Cat's Paw (32 page)

‘Ben.’ The weak voice was Tiffany’s. She lay by the rail at the roof’s edge. He crawled to her side.

‘Are you– oh, no.’ Her sleeves were cut to ribbons. ‘You’re bleeding.’

‘You’re bleedin’ right.’ She giggled unnervingly. That didn’t sound good. Losing all this blood must be making her faint. With desperate resourcefulness he clawed
off the sleeves of his own pashki kit and tied them as bandages around Tiffany’s arm.

‘Er. Keep pressure on it.’ That was what they said on TV.

By the muffled screams and snarls he guessed the fight had moved back inside the cabin. Ben breathed a silent thank-you to Mrs Powell – she must have driven Geoff away from them while they
lay helpless. Probably with the last of her strength. Ben wept tears of despair.

‘We were beating him. It was three on one. What happened?’

‘Jafri zafri.’ Tiffany chuckled again. ‘Should have seen that coming.’

Maybe they should. But now Ben grasped the terrible truth. Secret weapon or no secret weapon, Geoff was a foe beyond them. He had weapons at his fingertips they could barely imagine, and what
did they have? Compared to him they were defenceless. They were kittens before a cat.

‘Tiffany, I’ll– I’ll get you to a hospital. Hang on.’

‘Oh. Yuck.’ She seemed to notice how gravely she was wounded. ‘Whoops. Still, at least he didn’t hurt you.’

‘What do you mean? He nearly broke my neck.’

‘No scratches, though. Look.’

Ben examined his bare arms. No, this couldn’t be right. There were the bruises from his earlier battles, but where were the slashes from Geoff’s claws? He checked his torso, his
face.

‘That’s impossible. I was fighting him.’ It seemed unfair to have no proof. ‘He was clawing at me.’

‘He can’t have missed every time. Unless…’Tiffany sat upright. ‘Ben! That must be it. The claws. Kittens and cubs. Oh. He’s fallen for you.’

‘You should lie down, Tiffany.’

‘Ben, listen to me. Between you and Geoff… There’s something. It’s like love.’

‘Hold on. The ambulance is coming.’

‘I’m bleeding, Ben, I’m not mad!’ She caught her breath, her eyes rolling unsteadily. ‘Trying to… explain. Ben, even if he always meant to betray us, he
still got close to you. Really close. Close like brothers. Like cats from the same litter.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning… Ben, you won’t know this, it’s one of those cat things, but brother-or-sister kittens, no matter how much they look like they’re
fighting…’

She was mistaken, however. Ben did know, he must have heard or read it somewhere, a useless scrap of cat folklore he had thought no more about. Before she could finish telling him, he was on his
feet and running. It was true, it
had
to be, for still he could feel himself drawn to Geoff, as if by a rope that bound them together.

He reached the far side of the cabin to see Geoff in the doorway, flinging Mrs Powell to the floor. There was no more fight left in her. She lay at the top of the stairs, barely struggling as,
clasping her hair with one hand, Geoff raised the other over her neck. His fingertips twitched and the air faintly sang. A snarl twisted his lips.

‘Remember that day we met, Felicity? You should have let me steal your handbag.’

Down came his claws. Ben didn’t think. He dived through the doorway and thrust his palm between Geoff’s fingertips and Mrs Powell’s bared throat.

It hurt. But it was the stab of hard fingers, not the agony of hooks tearing his flesh. Geoff gave a strange whinny of astonishment. He had the look of one who throws a brick at a window only to
have it bounce back. Frozen in his crouch at the top of the stairs he could only mouth ‘How?’

‘Look,’ said Ben. He scratched gently at Geoff’s arm. The skin bore just the pink marks of fingernails. ‘You did that. Because I trusted you. Because I needed you.
Because you needed me too, I suppose. It wasn’t all lies, was it? You’d kill me along with the others, yeah, but you were ready to cry about it afterwards. We know it. And our Mau
bodies know it. Which is why they won’t hurt each other, no matter how much we try. How about that, Geoff? We’re like family. Your claws don’t work on me, and mine don’t
work on you.’

