by Poppy Harris
‘Kitty! Stop it at once!’ said Bethany. ‘I’m very sorry, Mister Pexperts,’ she added, but had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
‘Oh, Kitty,’ said Sam wearily, and left the trombone in its case while he helped Bethany to drag Kitty away from Tim. Kitty had forgotten all about rabbits and hamsters by now – she’d even forgotten why she was so cross, but she went on hitting Tim, and fought against Sam and Bethany as they took an arm each and heaved her away.
‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No, no, no, let me go, naughty Bethany, naughty Sam! I don’t like you any more, let me go! You smell!’
She twisted, kicked, struggled and howled, but Bethany and Sam held on to her. Shaking, bedraggled and astonished, Tim staggered to his feet. His clothes were not only crumpled, but also dirty from the shed floor, his shoes were badly scuffed, and his keys, his phone and several screwdrivers had fallen out of his pockets. He stuffed them back in again and adjusted his glasses. Sam, who had no idea who this man was, picked up the tracking device and rubbed it on his sleeve.
‘I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s broken,’ he said, handing it back to Tim.
‘I can mend it,’ muttered Tim with grim determination. Bethany tried to dust him down, but he wrenched himself away from her.
‘I’m really very sorry about all this,’ said Bethany, and she meant it. She was truly very concerned about him. ‘Kitty, what have you got to say to Mister Pexperts?’
‘You smell,’ said Kitty. She folded her arms, tilted her chin down and her shoulders up, and scowled.
‘Kitty, that’s very rude,’ said Sam, so she kicked him.
‘Kitty!’ It was Mum’s voice, and to Bethany and Sam at that moment it was the best sound in the whole world. She was standing in the shed doorway, and was too concerned about a very messy Kitty kicking Sam to worry about the Pexpert man.
‘That’s not very nice, is it, Kitty?’ she said. ‘Don’t kick Sam. And look at the state of your clothes; have you been rolling around on the floor? Now, you come with me because your mum’s here to take you home.’
For a moment, Kitty looked as if she might argue, but there was no more fun to be had. She couldn’t kick anyone now that her Auntie Angela was there, and if she screamed she’d just be tucked under Auntie Angela’s arm and carried inside. She took her aunt’s hand and walked meekly back to the house.
By this time, Tim had decided that enough was enough. The tracking device had been smashed on the shed floor and was useless. He had no hope of finding the hamster now – it was nowhere to be seen and must have run away from the shed in all the chaos. His knees were grazed, he was bruised from Kitty’s kicks and punches, and all he wanted was to get away from this house as quickly as possible. He did wonder about telling the police that he’d been assaulted, but then they’d find out that he was using a false name and pretending to be something he wasn’t. Besides, he couldn’t very well say he’d been beaten up by a little girl.
Bethany and Sam walked with him as far as the car and waved goodbye.
‘Who was that?’ asked Sam.
‘Just some sort of pet man,’ said Bethany.
‘You can’t keep men as pets,’ said Sam, and seemed to find this extremely funny. ‘Bethany wants a pet man!’
‘Shut up and don’t be stupid,’ said Bethany. ‘I mean, a man who knows about pets. He’s supposed to be an expert on hamsters.’
‘What did he say about Hamilton?’ asked Sam.
‘He couldn’t even find him,’ said Bethany, and then it all seemed very funny to her too.
While Kitty was in the kitchen with Auntie Sally and Bethany’s mum, Bethany went quietly back up to her room. She reached into her sleeve for Hamilton and stroked him.
‘It’s all right now, Hamilton,’ she said. ‘She’s going home. And that strange man’s gone. I’m sorry you haven’t had a very nice afternoon.’
Hamilton looked hard at his cage, then at Bethany, then – in case she hadn’t understood – back at his cage again.
‘You want to go for a sleep?’ she said. ‘Yes, of course.’ She put him back into his cage and fastened the door. He closed it extra firmly from the inside, as he knew that Kitty was still somewhere in the house.
He had learnt today about trombones and Monstrous Kitties, and they were both very tiring. He rearranged the nest, curled up in it and fell asleep.
In the kitchen, Kitty sat quietly on her mother’s lap while Bethany’s mum made coffee and handed Kitty a glass of orange juice. Kitty made gurgling noises into it.
‘Don’t do that, darling,’ said her mum. ‘What have you been doing while I was away? Have you been a good girl?’
‘I’ve been as good as gold,’ said Kitty, snuggling against her mum and kicking her legs contentedly. ‘I went to Bethany’s room and played, and Bethany’s got a big fluffy mouse and a funny man came with a magic box.’
‘What man, darling?’ asked her mum.
