‘You sound really … kind of fired-up.’ Nicky looked at him a bit sadly. ‘I’d almost forgotten how much you always enjoyed it – tinkering around with cars.’
‘Hardly tinkering around. Just putting a battery on charge. Not like getting down and dirty taking an engine out.’ He shrugged and picked up his mug to take a sip of tea. ‘Never mind. One of these days perhaps I’ll at least have time to start playing around with our own old wreck. That’d be a start. As things are, it’s a good job we only use it to drive to the station and back. It’s amazing it even got through its MOT. If it was a horse, they’d have put it down.’
Nicky laughed. ‘You will get time, Dan, when the spring comes, and the lighter evenings. If you can do it up a bit, we should probably sell it. We can hardly afford to fill it up, never mind paying the tax and insurance. We were mad to buy it in the first place, even though it was cheap. We’d be better off using the bus.’
‘Just another of our crap decisions,’ he agreed, sighing.
And they both stood there, sipping their tea, watching the wood begin to glow orange and red in the fireplace, and I decided it was time to meow my urgent need to be let out.
By the time I jumped through the cat flap in Sarah and Martin’s kitchen, I was hungry again, despite having had some food earlier next door. Nobody seemed to be around downstairs, but I could hear voices from the bathroom. I padded upstairs, enjoying the warmth of the central heating. The bathroom door was half open and there was a steamy, soapy feel in the air. I could tell from this, and from the splashes and laughter coming from the room, that the children were in the bath. I’ve never understood why humans seem to find sitting in water so enjoyable, but I certainly wasn’t going to get near enough to get splashed myself. I darted into the girls’ bedroom and waited on Rose’s bed for someone to notice me and remember to feed me.
After a while I heard Martin calling from downstairs.
‘Hello! I’ve finished in the shed now.’ Presumably doing his Saturday pottering again. ‘Shall I start putting some dinner on?’
‘Yes please!’ I meowed loudly.
‘Oh – Ollie’s back,’ I heard Grace saying in the bathroom. ‘I can hear him in our bedroom, Mummy.’
‘He must be hungry. He’s been out all day, hasn’t he,’ Sarah said. ‘Martin, will you put some food down for Ollie, please? I’m just chasing the kids out of the bath, then we’ll all be down. I’ve told them they can stay up and watch TV for a while tonight once they’re in their pyjamas.’
‘Where does Ollie go when he’s out all day?’ Rose asked. ‘I hope he doesn’t run into the road,’ she added quietly.
‘I’m sure he won’t,’ Sarah said, but they’d all gone quiet and I knew Rose had started thinking about Sooty again.
I jumped off the bed, anticipating my dinner, but just then Grace came bounding into the room with her dressing-gown on.
‘Hello, Ollie,’ she said, squatting down to stroke me. ‘You won’t get too close to the roads, will you?’
‘No,’ I meowed firmly in Cat. ‘I’m not an idiot like my friend Tabby.’
She put her lips close to my ear and did this thing humans call whispering. It’s like talking, you see, Charlie, but without their voice coming out. It tickled my ear.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she said. ‘But I’m going to buy Rose a new cat. I mean, one to keep forever, because you’re going to go back to your real home one day, aren’t you?’
And with that, she ran off downstairs, while I followed more slowly, my heart in my paws. So it was true. They were going to get rid of me. Or even worse, bring a new cat into the house who would resent me, as a lodger, and make my life difficult.
I was so upset I almost didn’t enjoy my dinner.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next morning, as promised, I was outside the front gate bright and early, washing the breakfast off my whiskers while I waited for Tabby. He eventually turned up, looking as gloomy as a cat in a cage.
‘I wish I didn’t have to face her,’ he said as we set off to look for Suki. ‘She’s just going to give me another mouthful of abuse.’
‘So let’s get it over with. Remember, just try to be sympathetic. I’ve heard females have something called hormones going on when they get pregnant. I don’t know what it is, but it probably isn’t very nice.’
‘All right, Ollie, I’ll do my best. But be a good cat and back me up if she starts on me.’
Suki was sitting on a windowsill of her house, staring out. When she saw us coming along the road she sat up straight and fixed us with a really mean, vicious glare.
‘This doesn’t bode well,’ Tabby groaned.
We waited in her front garden as Suki jumped down from the windowsill, her tail already flicking dangerously, and disappeared from view.
‘She’ll be heading straight for the cat flap,’ he said, ‘and then straight for my throat.’
‘Stay calm. Don’t go on the offensive,’ I advised him, although I obviously wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation either.
‘Look what the dog dragged in,’ Suki meowed nastily as she reappeared round the side of the house. ‘I thought you must have done a runner, Tabby. Haven’t seen you around since our last fight. Too scared to face me, were you?’
‘No, I just don’t want to fight with you,’ he said, in a pathetic whining mew. I looked at him in surprise. I’d never heard Tabby sound so unsure of himself before. ‘What’s done is done, Suki.’
‘Yes, but you’re not the one walking around with kittens in your tummy as a result.’
‘Look, I’m sorry, but…’
‘Don’t say but,’ I said to him very quietly. ‘Just sorry.’
‘Sorry isn’t good enough. And who asked you, Oliver?’ She immediately turned her venom on me. ‘Who asked you to get involved anyway?’
‘Tabby did,’ I admitted. ‘But it’s true, he is sorry. He was telling me yesterday how sorry he is. He wishes the pair of you didn’t mate in the first place, don’t you, Tabby?’
‘Do I?’ Tabby gave me a puzzled look. ‘Oh, er … I suppose I do, yes, in the circumstances.’
‘So now you’re saying you didn’t even enjoy it?’ she shrieked.
‘No! No, I’m not saying that.’ He got up and turned around a couple of times on the spot, looking even more uncomfortable than I felt, while Suki just sat there, glaring, waiting. ‘Look,’ he said again finally, with an air of desperation in his meows. ‘You’re a nice cat, Suki, and we had fun, didn’t we?’
‘And now I’m having kittens, you’re dumping me.’
‘No! Did I say that? I’ve only stayed away from you because you’ve been in such a foul mood.’
I glared at him. That didn’t sound like the best thing to say to her.
‘I’m pregnant!’ she hissed at him. ‘Of course I’m in a bad mood.’
‘All right. But it won’t last forever, will it. And then, afterwards, maybe we can get together and have fun again,’ Tabby said, looking suddenly considerably brighter.
‘What!’ she screeched. ‘Are you completely off your head? You needn’t think you’re going to talk me into it again. Anyway, my humans have always said they were going to get me spayed after I’d had one litter. I just don’t think they expected it to happen quite so soon. And nor did I,’ she added, giving him another reproachful look.