• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 448 0

he was angry. And I said he didn't hit me, he grabbed me, but he was angry. And Siobhan asked if he grabbed me hard, and I said that he had grabbed me hard. And Siobhan asked if I was frightened about going home, and I said I wasn't. And then she asked me if I wanted to talk about it anymore, and I said that I didn't. And then she said, “OK,” and we didn't talk about it anymore, because grabbing is OK if it is on your arm or your shoulder when you are angry, but you can't grab someone's hair or their face. But hitting is not allowed, except if you are already in a fight with someone, then it is not so bad.

And when I got home from school Father was still at work, so I went into the kitchen and took the key out of the little china jug shaped like a nun and opened the back door and went outside and looked inside the dustbin to find my book.

I wanted to get my book back because I liked writing it. I liked having a project to do and I liked it especially if it was a difficult project like a book. Also I still didn't know who had killed Wellington and my book was where I had kept all the clues that I had discovered and I did not want them to be thrown away.

But my book wasn't in the dustbin.

I put the lid back on the dustbin and walked down the garden to have a look in the bin where Father keeps the garden waste, such as lawn clippings and apples that have fallen off the trees, but my book wasn't in there either.

I wondered if Father had put it into his van and driven to the tip and put it into one of the big bins there, but I did not want that to be true because then I would never see it again.

One other possibility was that Father had hidden my book somewhere in the house. So I decided to do some detecting and see if I could find it. Except I had to keep listening really hard all the time so I would hear his van when he pulled up outside the house so he wouldn't catch me being a detective.

I started by looking in the kitchen. My book was approximately 25 cm × 35 cm × 1 cm so it couldn't be hidden in a very small place, which meant that I didn't have to look in any really small places. I looked on top of the cupboards and down the back of drawers and under the oven and I used my special Mag-Lite torch and a piece of mirror from the utility room to help me see into the dark spaces at the back of the cupboards where the mice used to get in from the garden and have their babies.

Then I detected in the utility room.

Then I detected in the dining room.

Then I detected in the living room, where I found the missing wheel from my Airfix Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6 model under the sofa.

Then I thought I heard Father coming through the front door and I jumped and I tried to stand up fast and I banged my knee on the corner of the coffee table and it hurt a lot, but it was only one of the drug people next door dropping something on the floor.

Then I went upstairs, but I didn't do any detecting in my own room because I reasoned that Father wouldn't hide something from me in my own room unless he was being very clever and doing what is called a Double Bluff like in a real murder mystery novel, so I decided to look in my own room only if I couldn't find the book anywhere else.

I detected in the bathroom, but the only place to look was in the airing cupboard and there was nothing in there.

Which meant that the only room left to detect in was Father's bedroom. I didn't know whether I should look in there because he had told me before not to mess with anything in his room. But if he was going to hide something from me, the best place to hide it would be in his room.

So I told myself I would not mess with things in his room. I would move them and then I would move them back. And he would never know I had done it so he wouldn't be angry.

I started by looking under the bed. There were 7 shoes and a comb with lots of hair in it and a piece of copper pipe and a chocolate biscuit and a porn magazine called Fiesta and a dead bee and a Homer Simpson pattern tie and a wooden spoon, but not my book.

Then I looked in the drawers on either