‘She means the pet consultant,’ said Mum. ‘He’s supposed to be a specialist on rodents or something.’
‘Yes,’ said Kitty firmly. ‘Oh dense or somethings.’
‘You mean ro – dents,’ said Auntie Sally. ‘That’s the word for little animals with sharp teeth who gnaw things. Can you say “rodents”?’
‘Dense,’ repeated Kitty decisively. ‘Dense. He was the Dense Man and he had little sharp teeth. He went all round the garden with the magic box.’ A daydreamy look came into her face. The more she thought about it, the more her imagination went to work on the story. ‘He had a magic box with a fairy light and it made a sound like Tinkerbell to make the fairies come. And we went into the shed and it was all full of fairies all flying about and Sam was playing a great big shiny trumpet and the big furry mouse jumped out of the trumpet and it had wings and it flew over our heads with the fairies, and I waved my magic wand.’
Her mother hugged her tightly. ‘You have the most wonderful imagination, darling!’ she said.
‘I know.’ Kitty hugged her mum back before wriggling off her lap and skipping away to watch cartoons. But before she could reach the television, she heard the bathroom door open and shut. Kitty gasped in delight. This meant that Bethany was finally out of the way and Kitty could get her hands on Hamilton!
She ran up to Bethany’s room to see if the Giant Fluffy Mouse was in his cage. Ever so quietly, Kitty pushed open the door of Bethany’s room and tiptoed in.
Back in his cage, Hamilton had woken up and was practising his embouchure – perhaps he could make noises down a trombone too. It would be difficult, but he might find some useful materials – silver foil, maybe, and the things Bethany put in her hair – that he could make into a hamster-sized trombone, or something like one. It would be fun to try.
He screwed up his mouth and pushed out his teeth. That was better, and he pretended to hold a trombone in his paws, pushing the slide in and out. He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t notice Kitty creeping softly into the room.
Kitty’s hand was on the catch. She knew this cage wasn’t easy to open, but a good wrench should do it.
She had been about to say, ‘Come on, mousie, come to Kitty,’ but she didn’t. When she looked at Hamilton, she was too frightened to say anything at all.
Bethany’s Giant Fluffy Mouse was pulling faces – horrible, scary faces! It had bared its teeth and stretched out its mouth and was waving its paws back and forth in the air like angry fists! It wanted to eat her! Kitty’s mouth opened wide in horror.
Hamilton felt he was doing rather well with his embouchure, but it was hard work. To relax his mouth muscles, he chewed at the bars of his cage.
Seeing this obvious attempt by the scary Giant F
luffy Mouse to chew his way out of the cage before eating her, Kitty backed away towards the door. She had had enough. When Bethany returned from the bathroom, Kitty turned and fled back down the stairs.
‘Hamilton!’ cried Bethany, running over to his cage to check that he was OK, ‘has Kitty been bothering you?’
Hamilton looked round. Kitty? He shook his head. He hadn’t even seen the Monstrous Kitty.
‘Good,’ said Bethany. She sat down and picked up her phone. ‘Hamilton, I wonder why that pet man came today. He said somebody had phoned him and asked him to visit. It wasn’t me.’
Hamilton put his head on one side and looked innocent.
‘Hamilton,’ said Bethany, opening the cage and taking him out, ‘I’m not going to be cross. I just want to know – did you send for the pet man?’
Hamilton nodded sadly. He already wished he hadn’t done it. That pet man had spoilt a very happy tromboning session.
‘Then, Hamilton,’ said Bethany, ‘you must never send messages to people you don’t know. Especially, you mustn’t invite them here. For all you know, they might not be very nice people. Do you understand?’
Hamilton nodded eagerly. He hadn’t liked the pet man.
‘In fact,’ said Bethany, ‘don’t text anyone, ever, except me. And don’t ever send an email. We can’t let people know that you’re such a clever hamster, can we?’
Hamilton thought about this. He liked texting, but he could see Bethany’s point. He twitched his nose and puckered his mouth to show that he wasn’t pleased, but he didn’t try to argue.
Bethany was just filling up his food bowl and water bottle when Mum looked round the door.
‘Kitty and Auntie Sally are going home now,’ she said. ‘Do you want to say goodbye? Kitty doesn’t want to come up here. I can’t understand why.’
Kitty was strangely quiet as they left the house. There wasn’t a word about the giant mouse, or the rabbit, or the man with the magic box. She trotted to the car holding her mum’s hand tightly.
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Sam as the car door slammed shut.
‘Sam!’ said Mum. ‘I know she’s hard work, but she’s your cousin.’
‘Bethany,’ said Sam as they went back upstairs. ‘Was that really your hamster in my trombone?’
