Darcy Burdock Book 3 Read online

I feel sick thinking about all the big cow legs in the box: I am such a good vegetarian. And then I remember that in the past few days I’ve eaten chicken curry and bolognese AND those pesky boot chicken nuggets and NOBODY reminded me. Oh great. I bet everybody thinks I am a weakling COWard with no principles or will power.

  And that’s when I look past the wall of rectangular mini swimming pools that are home to thousands of glittery tropical beautiful exotic fish. Past cage after cage of fluttery, squawky, gossipy birds nipping and napping in every shade of every colour, their posts covered in white sploshy bird poo like liquidated cloud. Past all of this are . . . the kittens.

  There are eight in this litter, piled up on top of each other in a warm nest of snuggles and warmth, fluff and fur, like a nest of heated hair, a snuffly tumble of so much cuteness our eyes are set to explode.

  Poppy, as usual, digs her hand straight in and pulls out a kitten with a big splodge over its eye.

  ‘WAAAAAAHHHHH!’ she squeals as she brings the podgy fluffball to her face and in baby language says, ‘Ri rove ru, res Ri roo.’ She then picks up another un-Poppy-proofed kitten in her other hand, a little black one, and confidently rolls the kitten up into her neck as if it’s a violin and she’s some kind of expert. She then begins muttering in baby language: ‘Smoochie woochie toochie coochie noochie moochie oochie, boochie loochie froochie doochie smoochie boochie woochie.’

  Which makes me feel sick, but actually not for long because then I see a little ginger one that looks just like Will. It makes me think about him, what’s happening in his world right now. I stroke the ginger kitten’s chin and he begins to purr, closing his eyes and relaxing his little body into mine. Mum and Dad have picked up a kitten each now too, and Hector is trying to hold the remaining three who are all purring but a bit crying too, he has a 50/50 success rate with animals.

  We all begin arguing over our favourite one, using words like my one as if they already belong to us.

  ‘Mine’s got a lovely tail,’ Hector tries.

  ‘My one’s got freckles on her nose,’ Poppy adds.

  ‘Mine’s got a lovely, kind, thoughtful heart,’ Hector suggests – he has been learning about friendship at school this week. Oh, those blissful days when you could do a WHOLE week on friendship.

  ‘Oh, how can we choose?’ Mum coos; she has truly been turned into a big gooey smitten kitten. But in one failing, falling horrendously awful swoop, our air balloon of kitten dreaming is punctured and sends us wailing to the ground.

  ‘No, no, no,’ says the little pet shop man with the bald head and the whiny voice like he’s speaking with a clothes peg over his nose. ‘I’m sorry, they are not for sale.’

  ‘WHAT?’ barks Mum. One thing you must know about mums is that they are actually roses made of barbed wire. They may look pretty and gentle but actually they are vicious and spiky, and if somebody messes with them all badness shall break loose.

  The man steps back but isn’t changing his mind. He is a tiny man, not much taller than me, and he begins to try and start ‘shooing’ us out. Obviously he has spent far too much time with dogs and not enough time with actual people to know you don’t shoo my mum.

  ‘Don’t you DARE shoo me or my family!’ My mum unleashes her alter ego, a wild, livid, powerful Angrosaurus rex with fire breath and yellow destroying eyes that could kill with a single glance.

  ‘Remove yourself from the kittens, please.’ He ushers us some more and then tries to protect the kittens from us as if we really are a family of monsters. ‘These kittens have all been sold; I’m just waiting for them to be collected. Many apologies.’ I hate it when people say they are sorry, but say it like they are reading words out of the newspaper, with no emotion and no heart, like a computer.

  ‘Well, why on earth was th—’ Dad tries, but the little man speaks over him, he is red now and cross.

  ‘Are you stupid? The kittens are gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. GONE, and now I’d like YOU to do the same.’

  In one moment the planets collide, the seas dry up, the planets drop from the sky and thunder and lightning and twisters and hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis happen, and volcanoes begin erupting and the world is cracking as my mum opens her mouth . . .

