To Be A Cat

The Infinite Tiredness

A BRIEF WAVE of tiredness came over Barney as he opened the front door.

His mum was hoovering and didn’t look up. Guster came over to greet Barney but unusually his tail wasn’t wagging, and his eyes had a gleam of mistrust about them.

Then his mum saw him and switched off the hoover.

‘Hello,’ Barney said. But he said it like a question. ‘Hello?’

His mum just looked at him, without the faintest trace of crossness. ‘Oh, hello, sweetheart.’

Sweetheart?

‘Why are you back early?’ asked Barney, trying not to sound suspicious.

His mum sighed.

This was it! This was the moment she was going to tell him off!

But no.

‘I just felt a bit guilty about this morning,’ she said.

‘What about?’

‘Well, it’s your birthday, and I didn’t really have time for you. So I thought I’d take you somewhere.’

Barney was confused. For a moment he wished he hadn’t ripped up the letter. Maybe this was the point he should confess everything. After all, his mum was surely going to find out, and she did seem to be in a particularly good mood. And that was quite rare these days.

‘Mum, I—’

‘Pizza? Do you fancy going out for a pizza?’

Barney remembered the dream last night. Of being with his dad in a pizza restaurant. ‘I … er …’

‘Or a curry?’

‘Yeah. A curry sounds good.’

Then his mum gave him a present. It was a book called How to Improve Your Maths Skills.

‘I know it’s not the most exciting present in the world,’ said Mrs Willow. (Even though his mum and dad had got divorced, Barney’s mum had kept her married name as her maiden name was Rowbottom, and she didn’t like that very much because she’d always been called ‘Growbottom’ as a child.) ‘But I just thought it would help you get better marks.’

Barney wanted to explain that the only way he could get better marks was if he moved to a school where there was no Miss Whipmire. But he didn’t want to sound ungrateful.

‘Oh, thanks.’

And then Barney’s mum nearly cried.

‘What’s the matter?’

She took a deep, pulling-herself-together breath. ‘Nothing. You just looked like your … Anyway, come on, let’s get ready. I’ll ring up and book a table for six p.m. I’m quite hungry, aren’t you?’

So they went for a meal, and Barney ate the most delicious prawn jalfrezi he had ever tasted. But afterwards he felt weird. The tiredness came back, along with an odd feeling in his bones, as if they were being squeezed. He also felt a bit sick.

‘You do look pale,’ Mrs Willow said, staring at Barney’s empty plate. ‘I hope it’s not the prawns.’ She quickly asked for the bill and stood up.

And that was when an infinite tiredness took over Barney and he leaned forward and fell asleep on his dirty plate.