A Tiger Tale

by Holly Webb

  She sat in the shed doorway and looked down the garden. She could see them, both lots, planted in clumps in the flower bed. Her stripy ones weren’t out yet – they were just fat green buds. But Granddad’s Apricot Beauties had opened over the last few days. On the day of the funeral Kate had noticed them out of her bedroom window. They were tall and strong, with flowers like perfect little cups. Even nicer than in the picture, Kate thought, looking down at the catalogue to see.

  The purple felt-tip ring around the apricot tulips was seeping ink. She was crying again, without even noticing. Hurriedly she blotted the tear away with the hem of Granddad’s fleece.

  It seemed all wrong to Kate that she was here in the garden, and the flowers they’d chosen together were opening, but Granddad had gone. How could that be the way things were supposed to happen? It just wasn’t fair.

  She huddled Granddad’s fleece around her and Amos, and watched the soft peachy-orange flowers shift in the wind. The fleece wrapped round Kate like soft, fat tiger paws, and deep tiger purrs rumbled in her ears. He’d come back!

  The tiger nudged himself against her side, nuzzling against Granddad’s old fleece, and Kate sighed shakily. “You’re here…” she whispered. The tiger stayed behind her, gently rubbing against her arm. Kate didn’t look round to see him properly. It was enough to know her tiger was there with her, keeping her safe for Granddad.

  Kate sat in the corner of one of the classrooms, reading a book. She wasn’t getting very far with it – it was a disguise, more than anything. Something she could say she was doing, if one of the staff tried to persuade her to join in an activity.

  It wasn’t a very interesting book, though. It was about mermaids, and it had looked quite good, but the story was so stupid that Kate was having trouble even pretending to read it. She wriggled herself deeper into the beanbag, and flicked over the next few pages in an unenthusiastic sort of way.

  Ella and Izzy, the two girls who’d found her under the table the day before, were practising a dance routine on the other side of the classroom. Kate watched them, a little wistfully. She did ballet classes, and street dance, and she wished she could go and join in. Both Ella and Izzy were very good – even though they were dancing to music on Ella’s MP3 player, and sharing the earphones, which didn’t make it easy. They couldn’t move more than about thirty centimetres away from each other.

  The earphones shot out of Ella’s ears as she kicked out too energetically, and she tried to catch them and practically fell over. Izzy tried to catch her, and the pair of them staggered all over the classroom, giggling, and nearly fell into Kate and her beanbag.

  “Oooops! Sorry!” Izzy perched on the edge of the beanbag for a minute. “I think we twirled too much. I’m dizzy.”

  “You looked really good,” Kate told her shyly. Molly had said everyone thought she was weird. Izzy might not want to talk to her.

  “Do you think so?” Izzy sounded pleased. “We’ve been practising it for a while. But really it needs more people.” She glanced sideways at Ella, who stared at Kate thoughtfully and jerked her head in a tiny nod.

  “Do you want to be in it too?” Izzy suggested. “We could sing the music – we’ve not got any more earphones.” She stood up, and held out a hand to Kate, offering to pull her out of the saggy beanbag.

  Kate’s mouth twitched in a quick smile of delight. They couldn’t think she was that strange, after all! She grabbed Izzy’s hand and jumped up, wondering if it would be all right to suggest a couple of steps that she had learned in street dance, or if that would be pushing it a bit.

  But then she remembered, and she felt the being sad fall down around her again. Her shoulders slumped. It was as if a thick black cloak had wrapped itself around her. People whose granddads had died didn’t do dancing. Even if they wanted to, just a little bit. It didn’t seem right to do fun things now.

  She sat down again with a thump, and scrabbled for her book, staring down at it with blurry eyes.

  “No,” she said flatly. “Sorry. I can’t.” She set her face in a grim look, and made her voice very firm, to squash down the part of her that was saying, Yes! Yes! I really want to join in!

