Читать книгу First Man In - Ant Middleton, Ant Middleton - Страница 7

Strange noises. People moving about. People talking. Footsteps. Heavy, grown-up footsteps that I didn’t recognise. I sat up in bed and tried to wake myself by squeezing and rubbing my eyes with the backs of my hands. It was the week after Christmas – perhaps Mum and Dad were having a party. I climbed down from my top bunk past my brother’s bed, which was empty. On the chest of drawers there was my favourite toy, a plastic army helicopter that Dad had bought for my fifth birthday. I reached up on tiptoes and gave its black propellers a push. I was about to take it down when I heard someone crying. I turned towards the sound. Through the crack in the door I saw a policeman.

I slipped out and followed him, barefoot in my grey pyjamas, in the direction of my parents’ bedroom. I passed two more policemen in the corridor who were talking and didn’t seem to notice me. Lights were blazing in my mum and dad’s room. There were even more policemen in there, four, maybe five of them, crowded around the bed. Intrigued and excited, I pushed between the legs of two of them and peered up to see what they were all looking at. There was someone under the sheets. Whoever it was, they weren’t moving. I shuffled forward for a better view.

‘No! No! No!’ a policeman shouted. He bent down and manoeuvred me back down the corridor into the other bedroom, his bony fingertips pressing into my shoulders. My brothers were all in there, Peter, Michael and Daniel. Someone had taken the television up there from downstairs. They were all watching it. I sat down in the corner. I didn’t say a word.

My next memory is about four weeks later. I was being woken up again: ‘Anthony! Anthony! Come on, Anthony. Wake up.’ The main light was on. There were two people standing over me, my mum and this man I’d never seen before. He was enormously tall, with a big nose and long, dark hair that went down past his shoulders. I didn’t know how old he was, but I could see he was much younger than Mum.

‘Anthony,’ she said. ‘Meet your new dad.’