The Girl With Nine Lives, The Girl Who Bit Back, The Girl With Ten Claws 3 Book Boxset (The Adventures of Benedict and Blackwell Series) Read online

  The Girl with Nine Lives

  The Adventures of Benedict and Blackwell

  Book 1

  ©2014 Copyright E. Earle

  www.eearle.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  All characters are entirely fictional. Any similarities towards living or dead are purely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Christopher Lynn for his wonderful designs and dedication towards The Adventures of Benedict and Blackwell.

  I would also like to thank my parents for constantly giving me their support and love.

  Finally, I would like to thank a little ginger cat who gave me his uncompromising love, company and didn’t mind sharing his cat biscuits.

  Dedicated to Rowan, my light in the dark.

  Chapter One

  It started with a meow. Then a hiss. And then the unbelievable happened. I watched in horror as his tail twitched and went poker straight.

  “Ben!”

  “I swear if you’re in here, Blackwell, I’m going to rip your pretty little head off!” Sabrina limped in, sweating, pale and furious, another one of her unpractical cream suits ruined by body fluid.

  Horror clutched my heart as she saw Ben. An insane and murderous look lit up in her eyes, momentarily paralyzing her.

  But it was all he needed. That official letter from the Royal Family, saying that they were visiting our new Campus in Oldbury, wonderfully immortalised in beautiful script and paper of the highest quality was in the perfect spot.

  And then it happened. My mouth fell open as Ben did the biggest dump I have ever seen on the PR woman’s desk.

  A second went by filled with nothing but his purring and the distinct smell of Whiskers.

  Without thinking, I grabbed him as Sabrina threw herself across the desk and ran out of the office, her screams bouncing off the walls.

  If you’re lost by now, I’m talking about my cat.

  “It’s strange bringing a cat to the office,” I know you’re saying, but hey- I didn’t bring him. Ben does what he likes, whenever he likes, wherever he likes- especially if it disrupts my life.

  “I’m going to kill you!” I snarled in his ear, but I knew he was too smug with himself to care about my scolding. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”

  He yawned, breathing cat breath into my face. “I think I improved her office,” he meowed.

  Ok, ok, I know what you’re thinking. Talking cat? I’m going to have to go back to the beginning, aren’t I?

  My name is Ellie Blackwell. I’m twenty-four and I am officially stuck in my life. By the way- I own a cat that can talk, although he would probably tell you he owned me.

  I had moved into a new flat in the town centre, my parents had flown to start their new lives in Australia and my sister was expecting a baby. I was trying my best to make things work, but sometimes things just don’t stay where you want them.

  I opened my eyes, squinting at the light coming in from the curtains. I groaned and then held my breath, sure I was going to throw up.

  “Oh, God,” I moaned. I looked at my watch. 7:48am. Unusually, whenever I woke from a hangover, I always did super early for work. I knew I shouldn’t have gone out on a Sunday night, but I am very easily swayed.

  I unsteadily got to my feet and shuffled to the shower. I would be lying to say I wasn’t sick in there between shampooing and conditioning.

  Maybe I haven’t gone back far enough?

  I used to live in Tamworth with my sister and mother. Our dad had gone off a long time ago. I couldn’t remember one Christmas or birthday with him- and that wasn’t because I had a bad memory- my memory about events, times and places was uncanny. We lived in a semi-detached house, with a cat called Ben. He was a skinny pale ginger cat, who always got into fights. His ears were always crusted with blood and he was constantly snotty. Well, near the end I suppose anyway. I feel guilty even now remembering the state of him. We should have taken him to the vets. But as a child, I always thought that he was just a bit of a fighter- and maybe he was. But looking back now, I think maybe we could have done more.

  I loved that cat. He used to follow me to primary school and wait for me to come back, sitting in the garage with me when it rained and my mum had forgotten to hide the back door key for me. He would even share his food with me- yes, I ate cat biscuits, and they were delicious.

  We took him to the move with us to Nuneaton, and I think that was where his health started to go downhill. He was very old by that point- eighteen years my mum had told me. I remembered when we gave him his first bath in the new house. He was starting to get pretty filthy and couldn’t clean himself. He was so scared he wet himself. We went on holiday, and mum gave him to a woman with four other cats to look after. When we came back, mum said he was happy there and we should leave him.

  I didn’t want to leave him, but he didn’t have much of a life in our house. He was only allowed to stay in the kitchen. I think he was always a reminder to mum of our biological dad. Barry had brought him home one day as a kitten. Mum hated anything Barry brought home, but even she had to admit it was different from the cars and motorbikes he kept dragging back.

  I saw Ben as much as I could after school and throughout the holidays. He was getting skinnier and skinnier. One day I came over to the woman’s house- I can’t remember her name now, and she said that Ben hadn’t been home all day

  “He was sitting on the windowsill yesterday looking out for you,” she said, her charms and bracelets rattling as she made me some orange juice.

  Going back, maybe it was cruel of her to say that he was looking for me, because I always felt guilty afterwards. I felt as though I had let him down. That one day I hadn’t come to see him, was the day he ran away.

