now.

‘I know but I got cold paws. I’m still nervous around humans and I’m sure yours are nice, but you know I’m not ready to trust again.’ I felt sad for him and what he had been through, although we had all had our tough roads to tread, I guessed.

‘Anyway, it’s your choice and I respect that. But I am worried about them.’ I filled him in on the drama that had unfolded.

‘I saw that neighbour and she was talking with that young builder, the one you don’t like.’

‘Liam?’

‘Yes that’s his name. I heard her speaking to him on the phone while she stood in the garden not that long ago. She looked around her furtively, checking no one was around, but I heard her tell him that his “little acts of sabotage” were unsatisfactory and he better “up his game”.’

‘What does that even mean?’ I asked.

‘No idea. We know what he’s done but your families haven’t agreed to sell the cottage.’

‘But what does she mean by upping his game?’

‘The mystery deepens.’

‘The thing is, we need to follow him at all times to see what he’s up to, and what with George and his crush and the kids and the humans, I’m just not sure I can do that.’

‘Alfie, I can help. I mean, I’m quite good at hiding so I’ll track him, at least for a while, especially when he’s alone. And if I can’t for any reason I’ll let you know and you can take over.’

‘Gilbert, that would be amazing, a huge weight off my mind.’

‘Well I got used to hiding, being invisible, it helps with survival.’ He looked sad.

‘I hate to think of you being so alone. I told you about my homeless time, and well, I hated it. I wish you could see that being part of a family isn’t all bad. My family isn’t.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’ He grinned sadly and I nuzzled him. ‘And maybe soon I’ll be able to let myself believe it.’

It made me so cross that a handsome, lovely cat like Gilbert had had such a hard time. He was my friend now so that meant I would do all I could to ensure that things improved. Yes, he was going to help me with Andrea and Liam, but in return I was going to help him see that people weren’t all bad. I only wished that the truth was that none of them were, but we all knew that that wasn’t the case. With the news that Tomasz and Franceska had imparted on top of that, well, I had a very bad feeling in my fur. Very bad indeed.