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Maybe he would have to stay here all night, he thought anxiously. Scarlett wouldn’t know where he was. Perhaps she was looking for him? He stood up again quickly, even though his paws felt sore, and meowed as loud as he could. Scarlett would look for him, he was sure of it.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_36]

But even though he called and called and called to her, she didn’t come, and at last he had to give up. He was worn out with scratching and meowing, and he dragged his sore paws back to the pile of mats. Then he curled up into a tight little ball, and lay there in the gathering darkness, wondering how long it would be before anyone found him.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

“We can make some ‘lost’ posters,” Izzy suggested the next morning. “If we ask Mrs Mason nicely, I bet she’ll let us use the ICT suite. We could put them up all round the village on the way home.”

Scarlett nodded. She should have thought of that the night before. After Izzy had gone home, she and Jackson had searched the house all over again, and then Scarlett had gone to bed, and cried herself to sleep, knowing that her little kitten wasn’t curled up in his basket in the kitchen – he was out there in the dark, and she had no idea where.

“We could go round the houses between here and school, and ask if anyone’s seen him,” she suggested, shivering at the thought of poor Bootle wandering around lost somewhere.

“Ooh, yes,” Izzy agreed. “We could get people to check their garages. Don’t worry, Scarlett, I can help with that. I know almost everybody in the village, and it’s scary if you don’t know people.”

“That would be great,” Scarlett said. She’d do anything if it meant finding Bootle, even if she had to talk to hundreds of grumpy people.

A couple of the Year Six girls came past Scarlett and Izzy on their way in.“Hey, Scarlett! Did you get into trouble with Miss Wilson yesterday?” one of them asked.

Scarlett stared at her in bewilderment.“W-what?” she murmured, suddenly shy.

“When your kitten came back! I thought your brother said Miss Wilson had told your dad off? That he had to keep your kitten at home?”

Scarlett forgot all about being shy.“You mean you saw Bootle? Are you sure it was yesterday?” she asked the older girl eagerly.

“Yeah, definitely…” The older girl – Scarlett was pretty sure she was called Eleanor – frowned. “I saw him looking in the classroom window, but then he ran off. Why? What’s the matter?”

“Bootle’s lost,” Scarlett explained. “Dad had him shut in, but he climbed out of an upstairs window. We think he must have tried to follow us. We weren’t sure he had made it to school, but if you saw him, then he was definitely here!”

“You’re not mixing up the days?” Izzy asked Eleanor doubtfully.

Eleanor shook her head.“Nope. I’m certain. It was yesterday when it was raining. And your kitten was soaked, Scarlett. His fur was actually dripping. I saw him out of the window; he was in the playground. Before break, I think.”

“He must have got out of the window really soon after we left,” Scarlett murmured. “Thank you, Eleanor! I have to go and look for him!”

[Êàðòèíêà: img_37]

There was sunlight coming in from somewhere else, Bootle noticed, as the shed grew slowly lighter that morning. It wasn’t just the space around the door. Where there was light, perhaps there was some sort of hole, or another window that might be open, so he could climb through it.

It was up at the top, near the ceiling, he thought. Very high up. Much higher than Scarlett’s window. But then, there were a lot more things to climb in here. Piles of chairs, some benches and more of those mats. He’d just have to find a way to reach it.

Bootle was sure that Scarlett was looking for him– almost sure, anyway. But the shed was all the way across the field from the school, he’d realized, as he lay curled up on the mats. What if Scarlett didn’t know about it? He couldn’t wait for someone to let him out. He would have to do it for himself.

He stretched out his paws, which felt a little better this morning, though they still ached from all that scrabbling and scratching. Then he padded across the pile of mats, and made a wobbly jump on to an old wooden bench. That was the first step…

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

“Where do we start?” Izzy asked, as they hurried across the playground.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should find Jackson and tell him that those girls saw Bootle,” Scarlett suggested, but she couldn’t see her brother anywhere, and she wanted to get started searching. “My dad rang up yesterday, remember? And he spoke to Mrs Lucy in the office, and she went and asked in the staff room. No one had seen Bootle. So he wasn’t just hanging around school looking for us.”

Izzy frowned.“I know I keep going on about him being shut in somewhere, but…”

Scarlett shook her head.“No, I think you’re right! It’s the only thing that makes sense. But where?”

Izzy shook her head.“I don’t know. Maybe the classroom cupboards? Do you think if we asked Mrs Lucy we could go and look? Oh no! There’s the bell.”