“Take these for five days,” the doctor said, handing my mum a prescription for penicillin. “And Clara… promise me you won’t go teasing cats again.”
“I didn’t tease it,” I protested. My head was still aching and it felt bigger and hotter than usual. My shoulder was sore from the tetanus injection, and the scratch marks on my forehead still stung and burned. It seemed so unfair that our usually friendly doctor was acting as if this were all my fault.
“No, no,” she said. “But I suggest you keep away from cats for a while.” She looked up at Mum again. “Call me if the cuts start to go red and swell up or if blisters begin to form. We don’t want her getting Cat Scratch Disease.”
“Cat Scratch Disease?” Mum said. “What’s that?”
“Many cats carry a nasty bacterium called Bartonella. It can infect humans, but the penicillin should nip it in the bud, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
And I didn’t or, at least, not much. I was much more scared that the monster cat might return.
On our way home we stopped at the chemist in Station Road and then at La Luna, our favourite pizza place.
“Hawaiian with extra cheese?” Mum asked me.
“Yes,” I said, though it felt a bit weird to get a take-away for lunch. But the rain was still tipping down and my body felt heavy and flu-like. I didn’t know if vast quantities of melted cheese would make me feel better, but it was definitely worth a try.
There was no question of my going to school that day. In fact, Mum acted as if it were only a matter of time before the Bartonella bacteria would wipe me out, despite the penicillin and the doctor’s best efforts with iodine and surgical spirit. When we had finished the pizza and cleared the table, I wanted to go to my room and play on my computer, but Mum made me take a book and curl up under a blanket on the spare bed in her study while she worked. It was very cosy and I didn’t mind, but I had a feeling that she was doing it to keep an eye on me.
Just after three o’clock that afternoon I got a text message. It was from Oscar. “Why weren’t you at school today?” he wrote. I didn’t know what to reply. It was a bit complicated to explain that I had been scratched by a cat and that it might make me ill. So I just texted back “sick :(”, even though I wasn’t really sick – at least, not yet.
That night I dreamt about the cat. It was waiting for me in the stairwell, just as it had done in real life. But instead of attacking me, it extended its body in a long, smug and supple cat-stretch, and yawned so I could see all its teeth. “You’re mine now,” it said, licking its lips with its pink tongue. “Mine, mine, mine…”
“Mum?”
“Yes, darling?” She sat up in bed with a start so fast that I wasn’t sure she had even been asleep in the first place.
“Mum, I think I’ve got a temperature…”
My forehead was throbbing and my arms and legs felt long and stiff, as if they weren’t properly attached to my body. The light from Mum’s bedside lamp drilled through my eyes and into my brain. I closed my eyes for a moment, but that was no good either because it made me so dizzy I could barely stand up straight.
Mum pulled me down onto the side of her bed and put her hand on my forehead.
“You’re burning up,” she said. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Lie down. I’ll call the duty doctor.”
The duty doctor, however, had no intention of making a house call just because some twelve-year-old girl had a bit of a temperature. I lay in Mum’s bed with my eyes closed and heard her arguing with him. She sounded far away and strangely woolly even though she was sitting right next to me.
“But the penicillin isn’t working, I’ve just told you,” she said. “Her temperature is above forty degrees C!”
I started to drift off. There was a lovely clean and comforting smell of freshly-washed bed linen and of Mum and Mum’s shampoo, but I was scared of falling asleep again. The cat was still there, I could feel it. It was waiting for me in my dreams.
“Would you like some water?”
“No, thanks.” My throat was hot and raw and I didn’t want to swallow anything, even though I was actually quite thirsty.
“I think it’s best if you drink something. A fizzy drink? Squash?”
“Some squash, please.”
She fetched it for me. Then she went back into the kitchen and I heard her put the kettle on to make herself some coffee. She had taken her mobile with her and was calling someone.
“It’s Milla Ash. I’m sorry to be calling you so late, but it’s very important that I get hold of my sister…”
Then she closed the door and I couldn’t hear the rest. But, despite the fever, I was intrigued. I knew that Mum had an older sister, but I’d never met her. And I couldn’t even begin to imagine why Mum was trying to reach her at two o’clock in the morning. Perhaps she was a doctor? No, my Aunt Isa was an artist, I remembered. Once we had seen cards with very lifelike ducks on them in a shop window. Isa Ash Design it had said on a big sign, and the cards were really expensive. “She’s called Ash, just like me,” I had said, pointing at it. I wasn’t very old then, eight or nine, I think. “That’s because she’s your aunt,” Mum replied. But she didn’t buy the cards and when I asked why we never visited Aunt Isa, Mum just muttered something about her living “miles away from anywhere”, as if Aunt Isa lived in Outer Mongolia and we could only get there with a dog sled or by helicopter.
That was all I knew about my aunt. So why was it suddenly very important to get hold of her?
I closed my eyes, too tired to carry on thinking. But in the darkness behind my eyelids I could hear the cat singing: Mine, mine, mine… I opened my eyes again. I think I started to cry, mostly because I was exhausted, and yet I was too scared to go to sleep.
On the other side of the closed kitchen door, Mum’s voice had grown loud and angry. I still couldn’t make out every word she said, only something about necessary and my daughter’s life.
My daughter’s life? My heart skipped a beat. Did she think I was dying? Dangerous bacteria could kill you even if you weren’t an oldie in a care home.
“Mum?” I called out. But she didn’t hear me through the closed door. And anyway, she was probably too busy arguing on her mobile.
I sat upright. Bang! It felt as though I’d been whacked with a hammer right between the eyes, right where the cat scratches were. I whimpered. The pain was so intense, and it just wouldn’t stop.
“Mum?”
I got out of bed. The door to the kitchen was miles away, but I reached it eventually.
“… I might just be forced to do that,” Mum said. “But I simply don’t understand how you can take that attitude when—”
Then she spotted me.
“Hello, Little Mouse. Sit down before you keel over.” She turned away quickly, but I had seen it. She was crying. Again.
Mums aren’t supposed to cry. They are supposed to be grown up and strong and take care of their kids. Like I said at the start, I’m not brave, not like Oscar, but I think that even Oscar would have been scared by now if he’d been in my place.
“Give me the address,” Mum snapped. “And I’ll work out the rest for myself.” She scribbled furiously on the notepad on the fridge door and said a very curt goodbye to the person she was talking to. When she turned to face me again, she had wiped away her tears and was smiling in a very mum-like manner.
“Little Mouse, I think we have to go for a drive. Are you up to that?”