This term our Year 12 English Ambassadors, Lillia H and Carla K, created and ran a short story competition for Key Stage Three. They were delighted with the range of entries and impressed by just how creative years 7-9 are. They are pleased to announce the winning entry, ‘Whisper’, by Evie S in Year 9.

Whisper
Rain drooled down crooked buildings, turning the sky a bruised purple-grey. Then, through the drizzle, came the whisper, so faint Wren wasn’t sure she’d heard it at all.

She pressed her freckled face against the cold windowpane. Life in the small English town had become a relentless cycle of grey monotony. Then she saw him: a sleek silver tabby, charcoal swirls fading to white at his neat paws. His amber eyes held an almost unnerving intelligence. A golden collar glinted at his throat, engraved with the name Sullivan.

She followed him through winding alleys, heart hammering with fear and exhilaration she hadn’t felt in months. Whenever she fell behind, he’d stop and fix her with those burning amber eyes, patient but expectant. Once, when she twisted her ankle, he pressed his warm flank against her leg until she steadied herself. He didn’t meow. He didn’t need to. At the mill, lightning cracked the sky open and through the grimy window, Wren saw it. A human shape. Crumpled. Still.

By morning, the town had a verdict. Superintendent Davies held a short press gathering on the mill steps: a homeless thief, caught in the machinery. Tragic accident. He folded his notebook shut with a neat snap and walked away.

But whispers crept through town. Mr. Finch at the pub swore he’d heard something that night, not grinding machinery, but something quieter. A soft, mechanical click at eleven. Davies’s patrol passed the mill at five to eleven every night.

Wren mentioned the click to Sullivan that evening. He gave her a long, measured look, then the dry meow, short and flat, as if to say: yes, obviously. Keep up.

She did. Sullivan led her back the following afternoon, stopping at a rusted grate hidden beneath ivy. He pawed at it once, then sat back and stared. Inside: an automated lock. Pull the grate shut from outside and the inner door sealed itself. Someone had waited for the thief to crawl in, then walked calmly away. Sullivan nudged her hand, guiding her eyes downward. Scratched low on the stone was a single deliberate mark — fresh and pale against old grime. Davies had retrieved the mill’s building plans from the archives. He would have known exactly how the lock worked. The scratch was his doing, a nervous habitual thing. He hadn’t even realised.

Wren looked at Sullivan. He watched her with steady amber eyes, and she felt it completely: this odd, unspoken friendship formed in the fog.
“We found it,” she murmured. “Both of us.”

He blinked once, slow and deliberate, then pressed his forehead against her hand. She turned to leave. The wall was empty.

That evening, she found it online. Sullivan. Missing since February 28th. Presumed dead.

She sat with that. For the first time in months, she hadn’t been alone. The whisper she had been chasing was never just the click of a latch. It was the sound of a friendship she hadn’t known she’d made, until the moment she lost it.

by Evie S, Year 9