  Izzy and Ella stared at her. “What do you mean, you can’t?” Izzy demanded. “You wanted to, just a minute ago. Are you terrible at dancing or something?”

  “Oh, just leave her!” Ella snapped. “She thinks she’s so perfect. She’s too important to hang around with us. Looking down her nose all the time. We didn’t want you anyway,” she added, turning to growl at Kate. “Go back to your book.”

  Kate gaped at her. She hadn’t meant to be horrible at all. It was just that she couldn’t join in now… It would be wrong. But she didn’t want them to think she was stuck up.

  “It isn’t that I don’t want to dance with you,” she tried to explain, struggling up out of the beanbag again, and feeling stupid as she wobbled about. Izzy seemed to be trying not to laugh at her, and Ella just looked annoyed.

  “You don’t understand…” Kate stood there, gazing at them, and biting at her bottom lip. She couldn’t explain about Granddad to two girls she’d never met before. She couldn’t even talk to her mum or Molly about him without feeling awful. How could she explain it to these two?

  “Well, explain it to us then!” Ella snapped, now completely out of patience. But Kate couldn’t. The words were all stuck inside her, so instead she turned and ran out of the room to the coat racks.

  Kate grabbed her rucksack and slid down the wall, so that she was sitting on the floor. Her legs felt wobbly. She even felt a bit sick. Hurriedly, she yanked at the zip on her rucksack, desperate to find Amos. But it was stuck, and she could feel the tears burning and prickling in the corners of her eyes. At last she managed to drag it open, and grab at Amos.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  Kate hadn’t noticed, but someone had come up beside her. Izzy. Why had she followed her?

  “Nothing!” Kate said sharply, stuffing Amos back into her bag, and glaring up at Izzy.

  “I was only coming to see if you were OK!”

  “Well, don’t!” Kate yelled. “Just leave me alone!”

  “You don’t have to be like that…”

  Kate watched miserably as Izzy retreated down the corridor. She was actually crying now too, and Kate felt awful. Being horrible to other people didn’t make her feel better. But right now she didn’t have the energy to be nice. Why couldn’t she just stay at home on her own all day? In bed? Then she wouldn’t have to talk to anybody.

  She stood up wearily, and saw that Ella had been waiting for Izzy. She’d heard Kate shout. Izzy was still crying, and Ella was glaring up the corridor at Kate. She put her arm round Izzy’s shoulders, and led her back into the classroom.

  Kate sighed. So now they really, really hated her.

  Ella’s older brother was at the holiday club as well. Kate found that out at lunchtime, when she was sitting on her own, eating her sandwiches, and a boy walked past and tipped over her bottle of orange juice.

  Kate jumped up, brushing uselessly at the juice all over the front of her jeans.

  “Oh, sorry! It was an accident.” The boy sounded apologetic, and when Jasmine hurried over to see what had happened, he pulled a tissue out of his pocket, and started patting at the juice puddled in Kate’s lunch box. “I’m really sorry! I must have knocked the table or something…” He even looked sorry. Until Jasmine turned away to get some more paper towels and he smirked nastily at Kate.

  “That’s what you get for being horrible to my sister and her friend. Stupid stuck-up little baby.”

  Kate shook her head, staring at him. “But I wasn’t! I mean, I did, but I wasn’t meaning to be horrible. I just…” But how could she explain? She didn’t want to tell this boy about Granddad either. She just shook her head again, feeling stupid.

  “You think you’re better t
han everyone else,” he snapped back.

  “No…”

  Jasmine came back then, and the boy was all apologetic again. He fussed around, helping to clear up but “accidentally” sloshing more juice on to Kate, until Jasmine told him she’d do it and he could go back to his own lunch.

  “Are you OK, Kate? Did the juice go on the rest of your lunch? I can get you something else to eat from the staffroom.”

  Kate shook her head. She wasn’t hungry anyway. “It’s all right,” she murmured.

