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now.
    “Well, you shouldn’t have.” Now my father was joining in too. “What if she’d seen you?”
    ‘“She’s away,” I replied.
    “She’s not,” Rula said. “I know she’s not. I saw her yesterday through the fence. There’s a hole. She was feeding her cat. It’s a black one. It’s called Rammy Rambo.”

    “You’re not to do it again, Billy, you hear me?” My mother was simmering down, but she was still cross.
    So was I. After all, I had tried to tell them. If they didn’t believe me, then that was their fault. I stormed out in a huff. I needed to get out of the room anyway, to think things through. The more I thought about it now, the more I was convinced that the Black Queen had to be Greg McInley’s mother. She’d be back soon enough. I’d ask her straight out.
    That evening I waited until I was quite certain that Rula was safe in her bath before I went to feed Rambo. I discovered the little knotty hole in the fence she must have been looking through, and plugged it with earth – just to make her wonder. After I’d fed him Rambo just wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept wrapping himself round my legs, badgering me for more food. I gave him some water – the milk had run out days ago – but he didn’t seem to appreciate it at all. In the end I decided I would have to fetch him a little more food.
    I was going back up the steps when I noticed I’d left the door open. Suddenly Rambo made a dash for it. He was up the steps ahead of me and in the house before I could stop him. He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t in the hallway. I called him and called him, but he wouldn’t come. I tried tapping a bowl with a spoon. He still wouldn’t come. The Black Queen had told me I mustn’t let him in. I had to find him and put him out, or he’d claw at the curtains and do messes. I went down the hallway towards the front door. The doors were all shut on either side. Rambo had to be upstairs.

    I went after him. The stairs creaked horribly, every one of them. Something dark whipped across the window at the top of the stairs and screeched like an angry ghost. I could see it was only a branch, but every nerve in my body was jangling by now. The whole house felt alive all around me. I called out again, in a whisper this time. Still no Rambo. There were three doors leading off the landing. Only one was open, just ajar. He had to be in there. I pushed it open tentatively. Rambo was up on the bed, on the pillows, licking his paws and purring loudly. I was worried he might scratch me if I picked him up, so instead I tried to tempt him off the bed. He wouldn’t budge. There were chessboards on the walls here too, and one with all the pieces set up on a table by the window. Then I noticed the framed photographs on the table. I knew I shouldn’t, but I went over to look.

    I was right! It
was
him! It was her son, Greg McInley, world chess champion – with the same shy smile on his face, holding a silver cup above his head. There was one of him standing on the porch of a house under snow, his arm around his mother – she had much longer black hair in those days and of course she looked a lot younger – and another of him as a boy proudly showing a medal and grinning happily through gappy teeth.
    Suddenly Rambo was on his feet springing down off the bed. I soon saw why. In the door stood Mrs Blume, the Black Queen, Greg McInley’s mother, and she did not looked pleased.

Chapter 8
    Checkmate
    “I WAS ONLY looking,” I said. She didn’t look as if she believed me. “It was Rambo. He came upstairs. I couldn’t stop him. Honest. He wouldn’t come down.”
    She said nothing, but just looked at me, frowning. I was glad I wasn’t having to lie, because I knew her eyes would find me out. Rambo was rubbing himself blissfully up against her leg, and I wondered how long it would be before he realized that two of us couldn’t be the same person.

    Still the Black Queen said nothing. I hated the silence, so I