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And Mrs. Alexander said, “Oh, my goodness.”

And I said, “I'm going to live with my mother because Father killed Wellington and he lied and I'm frightened of being in the house with him.”

And Mrs. Alexander said, “Is your mother here?”

And I said, “No. Mother is in London.”

And she said, “So you're going to London on your own?”

And I said, “Yes.”

And she said, “Look, Christopher, why don't you come inside and sit down and we can talk about this and work out what is the best thing to do.”

And I said, “No. I can't come inside. Will you look after Toby for me?”

And she said, “I really don't think that would be a good idea, Christopher.”

And I didn't say anything.

And she said, “Where's your father at the moment, Christopher?”

And I said, “I don't know.”

And she said, “Well, perhaps we should try and give him a ring and see if we can get in touch with him. I'm sure he's worried about you. And I'm sure that there's been some dreadful misunderstanding.”

So I turned round and I ran across the road back to our house. And I didn't look before I crossed the road and a yellow Mini had to stop and the tires squealed on the road. And I ran down the side of the house and back through the garden gate and I bolted it behind me.

I tried to open the kitchen door but it was locked. So I picked up a brick that was lying on the ground and I smashed it through the window and the glass shattered everywhere. Then I put my arm through the broken glass and I opened the door from the inside.

I went into the house and I put Toby down on the kitchen table. Then I ran upstairs and I grabbed my schoolbag and I put some food for Toby in it and some of my maths books and some clean pants and a vest and a clean shirt. Then I came downstairs and I opened the fridge and I put a carton of orange juice into my bag, and a bottle of milk that hadn't been opened. And I took two more clementines and two tins of baked beans and a packet of custard creams from the cupboard and I put them in my bag as well, because I could open them with the can opener or my Swiss Army knife.

Then I looked on the surface next to the sink and I saw Father's mobile phone and his wallet and his address book and I felt my skin . . . cold under my clothes like Doctor Watson in The Sign of Four when he sees the tiny footsteps of Tonga, the Andaman Islander, on the roof of Bartholomew Sholto's house in Norwood, because I thought Father had come back and he was in the house, and the pain in my head got much worse. But then I rewound the pictures in my memory and I saw that his van wasn't parked outside the house, so he must have left his mobile phone and his wallet and his address book when he left the house. And I picked up his wallet and I took his bank card out because that was how I could get money because the card has a PIN which is the secret code which you put into the machine at the bank to get money out and Father hadn't written it down in a safe place, which is what you're meant to do, but he had told me because he said I'd never forget it. And it was 3558. And I put the card into my pocket.

Then I took Toby out of his cage and put him into the pocket of one of my coats because the cage was very heavy to carry all the way to London. And then I went out of the kitchen door into the garden again.

I went out through the garden gate and made sure there wasn't anyone watching, and then I started walking toward the school because that was a direction I knew, and when I got to school I could ask Siobhan where the train station was.

Normally I would have got more and more frightened if I was walking to school, because I had never done it before. But I was frightened in two different ways. And one way was being frightened of being far away from a place I was used to, and the other was being frightened of being near where Father lived, and they were in inverse proportion to one another, so that the total fear remained a constant as I got further away from home and further away from Father like this

Feartotal ≈ Fearnew place × Fearnear Father ≈ constant