no good at school work either.
Oliver felt a bit sorry for her. Lessons were no problem for him, he was always near the top, but he knew how it felt to be different. He was odd to look at too, with a large head that looked much too big for the scraggy neck that supported it and pale, rather bulgy eyes; and he was the smallest, weediest boy in the whole class. He was no good at games either, even worse than Tracey Bell. People called him a wally.
Tracey didn’t have a dad but everyone knew Mrs Bell. She was just a bigger version of her daughter, with the same kind of pan-scrubber hair. “I might be coming to your house this week,” she told Oliver excitedly. “My mum’s doing a cleaning job for your mum. Good, i’n’t it?”
Oliver stared at her round moon face; he could have kicked himself. He’d told Tracey last week that his mother was looking for a cleaner, but he’d never imagined that she’d tell her mother, or that Mrs Bell would knock on the door and ask for the job.
The news put him in a bad mood. In spite of his secret sympathy for Tracey, he felt threatened, afraid that she might start poking and prying. She’d ask him why they hadn’t got a television and why he always had to go to bed so early, and why his parents were so old.
At nine o’clock he filed miserably into the school hall with the others, all set for a depressing week. Most lessons bored Oliver because he was so clever; he always finished first then he had hours to kill. He usually ended up messing with the things in his desk, then he got told off, or sent to the library for private study. That was boring too, because he’d read all the books that interested him.
But after assembly something quite exciting happened. The science master stood up and told them that their school, Dean Street Middle, had been chosen as the main location for a new television project. Kit McKenzie, the famous TV “animal lady”, wanted to come to the school and film them. It wouldn’t be lions and tigers, it’d be domestic animals, ones you could keep at home. But she was on the lookout for something unusual. “If you’ve got an interesting pet at home, or can get one,” the science master told them, “find out all about it, make notes on the way it behaves, what it eats, all that sort of thing. You never know, you might be one of the lucky ones and end up on television.”
At break everyone was talking about the animal project. Most people had pets like mice and hamsters but one boy had a lot of stick insects and a girl in 3B said she was going to borrow a parrot from her Grandad and Grandma. “It can sing pop songs,” she told everybody, “and it swears.”
“I don’t think they’d want that on TV,” Tracey Bell said, in her loud, penetrating voice, sidling up to Oliver.
He was feeling rather depressed as he listened to all the talk about gerbils and Siamese cats, and about a large spider called Boris that had lived for two years in William Briggs’ bathroom cupboard. His mother would never let him have a pet, not even for something educational; she made enough fuss about Binkie. There was no way he’d get on TV. Then Tracey sprang a surprise. “My Uncle Len’s got a pet shop,” she whispered, cornering him in the playground by the bike racks. “He could get us something interesting.”
“Us?” Oliver repeated suspiciously.
“Well, we could do our project together, couldn’t we? It’d give us a lot more chance.”
It was Tracey Bell’s dream to go on television, and she’d got it all worked out. Oliver was the cleverest boy in the school so he could do all the writing and reading up, and her Uncle Len would get them the animal, something a bit different, if she wheedled him. They just couldn’t lose. “What sort of thing do you fancy, Oliver?” she said brightly. It was hard to crush Tracey Bell.
Oliver didn’t fancy anything, and he didn’t fancy appearing on the TV screen next to her. They’d look ridiculous, like Little and Large. “A rat,” he said stonily. That might shut her up.
“A rat? Ugh … Oliver. What do you want one of them for?”
He didn’t know, he’d just said the first thing that had come into his head, though he must have been thinking about rats anyway, because of all Dr Verney’s questions about rats and mice.
“Well, at least it’d be something different,” he told Tracey, feeling a bit mean. Surely her Uncle Len didn’t sell rats in his shop? He’d never actually heard of anyone keeping a rat as a pet. Though now he actually thought about it, studying rat behaviour might be quite interesting. Weren’t they supposed to be highly intelligent? He dimly remembered reading a book once, a science fiction story in which rats had taken over the world.
“If Uncle Len can get us anything it’ll have to come to your house,” Tracey told him. “We live in a flat and we’ve only got a balcony. My mum won’t let us keep anything out there.”
Oliver didn’t reply. Tracey’s uncle would probably say no, for a start, and if he did come up with anything he couldn’t see his mother letting him have it at Nine, Thames Terrace. As for keeping a rat … he could just see her face if he came home with one. It was such an awful thought it was almost funny.
He found Ted in a stuffy room, sprawled in a chair, staring listlessly at a TV set. It was on low and the news commentary was hardly a mumble, he couldn’t be listening. And he wasn’t looking at the screen either, his eyes were going straight past it.
“I’ve brought you a present,” Oliver said, holding a paper bag out. Ted took it and looked inside. It was a chocolate bar, fruit and nut, the kind he sometimes brought in his lunch box. Oliver knew he liked it.
“Thanks, pal.” But the man didn’t eat it, he just carried on staring at the television. The voice didn’t sound like Ted’s, and the face wasn’t Ted’s either. It looked too white and shocked, and the eyes were still fish-like and glassy. “What’s up?” said Oliver, sitting down next to him, on a red leather pouffe.
There was a long silence. “Are you coming back to work soon?” Oliver tried again. He was looking at the man’s large, square hands, lying idly in his lap, at the kindly, weather-beaten face and the scanty fringe of greying hair round the speckled, bald head. He was fond of Ted Hoskins, and he’d decided that if he ever had a serious problem he’d go to Ted with it. In fact, he sometimes pretended that Ted was his real dad. It was awful, with his own father in hospital.
“No, I’m not, son. I’m not going back there. They can give me my cards if they want. I’m not bothered.” His voice was colourless and flat, as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of him, and Oliver felt little prickles going up and down his back. The neat sitting room, with its hard, bright colours, seemed to fade into a dull blur. Something else was taking its place, a harsh cold breath, like the first nip of winter. It was in his brain and it was inside him, squeezing out all the warmth and the light, all the ordinary, reassuring things.
“What exactly happened, Ted?” he could hear himself saying. “Did you find anything? I mean, at the site?” But Ted’s wife had suddenly materialized from the kitchenette. She’d gripped Oliver firmly by the arm and was now steering him out of the room. He tried hard to resist. He’d not even started his investigations yet.
“But I want—” he began.
“He didn’t find anything, duckie, nothing at all. He just came over a bit queer, that’s all. He’s got high blood pressure, you know.”
“But
