My heart beat louder and louder as Mrs Cuffy stalked closer and closer. Then her ears twitched once – and she stopped in her tracks. There was a noise outside the office.
It sounded like footsteps. I closed my eyes. Was it Mr Cuffy doing his rounds of the school? Or was it Mrs Winkle coming to collect her magic box? I didn’t know which was worse – being caught burgling the head’s office or becoming a late supper for a dog-sized rodent.
But Mrs Cuffy wasn’t hanging around to see who was coming. She shot one last spite-filled look at me, and leapt towards the closed window. She crashed through it in a shower of splinters and was gone, leaving an enormous rat-shaped hole in the glass.
The footsteps in the hall paused for a second and then came straight towards the office. I was caught like a cockroach in a glue trap.
I snapped shut the lid of the magic box and threw the key in the drawer. I flung myself on the floor behind the desk and crouched down. The door creaked open.
But it wasn’t Mr Cuffy or Mrs Winkle. Instead, peeping around the door, I saw the very last face I was expecting.
‘Mary!’ I said, standing up.
‘Ha!’ she said. ‘Got you!’
‘I can’t believe it!’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I saw you climbing out your bedroom window and I followed you,’ she said. ‘Anyway, never mind about me! What are you up to? And why is there all this weird stuff on the floor?’
I didn’t know where to start. I had never told Mary I was a witch in case she didn’t want to be friends with me any more. But now, she’d caught me behaving very strangely indeed.
Maybe it was time I told the truth. I was so sick of lying. And, after all, Mary was my best friend.
But what if she didn’t believe me? What if she thought I was mad or lying?
And what on earth was she going to say about my new feet? Who wanted to be best friends with a girl who had pig’s trotters instead of toes?
‘Mary,’ I said. ‘Sit down. I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘You certainly have, madam!’ she said, plonking herself in a chair and crossing her arms.
I took a deep breath and told Mary the whole story. Nearly.
She listened in silence as I told her how Aunty Grizz and Aunty Wormella had adopted me, and how we all found out I was a natural-born witch.
I told how about how I studied magic outside school hours. I told her all about shape-shifting and about what I’d done to Mrs Cuffy.
I told her about running into Mrs Cuffy this evening. Finally I showed her my hideous pig-feet.
On the whole, Mary took it pretty well. She went quiet for a second and stared at me. I held my breath. Would she gang up with other kids and tease me at school tomorrow?
‘Wow, Anna!’ she finally said as a smile crept across her face. ‘That’s so cool! I would never have guessed – you look so ordinary!’
She paused, looked at my trotters, and stifled a giggle.
‘Well, most of you does, anyway!’ she said.
‘Thanks a lot!’ I said.
‘But where did all this stuff come from?’ asked Mary, wrinkling her nose.
‘They’re potions of mine from home,’ I lied. ‘I store them in school sometimes.’
Although I could tell Mary everything about myself, I couldn’t breathe a word about Mrs Winkle. That’s a golden rule in witchcraft: one witch never tells on another.
‘Can you walk, Anna?’ asked Mary. ‘We could stuff your socks into your trainers and jam your feet into them. They won’t slip off and no one will notice!’
And that’s when I knew it would be all right – that Mary was still on my side! My breath gushed out in a huge sigh of relief.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get going.’
All the way home we chatted about witchcraft. It felt great to share it all with someone. Back in the warm kitchen at number 13 Crag Road, we tried to decide what to do next.
‘So the situation is,’ said Mary, finishing her cocoa, ‘that instead of having an ordinary rat to worry about, we’ve got a monster, mutant, killer, rodent on the loose.’
I hung my head. Charlie came and snuggled between us and I tickled his ears.
‘Not to mention,’ she said, ‘that you’ve got feet like a farm animal and you don’t know how to get rid of them.’
‘I keep trying to make things right,’ I said. ‘But instead I just make things worse!’
‘Lucky for you that you’ve finally got some brains on board!’ she said.
‘I suppose that means you?’ I said. ‘Are you saying you’ll help me?’
‘Of course!’ she said. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’
I smiled for the first time in two days. Maybe things were looking up.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘How are we going to find Mrs Cuffy again before she finds me?’
‘Rats are creatures of habit,’ said Mary. ‘She’ll probably keep hanging around the school, or somewhere else that’s familiar.’
A lightbulb seemed to go on in my head.
‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘I bet she’s near her old home! The Cuffys’ house backs right onto the school. That’s why she keeps popping up all over the place!’
‘Yes, that makes sense,’ said Mary. ‘But what’s she living on?’
‘Didn’t you tell me that rats scavenge food scraps?’ I said. ‘And the school kitchen dustbins are at the bottom of the Cuffys’ garden! We’ll start there!’
‘Well done, genius,’ yawned Mary. ‘But what do we do with her when we find her? She’s no longer your average rat, is she, not now that you’ve had another go at her.’
My shoulders slumped.
‘I need to think about this,’ I said. ‘I need to get out my magic books and learn how to change that monster back into Mrs Cuffy. I admit I can shape-shift all right, but I’m not very good at changing things back.’
‘So I see,’ said Mary, yawning again. ‘Can I go now? I have to get some sleep before school.’
‘Lucky you,’ I said, stretching my arms out. ‘I’ve got too much to do to sleep. See you tomorrow?’
‘Bye-bye, Porkers,’ said Mary, grinning. I scowled.
Five minutes later, Charlie and I were on my bed in the attic surrounded by all my spell books. I was determined to stay awake all night and find a spell that would sort out Mrs Cuffy once and for all.
Two minutes after that, I was lying on top of the books, dribbling. I was fast asleep.
