Cat Kin (20 page)

‘You assumed I knew him personally,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘The logic of young people. So if I were to find a poster of Elijah Wood in your bedroom, that would mean he’s your
boyfriend, would it?’

Tiffany blushed. Well, she could dream.

Mrs Powell smiled tenderly. ‘Come on, girl.’ She led Tiffany into the small but spotless kitchen and put the kettle on. Jim appeared with a chirrup of recognition, rubbing his silver
coat around Tiffany’s calves and rumbling like a bulldozer.

‘Give him this.’ Mrs Powell handed her a pale yellow fragment. Tiffany fed the parmesan cheese to the cat, who squirmed in ecstasy as he gnashed it down. Mrs Powell poured tea for
the two of them and a little, diluted with milk, into a saucer, and sat at the kitchen table.

‘Now then,’ she said. ‘One more time. Cobb is holed up in the old factory?’

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘That’s where he works. I don’t know if he sleeps there or goes home.’

‘If it really is him, you’ll find that he
doesn’t
sleep. Or hardly at all. Not enough to go to the trouble of owning a bed,’ said Mrs Powell.

‘How do you know about him? Who is he?’

‘I’ve been trailing him for many years,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘He has tried schemes like this before, although nothing so vile. Last time I and a few friends managed to get
him stopped. But he disappeared. Then two years ago I heard that he’d ended up back in London. I bought this flat so I could watch and wait, and prepare. And it turns out I was right. Too
right. He’s made his move too soon.’

‘What do you mean?’

Mrs Powell set her tea upon the table. Her stern face softened and for a moment Tiffany saw it as a great pool of sadness.

‘You wanted me to tell you that I was nothing to do with Doctor Cobb,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘But, Tiffany, I’m afraid I can’t do that. Because I am everything to do
with him.’

Tiffany’s cup rattled in its saucer.

‘You see, that piece of human filth…that pus-caked hairball…’ Mrs Powell heaved a long breath, ‘is my son.’

‘You have to imagine me aged twenty-two,’ said Mrs Powell, tidying her grey hair with her fingers. ‘Hard to do, yes?’

Tiffany could make no sound. Mrs Powell went on.

‘We were a footloose couple, Terence and I. Not the type to settle down in a cosy home together. Nor did I ever become Mrs Cobb. I walked by myself, and all places were alike to
me.’

The phrase rang a bell with Tiffany. Rudyard Kipling, of course.

‘I had James,’ said Mrs Powell, ‘while we were backpacking round the world. Yes, his proper name is James. We simply took him along, extra luggage. He lived in airports and
hostels and, at the age of four, had not seen England. He loved every minute.

‘The longest we stayed anywhere was eight months, in Sri Lanka. I’d always been fascinated by cats, so I found work at the Yala Colombo leopard breeding programme. Terry put up with
his girlfriend being a bit loopy. Didn’t understand the whole cat thing. Bear in mind this was years before I’d heard of pashki. Though it’s true that what happened next almost
certainly threw me onto that path.

‘It was my fault. I never pretended otherwise. I was a feckless young miss. Wouldn’t wear shoes or socks and kept shredding my feet on bits of glass. Drank the tap water everywhere
and got sick at both ends. And I let James play where he liked, with whatever local children were around. Let him grow up independent, like me. It used to drive Terence round the bend.’

Mrs Powell’s voice was dry. She refilled her cup and drained it.

‘One day I was in the leopard enclosure, helping sedate an animal that had a suppurating ear. James wasn’t with us, I was never that stupid. He was outside the fence playing with a
coconut husk. I’d forgotten that three baby leopards were roaming at the other end of the compound.

‘Poor little Jamie. He stuck his arm through the wire to touch them. Oddly enough, the kitten he chose to stroke didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. It was its mother who
minded.

‘She was at the wire in a flash and had Jamie’s arm in her jaws. A second longer and she would have torn it off. But I heard him cry out—’ Mrs Powell paused and shut her
eyes before resuming. ‘Such a cry. I ran over. I jabbed the mother leopard in the face with my ward-stick, half blinding her. Something I still feel sorry about. She was just another mother,
protecting her child.

‘The doctor didn’t know if James would make it. His arm looked like it had been mashed in a machine. When at last he was stable, Terence took him back to England and told me not to
follow. The surgeons in London saved the arm, but it never grew properly after that.’

‘And did you never see him again?’ Tiffany asked, softly.

‘Of course I did. You don’t tell a mother not to follow her sick son. I waited as long as I could, which was four days, then got a direct flight with all the savings I had left. I
visited him every day in hospital.’

Tiffany’s skin broke out in goosebumps as she thought of Stuart.

‘I watched him get better. That is, until,’ Mrs Powell smiled bitterly, ‘Terence got a court order preventing me from seeing James unsupervised. They said I was an unfit
parent. And I believed them. I let myself be shut out of his life. He wasn’t even James by then. Terence was using his middle name. He said he’d always preferred Philip to James. I ask
you! No-one prefers Philip.’

‘Mrs Powell,’ said Tiffany, ‘I read something. On Doctor Cobb’s website it mentions his accident. It says his mother died.’

