Home for Christmas - Part something or other.

What had Boris and my father been up to in the old toolshed?

I felt the ground shifting beneath my feet, my head was spinning, my reality was disintegrating... there were probably other metaphors happening at the same time but these three are the ones I recall.

As I watched the pair walking away towards the house I was at a loss as to what to do. If only Matron were here; she was the one I could always turn to when I was in a pickle at school. I could always rely on Matron to advise me what to do. But she wasn't here.

I watched them enter the house through the kitchen door - the same door out of which I had come only minutes before. I straightened up. My knees were stiff from the prolonged crouching I had had to endure behind the wheelbarrow.

The door was unlocked. I entered. I don't know what I expected to find as I flashed my torch around the old tool-shed, but I saw nothing except old tools. Mystified, I snapped off my torch and left.

I returned to the house, only to find the kitchen door locked! Luckily I had left my bedroom window open, and I quickly shinned up a convenient drain-pipe and gained access. I lay for a while on my bed, thinking. But recent events were so bizarre that I could not come up with a useful plan of action. So I fell asleep.

It could not have been more than half and hour when I felt a stirring beside me in the bed, and a familiar female smell (although I could not, at the time place it) pervaded my nostrils. I stiffened. Who could be invading my personal space in the middle of the night? And then, a voice, husky, and heavy with emotion - either that or its owner had a bad cold. I hoped it was not the latter as I catch colds so easily and I have to watch my chest.

Holding my breath, I turned to face the intruder in my bed.


(to be continued...)