Somehow he pulled himself together enough to leave the narrow passageway and run back round to the front of his house.
He saw a pair of boots he recognized. Black boots with a daisy painted on the ankles, now sidestepping a window-cleaner’s ladder and then walking up the path.
It was Rissa.
Of course it was Rissa. For her and for everyone else, this was a totally normal Wednesday morning at – well, Barney worked out it must have been about quarter past eight if Rissa was on time.
Rissa, he called. Rissa!
Even when he tried to shout her name as loud as he could, all that came out was a faint, breathless miaow. Watching her giant feet take T. rex strides up his path he felt a heavy sadness in his stomach. He crawl-walked towards her and nudged his head against her ankles.
She stopped and looked down. Slowly her face broadened into a smile.
Rissa, Barney kept on saying, even though he was beginning to realize it was pointless. It’s me, Barney. Please understand me … please understand me …
His friend kept smiling, but it was that empty smile you give to animals, not humans.
‘Hey! Hello, cat,’ she said.
She crouched down and stroked the top of Barney’s head. Her hand seemed massive, was massive, like the hand of some monster in a 3D movie that had actually managed to break through the fourth dimension.
I’m not a cat, he said, feeling a weird itch in his ear. I’m your best friend.
‘Where do you live?’ She asked him this the way people ask animals questions, without expecting an answer, but he gave her one anyway.
You know where I live. I live at seventeen Dullard Street. That’s right here. This very house. Barney panicked, the memory of Pumpkin and the swipers burning like the scratches on his back. Please, you’ve got to help me. It’s dangerous out here.
Rissa kept smiling, then stroked her best friend under his chin, which he found quite annoying. Not that it was her fault, or anything. How could she know who the cat she was stroking really was? How could anyone know?
‘Well, gotta go,’ she told him. ‘You’re lucky. You’re a cat. You don’t have to go to school.’
No. No. I am not lucky. I am deeply unlucky. Rissa, please, it’s me.
She stood up. She hummed happy human tunes, then rang the doorbell.
Barney stayed still for a moment.
Then he realized. She was calling at his house. The house he wasn’t in, and his mum was going to answer and say he wasn’t there, and Barney would be able to miaow at them like crazy and maybe – just maybe – they would understand.
D. I. E.
BARNEY HAD FELT a bit like this before, in the old days before his parents divorced. Obviously he’d never actually been a cat, but he’d felt that feeling of not having a voice. Or rather, not having a voice that anyone properly listened to.
You see, Barney’s mum and dad used to have lots of arguments. They’d row about almost anything. They’d row every time they drove in a car together. They’d row about his dad leaving old milk in the fridge when it had gone sour. About whose turn it was to walk Guster last thing at night.
And, after a while, there were no spaces between the rows.
Barney’s mum and dad had become trapped in a never-ending argument, and no matter how many times Barney told them to stop, or got them to promise they’d never do it again, they always did do it again.
And it was horrible.
When he was in bed Barney used to put his hands over his ears and close his eyes tight shut, trying to cancel out the shouting. ‘Be quiet,’ he used to whisper. ‘Please, just be quiet.’
But even though he hated his mum and dad getting cross with each other, he hated it even more when they told him they were getting a divorce. When he was younger he didn’t really know what ‘divorce’ meant, although he knew it wasn’t good. How could a word with the letters ‘d’, ‘i’ and ‘e’ in it – in that order – mean something nice?
‘Dad’s not going to live with us any more,’ his mum had said.
‘What? Why?’
‘Because we think you will be happier – and everyone will be happier – if me and your dad live apart.’
‘So, you’re splitting up because of me?’
‘No, Barney, of course not,’ his mum said.
‘Well, good. Because I want you to stay together. Why can’t you both stop arguing? It can’t be that hard. At school we learned about Carthusian monks who don’t speak for years. Why don’t you just not speak? Then you couldn’t argue.’
But Barney couldn’t convince her. Or his dad, for that matter, who put his hand on Barney’s shoulder and said, ‘Barney, sometimes what seems like a bad thing is really the best thing.’
‘But I won’t ever see you.’
‘You’ll see me on Saturdays. We’ll have fun together.’
Barney wasn’t impressed. He already had fun on Saturdays. It was Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays that needed improving. And having a Dad-less house certainly didn’t make them any better. In fact, Barney found himself actually wanting to
hear his mum and dad have an argument, because it would have been better than hearing his mum on her own, crying.
He spent nearly a year like this.
Saturdays with his dad trying too hard to be Mr Fun-Father, going to zoos and theme parks and football matches, which he would never have taken Barney to before.
‘You’ve had fun, haven’t you?’ his dad always said at the end of each Saturday.
‘Yes,’ Barney would say, and he’d sometimes mean it, but it was never enough fun to balance out six days of non-fun.
The Barney-Who-Wasn’t-Barney
AS BARNEY WAITED by Rissa’s ankles she looked down at him, smiling that same blank smile. What could he do to prove it was him?
‘Are you still there?’ she said.
He could feel a strange vibration inside him, a weird warm mumbling. And then he realized he was purring. But he wasn’t happy. He was anything but. Yet there it was, a purr that now seemed as loud as a drill. Because purring – that great mystery which has baffled biologists through the ages (‘Check the larynx!’ ‘No, it’s not coming from there!’) – isn’t anything to do with happiness. It’s to do with magic. And the sound of purring is the sound of magic itself. Or, rather, the sound of magic capabilities being made.
The door opened and his mother was standing there. He expected her to look pale and worried. After all, she must have known by now that her son was missing. But she didn’t look worried at all. In fact, she was smiling.
‘Hello, Rissa,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, I’m fine, thanks, Mrs Willow. Is Barney ready?’
This was it.
This was the moment they would realize something was majorly wrong.
Barney waited for his mother to say she hadn’t seen him all morning, but it didn’t happen. Her smile stayed exactly in place.
But if his mum’s behaviour was weird, what she said was even worse.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s just coming. Barney! Barney! Rissa’s here!’
This didn’t make sense.
Barney wasn’t coming.
He couldn’t be coming.
He was standing out on the pavement.
Yet only moments later, Barney saw someone walking through the darkness of the hallway.
Someone in Barney’s uniform.
And now he was there, standing with the sunlight revealing his face.
A twelve-year-old boy’s face.
Freckled.
With wavy hair and slightly sticking-out ears.
Barney knew the face.
It was the face he saw in the mirror every single day.
His face. On his body. In his school uniform.