Big Change for Stuart (25 page)

‘I'm going into work this afternoon. Can you let Dad know his food's ready?'

‘OK.' He slipped out of the back door.

‘Stuart!' shouted April. ‘At last! Shall we climb over? Stuart?
Stuart!
'

But Stuart didn't answer. He was too busy staring, aghast, at his father, who had got out of the deckchair and was doing a series of press-ups on the grass.

‘Shall we climb over the
fence?
' repeated April impatiently.

His father began to do the press-ups one-armed.

‘No,' said Stuart, struggling to think. It was
somehow
even more frightening to feel lost in his own home than it was in a trackless desert or a giant maze. ‘Not this fence. Maybe the next one. I think – I think I have to choose the right life. And the right letter.'

He ran back indoors.

The letter B glimmered on the living-room door. Steeling himself for what might come next, he went through, and found himself in the kitchen again.

This time his father was cooking, peering anxiously at a recipe book. The page had a photograph of an artichoke.

‘Where's Mum?' asked Stuart.

‘Dunno,' said his dad. ‘I think she said was going to get her nails done or something.'

Stuart went straight over to the living-room door.

The letter C.

This time the kitchen was empty, apart from Charlie curled up in a basket, but it smelled wonderfully of roast dinner. The garden was empty too, and there was no one standing by the fence.

‘Hello?' called Stuart cautiously. ‘Anyone at home?'

All was quiet. He waited for a moment or two, savouring the smell, and then took an apple from a bowl piled high with them. Above the fruit bowl, on the wall, was the photo of Stuart and his parents. He glanced at it, and dropped the apple. It fell with a dull thud and rolled across the kitchen floor.

There stood Stuart's father, his glasses spotted with rain, his mother, her hair blown into a thistle-shape by the wind, and Stuart, his nose bright red from the cold. And next to Stuart stood someone else – a boy, grinning. A boy who was a few centimetres shorter than Stuart, but who was otherwise his double.

In
this
world he had a brother.

STUART DIDN'T KNOW
how long he stood staring at the picture – only that he was jerked from his thoughts by a glassy crack. It came from the direction of the Book of Peril.

He hurried over and saw with a chill that the rippling darkness was now marred by a whitish circle around the dent. The surface there had paled and thickened, and he could no longer see through it. And – most worryingly – just as he reached out to touch it, there was another
crack!
and the opacity spread further, like ice forming on a pond.

His breathing quickened. What if the door stopped working? What would it mean? Might he be stuck for eternity in an empty kitchen?

He gave the door a tentative push, and it moved
slightly;
he could dimly see Clifford and Elaine tense in anticipation. He still had a little time, then – enough to grab the triplets and dive back through the Book of Peril, and who cared if he got the letter clue completely wrong and never solved Great-Uncle Tony's puzzle? Getting back to the real world with them was the only important thing.

He hurried outside. There was still no sign of the triplets, so he shouted their names over the fence. The windows of their house looked blankly back at him. He jumped up and managed to glimpse their garden; it seemed to be weedier than he remembered, and Mr Kingley had obviously taken the barbecue indoors.

He took a huge breath and yelled April's name as loudly as he could, and to his relief he heard the Kingleys' back door open. Footsteps approached.

‘Hello?' said a young man in a suit, frowning over the fence.

‘Where are the Kingleys?' demanded Stuart.

‘In Cornwall, I believe,' said the man. ‘They moved there a couple of months ago. Which is
why
I'm now showing Mr and Mrs Lee around this well-maintained three-bedroom property in a tree-lined cul-de-sac.' He flashed a smile at a severe-looking elderly couple who had followed him out to the garden. ‘They're looking for a
quiet
retirement residence,' he added pointedly.

Stuart didn't wait to hear any more. He hurtled straight back into the kitchen, and through the living-room door.

Letter D.

And the triplets were there, sitting in front of him at the kitchen table.

Knitting.

‘Oh, hello, Stuart,' said June, smiling warmly at him, the dog lolling asleep on her lap. ‘Lovely to see you – look what your mum's been teaching us. April's already made a doll's bonnet.'

‘Isn't it lovely?' asked April in a soppy voice, waving something pink at him.

‘We've got to go,' said Stuart brusquely, trying to ignore the awful weirdness of a world in which his mother could knit bonnets. ‘Come on.'

‘Not until I've learned how to make matching
bootees.
Your mum's just gone to find some more wool.'

‘We've got to
go
,' said Stuart, grabbing April's hand. She pulled away and gave a scream.

‘What?' asked Stuart, confused. A length of pink wool was dangling from his fingers.

‘You've
unravelled
it!' wailed April. ‘That took me ages and ages, and now you've
ruined
it. I'm not going anywhere till it's all knitted again.'

‘WE HAVEN'T GOT TIME FOR THAT!' shouted Stuart, so tense that he felt as if he might snap in half. He could see the crust of whiteness spreading across the dark panel of the door.

April burst into tears. ‘He
shouted
at me,' she sobbed. ‘I'm going
home
.' She flounced past Stuart and out of the back door.

‘Now look what you've done,' said May reproachfully, going after her. ‘You know how sensitive she is. It'll take hours and hours to talk her into coming back … Come on, June,' she added commandingly, and June scuttled after her, followed by Charlie.

The back door slammed.

