The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon [70]
But I couldn't sleep. And I got out of bed at 2:07 a.m. and I felt scared of Mr. Shears so I went downstairs and out of the front door into Chapter Road. And there was no one in the street and it was quieter than it was during the day, even though you could hear traffic in the distance and sirens, so it made me feel calmer. And I walked down Chapter Road and looked at all the cars and the patterns the phone wires made against the orange clouds and the things that people had in their front gardens, like a gnome and a cooker and a tiny pond and a teddy bear.
Then I heard two people coming along the road, so I crouched down between the end of a skip and a Ford Transit van, and they were talking in a language that wasn't English, but they didn't see me. And there were two tiny brass cogs in the dirty water in the gutter by my feet, like cogs from a windup watch.
And I liked it between the skip and the Ford Transit van so I stayed there for a long time. And I looked out at the street. And the only colors you could see were orange and black and mixtures of orange and black. And you couldn't tell what colors the cars would be during the day.
And I wondered whether you could tessellate crosses, and I worked out that you could by imagining this picture in my head
And then I heard Mother's voice and she was shouting, “Christopher . . . ? Christopher . . . ?” and she was running down the road, so I came out from between the skip and the Ford Transit van and she ran up to me and said, “Jesus Christ,” and she stood in front of me and pointed her finger at my face and said, “If you ever do that again, I swear to God, Christopher, I love you, but . . . I don't know what I'll do.”
So she made me promise never to leave the flat on my own because it was dangerous and because you couldn't trust people in London because they were strangers. And the next day she had to go to the shops again and she made me promise not to answer the door if anyone rang the bell. And when she came back she brought some food pellets for Toby and three Star Trek videos and I watched them in the living room until Mr. Shears came home and then I went into the spare room again. And I wished that 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG, had a garden but it didn't.
And the day after that the office where Mother worked rang and told her she couldn't come back to work because they had got someone else to do her job for her, and she was really angry and she said that it was illegal and she was going to complain, but Mr. Shears said, “Don't be a bloody fool. It was a temporary job, for Christ's sake.”
And when Mother came into the spare room before I went to sleep I said, “I have to go to Swindon to take my A level.”
And she said, “Christopher, not now. I'm getting phone calls from your father threatening to take me to court. I'm getting it in the neck from Roger. It's not a good time.”
And I said, “But I have to go because it's been arranged and the Reverend Peters is going to invigilate.”
And she said, “Look. It's only an exam. I can ring the school. We can get it postponed. You can take it some other time.”
And I said, “I can't take it another time. It's been arranged. And I've done lots of revision. And Mrs. Gascoyne said we could use a room at school.”
And Mother said, “Christopher, I am just about holding this together. But I am this close to losing it, all right? So just give me some—”
Then she stopped talking and she put her hand over her mouth and she stood up and went out of the room. And I started feeling a pain in my chest like I did on the underground because I thought I wasn't going to be able to go back to Swindon and take my A level.
And the next morning I looked out of the window in the dining room to count the cars in the street to see whether it was going