“It’s all right, he’s here.”
Alfie sat up, shaking his head blearily. The room was quite dark, just a little moonlight coming through his curtains, and for a moment he couldn’t imagine who it was speaking to him. He blinked and narrowed his eyes at the figure in the window. Then he remembered – Grace. She had been on his ready bed on the floor – he had offered her the real bed, as Mum had said he ought to, but she said she didn’t mind.
“What are you doing?” he asked sleepily. “What time is it?”
“About two in the morning, I think. I was just looking out of the window. I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep again. Then Penguin came and sat on me. It’s quite nice up here.”
Alfie wriggled himself up in bed and sat leaning against the wall so as to talk to her properly.
“Why can’t you sleep?” he asked.
Grace shrugged, or so he thought in the half-light.“Just can’t. Worrying about my gran, I suppose.”
[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: _19.jpg]
Alfie nodded.“But that’s sort of good, isn’t it?”
Grace sighed. He heard her, a soft, miserable breath floating across the room.“Ye-es. But it still isn’t, you know, nice worrying. I was thinking that if she dies, I’ll probably have to move again.”
“You wanted to go back to your old house!” Alfie said, feeling confused.
Grace shrugged.“Someone else is living in it now, I think. I’d like to stay here. I like it here.” She started to stroke Penguin; Alfie could hear him purring, deep in his throat.
“I was going to say…” He tailed off, then took a deep breath and started again. “You rescued him; that makes you his part-owner. I don’t mind if he goes to your house sometimes. I don’t mindmuch, anyway.”
Grace didn’t say anything.
“If you do have to move, he’ll still be partly yours. I’ll send you pictures.”
She laughed.“He could come and visit me on the train. You could tie his ticket on his collar. I read about a cat that did that on buses. I bet he could.” She was quiet for a minute. “Thanks, Alfie. You can have half shares in the tree, if you like.” Then she sniggered. “Yeah, you can have the top branches…”
Alfie snorted.
Grace sighed again.“I hope we don’t go.”
“I’ll buy him a season ticket for the train…” Alfie murmured sleepily. “Go back to bed, Grace.”
But he didn’t think she moved. As he settled back to sleep, he could still see her, curled up against the window glass, Penguin’s ears pricked up in little dark triangles against the moonlight.
“Your gran won’t mind?” Alfie asked cautiously, following Grace through her front door.
“No. She was nice about school. She kept asking if I’d made any friends. She was worried about me. She said to bring someone home for tea.”
“Yeah, but I think she meant when she was here,” Alfie muttered as he followed her into the kitchen. Grace’s mum was still at the hospital, where her gran was apparently getting much better. She’d been back to talk to Grace that morning before school, and Alfie’s mum had told her that Grace had been an angel.
Alfie had nearly laughed out loud, and Grace had been biting her lip. His mum still thought they’d been in Grace’s garden the whole time. They’d sneaked back in round the side path, while his mum was wrestling with sheets of dried pasta. Alfie hadn’t liked the lasagne, but Grace had had loads, and told his mum it was brilliant. Alfie hadfed a lot of his to Penguin, who definitely needed to catch up after that many missed meals. He knew he shouldn’t be doing it, but just thinking of Penguin shut up and miserable in the shed made it impossible not to.
“Wow, I see what you mean about the notes,” Alfie said, staring around at the cupboards. They were all covered in them, little sticky notes, all colours and shapes, with spiky, scratchy writing all over them.
“Weird, isn’t it?” Grace sighed. “They’re about all sorts of stuff. When to pay the milkman. People’s birthdays. That kind of thing. She’s really scared about forgetting something important.”
Alfie nodded. There were even sticky notes on the kitchen window, and he leaned forward to read one.“What’s a nuthatch?” he asked Grace.
“Oh, it’s a bird. She loves watching the birds. She has all those feeders hanging off the hooks outside the window. She was telling Mum, that’s what made her realize she was getting worse – she couldn’t get out of the back door to go and fill them up. I heard her, on the phone. She was crying. That’s when Mum said she had to come and see her.” Grace picked up a leather case from by the kettle. “Look, these are her binoculars. They’re really good ones. She could see right down to the end of the garden.” She opened the case and handed the heavy black binoculars to Alfie. “See?”
Alfie held them up to his eyes, frowning as he tried to make them focus. Then he gulped, realizing what the strange brownish lines were. Branches. A few leaves had fallen from the old apple tree already, and the lower branches were dark and spidery.
“She could see the tree,” he muttered.
Grace nodded.“Oh yes. Further than that, probably.”
“But then she could see me, all the time!” Alfie told her, his voice gone high with panic. “She knew I was in her garden!”
Grace smiled.“Who do you think put the rope there, silly? Look.” She pointed to another of the notes on the window, a blue cloud-shaped one, faded and curled at the edges.
Remember to get rope out of garage for that boy.
“She was a lot better then, of course,” Grace added.
Alfie nodded silently. He still couldn’t believe she’d known. He smiled to himself. He’d been thinking Mrs Barratt was a witch all this time, but really she was more like a fairy godmother.
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“Perhaps a bunch of flowers?” Alfie’s mum suggested.
Alfie shook his head.“No. That’s really boring. I want to get Mrs Barratt something special.”
His mum frowned.“Yes, I know. I just can’t think what, though. Why does it matter so much?”
“I just do…” Alfie muttered. “It’s important. She – er – she’s nice about Penguin, even though he chases the birds in her garden, Grace said so. And there was a note in her kitchen about it. She was going to ask one of her friends from the Over Sixties to buy her a water pistol to try and put him off, instead of complaining about him.”
“I’m still not sure about you and Grace going round there without Grace’s mum or her gran,” Mum murmured worriedly.
“We’re helping!” Alfie told her indignantly. “We refilled all the bird feeders. Maybe I could buy her a new one of those? They’ve got them in the pet shop.”
His dad glanced up, smiling.“I think the seven she’s got might be enough already, Alfie. If you want to do something to help her, why don’t you get a bell for Penguin’s collar? Then he couldn’t chase the birds, could he?”
Alfie nodded.“Can we go now? To the pet shop? Grace said her mum was bringing her gran home later today.” He was standing right next to his dad, bouncing slightly with eagerness.
His dad sighed, and yawned. He’d been on shift and had just got home. “Shouldn’t have said it, should I? Come on, then.”
“I’ll just get my pocket money!”
Alfie shuffled nervously into Grace’s kitchen, which was large enough for an armchair in the corner, set just where Mrs Barratt could see the birds at the window feeders. Even though the old lady had known he was in her garden all along and hadn’t ever said anything – even all those times his mum had stopped to chat with her! – he still felt funny about meeting her for real. He didn’t even know what she looked like.
She was sitting in the armchair, and his first thought was that she looked like a little bird herself. She had the most enormous beak-like nose, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. It was quite like Grace’s, he realized, except that the rest of Mrs Barratt’s face seemed to have sunken away, leaving the nose to be what one noticed first.