  ‘LISTEN, YOU LITTLE MAN, I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE, SPEAKING TO MY FAMILY LIKE THAT. I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE, OWNING A PET SHOP WITH THE CUSTOMER SERVICE OF A VOMIT-COVERED HOUSE FLY, YOU NASTY LITTLE MAN. YOU HAD A SIGN UP OUTSIDE ADVERTISING KITTENS AND NOW YOU ARE SAYING YOU HAVE SOLD THEM ALL. EITHER YOU ARE TERRIBLY LAZY, OR YOU ARE TRYING TO BRING CUSTOMERS IN UNDER FALSE PRETENCES, USING THE BAIT OF BEAUTIFUL KITTENS TO LURE CUSTOMERS INTO YOUR RUBBISH (insert lots of swear words) SHOP. AND DON’T YOU WORRY – OF COURSE WE WILL BE LEAVING, LEAVING QUITE HAPPILY, AND I HOPE YOU KNOW YOU HAVE JUST LOST YOURSELF SOME REALLY EXCELLENT CUSTOMERS.’

  The little man stands gawping. My dad evil-eyes him and goes a bit rude-boy gangster, like: ‘Yo, that’s my wife, that’s my girl, y’all better recognize.’ And we follow her out like she’s the big duck and we’re all her little ducklings, waddling after her, livid and devastated (we really wanted those kittens) but we’ve got our mum’s back.

  As we get outside the shop and see the chalked sign advertising the kittens, Mum doesn’t think twice – she picks the sign up and throws it in the nearest public dustbin and screams, ‘LIES UPON LIES UPON LIES.’ My mum can be quite dramatic, which is excellent.

  We clamber into the car as quick as can be. Mum gets into the back, I think because that’s where police officers put the criminals in their cars. I’ve seen it on TV so I know it’s true and accurate. I get in the front, as I’m next after Mum in the food chain of shotgunning the passenger seat. Dad starts the engine as a man yells, ‘Good work!’ from across the road. ‘I’ve always hated that pet shop idiot!’ Mum covers her face and is shaking – I can see why she was adopted now. I reckon her real parents were a prehistoric mega-shark and a T-rex. It was an ill-fated romance that wasn’t built to last.

  ‘OK, where to now?’ Dad says sarcastically.

  ‘The pub,’ Mum croaks.

  Chapter Seven

  A real-life thunderstorm starts later: a scary one that has a lot to say for itself and lights the sky up like a firework exploding. I have just finished writing my thank-you letter for Grandma, I’ll show you what it says if you like:

  I feel bad. Poppy didn’t even say that bit about the money but I had to get my point across without being rude. It is annoying getting notes, if you lose a note of money then it’s gone for ever. And it doesn’t even make a rattle noise like coins so it’s tricky to find.

  We are getting ready for bed, excited but tired after what feels like the longest day ever, when the phone rings unexpectedly.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ I shout, and pick up Lamb-Beth for a cuddle before trudging over to the phone. She hates storms and her tail is all sad and facing downwards. I LOVE the thunder.

  ‘Hello, Darcy, gosh you’re up late.’ It is patronizing Marnie Pincher. I roll my eyes and think about throwing the phone but perhaps we’ve all had enough drama for one day, what with the mice, Will and his dad, Koala Nicola and Olly Supperidge breaking up, and my mum going nuts at the pet shop. ‘Is Mum in?’ She’s not your mum, Marnie, you don’t get to call her Mum.

  ‘Yeah, let me get her. MUM! MUM! IT’S MARNIE.’

  I hear Mum mumble a few hundred mean moaning things about Marnie under her breath, but when she gets on the phone it’s all ‘Heeeeeyyyy best friends’.

  They aren’t on the phone for long, and then I hear Mum and Dad chit-chatting for a bit, but it’s hard to listen and crunch a biscuit at the same time. Then Mum rings Marnie right back, ‘Yes, OK, thanks,’ she says. ‘Do bring it round.’

  Bring WHAT round?

  It’s past our bedtime, but there is nobody telling us to go to bed and so we try to be really quiet and small so that Mum and Dad don’t notice us. Maybe they will forget that we have a b
edtime altogether? Fingers crossed.

  The door knocks, and it’s scary because the thunder crackles at the same time and the sky lights up making everything a white-silver colour. Dad opens the door and it’s Marnie and her son Donald, both wearing rain macs and wellie boots. They are SO over the top.

  Dad asks them both to come in for a hot drink but they say no thanks and we can’t stay as Donald needs to get to bed because it’s a school night. Then Marnie beadily glances at Poppy, Hector and me, and I can tell she is using every bit of discipline she can muster to not scream ‘GO TO BED!’ at us. Then Donald pulls out a cardboard box from under his rain mac. He gently (for him) passes it over to Dad, who has to use both hands to carry it.

  ‘I didn’t expect it to be this heavy,’ he laughs awkwardly.