‘Ben…’ Geoff’s blue eyes glistened in wonder.

‘Which means I have to do
this
.’

It wasn’t a pashki move – it was a football one, the kind used to take penalties. All the grief Ben felt inside him went into that kick. Geoff caught it on the bridge of his nose and
plunged backwards down the stairs. The banisters had been ripped out when the tower was prepared for demolition, so there was nothing to stop Geoff pitching sideways off the steps and falling, with
a yell, into darkness.

Ben knelt by Mrs Powell. A frail old lady mugged and left for dead could have looked no worse than she did. Her face-print had been lost inside a mask of bruises and blood, the grey hair on her
head torn up in clumps. From her eyelids, not a flicker. Geoff had killed her after all. Ben’s throat closed. He clasped her cold, wrinkled hand in both of his.

‘Mrs Powell. No.’

Her eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright.

‘Ben! You’re not still here?’

‘Y-yes.’

Not so much as a thank-you. But then that was typical of your average cat.

‘Ben Gallagher, get this through your head!’ She was hissing in his face. ‘That streetlamp he was trying to use. It isn’t really broken.’

Somewhere deep in his exhausted brain, alarm bells started to ring.

‘It’s not broken,’ Mrs Powell repeated. ‘I just reversed its relay switch. I rigged it so it would light by day instead of night.
Do you understand?
’

No – wait – yes, he did. Streetlamps were light-sensitive, he knew that much. Most were primed to switch on automatically at dusk. But not, she was telling him, not this one.
This
one would light at dawn.

Which was now.

Colour bled into the sky. His shadow cowered on the cabin wall.

‘That detonator. He never unplugged it.’

‘Ra is rising,’ said Mrs Powell.

The stairwell howled with a cry of rage, of astonishment, of mortal fear.

‘Felicity!’ Geoff was on the staircase only two floors below them, racing up the steps towards them five or six at a time. ‘Felicity, what have you done?’

Mrs Powell looked at Ben.

‘Save her,’ she said.

She leaped at Geoff as he reached the final flight. Ben heard a noise like a lion-tamer’s whip. Mrs Powell locked her arms round Geoff and they fell, tumbling, down into the
stairwell’s folded depths. Another noise punched through the soles of Ben’s feet, a roll of drum beats rising to a blow that seemed to smash his toes into his teeth.

He ran. Out of the cabin, onto the roof, into a blaze of sunlight – the very light, he knew, that had ignited the streetlamp and triggered the explosives in the tower. The boom
reverberated from the buildings all around, billowing up in clouds of startled birds. Then the birds appeared to freeze in the sky, flapping as slowly as newborn butterflies, as Ben’s Mau
body found its magical top gear.

With the speed of a terrified cat he sprinted across the roof, which had begun to yield underfoot, its hard paving cracking as if thawing in the sun. His stomach lurched into his chest and he
realised he was falling, falling as he ran, dropping with the tower’s walls, its stairs, its floors, its bones. Concrete and steel crashed and folded into one another, shattering under their
own weight as they crumpled unstoppably towards the ground. With his trainers barely brushing the disintegrating rooftop, Ben flung himself towards the far guard rail where Tiffany was staggering
to her feet. There was time to do only one thing, to shout one word above the roar like thunder. He hooked his right arm under her left and gave it everything he had.

‘
JUMP!
’

A giant fist slammed him in the back, a wind so thick with grit that it felt solid. Roiling waves of dust engulfed them both. He could see nothing, not Tiffany, not himself. Was he still in the
air or had he already hit the ground? He hit the ground. It crumpled his legs under him and tore Tiffany from his grip. Curling into a ball of pain he rolled and rolled until the crashing in his
ears died away.

He looked up. A fog of golden brown had hidden the world. Trace by trace shapes appeared. Wire fencing. Rows of lamp posts. A peak like a rugged pyramid. It looked to be steaming in the morning
sun, yellow dust venting from the fissures of its slopes.

‘Tiffany?’ He tried to stand. Just as he was panicking, he saw her. She was clambering on the pyramid, tearing at the rubble with blood-caked hands. His strength spent, he could only
crawl towards her over the painful rockeries of concrete and mangled steel. Dust parched his mouth and stung water from his eyes.

