Zack and Jake had made it to the tree with the hollow trunk only to find it wasn’t full of hidden treasure but just old pieces of bark. They were a little crest-fallen but they still had hold of Toaster, their prize possession of the day.
‘I’ve got a great idea,’ said Zack. ‘If we take the toaster back to mum she’ll be really pleased. We won’t be in her bad books anymore and then we can do what we like.
‘What do you mean we? It’s you who are always in her bad books not me.’
‘Whatever. Anyway let’s go back to the house.’
Before the two brothers even got to the top patio Zack started shouting: ‘Mum, mum come here look what we’ve got.’
Rebecca came out of the kitchen door. ‘Will you two pipe down,’ she said. ‘Your sister is having a nap. What is it now?’
The brothers both tried to talk at once but Zack won as usual with his frantic shouting. ‘Mum, we’ve found one of the stolen kitchen items, look, the toaster. Here it is. It’s a bit damaged because we had to teach it a lesson, but mum, mum it means the burglars escaped down the bottom of the garden. We should tell the police. Mum, do you think there’ll be a reward?’
‘Zack, please be quiet,’ said Rebecca with all the calmness she could muster. ‘Just for your information the toaster was not one of the items stolen. I found it broken in all the rubble in the kitchen that morning. It had not been taken at all and because it was broken, just as it looks like now, I took it out…’ and then her voice started to rise. ‘And I put it in the dustbin myself! So don’t come to me with some idiotic story Zack, because I wasn’t born yesterday. So go and put that toaster back in the dustbin where you got it from.’
‘But mum….’
‘Do as I’ve told you.’
‘But mum, we found it down on the far lawn.’
‘Zack I am tired of all this. Just do what I say, and anyway you are not allowed down on the far lawn. Just wait until your father hears about it.’
And so Zack, for once, had to admit defeat and go and put Toaster back in the dustbin, where he belonged.
‘And when you’ve done that you can come in and wash your hands,’ shouted his mother.
Throughout the evening right up until bedtime Zack tried to convince his mother they had found the Toaster near the bushes on the lawn. He even resorted to tears and then said: ‘Ask Jake,’ he was with me. ‘Just ask Jake.’
But Jake seeing one of the few opportunities he ever got to put one over on his elder brother merely replied: ‘I don’t know what you are talking about Zack.’
*
Gadgets: The Great Escape Page 32