by Hilary McKay
‘Using it?’
‘Taking it.’
‘Goodness, no!’ said Charlie’s mother cheerfully. ‘Help yourself! We shan’t be needing it again, I don’t suppose … Hello, hello? Oh wonderful! A human voice at last!’
She waved Henry away and hurried into the front room with the phone. Henry, feeling deliciously like a burglar, rushed upstairs to Charlie’s bedroom.
‘Help yourself!’ Charlie’s mother had said. Henry did. He found Charlie’s quilt, pillow, slippers and pyjamas and flung them out of the window to land on the lawn below. Next he unplugged the bedside lamp and lowered it down by the flex on to the quilt. Finally, he staggered down the stairs with Charlie’s bedside table.
It took him less than five minutes. Charlie’s mother did not see a thing.
‘Brilliant!’ said Charlie, when all these things appeared behind the shed. ‘Didn’t she mind?’
‘She said I could,’ said Henry. ‘She said she wouldn’t be needing it again. She’s still trying to get that computer fixed. Crikey! Did you make that great big hole just with a tin-opener?’
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ asked Charlie, and he looked proudly at the results of his work, a jagged hole, easily big enough to get a hand through.
‘What’s it for?’
‘There’s plugs in that shed, Henry,’ said Charlie mysteriously.
‘Sink plugs?’
‘Electric plugs,’ said Charlie, ‘and I can reach them.’
By the end of the afternoon Henry’s burglaring and Charlie’s hole had changed everything. Now the carpet was down and the bed was made. The bedside lamp was glowing and the PlayStation and TV were unpacked and set up. Charlie and Henry (eating hot pizza, chips and salad absent-mindedly made by Charlie’s mother and dumped on the lawn for the cat) were squabbling over the controls.
‘I should have run away ages ago,’ said Charlie.
Henry shared the last chip fairly in half and asked, ‘What’ll you do when I’ve gone?’
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘Home,’ said Henry.
‘Are you going home?’
‘I haven’t run away,’ Henry reminded him.
Charlie suddenly didn’t want his last half chip. All at once, life behind the shed seemed much less cosy. Still he said bravely, ‘I expect I’ll stay up all night. I’ve always wanted to. When are you going, so I can get started?’
‘Now,’ said Henry.
‘Now?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry, and went.
4
Gone for Hours
After Henry had gone there followed a time when Charlie became so bored his stomach ached and he thought he must be ill.
Suddenly there were footsteps in the garden: Max, pushing his bike round the corner of the house.
‘Hi, Max!’ he heard his mother call. ‘Did you have a good time?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ said Max.
‘Supper very soon, when Dad comes home. Just the three of us, because Charlie’s run away.’
‘He has?’ asked Max. ‘Oh superb! Fantastic! At last!’
Behind the shed Charlie pulled awful faces at Max. He was still pulling them when his father came home.
This time both Max and his mother rushed out to tell the news.
‘Charlie’s run away!’ they said happily. ‘It’s been so peaceful. We can’t imagine where he’s gone but he’s definitely completely vanished!’
Charlie’s father had already heard what had happened to the computer, and had just been stopped by the owner of number sixty-two and shown the remains of the fence. So he was not in a good mood. He said it should not be hard to find Charlie.
‘Just a matter of following the trail of destruction he leaves everywhere he goes!’ he said.
‘No, no,’ said Charlie’s mother. ‘You do not understand! He’s been gone for hours; he must be miles away by now. Poor Henry has had to play on his own here all afternoon.’
‘Henry’s not run away too, then?’ asked Charlie’s father in a hopeful kind of voice.
‘Oh no,’ said Charlie’s mother. ‘Henry would not have to do that. Charlie told me this morning that Henry is far better looked after than he is. He does not have a horrible rotten mother always fussing. Or a bossy big brother or a father who never shares his stuff. I am terribly sorry about the computer. I had only turned my back for a minute to get the parachute off the cat … Charlie made her a parachute, you see, very early this morning, before he got up. Poor old Suzy!’
I was being kind! thought Charlie, listening indignantly. I was helping her! She was sitting very dangerously on the banister without a parachute!
‘So that’s what happened to my football shirt!’ grumbled Max. ‘I wondered why it was all tied up with bits of string.’
It was an emergency! thought Charlie. Which is most important, your football shirt or our faithful only cat?
‘Poor old Max,’ Charlie heard his father say as they all went inside.
