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Tomasz waited until after the rehearsal had finished to get some of the guys to help take the curtains down. Franceska and Sylvie were going to get some similar material and make a panel to go across the width of them and it would look fine. But, still, it was piling more work onto people who had enough. Sylvie had Theo and Franceska had the restaurants and her boys. We needed to stop the saboteur, enough was more than enough now.

Barbara was, again, hovering around, being overly helpful. She threw herself into her wise man role with gusto. And even though she only had a few lines she definitely milked them. She was so charming and helpful to everyone, definitely not acting as if she was remotely guilty.

We did our sheep part pretty well tonight, according to George. It wasn’t long until the dress rehearsal and I knew that if we didn’t do our best, George would never forgive us. So we all threw ourselves into being sheep. Hana was particularly good, she even looked a bit like a sheep having put a bit of weight on. Apparently she was so tired she was eating all thetime. It actually suited her, but then she probably would need to start exercising more if she kept going that way. Not that I would tell her. I had learned from Claire that to comment on a woman’s weight was definitely not a good idea.

When the rehearsals ended, everyone moved to leave the hall. Pickles was on his lead, so there was no way he was staying behind. Hana bid us goodbye and went with Connie, and Snowball managed to get away from Harold, who had performed a great Santa finale and was so pleased with himself that he didn’t seem to notice she was still here.

The plan was that we would go and check if the back door was locked and if it was open we would know that Barbara was going to come back later. If that was the case, then we had to move quickly. George, Snowball and I would hide, Salmon would go and get the others, who would be waiting outside by the back door. Snowball, George, and I would all push the door as hard as we could and let them in and then we would be ready for Barbara. It was a very good plan.

However, as we went to the back door, I saw it was locked. I’d heard Claire asking someone to check it, and they obviously had done. Then Barbara left with the Goodwins. We ran out and sat on the front step of the hall as Claire locked up and bolted the padlock. I went to tell Salmon and the gang that our mission was aborted for now and we all went home heavy hearted. Although I was tired, I knew that we still hadn’t sorted this awful situation. Barbara might not be going in tonight but that didn’t mean she’d stopped and we had to do this every night until we caught her. I felt tired from the tips of my claws to the tips of my ears just thinking about it.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

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It was another day of agitation, waiting for the evening to come around again. I knew you shouldn’t wish time away but when you had a bad person to catch it was different. There was no rehearsal tonight, but a lot of work going on with the sets and the costumes, so I wasn’t exactly sure if Barbara would be there, but we assumed she would be. We were sure that she was going to strike again,yet somehow it felt as if she was toying with us.

To pass the time I sat in the window and watched the weather. It was cold and people on the streets were wrapped up in warm coats, scarves, and gloves. I also played with some of the baubles on the lower part of the tree. There was no way I was going to harm them, but I liked to see them spin a bit and then watch my reflection in them. I was still waiting until the advent calendars arrived, because then I knew we had only a few weeks to Christmas. The anticipation was killing me; because we put the tree up early I was ready for Christmas now. But not ready for the show just yet. We needed to get Barbara out of the picture before we were ready for that.

I couldn’t sit still, so I went to see Dustbin, to update him. I knew there was no news from him because he or Ally would have come to find us. I went alone as George was with Hana, who was trying to rest as much as she could. The show and the baby were really taking their toll on her. But then, she was quite a delicate cat. Snowball was spending the day with Harold, to alleviate her guilt about having to leave him at night, depending on whether we could figure out if Barbara was going to strike again, of course. Although my instinct was that we had to risk it.

I let thoughts run around my head as I made my way to the yard. We were pretty sure we could catch Barbara but how could we make sure a human discovered what she was doing? I had no idea yet. We could all foil her but would that be enough? I kind of felt that if justice was to be done she needed to be found out by the humans.

I was still mulling it over when I went into the yard and found Ally and Dustbin.

‘Hey guys,’ I said, trying to sound upbeat.