  Marnie can’t seem to get away quick enough, with lots of come on then, love, let’s get home to Donald. The pair of them run out into the spidery rain, yelling, ‘Bye,’ whilst the sky continues shelling little globes of liquid diamonds all over them.

  WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

  WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

  WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

  We all settle down in the kitchen, Dad throwing Mum an anxious look. Hector is a terrifically impatient child, especially when he’s tired like now.

  ‘OP-EN IT,’ he yells, patting the box.

  ‘Hector!’ Poppy snaps. ‘Wait.’

  ‘Kids . . .’ Dad taps our hands off the box, which has started to rumble, juddering and vibrating. Hector leans back, as if the box is about to explode in our faces, and shields himself as Dad lifts the flaps open. A large grey head with pointy ears pops up like an oversized jack-in-the-box or the surfacing face of a livid hippo. Its eyes are a chalky green. The teeth are sharp and expression livid. It is one moody . . . cat.

  ‘She said he was a kitten, aged six to eight weeks!’ Mum laughs through shock when she can just about get her words together.

  ‘Ha! More like six to eight centuries,’ Dad mutters, looking a bit cross.

  But not as cross as this cat.

  ‘All right, let’s get him out.’ Mum begins to tip the box a little, hoping the cat will gently slide out onto the kitchen floor, but the cat suddenly becomes like set cement and is incredibly heavy. ‘Blooming thing weighs a ton.’ She begins to get red in the face. ‘We’ll have to lift him out of the box.’

  ‘How?’ I can tell Dad does not want to touch this creature.

  As Mum and Dad debate the best way to get the cat out, I suddenly remember Lamb-Beth. I haven’t seen her since the door knocked. I jump up to look for her, and I know she will either be in one of our bedrooms, under the duvet, or in the living room under the coffee table. I check downstairs first, and there she is, as expected, curled underneath the table, shaking. I wonder if this fear is coming from more than just the storm outside.

  ‘It’s OK.’ I stroke her fluffy head and her big eyes look back at me as if to say, It’s not really though, is it? You have brought a strange, angry beast into our home. And I know she is right.

  I hop back into the kitchen where everybody is staring at the cat and the box like they’re the sword in the stone, impossible to separate them.

  ‘OK . . .’ Dad breathes in. ‘I’ll just . . . erm, let me just . . .’ He puts his hands into the box. ‘I, erm . . . he might have fleas!’ Dad is really failing at being a superhero this week, what with the screaming at the sight of mice and letting himself be shouted at by the little man in the pet shop. The cat hisses furiously and Dad jumps back like he’s seen a ghost.

  ‘Let me get him.’ Poppy leans forward, her hands go right under the cat’s armpits and she lifts him up like a grumpy, chubby baby. ‘Hello, tiger . . .’ she greets the cat, followed by, ‘Wiger, liger, miger, biger, jiger . . .’ and then the cat hisses at her really loud and shows his claws and we all jump back this time, apart from Poppy. ‘Ah, bless,’ she sniffs (she has learned Ah, bless off of Grandma). ‘Come here, you.’ She then picks the cat up out of the box, completely unfazed.

  He is the biggest, fattest, most solid cat that I have ever seen. Poppy throws him over her shoulder, huffing and puffing under the cat’s bulk, but he meekly lies there, while she pats his back like a baby being winded. ‘There, there. It’s OK now, you’re safe here.’

  HOW does she know what to do? I watched this programme once where this man runs around on TV visiting dogs all over America. Some of these dogs are really naughty or disobedient and he communicates with them to calm them down. He’s called a dog whisperer. Poppy is clearly a cat whisperer. This must be true, as the monstrous cat begins to purr.

  ‘Let’s call him Tiger then!’ Mum announces.

  ‘Are we KEEPING him?’ Dad screeches.

  ‘Of course we are! We’ve got a mice infestation,’ Mum laughs. ‘Remember! You wanted a cat and now we’ve got one.’

  ‘Is the cat going to eat the mice?’ I ask, feeling queasy again.

  ‘No, he will catch them and give them to us and we can put them in our cage.’ This is Hector.

  He is SO wrong.

  ‘There is NO way that THAT cat is going to catch poor defenceless mice and then hand them to us INTACT without gobbling them up,’ I screech.

  ‘They aren’t defenceless!’ says Dad. ‘You’ve seen ’em, Darcy, they are violent, vicious, vile rogues!’

  Poppy is still cuddling the big dollop of cat. ‘He doesn’t want to be called Tiger,’ she says.

