Tanglewreck Read Free

and expenses, and you shall both stay at my house. That will give me an opportunity to question the child about the Timekeeper, and, perhaps, if you don’t mind – and please take this money for your troubles – I would like also –’
    At that moment there was a terrific crash as Bigamist flung himself down the cellar stairs. Silver missed whatever it was ‘also’ that Abel Darkwater wanted – and she wondered why he didn’t just ask her his questions here and now in the house. She didn’t have anything to tell him anyway. Nobody seemed to believe her, but Silver had absolutely no ideawhere the Timekeeper could be. She had never even seen it.
    As she swept up the last of the coal to throw on the furnace, she noticed something sparkling in the coal dust. She picked it up carefully, so that Bigamist couldn’t see what she was doing. It was long and thin, like a man’s tiepin, with a sharp pointed end, and it seemed to be made of diamonds. Hurriedly, she dropped it in the pocket of her overalls.
    Overhead, she heard the library door open and the floorboards creak as Mrs Rokabye and Abel Darkwater went towards the front door. She sneaked up the cellar steps, past Bigamist, and darted into the library. Quick as a whistle, she stuffed the leftover ham sandwiches and Victoria sponge down her overalls, and filled her pockets with chocolate biscuits. From the window, she could see Abel Darkwater slowly lowering himself into his car. Mrs Rokabye was turning back towards the house, counting the wad of money in her hands.
    Silver grabbed the jug of milk from the table, and slipped out past the enraged rabbit and upstairs to her little bedroom that she loved. It was where she felt safe.
    The room was high up in the attics of the house. It had a big wooden bed carved in the shape of a swan, and a fireplace, where she always kept a fire burning, fetching sticks from the orchard, so that the room smelled of apples and pears even in the worst of winter.
    Silver began to heat the milk on the little fire, and lay out the sandwiches and cake. She would save the biscuits for later.
    She looked at the photograph of her mother and fatherand sister on the mantelpiece, but she didn’t cry. Instead she said, half to herself, and half to the photo –
Help me to find the Timekeeper
.
    The room breathed in. The fire paused in its burning. The milk that had boiled to the rim of the pan bubbled and stopped. It was only the smallest hesitation in time, but Silver knew what she had to do. Something in her and something outside her leapt together and waited in the leaping. She said,
Yes, yes
.
    Then the moment landed, and the milk boiled over, and everything was as it usually was, but Silver knew that she had made a promise – to something inside herself and to something outside herself. She would have to find the Timekeeper now, because the Timekeeper had to be found.

Toad in the Hole
    Three days later, Silver was in her vegetable garden weeding the cabbages, when she heard Mrs Rokabye calling to her from the house.
    It sounded as though Mrs Rokabye was shouting something like ‘Toad in the Hole’, but Silver knew it couldn’t be that, because Toad in the Hole is something to eat and Silver never got anything to eat from Mrs Rokabye.
    She’s probably found a frog stuck down the sink
, thought Silver.
I’d better go and rescue it
.
    Silver shut the gate on to her little garden so that the hens couldn’t get out, and walked towards the kitchen. She could smell food – hot food, which was very strange.
    Mrs Rokabye was standing at the low kitchen door, smiling. It was a horrible sight; the corners of her mouth were drawn up towards her eyebrows, and her eyebrows were pulled up towards the hairnet she always wore in the house. She had been practising smiling all morning, but it was not nearly for long enough.
    ‘Welcome, dear child!’ she said. ‘Come and eat your lunch while I tell you something very exciting.’
    Silver came slowly