‘Tiffany, don’t.’

She didn’t look at him. She strained to lift a grey slab that five men couldn’t have moved. She searched for other rubble to dig. There was plenty.

‘Tiffany, you’re hurt. Stop it.’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘No, no, you can’t.’ She raked out clumps of plaster and screed. ‘You can’t. You can’t do this to me. I won’t let you. Not
again. Not again.’

‘Tiffany, stop. Please stop.’ He reached her. With arms wrapped around her he tried to pull her from the feeble hole. ‘Stop.’

She sank upon the rubble as if onto a bed. Down a ragged slab ran a stream of tears, making muddy rivulets in the dust. He sat beside her. He had nothing left, not an atom of strength, not a
word in his head that might comfort her. He could barely remember his own name. All had boiled down to a faint, tingling sound. At first he supposed that the deafening implosion had set off a
ringing in his ears. Then he managed to place it. In the communal gardens across the way, where the sun had just alighted, the birds were singing in the trees.

Ben woke up. He’d had the strangest dream.

The bedroom walls were sunlight. He lay warm under the duvet.

In his dream he’d been at home. Mum and Dad were there. That was all. That was his dream. It was the most extraordinary thing.

This looked like his bedroom. One of his bedrooms. Where had it come from? Through the window was a morning sky. He found the glass of water he somehow knew was on the bedside table. The door
opened and Mum came in, wearing her dressing gown.

‘Mum! What are you doing here?’

‘That’s the third time you’ve asked me that.’

Was it? His memory was like a jigsaw puzzle box. He rummaged. Getting Tiffany to A&E at Homerton hospital. Then a gap. Beating at the door of Dad’s flat. A gobsmacked Dad, a wailing
Mum. Falling against them. Being carried to his room, undressed and put to bed. Sleepy glimpses of Mum at his bedside, then Dad, later both of them… unless those parts were dreams.

‘Don’t tell me he’s finally awake.’ It was Dad, with a cup of hot tea.

‘Finally?’

‘You’ve slept a whole day and night, Benny. Guess you were tired.’

‘Uh. Yes.’

Dad laughed as if this was the best joke ever. Mum’s eyes twinkled like sugar dissolving.

‘Oh, young man, you are in so much trouble!’

Ben lay back on the pillow and shut his eyes.

‘Not any more.’

There came a twenty-fifth hour of sleep, then a huge breakfast in bed. After this Mum ordered him to get dressed and help with the washing up. He dried every teaspoon and then offered to help
clean the kitchen, even though the slightest movement made him ache.

Mum and Dad were furious with him, but their fury took the form of delight. Both kept demanding where he had been, then saying, before he could answer, that it didn’t matter, he was home
now. When he did finally get a word in, he said he’d slept in a tube station with some other runaways. It was hard to tell if they heard. He was home, that was all they cared.

Midway through fish and chips the following evening, he plucked up his courage.

‘How long are you staying, Mum?’

‘Why? You bored of me already?’

‘No, I thought… your job.’

‘I can get up earlier and go by train. Till I find one locally.’

‘Locally – ?’ He took a gulp of Coke, which almost fizzed out of his nose as he realised what she was saying. ‘You don’t have to, you know. Not if it’s, you
know, difficult. Not just for me.’

‘What are you blithering about?’

‘I mean,’ said Ben, getting hot, ‘you two don’t have to pretend to get back together. It’s all right. I won’t run away again. I promise.’

His parents stared at him. Dad chuckled.

‘Don’t flatter yourself, Benny. It’s not only for you. Is it, Lucy?’

‘Ben,’ said Mum. ‘When we worked out what had happened – that you’d run away – it was the worst thing. Worse than having our home knocked down. It was awful
and no-one could make it better. No-one could understand. Except your father. There was one person in the whole world who I could talk to about it, who wanted you back as badly as me, and who might
get me through it. And he did.’

‘No,
she
did,’ said Dad. ‘You were the strong one, Lucy.’

‘So,’ Ben tried to get his head round it. ‘You’re not pretending.’