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Lunch hour.

In the dining hall Rissa sat at a table on her own, eating the only vegetarian option – cheese and tomato pizza made with what was meant to be white bread, but tasted more like bath sponge. Well, she was on her own until Petra and Petula Primm came over to sit with her.

The twins were very neat-looking girls with shiny black hair cut into two perfectly immaculate bobs. And they were absolutely identical, except that Petra always wore a school tie while Petula, like most other girls, went for an open collar. They never normally made any effort with Rissa, as Petra and Petula didn’t like the idea of someone who lived on a barge, especially as

they lived in a very large house near the library, full of everything they ever asked their daddy for. Today, though, they seemed very interested in talking to her.

‘What happened to Barney this morning?’ asked Petra instantly, placing her tray on the table.

‘Why did he run away?’ added Petula, doing the same.

Rissa shrugged and swallowed some more bath sponge. ‘I don’t know. It’s weird.’ She thought about whether she should really say the next thing. But she did. ‘I think it might have something to do with his dad.’

She noticed the twins look at each other, their eyes shining with secret knowledge.

‘What made you—’ started Petula.

‘Say that?’ finished Petra.

‘Well, I don’t know. I just think he might be missing his dad.’

‘Or,’ suggested Petra, allowing Petula to continue, ‘He might have seen his dad.’

Rissa swallowed her food and stared at the twins. She knew they were itching to tell her something. ‘His dad’s missing,’ she said. ‘No one’s seen him for months.’

The twins gave each other that look again.

‘Let’s show her,’ said Petra.

‘Yes.’ Petula was positively bursting with excitement. ‘Let’s.’

And the twins both got out their identical mobile phones as menacingly as if they were weapons. They were incredibly shiny and sparkly and had their initials, ‘PP’, engraved on the back.

Rissa watched, worried, as the twins’ thumbs kept sliding across their screens.

‘There!’ said Petula.

‘Me too!’ said Petra.

And they both turned their phones round for Rissa to view the photo on each screen. The photo on Petula’s phone was of a man with a beard, but it was a bit blurry and dark so Rissa couldn’t really tell what she was supposed to be seeing.

The photo on Petra’s phone was much clearer. It was of the same man. A man with mid-brown hair and the same big bushy beard. He was sitting at some kind of counter, and there was a painting on the wall behind. It was an oil painting of a cat.

But it wasn’t the painting she was meant to be looking at.

It was the man.

She knew him from somewhere, but couldn’t think where.

‘Take away the beard and who do you have?’ asked Petra.

Rissa gasped as she imagined the man without a beard. She remembered the face from primary school. Could picture the man at sports day cheering on Barney as he struggled in the sack race. No. It couldn’t be.

But then Petula took something from her pocket – a piece of folded paper – and slid it across the table towards Rissa. Rissa unfolded it and saw it was an old newspaper cutting from the Blandford Gazette.

‘It was in our dad’s paper,’ said Petula, reminding Rissa that their father was the Blandford Gazette’s editor in chief.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

But Rissa didn’t need an answer. She’d unfolded it now and could see it was a photo of a man she recognized, this time in black and white. And underneath the photo was the man’s name, and a brief summary of the news story.

Neil Willow, aged 45, went missing two days ago from his home on Bradbury Drive. He lived alone, having separated from his wife several months earlier. No one has any idea where he went.

‘Barney’s dad,’ said Rissa.

‘And read that,’ Petula told her.

But Petra was already doing so with delicious glee. ‘No one has any idea where he went!’ she said. Then added: ‘Until now!’

And that’s when Rissa looked again at the photos on the twins’ mobile phones, then back to the newspaper cutting.

‘Take away the beard and who is it?’ asked Petula. ‘And we only took these pictures yesterday … so you know what that means, don’t you?’

There was no denying it. It was the same man. The same eyes, the same nose, the same everything.

‘So, Barney’s dad is still alive …?’ said Rissa in shock.

The twins nodded, thrilled.

‘We stayed with our aunt at the weekend, and we were at the cattery near her house. She was picking up her cat. It’s in Edgarton, fifteen miles away. That is where Mr Willow is working.’

‘It’s going to be the best story ever. Too good for the school newspaper,’ added Petula. ‘Daddy’s promised us that if we uncover the mystery we can be his star journalists. We’ll have our own front-page story in the Blandford Gazette!’

But Rissa was hardly listening. She was just thinking about Barney’s weird behaviour that morning, and how there must be a link to this.

Of course, what the Primms were telling her should have been good news. But as they kept on smiling, Rissa’s stomach tightened with dread.

Something was wrong with all this, she just knew it.

And so she put down her knife and fork, said goodbye to the twins, and left the hall with urgent steps.

Rissa’s Decision

RISSA DIDN’T PARTICULARLY like Miss Whipmire.

Of course she didn’t. No one liked Miss Whipmire. She was, quite simply, impossible to like, in the same way bath-sponge pizza was impossible to enjoy.

But Miss Whipmire was the head teacher, and the job of a head teacher is to know what to do …

That is what Mrs Lavender told Rissa when she went to tell her about Barney. At first, and on Rissa’s insistence, Mrs Lavender had tried to phone Barney’s mum at the library, but it was engaged.

‘Now, if you are still worried you must, absolutely must, go and tell Miss Whipmire.’

Rissa had made a face at this. ‘But she doesn’t like Barney.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly. Of course she does. And even if she doesn’t, I’m sure she wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him … You know our school motto: “Your child is our world”. Miss Whipmire came up with that herself.’

So Rissa reluctantly agreed and walked the empty corridors towards the head teacher’s office, knowing she would be there – one of the odd things about Miss Whipmire was that she never seemed to eat, and she certainly didn’t join the other teachers in the dining hall with their school dinners and packed lunches. But then, Rissa didn’t know about her sardine drawer.

She arrived. Outside the door.

She waited nervously, and whispered under her breath.

‘Marmalade, marmalade, marmalade.’

Then she knocked.

There came an angry squawk from beyond the door. ‘Ye-es?’

‘Hello … it’s Rissa Fairweather. I’m … I’m a pupil here. Year Seven. I just … want to speak to you about something. Mrs Lavender said to … to see you.’

‘Not now!’

Rissa started to walk away from the door. But she stopped. Barney might be in trouble, and she had to do everything she could. So she went back, looked around to make sure no one was listening, then said in as confident a voice as she could manage: ‘It’s about Barney Willow.’

And the door opened so fast Rissa jumped.

‘Come inside,’ hissed Miss Whipmire, with angry fear bulging her eyes. ‘Now!’

The Howling Miaow

RISSA STEPPED INSIDE Miss Whipmire’s office as the door was closed – and then locked – behind her. She had never been in here before and she found it a strange place. The scent of fish, the cat calendar, the unusual plants, the poster of a dark-looking, exotic landscape on the back of the door (Chao Phraya – Thailand it said on it), the sheepskin rug that was draped over Miss Whipmire’s chair, the ugly pot with the pens nearly falling out of it. Somehow the office didn’t feel part of the school, the way a wart on a finger doesn’t feel like a true part of a hand.