  I searched for him in tears with my older cousin, Craig, who found it hilarious. We went into people’s back gardens, searching for him. We came across a pond and Craig said, “Maybe he fell in there and drowned.”

  I was furious and inconsolable. I returned to my auntie’s house where my family was, burying myself into a hug from my mum.

  “Sometimes, Ellena, cats go away when it’s time for them to pass on,” she said.

  More tears followed, more searches, until days passed on and he didn’t return. I wondered whether my mum had taken him to the vet to be put down, but she always denied it. I had to accept the fact that Ben was gone. I would dream about him sometimes. I would promise him I would give him a better life. Treat him like a king. I was older now, wiser too (though my family may have said otherwise) and I realised that maybe we hadn’t given him the life he had deserved.

  Thirteen years passed. I left school, went to college, went to university, back to college, and finally came back to Warwickshire. Life moved so quickly, and I already felt I had lived a number of different lives.

  My love life was non-existent, my friends were not exactly plentiful and my job was stuck.

  I worked as a Teaching Assistant at the U.C.W (University College of Warwickshire) where I had built my own hopes and dreams, only to return there to assure other dreamers they could make it in a world of concrete and One Direction.

  I was returning home from work, thoroughly depressed after having my hours slashed in half. The Student Support Team always reassured us that the
re were more hours to be had, and then would hire more staff, to then cut down on hours saying that there wasn’t enough. I had been there nearly a year, and still hadn’t nabbed the contract I desperately craved. I needed stability; I was turning twenty-five that year for God’s sake! I wanted to get on the property ladder, get a better car than my crappy KA that my uncle was insisting he was still getting around to fixing, and I desperately wanted someone to share it all with.

  Little did I know I was going to get that someone sooner than I thought.

  I fumbled in my bag for my keys, my hands freezing from my fingerless gloves. It took an age as usual because my bag is full of crap. I pulled them out, wondering about how I was going to pay my rent next month. My flat was like any other flat. Average. I had only been in there a few months, previously living with my parents. But when they said they were moving to Australia, I saw it as good sense to get out of the house so they could prepare to sell. More fool I, because my sister moved straight in with her husband and huge bump.

  The flat was second floor on a set of terrace houses that aside from a patch of gated grass at the front, was straight on the main road. It cost a fortune in gas, mainly because I refuse to be cold at any time, and a fortune in maltesers- mainly because that’s what I eat when I’m depressed.

  I shivered and struggled to find the right key out of my collection. That’s when I saw him.

  A pale ginger cat was sitting at my front door, wet and miserable looking in the drizzle that fell. His eyes stared at me, pale orange, blood at his ears from fighting, two small bald patches on his temples.

  My lungs didn’t even pull in a breath at that moment.

  He was a spitting image of Ben.

  I stared back at him and without thinking knelt down. “Hello,” I said in my best cat voice (we all have one). The cat came immediately, running his wet back under my hands. Grit came away with some fur and I wrinkled my nose in distaste He was filthy. I stood up, the Ben-look-a-like rubbing himself on my legs. I put the key into the door and as soon as I opened it, he shot in.

  I swore under my breath, but I knew I would have let him in sooner or later. It was miserable outside and I was a sucker for cats. I walked in, dropping my bag by the door and taking off my wet coat. The cat was sniffing his way around my flat, rubbing against my furniture and shaking himself free from the rain.

  Throwing off my gloves, I rushed into the kitchen to turn on the heating before I dealt with the cat. I turned around to find him sitting on the floor in front of me, staring at me expectantly.

  He meowed.

  God he looked like Ben.

  “You hungry?” I said.

  He meowed again.

  I bit my lip, thinking. I pulled out a small dish and started rooting through my cupboards. I found a tin of tuna and quickly emptied its contents. I didn’t even like tuna, so I had no idea why it was in my cupboard. I set it on the floor for him to leap to his banquet. Watching him wolf it down, I set down another saucer of watered down milk.

  I watched him eat, memories of Tamworth surfaced at the sight of this cat. It was obvious it couldn’t be Ben. I was eleven when he went walkabouts and that was nearly fourteen years ago. The cat would have to be thirty-two years old for it to Ben. I knelt down next to him and scratched behind his ear.

  “But you do look like Ben,” I cooed to him.

  He stopped eating and shoved his head into my hand, purring. It was nice until he wiped his snotty nose on me.

  “Eugh.”

  I cleaned up the blood from him as best as I could with paper towels and wiped his wet nose. I even gave him a brush through and wiped his coat free from oil and grit. Soon he was looking presentable.

  I sat down on the sofa for him to jump into my lap. He was still a bit smelly, but I carried on stroking him. I did play with the thought of calling the RSPCA but I couldn’t bring myself to reach for the phone.

  I put on the TV, and wrapped a blanket around us both. Soon Ben was stretched out, purring and licking my hand. I realised with a jerk that I had named him Ben without even knowing it.

  “Would you like that?” I said to him, tickling his chin. “Would you like to be called Ben?”

