A Friend Like Ben: The true story of the little black and white cat that saved my son. Julia Romp

talk to Michelle about it all though, until she brought it up one evening as we sat on the stairs between our flats. We’d got into the habit of meeting there as time had gone on and I’d found myself looking forward to the moment when I heard Michelle’s knock. Leaving our front doors ajar so we were both near enough to hear if any of the kids woke up, we’d sit out together, and that’s where we were the night she turned to me.

      ‘Is there a problem with George?’ Michelle asked.

      No one had ever said it straight out like that before.

      ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘But he’s had his hearing and sight tested and they say he’s fine. I’m at the end of my tether with it, though, because I’m sure there’s a problem and no one seems to want to listen.’

      Michelle looked at me with her big eyes. ‘You know, you’ve got to stop apologising for him, Ju. George is who he is and people are going to have to accept that. You get into too much of a state about it all. You shouldn’t care so much about what other people think. I can see how much it bothers you, but it shouldn’t.’

      ‘What about when he hits Ricky, though, or tells Ashley that she smells?’ I asked. ‘What am I supposed to do then?’

      ‘You do as much as you can with him. I know that. But sometimes you have to let the kids sort it out themselves and know that people are going to have to accept George the way he is because he’s not going to change anytime soon.’

      I’ve always thought we meet people for a reason and Michelle was my karma. As we got to know each other better, I’d talk to her about George: how I’d finally get him to sleep each night just hoping we’d get through a few hours without him getting up to wee up the wall or how I’d see other kids playing together and wish George could learn to join in.

      ‘Let him be, Ju,’ Michelle would tell me. ‘You can’t make George be what he isn’t, and anyone can see what a good mum you are. It’s other people who’ve got to change their attitude, not George. If they can’t accept him, then they’re not worth bothering about.’

      Michelle was so understanding that I soon even felt comfortable enough to take George to her flat. It didn’t matter if he wiped cake up the wall there or bashed the head of Ashley’s doll against the wall, because Michelle didn’t flinch.

      ‘Are you knocking some sense into Barbie, then, George?’ she’d say with a laugh. ‘That’s good.’

      And while George still found it hard to get on with Ricky and Ashley, even though they were both really good with him, I knew that he liked Michelle. He’d never hug her, of course, or smile – George wouldn’t even look at Michelle when he spoke to her most of the time or show that he noticed when she was there. But as the months passed, he started doing something that told me he did: he sniffed. Each day when we left the flat, George would take in a deep breath of fresh air and tell me that he could smell Michelle. Because even though her flat was one floor below us, he knew when she had a wash on and to George that smell meant Michelle. Somehow she had got through to him and George showed me in his own particular way that she had.

       Chapter 4

      I stopped still as I walked into the bedroom and saw George. I wanted to scream, but knew I had to be silent. Somehow he had opened the latch that locked the window and climbed outside. He was standing on the other side of the glass with his bare feet on the ledge next to the open window. We were on the third floor. I couldn’t move too quickly or else I’d frighten him.

      ‘What are you up to, George?’ I asked.

      He stared silently at a spot just past my head, his hands holding on to the frame.

      Slowly I reached into my pocket for my phone and dialled 999. ‘I need help,’ I told the operator.

      A voice on the other end took my details and my eyes didn’t leave George as I put down the phone, praying that someone would get here soon. If he moved an inch he would fall. I should have known he might do something like this. George had no sense of danger at the best of times and didn’t seem to feel pain either. If he fell over, he never ran to me or cried; he just got up and walked away, with his knee pouring blood if he had cut it. But lately he’d been jumping up and down a lot when we went for a walk and telling me he was flying.

      ‘Are you, my love?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Where?’

      ‘Over a big building.’

      ‘Really? Where else?’

      ‘A tree.’

      I’d told myself George had a wild imagination and I was happy that he could dream. But now as my heart hammered and George looked at me I knew I should have kept a closer eye on him. I wanted to scream – knowing I had to stand still, longing to run at him – for what felt like forever, but was probably just a couple of minutes, until I heard the sound of sirens. I had asked the firemen to be ready to catch George if he fell because I couldn’t let them into the flat. If he saw strangers I was sure he’d let go of the window frame. He just didn’t understand that if he did that, he would fall. George thought he could fly like the birds.

      I took a step forward, ready to rush at him and grab him if he let go with his hands. Then I looked at my watch as if it was any other day and I didn’t have a care in the world.

      ‘We’re late, George,’ I told him. ‘We’ve got to get to Nannie’s because Lewis is waiting to see us.’

      George looked at me, as if he was thinking about whether he wanted to move or not.

      ‘They’ll be wondering where we are,’ I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.

      Inch by inch, George started shuffling back along the windowsill and my heart was in my mouth with every move he made. But the moment he put a foot through the open window, I gripped it so hard there was no way he’d be able to rock back and I pulled him down into the room with me.

      ‘Good boy,’ I said, longing to cuddle him, knowing I couldn’t. ‘But you know you mustn’t do that again, don’t you, George?’

      He brushed himself with his hands where I’d touched him and looked at me without a shadow of understanding in his eyes. My hands shook as I followed George out of the room and even though I knew that from now on I would lock every window and door in the flat and hide all the keys, I was still at my wits’ end as I talked it over with Michelle that night.

      ‘We’ve got to show him, Ju,’ she said. ‘George can’t see it himself, so we’ve got to show him what could happen.’

      The following morning Michelle arrived at the flat armed with a box of eggs, and we took George to the bedroom, where we opened the window.

      ‘Do you see this egg, George?’ Michelle asked as she held it in front of his face. ‘It’s you, it is.’

      She dropped the egg out the window and George watched as it flew down and smashed on the concrete below.

      ‘Now you try,’ Michelle said as she handed him an egg.

      After throwing half a dozen out the window, we ran downstairs to find the concrete outside the flats covered in bits of yolk and shell.

      George looked around with a blank face.

      ‘You’ll get broken too if you fall – just like you’ll get broken if you step in front of a car,’ I told him, kneeling down to face him. ‘You’re like an egg, George – you’re fragile. Do you see?’

      He didn’t look at me or say a word, but at least we’d tried, and I was learning by now that if you said things enough to George they eventually went in. If most mums had to tell their kids a hundred times, I had to repeat it a thousand to George. How else was he going to learn to fit into a world he didn’t