“You didn’t mean to!” George’s mum laughed. “I’m sure they’ll just be delighted to have her back. Do you want to borrow Pirate’s cat carrier? The poor kitten probably won’t like it much, it’ll smell of Pirate, but you’ll need to put her in something.”
“Before she eats all the cat treats and makes a getaway!” Luke agreed.
“Can I come with you?” George asked shyly. “I won’t get in the way or anything. I’d just like to help take her home.”
“If it’s OK with your mum. You can sit in the front with me and hold the carrier. I don’t want it wobbling about.”
“Of course you can,” Mum said. “Hold on a minute and I’ll get it out of the garage.”
George smiled. He could imagine how pleased Amber was going to be. If he’d lost Pirate, he’d have been in a real state.
“Amber, can you get the door?” Mum called. “I’ve got crumble mix all over my hands.”
Amber put down the jingly ball she’d found under the shoe rack, blinking away her tears. She kept wanting to cry – everything in the house seemed to remind her of Cleo.
“If it’s those window people again, just say no thank you,” her mum added.
Amber’s mum really didn’t like people trying to sell her double-glazing, and they always turned up when she was cooking the dinner. Amber opened the front door, rehearsing a polite go-away smile.
“Oh!” It was the builder from across the road. Amber bit at her bottom lip. What if he was coming to tell Mum on her, after all? But he was smiling.
“I’ve brought you a present. Me and my friend here.” He stepped back so that Amber could see the boy beside him, who was holding a plastic cat carrier.
“George?” Amber stared at her classmate for a moment – then she looked down at the cat carrier, and her eyes went wide with hope. “Have you… Have you—?”
“Is it her?” George asked anxiously. “We thought it must be.”
Cleo scrabbled madly at the sides of the carrier, mewing and mewing. Amber was there! The boy had brought her back to Amber. Why wouldn’t they let her out?
“Amber, what is it?” Amber’s mum came up the hallway, drying her hands on a tea towel. “Luke, hello. Is there a problem over the road?”
“Mum, they’ve found Cleo! Thank you so much!” Amber pulled open the latch and reached in to stroke the kitten. “I thought you’d never come home…” she murmured, lifting her out and snuggling Cleo against her shoulder. “Where was she?” she asked.
“I found her in my garden,” George explained. “But I didn’t know she was yours. I, um, fed her my leftovers,” he admitted. “And then she got stuck on our garage roof, and Luke helped to get her down.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell Amber that he’d lured her kitten into his house and got her into a fight with Pirate.
But Amber beamed at him. “Thank you for feeding her. I was so worried she was going to be starving!”
“I reckon she went for a ride in the back of my van,” Luke put in. “I can’t see how else she turned up in our neighbourhood. It’s a good couple of miles away.”
“Goodness,” Amber’s mum said. “She stowed away! I’ll have to ring Sara and Dad and tell them. You don’t know how relieved they’ll be. We were imagining the worst things…”
“I’m glad I found her,” George said to Amber.
“Not as glad as I am,” Amber said, giggling as Cleo licked her chin. “You couldn’t be.”
“You know a lot about cats,” Amber said admiringly, watching George tickle Cleo on just the right spot behind her ear. She’d invited George round to tea to say thank you – and to let him see how Cleo was. He’d asked Amber about her at school a few times, and she thought George must have really liked the kitten.
“Our cat’s called Pirate, because he looks like he has an eye patch. He’s my mum’s actually. She got him before I was born.”
“So he’s pretty old then?”
“Uh-huh. He’s a bit slow now – he doesn’t race around like this one does. But he’s still special,” George added firmly.
It was true. Pirate might be slow and not that good at chasing toys, but he almost always slept on George’s feet at night. Mum had told him the other night that Pirate had done that since George was a baby. She and Dad had tried to keep him away because they were worried that Pirate might hurt him by accident. But Pirate wouldn’t be shooed away – and he was the best one for stopping baby George crying. “In the end we gave up,” his mum had said, smiling down at Pirate, who was sitting between them. “He’d obviously decided you were his, you see.”
George watched Cleo clamber up into Amber’s lap and flop down, purring. He stroked her ears, and nodded to himself. Amber was Cleo’s, and he belonged to Pirate – and that was exactly the way it should be.
“Are you going on holiday?” Max asked, whacking at a clump of nettles with a stick as they walked home from school along the lane. “We’re going to Spain on Saturday.”
“Yes, we are, but not until September, just before we go back to school,” Jessie said. “We’re going to Scotland for a week, to stay with my gran.”
“We can’t,” Laura said, a little sadly. Almost everybody in her class seemed to be going somewhere amazing, but she was staying at home all summer. She gave a tiny sigh and peered over the bramble bushes to catch a glimpse of the sea. It was really blue, and the sun was making the ripples glitter. Laura knew they were lucky to live in such a beautiful place, but it would have been nice to go on holiday somewhere different!
“Mum’s working,” Laura went on. “It’s the busiest time of year for her, the summer. All the cottages are booked up for the whole seven weeks. She says she’s going to be run off her feet.”
Jessie nodded. “Never mind. I’ll be around until the end of August. We can go to the beach. Mum’s booked me some bodyboarding lessons for the first couple of weeks. I want to get lots of practice in.”
Max snorted. “Yeah, you need the practice.”
Jessie blew a cloud of dandelion seeds at him, so they caught in his blond hair, coating it in white fluff. It made him look about sixty years older all of a sudden.
“Oi, get them off me! Uurrgh.” Max flailed at his hair crossly. “They’re all itchy.”
“Serves you right,” Laura pointed out. “Just because you’ve been surfing since you could stand up, doesn’t mean you have to be horrible to Jessie. She’s only lived here a year!” She smiled gratefully at Jessie – she was really glad that someone was going to be around for most of the summer.
Lots of their friends lived quite a long way from Tremarren and travelled in by the school bus, so it wasn’t that simple to meet up with them in the holidays. Mum had promised Laura that they’d try to fit in some fun treats and go to the beach together, but Laura knew how busy she would be. Laura didn’t like seeing her so tired. Managing the cottages meant that Mum was on duty twenty-four hours a day, really, in case any of the guests had a problem.
Laura helped out as much as she could, although mostly she sat and did her homework while Mum was cleaning the cottages. But this holiday, now Laura was nearly ten, they’d agreed that she was old enough to stay at home while Mum was out. The holiday cottages and the little cottage where she and Mum lived had all been converted from the old farm buildings, so Mum would never be that far away. Since the beginning of term, she’d let Laura walk to and from school with Max and Jessie. Laura was even allowed to go to the beach for a little bit by herself or with friends. She wasn’t allowed to swim on her own, though. Mum had made her promise.