  Jasmine went off to put away the mop, and Kate sat looking at her juice-spattered biscuits. They were probably all right, wrapped up in their cling film, but she didn’t open them. She zipped her lunch box shut again and put it in her rucksack, and then she just sat there, with her head hanging. Everyone was looking at her, she could tell. And whispering about her.

  “She’s crying…”

  “Harry shouldn’t have done that, it was mean.”

  “But didn’t you hear? She was really horrible to Ella and Izzy.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, but Ella said she was mean. Harry was just sticking up for Ella.”

  “She really is crying, look at her.”

  “She looks like she’s wet herself, with that juice all over her jeans.”

  Then there was just giggling. Molly was over there, somewhere, but she didn’t stick up for Kate. She didn’t say anything. Kate couldn’t help thinking that Harry was horrible, but at least he looked after his sister.

  Kate reached down, pretending to look for something in her bag, so she could touch Amos’s fur. It was lucky that boy hadn’t got juice on him too. He was right down at the bottom of her bag, and only a few drops had gone over the outside. The soft plush warmth of him tingled through her fingers, like the tiger purrs from last night, and she felt a little stronger. Brave enough to move.

  Kate got up, tripping over chair legs and rucksacks, and once, she was almost sure, someone’s stuck-out foot, as she hurried out of the room.

  Kate spent the rest of the day skulking in and out of classrooms, avoiding Izzy and the others, and trying to stay within sight of one of the staff. She didn’t want anything else spilled on her.

  Actually, because she didn’t want to get cornered by Harry and the others, she ended up having the best time she’d had at the holiday club so far. She stayed in the art room most of the afternoon, and did a massive painting of a tiger on a piece of cardboard. They had thick acrylic paints in there, the most amazing strong, rich colours. She’d been able to paint something that almost looked like her tiger, with amber eyes that glowed like jewels.

  So she was feeling nearly happy, as she went to get her coat. She was a little late – she’d been helping to wash up the brushes and put things away. She was even looking forward to taking the painting home.

  Kate shrugged her coat on, and unzipped her bag to whisper to Amos. “I left the painting to dry. I’ll bring it home tomorrow.” But as she reached down to the bottom of the bag, she found only her lunch box. No furry tiger.

  Kate unzipped the other pockets, searching them frantically – even though she knew that the tiger wasn’t in either of them.

  Amos was gone.

  Kate dropped the bag. She didn’t know what to do. She needed Amos. Desperately she dropped to her knees and searched again, throwing out her lunch box, and her jumper, her pencils, everything. But he still wasn’t there.

  “Kate, your mum’s here. Are you ready?” Jasmine stood over her. “Have you lost something?”

  Kate looked up at her, but she could hardly see. She couldn’t talk, either. She could hardly breathe. Her shoulders heaved as she gasped and sobbed, trying to get words out. But she couldn’t say it. He’s gone.

  “Oh, Kate!” Jasmine quickly picked up the things that Kate had scattered around, and stuffed them into her bag. “Come on. Let’s go and find your mum and Molly.”

  She led Kate along the corridor with an arm around her waist, which was good, because Kate couldn’t actually see where she was going. Amos was her special present from Granddad, and now she had lost him. He was gone. If she didn’t have the toy Amos, her real tiger wouldn’t be there either. She would be completely alone. It was as if she’d been torn away from Granddad all over again.

  “I’m really sorry, I’ve just found Kate by the coats, and she can’t explain what’s the matter…” Jasmine sounded worried. “She’s had a much better day today, I don’t know what’s gone wrong. It’s possible someone said something to her, about her granddad. Children can be cruel without meaning it sometimes…”

  Kate felt her mum wrap her in a hug, and she slid her arms round Mum’s waist. But she couldn’t explain to Mum either. She couldn’t answer any of the anxious questions Mum was pouring out.

  “We’ll take her home,” Mum said at last, gently turning Kate round and leading her out to the car. Molly even opened the car door for her, and then she got in next to Kate instead of sitting in the front, and reached over to do her seatbelt, like Kate was tiny. It was nice.

