Page 3 - Billy the Cat and Katie

wonder if Granddad knew more about these people than he was telling. Perhaps he was
keeping a secret, perhaps he had even met them. He seemed to know an awful lot about them.
As they drifted off to sleep they all said how they wished they could be just like them. As they
both sat quietly in the glow of the fire, each with a cup of tea in the hands Great Aunt Kathleen
and Granddad smiled at each other. ‘Do you think they'll catch the robbers Katie?’ ‘Of course
Billy, we always did!’

It really was a long, long time ago when Granddad William and Great Aunt Kathleen were
young. Just after the Second World War, William's parents were both killed in an accident in the
middle of London. A gang of thieves had just robbed a jewellery shop and were making their
getaway when they crashed into the car driven by William's mother Janet. She was taking her
husband William Grange Snr to show the inventions he'd made to the top army Generals
at Whitehall where the British Army had their headquarters. It was a very hard time for William
and he was very sad but his aunt Mabel Grange would look after him at her home in Burnham,
not far from where William lived and went to school at the local academy. Aunt Mabel had a
daughter Kathleen, who was the same age as William and they were very good friends as well
as cousins. It didn't take too long for him to settle in. He had his own bedroom and there was a
huge garden and several sheds to keep lots of his parent’s things in, to keep forever as
memories. William and Kathleen were both 15 years old, born within two weeks of each other.
Kathleen's father had been killed in the war when she was only 10 years old so she knew a little
of how William must feel and always comforted him when he felt a little sad. Both of them
were normal British schoolchildren, but William had a secret.

Chapter 1 - Inventions

‘Ouch, not so loud!’ With the helmet on William could hear the neighbours cat scratching at the
back door to be let in.’ Turn your head away from the sound William’ his father said. The noise
of the scratching went from sounding like an earthquake to a gentle background sound, as if
someone was opening a paper bag and putting their hand inside to get a sweet. ‘I will have to
adjust it so it's not so loud’. Taking off the helmet William could see that his father had added
what looked like cats whiskers to the top. ‘Those are the aerials; they pick up radio signals too.’
Billy looked on amazed. His father was always coming up with strange inventions. He’d
invented a torch inside a policeman’s truncheon and being a policeman himself he showed it to
the chief superintendent at Scotland Yard who was very impressed. If it wasn't for the war and
all the rationing and cuts he could've made a lot of money, but at the moment there just wasn't
any money to spend on new things like that. The British government were more concerned
with rebuilding the country and providing houses for all of the people who been bombed by the
Germans. Still it didn't stop him from inventing things and the new helmet was just one of the
amazing things that William's father had been trying out.

The suit was very, very expensive to make but it was a marvel, a miracle in fact and William’s
father said it would be his greatest triumph. If only he'd invented it years earlier he could've