Bethany did wonder for a moment whether she should pretend to have no idea what Sam was talking about. But that wouldn’t work. She had to be as truthful as possible.
‘Yes, it was,’ she said. ‘I wish I knew how he got in there. It could have been dangerous.’
‘It was probably Kitty’s fault,’ said Sam. ‘Is Hammy all right?’
They went into Bethany’s room together. For Hamilton, it had been a tiring day and he hadn’t slept much. After supper and a drink, he had made his nest comfortable and settled down to go back to sleep.
‘All he ever does is eat and sleep,’ said Sam, and went back to his trombone.
At the university, Tim limped into the laboratory and kicked the waste-paper basket because he needed to kick something. It fell over, spilling paper and apple cores across the floor. He kicked the desk too, which hurt his toes. Then he flopped down heavily in his swivel chair and inspected his trousers, which had got very dirty when he fell. He supposed they’d be all right if the dry cleaners could get the marks out.
He wouldn’t have minded getting dirty, or even being attacked by the terrible Kitty – he wouldn’t even have minded the bruises – if only he’d got hold of the hamster and the microspeck. He put his head in his hands – he had been so close, so close to getting hold of that hamster and getting the microspeck back.
He began to wonder if he’d imagined it all. Surely the hamster couldn’t really have jumped out of a trombone? Why was the boy playing the trombone in the shed? Tim was already seeing that hamster in his dreams. Maybe he was beginning to see it when he was awake too, even if it wasn’t there. But he wasn’t imagining the bruises.
Somebody knocked at the door and he jumped – but it was only Mary the cleaner, standing at the door with her vacuum cleaner and her box of dusters and polish.
‘Doctor Taverner?’ she said. She had been watching him for a few minutes now and was worried. At first she hadn’t been quite sure if it really was Dr Taverner at all because he had dyed his hair blond, but, yes, it was definitely him. The poor man had just buried his head in his hands as if he needed to hold it on. Poor Dr Taverner – he must have been working too hard again – or maybe he just wished he hadn’t had his hair done.
‘Is it all right to do your cleaning now, Doctor Taverner?’ she asked. ‘And what about a cup of tea?’
Without waiting for an answer, she put the kettle on. When she brought the tea, Tim was swivelling gently from side to side in his chair.
‘You’ve changed your hair colour, Doctor Taverner,’ she said.
‘What?’ Tim had forgotten about the blond dye. ‘Oh – oh, yes.’
‘It looks very nice,’ she said. It didn’t, but she wanted to make him feel better. For the first time, she noticed how grubby he was. ‘Look at the state of you!’ she exclaimed. ‘Did you fall off your bicycle?’
‘There was a shed,’ said Tim slowly and thoughtfully as he tried to make sense of all that had happened. ‘And a small boy with a trombone.’
‘I see,’ said Mary. Poor Dr Taverner seemed to be very confused. Perhaps he’d fallen asleep and had a nightmare.
‘Then the hamster jumped out,’ he said.
‘What hamster?’ she asked.
‘The hamster,’ he said a bit impatiently. ‘The one I have to catch. It was in there.’
‘In the shed?’ said Mary. ‘In a cage?’
‘No, in the trombone,’ said Tim.
Mary stood up, looking stern. ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic,’ she said. ‘I’ve got work to do.’
‘I’m not!’ cried Tim. ‘The hamster! Really and honestly, Mary! It just flew out of the trombone!’
Mary sat down again. ‘Flew?’ she repeated.
It began to dawn upon Tim that this must sound even more ridiculous to Mary than it had been at the time.
‘I mean, jumped,’ said Tim.
‘So,’ said Mary, ‘let me see if I’ve understood this. There was a boy in a shed, and he was practising his trombone. My son used to play the trombone when he was at school. You get some rude noises out of it when you’re first learning, and it frightened the cat. I wish we’d had a garden shed – I’m sure I would have sent him to practise in it. That’s quite reasonable so far, Doctor Taverner, nothing to be upset about. And as for the hamster, maybe it was just a little fieldmouse.’
‘No, it was definitely that hamster,’ said Tim. ‘It set off the bleep.’
Mary decided not to ask any more questions. The poor man had obviously been working far too hard. As she closed the door, she shook her head. A hamster in a trombone? Whatever next!
‘Goodnight, Hamilton, sleep tight,’ said Bethany as she went to bed. ‘And thanks for settling Kitty down. I don’t know how you did it, but she was as good as gold when she came downstairs.’
In the cosy warmth of his nest box, Hamilton had already fallen asleep, curled up tightly. It wasn’t time yet for his nightly run on the wheel. His paws twitched. In his dreams he was leaping, dancing and waltzing through the air, all to the oompah-oompah of a band of trombones.
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