‘That’s what he tells people,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘It might as well be true. His father made sure James—sorry,
Philip
—knew who to blame for his injury.
For all I know, he ended up thinking I’d fed him to a leopard deliberately. He grew up hating and fearing me as much as he feared and loathed cats.’

‘If he’s so afraid,’ said Tiffany, ‘how can he bear to have a factory full of them?’

‘They can’t hurt him now,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘He uses them, he tortures them, and they make him rich and famous. Do you not know the word for it? It’s
revenge
.’

The kitchen windows had become ghostly mirrors, as if the darkness outside was wrapped close to imprison the light within. Tiffany and her pale reflection stared at each other. Minutes had
passed since Mrs Powell stopped speaking. How late was it? She ought to ring home.

‘So. What now?’ she heard herself ask.

‘I go tonight,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘There is no point waiting.’

‘But what will you do?’

Mrs Powell paused on her way out of the kitchen.

‘Why, stop him, of course.’

It took Tiffany a moment to recognise the shape that detached itself from the other shadows in the hall. Mrs Powell had changed into a close-fitting outfit quite different from
the one she wore to teach. The pattern reminded her of Jim’s dappled silver coat, but in night-blues and greys. The biggest change was her face-print. Stripes streamed off the central M like
lines of magnetic force. This was no mere camouflage; it was war-paint, framing eyes green and cold as a dusky winter sky.

‘The hot water’s on the blink again,’ she remarked. ‘You’ll have to use the Swarfega soap by the sink to wash your face. You can go in my bedroom to get changed.
Where have you put your street clothes?’

‘Er…they’re in the leisure centre,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’ll be closed now. But I thought…’

‘Best leave the face paint on, then’ said Mrs Powell, ‘and go home as you are. If anyone sees you, they’ll assume you’ve walked out of an amateur production of
Cats
.’

‘I’m coming too, aren’t I?’ Tiffany burst out.

‘You most certainly are not,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘I will have enough on my mind without you to look after.’

Tiffany bristled.

‘I know everything you’re about to say,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘You don’t need looking after. You can take care of yourself. You’re not going to be told what to
do. Etcetera. It’s my fault. I’ve trained you too well.’

She placed a hand on Tiffany’s shoulder. Tiffany thought she could feel a faint tingling, like the webs of static on a television screen.

‘But not well enough, I’m afraid. Not yet. One day.’

‘One day what?’

‘You. Ben. And the other Cat Kin. You don’t think I was teaching you as a hobby, do you? I knew Philip Cobb was out there. And others like him.’ She closed her eyes and Tiffany
wondered at how aged she looked, with her iron grey hair and crow’s feet wrinkles criss-crossing her tabby makeup. ‘If Philip does not meet with an accident, he’ll be around long
after I’m too old to do anything about him. Sometimes I feel I’m waging a private war. I need soldiers. I hoped some of you might be ready to join me when my son reappeared. But his
scheme is already in full flood, and my army is still nothing more than—no offence, my dear—nothing more than a sack of kittens.’

Mrs Powell pulled on grey suede boots. She took a carton of milk from the fridge and drank straight from it like a teenager.

‘Pop round tomorrow and I’ll tell you how it went. You can let yourself out.’

She faded down the hall on velvet feet. Tiffany hesitated, then followed just as stealthily to peer round the studio door. Mrs Powell stood by the open window.

‘I know you’re there.’ She didn’t turn. ‘I mean what I say. It’s too early to expose you to such danger.’

Tiffany said nothing.

‘I’m not being held responsible.’ Mrs Powell faced her at last.

Tiffany put on her most determined expression. Mrs Powell sighed.

‘The problem is, I can’t stop you following me. And I really don’t need to be distracted by your elephant feet clumping along behind. So, as long as I’m stuck with
you…’ She jerked her head towards the window.

Tiffany climbed a ladder of rusted couplings where a drainpipe had once been fixed. Standing on the very edge of the guttering, Mrs Powell peered over the rooftops.

‘Under my very nose. As if he were mocking me.’

Like a beached oil tanker the factory blackened out the Hackney skyline. Tiffany’s mouth was too dry to speak. Already she was having second thoughts.

‘His glorious new laboratory is under way, I see,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘There’s a crane. And a lorry. Good. A building site on his doorstep should give us extra
cover.’

She was off, bounding along the slates as if they were springy turf. Tiffany settled into the effortless grace of Eth and tried to keep up. The roofscape felt like an alien desert, all angular
mountains and eerie flat plains.

Apartments even seedier than Theobald Mansions led like a thread into the distance, tangling in the knitting of old and new buildings that made up Stoke Newington. The rooftops were roads that
led everywhere.

Mrs Powell slowed. ‘Big gap. Are you up to it?’

Four floors down, in an alley that looked like a chasm, a pair of young men were noisily arguing. Tiffany nodded. Mrs Powell sprang across, stopped as neatly as a dart in a bullseye, and
beckoned. Taking a moment to focus, Tiffany cleared the jump.

‘Well done,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘Next time, try and stop more cleanly.’

As the roofs slanted more steeply, Tiffany lagged behind. Around them, like steam, rose the mutter of evening traffic, mixed with the thump-thump-thump of drivers who felt their musical tastes
had to be shared. Bats twirled over the street glow like ashes from a bonfire, pricking her ears with machine-gun squeaks.