The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon [17]
So I would have to be an astronaut on my own, or have my own part of the spacecraft which no one else could come into.
And also there are no yellow things or brown things in a spacecraft, so that would be OK, too.
And I would have to talk to other people from Mission Control, but we would do that through a radio linkup and a TV monitor, so they wouldn't be like real people who are strangers, but it would be like playing a computer game.
Also I wouldn't be homesick at all because I'd be surrounded by lots of the things I like, which are machines and computers and outer space. And I would be able to look out of a little window in the spacecraft and know that there was no one else near me for thousands and thousands of miles, which is what I sometimes pretend at night in the summer when I go and lie on the lawn and look up at the sky and I put my hands round the sides of my face so that I can't see the fence and the chimney and the washing line and I can pretend I'm in space.
And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which stops you from being anemic was made in a star.
And I would like it if I could take Toby with me into space, and that might be allowed because they sometimes do take animals into space for experiments, so if I could think of a good experiment you could do with a rat that didn't hurt the rat, I could make them let me take Toby.
But if they didn't let me I would still go because it would be a Dream Come True.
89. The next day at school I told Siobhan that Father had told me I couldn't do any more detecting, which meant that the book was finished. I showed her the pages I had written so far, with the diagram of the universe and the map of the street and the prime numbers. And she said that it didn't matter. She said the book was really good as it was and that I should be very proud of having written a book at all, even if it was quite short and there were some very good books which were very short like Heart of Darkness, which was by Conrad.
But I said that it wasn't a proper book because it didn't have a proper ending because I never found out who killed Wellington so the murderer was still At Large.
And she said that was like life, and not all murders were solved and not all murderers were caught. Like Jack the Ripper.
I said I didn't like the idea that the murderer was still At Large. I said I didn't like to think that the person who killed Wellington could be living somewhere nearby and I might meet him when I went out for a walk at night. And this was possible because a murder was usually committed by a person who was known to the victim.
Then I said, “Father said I was never to mention Mr. Shears's name in our house again and that he was an evil man and maybe that meant he was the person who killed Wellington.”
And she said, “Perhaps your father just doesn't like Mr. Shears very much.”
And I asked, “Why?”
And she said, “I don't know, Christopher. I don't know because I don't know anything about Mr. Shears.”
I said, “Mr. Shears used to be married to Mrs. Shears and he left her, like in a divorce. But I don't know if they were actually divorced.”
And Siobhan said, “Well, Mrs. Shears is a friend of yours, isn't she. A friend of you and your father. So perhaps your father doesn't like Mr. Shears because he left Mrs. Shears. Because he did something bad to someone who is a friend.”
And I said, “But Father says Mrs. Shears isn't a friend of ours anymore.”
And Siobhan said, “I'm sorry,