You’re the idiot, I silently screamed at him. Or maybe I was, to keep on waiting for something that I should know by now was never going to happen.
Maybe today was the day when I’d finally speak up. But before I could find the courage, our attention was drawn to three teenage girls a short distance ahead of us on the path. They were gathered at the base of a towering oak tree, calling up into the high overhead branches.
One girl broke away from the group as we approached and ran towards us.
‘Please can you help us?’ she begged, frantically grabbing my arm. She looked to be no older than sixteen, and her freckled face was stained with tears.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘It’s Missy. My cat.’
‘Your cat is missing?’ misheard Josh.
‘Missy. Her cat’s called Missy,’ I corrected.
The girl gave me a look like she wanted to adopt me as her big sister. ‘Some morons threw a firework into our garden,’ she said, pointing towards a row of properties that backed on to the park. ‘Missy got spooked, jumped over the fence and ran up this tree, and now we can’t see her, and she won’t come down.’
Josh’s expression darkened as the girl told her tale, and he scanned the park with a new and dangerous look in his eyes. ‘Where are they? Are they still here?’
The girl shook her head. ‘No, they legged it as soon as they saw us. Can you help?’
‘Of course,’ I said, pulling my mobile from my pocket. ‘We’ll call the fire brigade for you. They sort out things like this all the time.’
The girl shook her head, and some of the confidence she’d placed in us faded from her eyes.
‘We’ve already done that, but they said it might be a while. And Missy needs help now. What if she’s hurt?’
‘I’m sure she’s not,’ Josh said, already slipping his arms out of his jacket and passing it to me.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, afraid I knew the answer to that one by the way he was staring up into the tree and searching for footholds.
‘I’m going to climb up the tree and get the cat,’ he said.
The three young girls looked at him, and collectively sighed.
‘Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,’ cried Missy’s young owner.
Josh flashed her a quick smile, which was cut short when I laid my hand on his forearm, stopping him.
‘Don’t even think about climbing this tree. You’ll fall and break your neck.’
Josh looked into the upper branches, as though that thought hadn’t even occurred to him.
‘No, I won’t. You know better than anyone how many trees I’ve climbed.’
‘This is different. You’re older now.’
‘Lily, I’m twenty-four, not eighty-four. I’m pretty sure I can still manage a simple tree like this.’
‘There are men on the way with extendible ladders and proper cat-rescuing equipment. Why can’t we just wait for them?’
‘Because Minnie needs us.’
‘It’s Missy,’ I corrected. But Josh wasn’t listening. He was enjoying the chance to save the day and nothing I said was going to stop him. He turned towards the oak, but before reaching for a lower branch, he spun back and pressed a quick hard kiss on my lips. ‘That’s just in case I do fall,’ he said with a grin.
My neck was aching from staring up into the tree when Josh finally called down that he’d found the cat, a comment that was quickly followed by a loud yowl from a clearly terrified Missy, and a swear word that was definitely not age-appropriate for Josh’s new adoring fan club.
It was all a bit of a blur after that. The leaves shuddered and the cat shot back down the tree, travelling at warp speed across the grass and back into her own garden. She was followed by the three teenagers. A few minutes later Josh reappeared, with leaves and bits of twig in his hair and two long bloody scratches on his forearm, a gift from the cat who’d never needed rescuing after all.
