Chapter
4 I haven’t seen a ghost
When Dave got back to the party,
Emma, Trevor and Madeleine were dancing.
“I suppose this is what it was like
when the caves were used for dances,” shouted Trevor. “Don’t you like dancing,
Steve? How about you, Jack?”
“We’re hungry,” said Steve. “Hey,
Trevor ... you nearly knocked Dave over.”
“Oh, you’re back, Dave. … No sign of
Joy?” said Jack.
“No. I just came back to tell you
I’m going to go to her house and see if she’s there,” said Dave.
“Shall I guide you?”
“No!”
“OK, sorry.”
Dave unfolded his white stick and
started walking away, swinging the stick gently from side to side in front of
him.
“What’s wrong with Dave?” Jack said
to Steve.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him
like that before.”
Dave stopped walking and turned
round.
“Don’t talk about me as if I can’t
hear you!” he said. “I’m blind, not deaf.”
“Sorry,” said Jack.
“Yes, sorry, Dave,” said Steve.
When the song came to an end,
Madeleine came over.
“Dave, are you OK?” she asked. “You look as if
you’ve seen a …”
“Seen? Did you say seen?”
“But, Dave, you always use that
word. You say things like ‘I’ll see if I can find Joy’ or ‘See you later’...”
“Yes, well, I can’t see, can I? And
you were going to say I look as if I’ve seen a ghost. Well, I haven’t seen a
ghost.”
Chapter 5 The Burglary
Steve
and Madeleine’s foster mother, Joy, put her hand up to her head. Her hair felt
wet and sticky. When she looked at her hand, it was covered in blood. There was
blood on the radiator and blood on the freezer bag full of sandwiches on the
hall floor.
She
sat up. Her head was throbbing.
She
was next to the radiator on the floor in the hall of her house. There was a
trail of blood from the top of the radiator down to the bottom. She must have
cracked her head on the top corner of the radiator as she fell.
She
had been looking for her earrings upstairs in her bedroom. She’d wanted to wear
earrings and lipstick to Madeleine’s birthday party.
Joy
had sung as she searched for the earrings. She was looking forward to the party
in the caves.
But
then she heard the sound of the front door being unlocked and opened
downstairs. It was a stiff door and it made a loud creaking noise every time it
was opened.
Joy
stopped singing. She was confused. Her foster children had gone to Madeleine’s
birthday party. And they usually used the hidden passageway from the cellar
under Joy’s house to get to the caves. If they had come back, they would have
come through the cellar. And then they would have gone to the back door, not
the front door. And anyway, she just couldn’t imagine what might be so
important that they would leave the party.
She
shouted, “Hello! I’ll come down as soon as I’ve found my earrings.”
No-one
shouted back. But she could hear someone walking around downstairs. She knew it
couldn’t be burglars because she had heard the key in the lock.
“Did
you forget something?” she shouted. “Hey, why don’t you answer me?”
Then
she saw her earrings on her bedside table. She put them in her earlobes, put
some lipstick on, picked up her shoulder bag and made her way downstairs.
The
wind was blowing in through the open front door. Joy could hear the sound of a
car engine outside.
A
woman came out of the front room. She pushed Joy very hard and ran out of the
house. Joy fell and hit her head on the radiator.
Her
head was throbbing so much that it took her some time to stand up.
Once
she was standing up, she went into the front room.
The
TV had gone. So had the family laptop.
Even
the phone had gone. The woman had unplugged it and taken the whole thing.
But
Joy still had her shoulder bag. She reached into it and took out her mobile.
She
tried to find the 9 on her phone so that she could dial 999. She couldn’t see
the numbers clearly. Then she saw Dave. He was swinging his stick from side to
side as he made his way down the path and into her house.
“Dave,
come in. The front door is open. I’ve been burgled,” said Joy.
“Have
you called the police?”
“I
can’t see the numbers properly ... Dave, the burglar pushed me over. I don’t
feel OK. Maybe we should call an ambulance.”
“Have
you got a touchscreen phone?”
“No.
It’s a Blackberry.”
“Good.
Give me the phone.”
She handed it to him
and he felt for the bump on the number 5. Then he moved his finger to the
number 9.
Copyright text © 2013 Fiona
Cullen
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 9781492309604
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