Mr Stevens pursed his lips and began to make wet, kissing noises. The sound made Tim feel ill. The tabby had been sniffing around the bowl, but now it looked up and stared at them both with its large orange eyes. Tim willed the cat not to come, he concentrated every ounce of his brain on telling it to turn around and run off down the end of the garden, but it didn’t work. The tabby took two tentative steps towards them, and then stopped again.

Mr Stevens reached into his right pocket and brought out a small brown biscuit in the shape of a fish. He tossed the biscuit onto the grass, a few metres in front of the cat, and then resumed those wet kissing sounds.

Tim’s body was itching all over. He wanted to jump up and scare the cat away, but he knew if he did that his dad would be angry. Maybe he’d tell Tim another bedtime story, an even scarier one than all the others put together.

Or maybe he’d do something worse.

The tabby was only a metre from the patio now. It stopped one more time, staring up at Mr Stevens as if trying to guess what he had planned. Its tail flicked back and forth.

Run away, Tim thought. Run away while you still can.

If someone had asked him, Tim wouldn’t have been able to explain why he felt something bad was going to happen – aside from the stories Tim’s dad told and the fact he sometimes made Tim’s mum cry, Tim had never seen him actually hurt anyone – but the feeling was there nonetheless. That deep, hard knot of dread, nestled far down in the base of his stomach like a lead weight.

Tim watched, frozen, as his father’s hand disappeared into his right coat pocket again. He watched as the hand came out holding another of those little brown fish, pinched carefully between his thumb and forefinger. Mr Stevens lowered his hand down towards the patio, and a second later the tabby took its last two steps forward.

If he hadn’t been so scared, Tim would have been almost in awe of how fast his father moved. As the tabby leaned forward to sniff the biscuit in his right hand, Mr Stevens’ left hand shot down and gripped the cat hard by the scruff of its neck. It yowled and tried to jerk away, but Mr Stevens held it in a tight grip.