Page 8 - Billy the Cat and Katie

On a warm summer afternoon when the school term had finished William was sitting in the
garden with Kathleen and Aunt Mabel when there was a knock at the door of the house. It was
Mr Gordon, his father’s solicitor who'd come over to speak to William and Aunt Mabel. It was
now official that William would be adopted by his Aunt and the money from the sale of his
parent’s house would be put into a trust fund for him, whilst the interest would be paid to Aunt
Mabel to help her look after him. So now William had a real home again and for the first time in
ages he felt as though he was part of a family again. A celebratory tea was called for and
although Mr Gordon couldn't stay, he did take away a large piece of homemade ginger cake
wrapped in a paper napkin to eat on the train back to London.

The very next day all three of them helped to unload the lorry that contained everything from
William's old house. Just the weekend before William had made sure that his father’s secrets
had been carefully boxed up and labelled ‘William's bedroom’, just to make sure that no one
would accidentally come across his inventions and all the plans that had been meticulously
typed up by his mother. William carried the boxes upstairs and placed them in the bottom of
the large cupboard in his room, covering them with blankets and jigsaw puzzle boxes. It was
lucky that Aunt Mabel had such a large house and a lot of the furniture had to be stored in the
basement and in one of the large potting sheds. William had asked if he could keep his father’s
tools and work boxes in the largest toolshed and it was a perfect hiding place for the special
chemicals and material for the catsuit. There was even a lockable tool chest to store the
helmets in. William's father had kept several at different stages of completion and to the
untrained eyes they looked very much like motorcycle helmets.

It was a quiet summer evening when something very unexpected happened and it was to
change William's life forever. The holidays were nearly over and after a long day at the local
swimming pool with Kathleen and a big tea, William sat watching the television with his new
family. The newsreader looked very serious as he reported that ‘there had been another large
theft of jewellery in the centre of London, possibly carried out by the same gang who’d
previously been involved in the hit and run accident a few months ago, that resulted in the
death of Mr and Mrs Grange of Burnham.’ William listened intently as the man read on.
‘Witnesses describe the 3 men as armed and dangerous as they’d held a security guard hostage
whilst robbing the Bond Street shop of £75,000 of diamonds.’ The same men who’d been
involved in the accident? So they were still around and still up to no good.

In bed later that night William couldn't stop thinking about the robbers and where they could
possibly be hiding. As he lay in bed, suddenly he heard a noise like the kitchen door being
opened. He recognised the creaking of the hinges as Aunt Mabel had never been able to get
anyone to fix the door which led to the back garden. He slipped slowly and quietly to the
bedroom door and peeped through the crack between the door and the frame. A beam of light
from a torch passed across the hallway downstairs and the shadowy figure of a burglar passed
from the kitchen towards the dining room where Aunt Mabel kept her prized dinner service and
cutlery in a large glass fronted cabinet. William only paused for a fraction of a second and
turned towards the bedroom cupboard.