Stuart heard himself give a despairing moan. He
looked
at the Book of Peril, and saw the darkness being leached out of it, and he started to run after the triplets, and then changed his mind and plunged instead through the living-room door.

Letter E.

‘Salutations,' said his father, sitting at the table with a pad of paper. ‘Your mother will be home from her quotidian microscopic investigations in approximately—'

‘Sorry, I'm in a hurry,' gabbled Stuart, running straight out into the garden. Which was somehow different, though he didn't have time to work out how, or why. He looked over the fence and saw the triplets sitting on their lawn, playing with Charlie, and he bellowed hoarsely to them, panic straining his voice.

‘Hurrah!' shouted April, leaping to her feet. ‘I knew you'd come,' and she hauled a garden chair across to the fence, and was over it in seconds, Charlie in her arms, her sisters hurriedly following.

‘Come on,' said Stuart. ‘Come on come on come on come on come on come
on
.'

‘Would your visitors care for inter-prandial ingestion of—'

‘No time, Dad,' said Stuart, hurling himself towards the Book of Peril. It looked like the top of an iced cake now, only a tiny section of the darkness visible around the edges. He gave it a shove and it buckled rather than opened, the top and the bottom curling in towards each other. He shoved again, and a crack opened on one side; he urged April and Charlie through, and then June, and then a wide-eyed May, and with one final look back at a kitchen that didn't look quite the same as usual, Stuart leaped through himself.

There was a noise like a giant light bulb breaking, a whoosh of air, and he fell into darkness onto a pile of shouting bodies, Charlie yapping, dust everywhere, clouds of it, gritty and stinging.

A torch flashed on, and then another.

‘That was quick,' said Clifford.

‘What?' asked Stuart, coughing, scooping up the dog before he could be trodden on.

‘Less than half a minute. The door sort of twitched after twelve seconds and then disintegrated at twenty-eight.'

Stuart turned and looked at the gaping hole
where
the door had been. The dust hung in the air like icing sugar, and through it he could just see the socket where the final spoke of the Magic Star had fitted. It was empty now.

‘It might have been twenty-eight seconds for you, Stuart, but we were away for
ages
,' grumbled May, getting to her feet. ‘When we went back to unglue April from that path, everything got sort of fuzzy, and then we found ourselves in our house – but it wasn't really our house at all, it was like a stage set. There was no upstairs, the front garden was just mist, and there was nothing on the telly except static. We were just waiting and waiting and waiting, and it was all because no one listened to me when I said it would be dangerous, and then it
was
, and no one listened to me when I said we'd get stuck there, and then we
did
! Is it the same day, even?'

Stuart nodded.

‘Well, thank goodness for that!'

‘It was boring and weird and horrid,' added April quietly. ‘But I knew you'd come and get us. Thank you.'

‘Yes, thanks, Stuart,' said May, giving him a deeply embarrassing hug.

‘That's all right,' he said gruffly, ‘and I couldn't have done it without help.' He gestured to Clifford and Elaine.

‘We'd better get you all out of here,' said Elaine. ‘Before we get caught.'

‘And before our mum does her nut,' added April. She held out a hand to help up June, who was still sitting on the floor.

‘I've had the oddest dream,' she said.

‘Oh, for
goodness' sake
,' screeched May, ‘it was
not
a dream. When are you
ever
going to admit it?'

April rolled her eyes at Stuart. ‘
It's been like this the whole time
,' she whispered. ‘
I've had to be incredibly tolerant and patient, and then when she
…' She paused and frowned.

‘What?' asked Stuart.

She looked at him, tilting her head. ‘You look different,' she said. ‘Apart from being covered in dust, I mean.'

‘What sort of different?'

‘Older.'

‘What?'

‘No, not older …' She paused, and her eyes widened. ‘Taller.'

‘
What?
'

‘Taller. A bit, anyway.'

‘Come on, everybody,' said Elaine firmly. ‘Out. And let's be as quiet as cats.'

Stuart, light-headed with shock, was scarcely aware of the tiptoed journey across the yard, the scurry over the ladder, the rushed farewells to Elaine and Clifford, the jog through the darkened town, with Charlie drooping tiredly in his arms.

What April said couldn't be true, could it? And yet … in the Book of Peril, when he had dashed outside for the last time, he had spotted the triplets in their garden. Which meant that
he had been able to see over the fence
. Without jumping. Without standing on a box. And maybe the kitchen in that world had looked different, not because of anything in it, but because he'd suddenly been viewing it
from a different height
. And maybe the wrong factor in that particular world hadn't been his dad or his mum, or even the triplets – it had been
him
.

‘There's Mum,' said April rather nervously, jerking Stuart out of his thoughts. They had reached Beech Road, and Mrs Kingley was standing on the front doorstep, her arms folded. She said nothing at all as they approached, but simply pointed inside.

‘
Bye
,' mouthed April to Stuart. ‘
See you tomorrow
.'

He watched them file silently into their house. The front door clicked shut, there was a pause – and then the sound of Mrs Kingley shouting. Stuart scuttled off to his own front door, and bent his knees slightly before ringing the bell. Just in case his father spotted anything different.

But it was his mother who answered the door.

‘Surprise!' she said. ‘I was actually phoning from the airport, but I didn't—' She stopped speaking and stared at him.

‘You've
grown
,' she said. ‘And you've found a dog.'

‘I know,' replied Stuart, his voice coming out a bit wobbly. ‘Surprise!'