Читать книгу Sarah Lean - 3 Book Collection - Sarah Lean, Sarah Lean - Страница 21

WHEN WE GOT BACK, LUKE PHONED GRANDMA and Grandpa Hamblin. He sat on the stairs and asked them to tell Dad to change his mind.

Then he was silent for a long time, listening, holding the phone loosely by his ear. He said no or yes or but to them now and again, but they kept talking. I could hear their voices, but not what they were saying, like a radio far away.

“They want to speak to you,” said Luke.

But I squeezed past him to go upstairs while he held the phone out and watched me go to my room. I blocked my ears so I couldn’t hear what he told them, so I didn’t feel bad about leaving him there on his own. But it didn’t work.

Luke didn’t speak to Dad for days. I didn’t either of course. Dad didn’t say anything about us not talking. He gave us each two H. Packaging boxes from work, told us to fill them with everything we wanted to keep, just two boxes, no more. I bet he was like that at work. Because he was a supervisor in the warehouse he could say what size box you had to use, do this, do that.

I packed up my boxes in a special way: books together, clothes together, shoes together, special things together, putting things in compartments with extra strips of cardboard so it was all divided up. Above my bed was a picture Mum and me drew. I had drawn her and she had drawn me. I rolled it up and put it in a small compartment by itself. Sometimes silence is really uncomfortable. Like trying to fit all your things into cardboard boxes.

Friday, and Mia and Daisy came running up to me. Mia looked excited, but she folded her arms and said, “You don’t have to keep being such a sulker. You could ask someone else to sing in the concert with you.”

And Daisy said, “She could ask to be in one of the big groups of singers.” Then she laughed. “Oh, but the auditions are closed now anyway.”

Then Mia stopped laughing with her.

“I think if you just said sorry for cheating so I couldn’t do the sponsored silence and for being such a loser then we’d let you play with us again. Well?” said Mia, her lips like the top of a gym bag, her eyes fierce. “Are you going to?”

She tapped her foot. “If you don’t say sorry, we won’t tell you what we’ve found.”

Daisy elbowed Mia. “I thought we weren’t going to tell her we found a dog.”

Mia gritted her teeth. “No! We weren’t going to tell her we found a dog over by the gates.”

“But you just did!” said Daisy.

Mia blinked hard. “No, you did!”

Daisy said, “But she’s got to say sorry before we show her or say anything else.”

Mia couldn’t help herself. “It’s the biggest dog in the world and it’s so friendly. It ate my cheese sandwich, right out of my hand! I’m going to ask my mum if we can keep it.”

They looked over to the school gates. So did I.

“It’s gone!” Mia screeched. “That’s your fault, Daisy!”

“No, it’s not! It’s Cally’s fault. If she’d just said sorry straight away like you asked then we wouldn’t have had to leave it all by itself for so long.”

Mia grabbed my sleeve. “Typical! You’re always messing things up for me.”

I ran, leaving Mia holding my empty grey cardigan and shrieking, “When I see it again, I’m never, ever going to tell you, ever again!”

I went to the library to get away from them and to read about dogs. I found out about Homeless, Irish wolfhound, ancient wolf hunter, loyal friend and protector, about precious silver collars and how in the olden days people paid high prices to own one. There was a story with a brown and white drawing of a famous wolfhound called Cu who saved his owner’s child from a wolf. I looked at the pictures. I stared at the fearless guardian. That’s what Homeless looked like – like he would go to the ends of the earth to save you.

I wished I could see him again. I wished he was mine.