Cat Mummy Read online

  I looked. Dad had done a wonderful poster with a big blown-up picture of Mabel curled up asleep, under the heading HAVE YOU SEEN OUR CAT MABEL?

  My heart started banging so hard I thought it was going to bounce right through my chest and make a mess of my school dress. Dad and I trudged down street after street after street. We pinned Mabel’s poster to trees and fences and lamp-posts everywhere we went.

  ‘Don’t worry, Verity, we’ll find Mabel now,’ said Dad, taking hold of my hand. ‘Someone’s bound to see the poster and recognize Mabel and ring our number. She can’t have vanished into thin air.’

  My heart went bang bang bang. I knew I should tell Dad that Mabel wasn’t missing. He had done a hundred posters asking if anyone had seen her. There was only one person in the whole world who knew exactly where she was, entombed in my wardrobe.

  I wondered if Dad would understand? I didn’t dare risk telling him. You couldn’t talk about things like death to Dad. It made him think about Mum. I remembered Gran this morning. It would be even worse if Dad started crying.

  So I didn’t say anything. I was very, very quiet all the way round the neighbourhood and I was very, very quiet when we got home. We were all very, very quiet.

  I was glad when Gran sent me up to bed. I lay there wide awake. I waited until I heard Gran and Grandad go up to bed. I waited even longer, until I heard Dad go up to bed too. It was a good job I waited, because Dad crept into my room. I closed my eyes tight and lay very still. Dad stood beside my bed a long time. Then he sighed, gently tucked the covers up under my chin, and went out the room.

  I still had to wait ages and ages, just to be safe. But when there hadn’t been any sound in the house for a long, long time I crept out of bed and very slowly and cautiously opened my wardrobe door. There was a strange smell, half sweet, half sour – bath salts mixed up with the new worrying smell of Mabel.

  I decided I mustn’t let this put me off. Mabel couldn’t help it after all.

  I reached into the back of the wardrobe and reverently pulled out the duffle bag. I tried hard but I couldn’t pull the Mabel mummy out. I couldn’t really see what I was doing in the dark. I had to content myself with inserting one hand into the bag and stroking Mabel’s bandages. It was very soothing, very, very soothing . . .

  I woke up in the middle of the night to find myself huddled against the wardrobe, the duffle bag clasped to my chest. I wanted to take it back to bed with me, but I didn’t dare risk it. I put Mabel back in the wardrobe, shut the door, and then crawled back into bed. I was freezing cold so I wrapped the duvet tightly round me.

  I think it was the duvet that gave me the nightmare. I was dead and someone was trying to hook my brains out and I screamed and then they were wrapping me up in bandages, tighter and tighter, and I screamed again. I screamed for someone to come and help me because I was being turned into a mummy . . .

  ‘Verity! Verity, darling, it’s Dad. I’m here. Wake up! You’re having a nightmare.’

  I started sobbing, still thrashing my arms and legs around to free them from the mummy bandages. The duvet fell away and the only thing holding me tightly was Dad.

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ I sobbed. He held me close.

  ‘What’s up?’ Gran said sleepily, out on the landing. ‘Is Verity crying?’

  ‘She had a bad dream,’ said Dad. ‘She was shouting.’

  ‘What was I shouting?’ I said, suddenly scared. ‘Did I shout about Mabel?’

  Dad didn’t answer until Gran had shuffled back to bed.

  ‘I couldn’t quite make out what you were saying, pet, but you seemed to be calling for . . .for Mummy.’

  I didn’t know what to say. My heart was banging again. Dad cleared his throat as if he was about to say more, but no words came out.

  There was a deep silence in the dark room.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mabel, the Spirit of the Dead

  WE ALL OVERSLEPT in the morning. It was just as well. Gran noticed all the bath salts were missing.

  ‘How can they have disappeared?’ Gran said, bewildered.

  She asked Grandad if he’d used them. He said he didn’t want to smell like a lavender bush, thanks very much, so he never used so much as a sprinkle.

  ‘Verity? You didn’t use them all up, did you?’ said Gran. ‘I know it can’t have been your dad. He only ever has a quick shower.’

  ‘I – I might have used some of them,’ I mumbled, running away from Gran into my bedroom. ‘Sorry, Gran, I’ve got to pack my school bag.’

  But Gran followed me into my bedroom. She sniffed suspiciously.

  ‘My goodness! I can smell the bath salts! What on earth did you do? Tip the whole jar in your bath?’

  ‘Please don’t be cross, Gran,’ I said, frantically shoving my books and PE kit into my school bag.

  I shoved a little too frantically and the zip jammed. I tugged. I tugged too hard.

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Verity! Silly girl! You should have eased the zip. Now look at it! Where’s your duffle bag? You’d better take your stuff in that.’

  ‘No! No, I . . . I can’t. I don’t like my duffle bag. No-one takes duffle bags to school any more. This bag’s still fine, Gran. I’ll pin it. Oh please, let’s hurry, we’re late.’

  I dodged round Gran, clutching my broken bag in my arms. I hoped she’d have forgotten all about the bath salts by the time school was over.

  We couldn’t forget about poor Mabel. There were all the posters on every tree and fence, her sweet face peering at us plaintively.

  ‘I’d give anything in the whole world for Mabel to be safe and sound somewhere,’ Gran muttered. ‘I’ll stay in all day just in case anyone phones with news of her.’

  ‘Oh Gran,’ I said.

  I trailed into school, feeling terrible. The bell had already gone but Miss Smith didn’t tell me off when I sidled into the classroom.

  ‘How are you today, Verity? Any more bad dreams?’ she asked.

  I nodded. ‘Horrible nightmares.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said, and she patted my shoulder as I went past.

  Sophie and Laura and Aaron were all extra-nice to me. Even Moyra was nice. She offered to share her sweets with me at break-time. She had two big wiggly green jelly snakes.

  ‘You can have one if you want, Verity,’ she said.

  I said I wasn’t very hungry, thank you. She did tease a bit then, shaking a snake right in my face and asking if I was frightened of sweets – but Aaron elbowed her out the way and asked if I was going to the swings after school. Laura told me her next-door neighbour had heard a cat mewing in the night and it might have been Mabel. Sophie said if Mabel didn’t ever come back maybe I’d like Sporty or Scary or Baby or Posh because her mum said they couldn’t keep all the kittens.

  I thanked Aaron but said I didn’t really feel like a trip to the swings. I thanked Laura and said I didn’t think it could have been Mabel. I thanked Sophie and said I loved Sporty and Scary and Baby and Posh . . . but they could never ever replace my Mabel.

  I thought about Mabel most of the morning. I got a lot of my sums wrong. But after dinner Miss Smith gave another lesson on the Ancient Egyptians, and I started to listen properly. She held up this rather scary-looking jackal mask and asked who wanted to try it on and be Anubis, the god of the dead. Moyra nearly wet herself she was so desperate to be chosen. Miss Smith let everyone take turns while she told us all about the Ancient Egyptians’ beliefs about death.

  They were sure the spirit left the body but might come back to it later on. That’s why they thought it very important to preserve the bodies. They needed to be kept in spic and span condition in case the spirit paid a visit.

  I felt relieved that I had done my very best for Mabel. I decided to leave the wardrobe door ajar so that Mabel’s spirit could waft out and go for a walk round all her old haunts whenever she felt like it.

  ‘Can you see the spirit, Miss Smith?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, the Ancient Egyptians painted pict