  ‘What does he want to be called?’ I ask. I am both impressed and jealous of Poppy. Why can’t she just stop being good for one quick second and just be a bit rubbish?

  ‘Hold on, let me ask.’ She nestles into the cat’s ear and does some whispering and then, like Dad does when he pretends our teddy bears are talking to him (they always want us to go to bed for some reason, why did we get such moody party-killer teddies? I thought teddies were into picnics), she looks back at us and says, ‘Pork. He would like to be called Pork.’

  Hector laughs and Mum frowns, not convinced that her daughter can speak full-blown cat. ‘Are you sure he didn’t say he would like to eat some pork?’

  ‘Nope. He says a bowl of milk would be suitable but he would like to be called Pork.’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ says Dad. ‘Pork it is.’ Dad then starts shaking his head as if he is saying NO NO NO NO NO NO over and over again. ‘Two days ago I had a normal life,’ he mutters, ‘and now I seem to be living with a bunch of mice and a mangy cat.’

  ‘Get over yourself,’ Mum hisses, just like Pork. ‘You never had a normal life.’

  I think Dad might have wanted a cute new kitten that tumbled and got all caught up in rolls of wool and purred and hopped about. Not basically an angry dumpling, which is what we have, now Pork is here.

  I scoop Lamb-Beth up and we make our way to bed. She is yawning and snuggling and mostly furious. Mum says animals don’t always yawn because they are tired, they yawn because they are stressed too. It’s when you need to get extra more oxygen to the brain. It must have been a stressful day for poor Lamb-Beth, with a new pet in the house. That’s how I felt when Poppy was born, but you soon get used to it. You have to. I can’t imagine Pork doing that much chasing and capturing or being that useful as he just sits there, like an oversized plop of furry grey mouldy mashed potato.

  I think about Will and how his day must have gone. What did his dad even say to him? What did his dad want? And how is Annie? What does she think about her dad returning?

  It’s been a long day but I have lots of inspiration now, stuff to think about and write about. My head feels completely ready to burst but right now my eyes are sticking together and closing . . .

  Chapter Eight

  I put my pen down. If that doesn’t count as ‘persuasive writing’, I don’t know what will. I think Mr Yates will be pleasantly surprised. Persuasive writing is what you do when you are trying to convince someone to do something, and I think I’ve just nailed it. I do a bit more yawning myself as I feel like I’ve got
one trapped at the back of my throat.

  ‘Boring you, is it, Darcy?’ Mr Yates asks.

  ‘No, I’m just tired,’ I say. Everybody looks up and the sound of pens scratching and squiggling grinds to a halt. ‘We got a tramp cat last night,’ I announce to the class. Some kids snort and laugh a bit.

  ‘How very nice for you.’ Mr Yates nods. ‘Thank you for sharing.’ Most people would accept this as conversation over, but not me.

  ‘He is called Pork,’ I continue, as some more of my classmates giggle and swivel round to face me, ‘but we didn’t choose that name, he did – he told my sister Poppy in a whisper that this is what he would really like his name to be. We had to listen and let him have his wish because he is to be a mouse-catcher for us – we have mice eating all our things, even Mum’s moisturizer. Dad bought a big tub, a bucket almost, of bright blue poison pasta to murder the mice but it didn’t even work. Much to his disappointment, as Dad’s really into murdering mice. Then we went to the pet shop and stroked loads of tiny kittens but then Mum went absolutely mental at the man because he was a swear word, and so we had to go to the pub and get Mum a bit drunk. Then the thunder and lightning came and our parents’ friends, who we all hate a bit, rang us up and said they found a stray tramp cat and did we want to have him as a mouse-catcher and . . . well . . . that’s Pork.’ I cough a bit, and then I do a big yawn. One by one, including Mr Yates, everybody yawns back. Like a mirror.

  ‘Thank you for that interesting and imaginative adventure of yours, Darcy. I think we were all entertained,’ Mr Yates says after his yawn, his hand curled in front of his mouth like a protective paw.

  Even though he is being sarcastic I still say, ‘You’re welcome,’ and do a bow. Everybody laughs.

  ‘As much as we would all love to have a little nap now on our desks, we’ve still got work to do. Everybody back to work, finish our persuasive writing.’ I don’t know why teachers use words like ‘our’, as it’s not like they have to do it! ‘And if you’re finished . . .’ – this applies to me – ‘you can catch up on some reading or you can work on some creative writing in your exercise book.’