Two Weeks with the Queen Read Free Page B

to compare it to.
    Without hesitating (if he was sprung, that matron looked like she could remove an appendix with her teeth) Colin grabbed a pin and jabbed it into his finger. He put a spot of his own blood onto his hanky, slid it under the lens and peered at it.
    Wriggle.
    Wriggle wriggle.
    His blood was full of wriggly things.
    Colin felt the rest of his blood pounding in his head. He had a vision of Mum and Dad kneeling by his bed holding his hands and weeping while several hundred doctors and nurses wheeled huge and very important-looking pieces of medical equipment into position.
    Then he had a very different vision. Of him telling Mum and Dad and them not believing him.
    What I need, he decided, is a second opinion.
    By the time he got to the doctor’s house he was in a fair bit of pain.
    It was his new shoes, rubbing the backs of his ankles. He’d had to wear them because that was his excuse for going for a walk, to try them out.
    Another bit of him was hurting as well, the bit inside that always ached when Mum and Dad did something that made him think they preferred Luke. It had started this time as soon as Mum had said, ‘Good idea, love, you take yourself off for an hour, give me and Dad a chance to get some of Luke’s things together and take them to the hospital.’
    They’d be sorry when they found out it was him who was really sick.
    He checked a brass number on a smart polished-wood mailbox and turned into the doctor’s driveway.
    The doctor lived on the side of town where people had brick houses with front lawns and sprinklers and two toilets. Dad reckoned this was a criminal waste of water. Colin reckoned that if people were clever and successful and important it was OK. As long as they didn’t show off about it, like inviting two people in to go to the toilet at once.
    He knocked on the doctor’s big, stained-glass front door. The doctor opened it. He was wearing a party hat and a red plastic nose and holding a turkey leg.
    From inside Colin could hear Christmas music and lots of adults and children talking and laughing.
    He held out his hanky with the blood spots on it.
    â€˜Sorry to bother you,’ he said, ‘but I think I’ve got gastric.’
    The doctor stared. Then he took off his red plastic nose.
    Later, when the doctor drove Colin home in his silver Jag, Colin had got over not having gastric.
    At first it had been a bitter blow, but interesting as well, the doctor getting out his microscope and showing Colin the wriggly things that covered not only the blood spot but that entire corner of the hanky.
    The doctor had asked Colin if his hanky had come into contact with a dead animal and Colin had said, yes, sort of, Arnie Strachan had used it to wipe out his lunchbox.
    Then the doctor had explained that the wriggly things had only got onto Colin’s blood spot because they were on the hanky in the first place.
    Colin had asked why the wriggly things hadn’t got onto Luke’s blood spot and the doctor had said because by some miracle Luke’s corner of the hanky had stayed clean.
    Well, cleanish.
    As they turned into Colin’s street, Colin glanced across at the doctor. They knew their stuff’, these medical blokes. The doctor saw him looking. He gave Colin a grin.
    â€˜Bit of a pain, eh, having your kid brother in hospital. Bloke gets a bit ignored when his kid brother’s in hospital.’
    Colin didn’t say anything. He wondered if the doctor would agree to swap brains with Dad. The first double brain transplant in Australia. Probably not.
    â€˜Don’t worry about your brother,’ said the doctor. ‘He’ll be out of hospital in a couple of days.’
    Colin hoped the doctor was right.
    He looked around the car as they purred along. The leather seats, the real wood dashboard, the aerial that went up without you having to stop the car and get out and pull at it and swear like with Dad’s.
    Of course