The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Read Free Page B

raspberry milk shake. But if I say that I actually had Shreddies and a mug of tea 3 I start thinking about Coco Pops and lemonade and porridge and Dr Pepper and how I wasn't eating my breakfast in Egypt and there wasn't a rhinoceros in the room and Father wasn't wearing a diving suit and so on and even writing this makes me feel shaky and scared, like I do when I'm standing on the top of a very tall building and there are thousands of houses and cars and people below me and my head is so full of all these things that I'm afraid that I'm going to forget to stand up straight and hang on to the rail and I'm going to fall over and be killed.
    This is another reason why I don't like proper novels, because they are lies about things which didn't happen and they make me feel shaky and scared.
    And this is why everything I have written here is true.
    41. There were clouds in the sky on the way home, so I couldn't see the Milky Way.
    I said, “I'm sorry,” because Father had had to come to the police station, which was a bad thing.
    He said, “It's OK.”
    I said, “I didn't kill the dog.”
    And he said, “I know.”
    Then he said, “Christopher, you have to stay out of trouble, OK?”
    I said, “I didn't know I was going to get into trouble. I like Wellington and I went to say hello to him, but I didn't know that someone had killed him.”
    Father said, “Just try and keep your nose out of other people's business.”
    I thought for a little and I said, “I am going to find out who killed Wellington.”
    And Father said, “Were you listening to what I was saying, Christopher?”
    I said, “Yes, I was listening to what you were saying, but when someone gets murdered you have to find out who did it so that they can be punished.”
    And he said, “It's a bloody dog, Christopher, a bloody dog.”
    I replied, “I think dogs are important, too.”
    He said, “Leave it.”
    And I said, “I wonder if the police will find out who killed him and punish the person.”
    Then Father banged the steering wheel with his fist and the car weaved a little bit across the dotted line in the middle of the road and he shouted, “I said leave it, for God's sake.”
    I could tell that he was angry because he was shouting, and I didn't want to make him angry so I didn't say anything else until we got home.
    When we came in through the front door I went into the kitchen and got a carrot for Toby and I went upstairs and I shut the door of my room and I let Toby out and gave him the carrot. Then I turned my computer on and played 76 games of Minesweeper and did the Expert Version in 102 seconds, which was only 3 seconds off my best time, which was 99 seconds.
    At 2:07 a.m. I decided that I wanted a drink of orange squash before I brushed my teeth and got into bed, so I went downstairs to the kitchen. Father was sitting on the sofa watching snooker on the television and drinking scotch. There were tears coming out of his eyes.
    I asked, “Are you sad about Wellington?”
    He looked at me for a long time and sucked air in through his nose. Then he said, “Yes, Christopher, you could say that. You could very well say that.”
    I decided to leave him alone because when I am sad I want to be left alone. So I didn't say anything else. I just went into the kitchen and made my orange squash and took it back upstairs to my room.
    43. Mother died 2 years ago.
    I came home from school one day and no one answered the door, so I went and found the secret key that we keep under a flowerpot behind the kitchen door. I let myself into the house and carried on making the Airfix Sherman tank model I was building.
    An hour and a half later Father came home from work. He runs a business and he does heating maintenance and boiler repair with a man called Rhodri who is his employee. He knocked on the door of my room and opened it and asked whether I had seen Mother.
    I said that I hadn't seen her and he went downstairs and started making some phone calls. I did not