  “Mum, what’s the matter with her?” Molly asked. Her voice was shaky, as though she was frightened, and Kate tried to look over at her. Molly was scared about her?

  “I don’t know, Moll. Kate, please, can you try to stop crying? Tell us what’s wrong?” Mum was leaning round from the front, and she caught Kate’s hand in hers. “Please, sweetheart?”

  “I lost him…” Kate managed to force out. “Granddad…”

  “Oh, Kate.” And then, amazingly, Mum was crying too.

  Kate stared at her. Mum never cried. She hadn’t even cried in the hospital, when they’d gone to say goodbye, the day before Granddad died, or at the funeral. Kate had wondered about it, whether she wasn’t all that sad. Mum had explained to them that Granddad was tired and ill and worn out, and it was better that he didn’t come home and keep on feeling like that. Kate had thought that Mum believed it. That she was all right.

  And now it was obvious that she wasn’t. She was crying like Kate, just the same way, her shoulders shaking in huge, great gasps.

  Kate managed to draw in a proper breath for the first time in ten minutes as she watched her mother uselessly pat a tissue against her face. “You do miss him then…” Kate murmured shakily. “You said it was for the best… You laughed, when Auntie Lyn was telling all those stories!”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m happy about it!” her mum almost howled, squeezing Kate’s fingers as if she was frightened to let go.

  Kate nodded, and reached out her other hand to grab on to Molly. “I didn’t know…” she whispered. “I thought it was only me.”

  Mum sighed, and blew her nose. “I don’t want to go home just yet,” she murmured. “We’ll go to the cafe.”

  “Granddad’s cafe?” Kate sniffed, surprised. Granddad sometimes took her and Molly after school for a treat.

  “Yes. I need some chocolate cake, what do you think?”

  Mum sounded so different, Kate thought, as they drove through the centre of town to the little cafe, not far from their school. It was as though she’d been bottling everything up, and trying to go on just as before. And now she was actually admitting that she was sad.

  “Chocolate cake was Granddad’s favourite too,” she said quietly.

  Mum gave a little snort of laughter. “Maybe I inherited my love of chocolate cake from him,” she suggested, as she parked down the road from the cafe. “Perhaps he’ll be happy we’re having it, and remembering him. He loved those little chocolate curls they put on the top. And the way it was too squidgy to pick up. He said a cake was only a proper cake if you needed a fork for it.”

  “We inherited it being our favourite from you,” Kate agreed seriously. “Like the cats. I inherited loving cats from you too, and you got that from Granddad.”

  The cafe was tiny, but the
re were a few tables free. Even Granddad’s favourite table, just under the tiger. They always sat there if they could. The whole cafe was painted with a giant mural all the way round the walls inside. It made the room look like a wild, mad jungle, with huge trees and a river, and animals peering out all over the place. There were real plants in pots that sent out long leafy trails on wires across the ceiling too. Kate loved it. Every time they went she seemed to find a new creature. Some of them were really tiny, as though the artist had enjoyed setting a puzzle for the customers. Kate was almost sure that she and Molly were the only people who knew about the snails crawling along the top of the plug socket behind their table.

  But as Molly hurried over to bag the tiger table, under the huge tiger snoozing on his tree branch, Kate hung back. The shock of seeing Mum cry had made her forget Amos, just for a few minutes. But that painted tiger looked so like him. So like the tiger who had snuggled up next to her in the shed.

  And now she had lost him!

  Her shoulders began to shake, and she pressed her hand across her mouth. She didn’t want to make Mum cry again. It was almost scarier than crying herself.

  “Katey-kitten… What is it? Here, come and sit down.” Mum gently pushed her into a chair – but Kate was right underneath the tiger. She buried her face in her arms so she couldn’t see him. What if she never found Amos? How would the real tiger come back without him?