Free Frisky Business by Clodagh Murphy

cause. Just as she had realised she might be better off not knowing, she had been given a reprieve.
    ‘Well, I’ve come up a blank,’ Lesley said to her later. ‘How about you? Did you question Derek?’
    ‘Yeah, it wasn’t him.’
    Lesley sighed. ‘That’s it, then. He’s not here.’
    ‘No,’ Romy smiled. ‘He’s not here.’

    Kit watched as the door opened and a flood of light illuminated the garden as another group of people hurried down the steps, waved off by Romy. He watched as they walked down the street and out of sight. When he turned back to the house, the door was closed again, the garden in darkness once more. He had made up his mind to go and knock on the door several times, but he had hesitated and started dithering again, and the moment had passed. Now the party seemed to be finally breaking up. Romy had been to the door several times, seeing people off, and now she was moving around the room, gathering things up. He lost sight of her for a while, and then a light came on at the other side of the house and she appeared in the window. It looked like she was cleaning up. He decided it was now or never.
    He pulled the mask he’d bought from his jacket pocket. He’ddecided he would make an entrance – go up to her door in a mask and say ‘trick or treat’. On the way here, he had slipped into a newsagent’s and bought the first mask he could find – a cheap plastic one that made his face sweat, which was why he’d waited until the last moment to put it on.
    Silly, it is, he thought wryly, looking at the wise old face of Yoda. Still, he had felt it would be easier to approach Romy with the mask as a shield – it also meant he could still run away if he changed his mind and she need never know it was him. He pulled the mask over his face, the thin elastic tight on his ears. He was about to climb down from the tree when Romy came to the door again and he paused. She stood at the top of the steps making that ‘pshwsh’ sound people make to call cats and calling ‘Bumble’ softly.
    Kit looked down and saw a fat ginger cat rubbing himself on the bark of the tree – his tree! He tried to hiss at it really quietly, so Romy wouldn’t hear, desperately willing it to go away. But it was too late. Romy spotted the cat and came bounding down the steps and out the gate. Kit froze on the spot, looking down at the top of her dark head and trying not even to breathe as she bent to the cat.
    ‘There you are,’ she cooed, crouching down in front of him and stroking his fur. ‘Were you scared of the fireworks? Poor little fella.’
    She was reaching to pick him up when a firework screeched into the sky and exploded with a loud bang. The cat yowled and scrabbled up the tree, landing right in Kit’s lap, simultaneously sinking its claws into his crotch and its teeth into his hand. Already balanced precariously on a branch, Kit got such a fright he yelped and instinctively pulled away. Losing his balance, he came crashing out of the tree and landed with a thud right at Romy’s feet.
    ‘Ugh!’ he groaned as he sat up. ‘Nice one, Ginger!’ He scowledat the cat as it executed a perfect landing beside him seconds later and stalked over to Romy, its tail in the air.
    ‘Oh!’ Romy was looking down at him with a startled expression, and he jumped up quickly, brushing bits of twig and leaf from his clothes, aware that he must look like … well, like he’d literally been dragged through a tree backwards.
    ‘Hello!’ he said, giving her a big friendly grin, trying to look reassuringly normal, despite the fact that he had just come hurtling out of a tree.
    ‘Hello.’ She didn’t smile back, looking at him sketchily as she bent to pick up the cat, as if afraid he would pounce on her if she let her guard down for a second. She held the cat to her chest, stroking its fur. ‘Did you get a fright?’ she whispered, frowning crossly at Kit as if it was his fault – as if he’d done something to hurt the