To Be A Cat

History

RISSA FAIRWEATHER LIKED HISTORY.

It wasn’t her favourite subject. Her favourite subject was science. Well, not all science. Just the stuff about what makes stars glimmer and the stuff which tells you that every time you look up at the night sky you are looking at the past, at stars that have actually existed since before the dinosaurs, before history itself.

But history was interesting too. As interesting as art and music, her other favourites. And the Vikings, whom Mr Crust was talking about today, were particularly good fun – with their long-boats and axes and outdoor toilets and bloody violence.

But today she wasn’t paying any attention. Instead she just kept thinking about the empty chair next to her and the same recurring questions. Why had Barney run off like that? And why hadn’t he said a word when she’d walked up the street with him?

Maybe he was sad about his dad. She remembered when Barney had found out his dad had gone missing. He had been quiet for weeks then. Far quieter than when his parents had got divorced, because there were so many uncertainties. Had his dad run away? Been kidnapped? Died in a ditch where no one could find him?

These were questions which could probably grow and grow inside a boy’s head until they stopped words altogether. And Barney, in those last few months at primary school, had been very quiet indeed.

Rissa wasn’t at all convinced that Barney was over it, even now.

‘Rissa, am I boring you?’

For a moment Rissa stopped thinking about Barney’s possible troubles and looked up to see Mr Crust’s wrinkled face staring straight at her.

‘No, sir,’ she said.

‘Good, well, perhaps you’d like to tell us about runestones, then?’

‘I’m sorry. My mind was wandering—’

The class giggled but Rissa didn’t care.

Rissa’s mum always said: ‘No one can make you feel bad about yourself without your consent.’ Which meant that you can’t control what people said about you, but you can control how you feel about what they said. Oh, and if Rissa was ever really stressed, she followed her dad’s advice and spoke the magic calming word under her breath.

Marmalade.

And Rissa had repeated all this to Barney, many times, but she knew he wasn’t like her. She could always feel his shame whenever Gavin called him ‘Weeping Willow’, after the time he found Barney wiping away a tear on his missing dad’s birthday.

But Rissa knew she had a lot to be thankful for, and that helped. She knew that however tough the day turned out to be, she would go home to her parents and they would cheer her up by singing songs (her dad was very good at playing the acoustic guitar) and, on clear nights, talk about the constellations that were seen through her telescope. Or, failing that, they would eat home-made chilli bean burgers and hand-cut chips, followed by one of her mum’s delicious carrot cakes made with a dollop of her special ingredient – marmalade.

That was all you needed to be happy.

Food. Music. A clear night sky and a telescope.

Plus love.

Lots and lots of love.

Meanwhile Mr Crust was still talking:

‘… Runestones are usually stones that were put into the ground by Vikings to remember important battles or men who had died. They have mainly been found in Scandinavia, but there have been some located in the British Isles, such as Northumbria and the Isle of Man. And a picture of the battles or dead men would be engraved onto the stone. But sometimes these “runic inscriptions”, as they are called, would be a picture of an animal. Horses were commonly depicted as they often died in battles with their owners. But there were other animals too. There are, for instance, a surprising number of runestones dedicated to cats. And you might think this is sweet, but the strange thing is that, although cats were sometimes kept by Vikings to kill rodents, they weren’t really pets. So it remains a complete mystery to historians and archaeologists …’

Mr Crust’s ramblings reminded Rissa of the cat that had come to school with her this morning. And, for some strange reason she couldn’t identify, this made her think of Barney again.

Something was definitely wrong. Barney had never run off like that before. Why would he have done that? What had scared him so much?

The questions stayed there, hovering, until the bell rang.

Lunch hour.

In the dining hall Rissa sat at a table on her own, eating the only vegetarian option – cheese and tomato pizza made with what was meant to be white bread, but tasted more like bath sponge. Well, she was on her own until Petra and Petula Primm came over to sit with her.

The twins were very neat-looking girls with shiny black hair cut into two perfectly immaculate bobs. And they were absolutely identical, except that Petra always wore a school tie while Petula, like most other girls, went for an open collar. They never normally made any effort with Rissa, as Petra and Petula didn’t like the idea of someone who lived on a barge, especially as

they lived in a very large house near the library, full of everything they ever asked their daddy for. Today, though, they seemed very interested in talking to her.

