Читать книгу The Dog Who Saved the World - Ross Welford - Страница 19

‘Give me a week,’ Dr Pretorius had said. It was seldom out of my thoughts. Another week of secret-keeping.

Secrets are easy to keep so long as no one finds out.

So long as no one sees you. Someone who knows your brother, say. Someone who has just started working at the Spanish City and notices you coming out of the door at the back of the arcade.

Sass Hennessey’s sister, Anna, for example, who is in the same school year as my brother Clem and whose mum had got her a Saturday job at the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms.

Give me a week, give me a week. It was going around in my head, like some annoying song that gets stuck, as I was walking back from the Spanish City, up our lane, swinging my school bag. I was surprised to see Clem come out of Dad’s workshop, wiping his oily hands on a towel.

We live in a farmhouse, although it’s not a proper working farm any more. Nearly all of the other farms around us have been sold for development. You can stand by Mum’s tree in the top field with the cows, and see houses and cranes and half-built flats in every direction apart from to the east, where the sea glints silver in the distance. (The cows are not ours, though I wish they were.)

Down the lane from our farmhouse is Dad’s workshop where he restores old cars, and a barn with bits of engines, exhausts, and car doors and stuff.

It looked like Clem had been expecting me.

‘Hi, Pie-face,’ he said. He was cheery. He used his nickname for me for the first time in ages. This made me suspicious but I smiled.

‘Been anywhere exciting?’ he asked.

The truth? I had been a participant in a medieval jousting tournament, charging towards Ramzy on a virtual horse (made from an old piano stool and the saddle I had seen on the first day in the loading bay).

‘St Woof’s,’ I lied. I hated lying, even to Clem. I could feel my cheeks going red.

‘And how is he?’

‘Who?’

‘That dog. Ben?’

‘Oh, fine! We went on the beach. The usual. He’s great.’ Clem was watching me, carefully, and I didn’t like it.

He paused for what seemed like forever before saying, ‘Instant recovery then?’

I gave Clem my ‘puzzled but innocent’ look: half-smile, blinking.

Clem said, ‘The vicar called me. He’s been trying to ring you but your phone’s been off.’

That was true: we always switched our phones off in Dr Pretorius’s studio – something to do with electromagnetism. I’d forgotten to switch mine back on.

‘Let’s keep this simple, shall we?’ Clem counted off on his blackened fingers as he said: ‘One: some dog called Ben is sick. He’s in quarantine. That’s the vicar’s message. Two: Anna Hennessey’s seen you at the Spanish City with your buddy Ramzy Whatsisname and some spooky old lady. Three: you’re lying to me, because you’re blushing. And four: I want to know why.’

‘Or what?’ You’ve got to remember: this is my brother. He’s supposed to be on my side.

‘Or I’m telling Dad.’

OK, so maybe he’s not on my side any more. Clem nodded, pushed his glasses up his nose with an oily hand and turned to go back into the workshop, expecting me to follow him.

Did I have a choice?