  His purring sounded snotty, so I cuddled him even more.

  And it was decided. He had chosen me. And if you think he chose me as an owner, you would be very much mistaken. I was the owned human.

  Weeks passed of attempting to get more hours at work to no avail. Yeah, they had given me an extra two hour slot, but what did that pay for? Not much considering the cost of the vets. Ben’s cold went and his coat started looking better, not to mention he had started putting on weight. Over the stress at work, I had lost nearly half a stone, preferring to grab a quick soup and then go back to work to teach at night. I only teach twice a week in the evenings, but I knew I would do more if they asked me. I was desperately trying to build myself up as an English teacher but had to admit even though I loved it, I needed something more stable.

  My work was always reluctant to give contracts out to employees. I think it was so they could have more control over the support staff. They knew we were desperate for more hours and would jump through hoops for them. They always promised us hours over the summer, and then would give them to contracted staff. I felt as though it was time they gave me a contract- after a year of working there, surely? I didn’t know how to broach it.

  I started drinking at night, feeling sorry for myself. Trying to keep myself together over Skype calls with my parents in Australia. They wanted me to come over, but I had screwed that up as well. I had a visa stamped to go over, but I had turned it down after spending a few months over there. I had been homesick. And when we had returned from Australia, my Granddad had been really ill. We discovered he had cancer, and after weeks of caring for him, he passed away. It had nearly destroyed me. But it was January now, start of a new year and time to move on, or so my dad kept telling me. But it was the anniversary of his death in February, and each day it came nearer, I struggled.

  Confused that I mentioned the word, “dad”? Well, that’s my stepdad, Andy. He came along when I was ten after the divorce of my parents. He was the best thing that happened to my family. He made my mother happy, and in 2003 after years of dating, they finally got married. I called him Andy face to face, because that name will always mean more to me than ‘dad’. To say the word ‘dad’ and expect a response made my stomach turn, memories of slamming doors and a motorcycle going off in the distance rife in my mind. Andy was a word that made me feel safe. Even to call out the word, “dad” felt alien and unnatural. It made me feel self-conscious.

  I called my biological father Barry. It made things easier. He had lived a double life with us, having another family. We didn’t find out until we moved to Nuneaton that he had children with another woman. To my knowledge, they still didn’t know we existed, and that was tough to take. Sometimes in my life, the subject of Barry would crop up and I would torture myself over it. I would try and search for the children on the internet. I had upset my mother recently by asking how she would feel if I one day met up with them. She was appalled; believing anything that came from Barry would be a bad seed, my sister and I not included.

  Sometime Kayleigh and I would just tell people that we were an immaculate birth. It made Mum laugh, and I think she preferred the idea.

  Ben coming along had brought Tamworth back, but funnily enough, he reminded me of the good parts of my childhood. Reminded me that it wasn’t all bad. And it wasn’t. We had a great childhood- mum made sure of that. I had a Barbie every birthday and every Christmas, and once a year- maybe even twice, she would take us to McDonalds. We were always dressed nicely- yeah, so they were clothes from charity shops and carboots and hand-me-downs, but she always made sure we looked presentable. I wondered how she managed sometimes. How she kept things together. But then I remembered seeing the cracks in her plight, and then would try to think of something else. It was a dark hole I didn’t want to fall into
.

  But it seemed I was already in a black hole- the black hole of being terribly hung-over. I looked in the mirror after the shower and agreed that I looked awful. Ben seemed to agree, staring at me disapprovingly as I got dressed and dried my hair.

  I was going to make things work for me at the U.C.W. I needed to network my way into making a success. Things seemed to go well when I made things happen- see who I could talk to, do favours for, search for work in different departments.

  But I had been shaken recently. I had been asked to take up I.T classes at the college with an hour before teaching my English Class. I finished late at night and was expected to prepare to teach I.T to a group of 2nd Year Business students the next day.

  My restlessness had made me go in, too scared to say no, wanting to make an impression, and feeling as though if I didn’t take on the workload, then they wouldn’t give me any more work in the future. I would be a failure. Incompetent.

  I had stayed up late at night and had gotten up early to prepare for the lesson I had no idea how to teach. But I’m good at blagging. I had gone in, seemingly confident and assured, exhausted from searching for the information I needed, no help given from the staff and delivered the lesson. The lesson had gone well and the students seemed to like me. Three weeks passed of me delivering this course, desperately trying to find out more about Excel. I knew Publisher, Powerpoint, Word and even Photoshop, but Access and Excel were things I found difficult to grasp.

  “Excuse me,” I said, knocking on an office door a busy colleague had pointed out. A few women looked up from their work, their desks heaped with work and empty cups of tea. “I was wondering who I could talk to about Excel?”

  “You want Maggie,” a woman from Childcare said, dark rings under her eyes from lack of sleep. “But she’s not here.” The smile didn’t reach her eyes and I knew she didn’t have any time for me. She had her own problems to deal with the day. My heart sank. I needed help with this, but somehow I knew it wasn’t going to come from these women.