‘What happened to Barney this morning?’ asked Petra instantly, placing her tray on the table.

‘Why did he run away?’ added Petula, doing the same.

Rissa shrugged and swallowed some more bath sponge. ‘I don’t know. It’s weird.’ She thought about whether she should really say the next thing. But she did. ‘I think it might have something to do with his dad.’

She noticed the twins look at each other, their eyes shining with secret knowledge.

‘What made you—’ started Petula.

‘Say that?’ finished Petra.

‘Well, I don’t know. I just think he might be missing his dad.’

‘Or,’ suggested Petra, allowing Petula to continue, ‘He might have seen his dad.’

Rissa swallowed her food and stared at the twins. She knew they were itching to tell her something. ‘His dad’s missing,’ she said. ‘No one’s seen him for months.’

The twins gave each other that look again.

‘Let’s show her,’ said Petra.

‘Yes.’ Petula was positively bursting with excitement. ‘Let’s.’

And the twins both got out their identical mobile phones as menacingly as if they were weapons. They were incredibly shiny and sparkly and had their initials, ‘PP’, engraved on the back.

Rissa watched, worried, as the twins’ thumbs kept sliding across their screens.

‘There!’ said Petula.

‘Me too!’ said Petra.

And they both turned their phones round for Rissa to view the photo on each screen. The photo on Petula’s phone was of a man with a beard, but it was a bit blurry and dark so Rissa couldn’t really tell what she was supposed to be seeing.

The photo on Petra’s phone was much clearer. It was of the same man. A man with mid-brown hair and the same big bushy beard. He was sitting at some kind of counter, and there was a painting on the wall behind. It was an oil painting of a cat.

But it wasn’t the painting she was meant to be looking at.

It was the man.

She knew him from somewhere, but couldn’t think where.

‘Take away the beard and who do you have?’ asked Petra.

Rissa gasped as she imagined the man without a beard. She remembered the face from primary school. Could picture the man at sports day cheering on Barney as he struggled in the sack race. No. It couldn’t be.

But then Petula took something from her pocket – a piece of folded paper – and slid it across the table towards Rissa. Rissa unfolded it and saw it was an old newspaper cutting from the Blandford Gazette.

‘It was in our dad’s paper,’ said Petula, reminding Rissa that their father was the Blandford Gazette’s editor in chief.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

But Rissa didn’t need an answer. She’d unfolded it now and could see it was a photo of a man she recognized, this time in black and white. And underneath the photo was the man’s name, and a brief summary of the news story.

Neil Willow, aged 45, went missing two days ago from his home on Bradbury Drive. He lived alone, having separated from his wife several months earlier. No one has any idea where he went.

‘Barney’s dad,’ said Rissa.

‘And read that,’ Petula told her.

But Petra was already doing so with delicious glee. ‘No one has any idea where he went!’ she said. Then added: ‘Until now!’

And that’s when Rissa looked again at the photos on the twins’ mobile phones, then back to the newspaper cutting.

‘Take away the beard and who is it?’ asked Petula. ‘And we only took these pictures yesterday … so you know what that means, don’t you?’

There was no denying it. It was the same man. The same eyes, the same nose, the same everything.

‘So, Barney’s dad is still alive …?’ said Rissa in shock.

The twins nodded, thrilled.

‘We stayed with our aunt at the weekend, and we were at the cattery near her house. She was picking up her cat. It’s in Edgarton, fifteen miles away. That is where Mr Willow is working.’

‘It’s going to be the best story ever. Too good for the school newspaper,’ added Petula. ‘Daddy’s promised us that if we uncover the mystery we can be his star journalists. We’ll have our own front-page story in the Blandford Gazette!’

But Rissa was hardly listening. She was just thinking about Barney’s weird behaviour that morning, and how there must be a link to this.

Of course, what the Primms were telling her should have been good news. But as they kept on smiling, Rissa’s stomach tightened with dread.

Something was wrong with all this, she just knew it.

And so she put down her knife and fork, said goodbye to the twins, and left the hall with urgent steps.