Poor old Max now! thought Charlie, all alone again. What about poor old Charlie! Having to live out here behind the shed! All by myself! In the dark! In the …
Something cold hit Charlie on the face.
‘RAIN!’ exclaimed Charlie.
It was true it was raining. Slow, heavy drops were falling on Charlie, and Charlie’s bed and bedside lamp, and worst of all, on Charlie’s portable TV and PlayStation.
‘Oh!’ thought Charlie, frantically unplugging and stuffing and packing. ‘What shall I do?’
He had two choices, he realized. He could either go home and put up with his awful family, or he would go somewhere further away. Somewhere dry and comfy.
By the time he had his bags packed his mind was made up. He pushed the Thomas rug and beanbag into the shed, picked up his backpack and his impossibly heavy bags, draped his quilt over his shoulders like a cloak and headed off down the road to Henry’s house.
Luckily, Henry’s back door was open and there was no one in the kitchen. From the living room came the sound of the TV and of Henry’s mother talking on the phone. Charlie crept up the stairs and past the bathroom. Henry’s bedroom was empty too, but from the bathroom came terrific splashing and Henry’s voice ordering, ‘Dive, dive, dive!’ Silently Charlie lowered his bags to the floor, and flopped down on Henry’s bed.
Henry was very surprised to find that Charlie had run away to his house, but he was not sorry. He had felt rather left out, coming home alone and leaving all the adventures to Charlie. So he willingly helped Charlie hide his belongings in the cupboard, fetched him the biscuit tin and went downstairs to ask for two mugs of hot chocolate instead of one.
‘Two?’ asked his mother, and she said into the telephone, ‘Henry has just come in and asked if he can have two hot chocolates! He must be extra thirsty …’
Henry put on his extra thirsty face.
‘Of course you can,’ she said to Henry. ‘And two baths if you like, and two pairs of pyjamas …’
Whoever she was talking to laughed. Henry heard them.
‘… but then bed, and no talking …’
‘Talking?’ asked Henry, startled.
‘… to that hamster … Shall I come and tuck you up?’
‘I will tuck myself up, thank you,’ said Henry angelically, ‘to save you bothering.’
Charlie stayed hidden at Henry’s house for thirty-nine hours. He knew it was that long, because he counted.
It was a time of great quietness.
Food was the easy part. Henry was always appearing with piles of the stuff. Henry’s mother seemed to leave it lying around in uncounted heaps: bunches of bananas, sausage rolls, cartons of fruit juice, boxes of cereal, cheese sticks and sandwiches.
‘I should like toast,’ said Charlie.
Henry brought toast but it was not like home toast. It was made with the wrong sort of bread and spread with the wrong sort of butter. It did not smell right, either.
‘You’re too fussy,’ said Henry crossly, when Charlie c
omplained. ‘You’d better eat as much as you can, whether you like it or not. I might not be able to get any more for ages.’
Henry said this with everything he brought. He made it sound like starvation might happen any moment. Charlie ate until he was stuffed and ungrateful. When Henry appeared on Friday afternoon with a plateful of warm-out-of-the-oven chocolate cakes, Charlie pushed them out of sight under the bed. All that night he could smell them there, and it made him feel awful.
The nights were very long. Charlie slept on Henry’s floor, with Henry’s sleeping bag underneath him, and his own quilt on top. It was not like a sleepover because they could not talk. It was as uninteresting as going to bed at home, except that instead of Max telling ghost stories for company, he had Henry snoring and muttering and tossing the bedclothes about.
But the days were worse than the nights.
During the day Henry and Charlie played silently with every game that Henry owned. They made models out of every piece of Lego. They fitted together every jigsaw puzzle.
It was terribly boring for Charlie, but it was all right for Henry. When he grew tired of the silent bedroom life he could escape. He could tear round the garden kicking goals into his football net. He could watch TV in the living room, or scrape out a cake bowl in the kitchen.
Best of all, he could be noisy. He could jump down the stairs with enormous crashes. He could ring his bike bell or chatter to the man mending the fence at number sixty-two, or yell across the garden to Lulu. Charlie, listening to these happy sounds, felt more and more like a prisoner.
‘Not a prisoner!’ said Henry, insulted, when Charlie told him this. ‘More like a … like a … like a pet! Like Hammy!’
Hammy was Henry’s hamster. He also lived in Henry’s bedroom, constantly supplied with delicious food and terrible toys. He also kept his extra supplies under the bed.
Sometimes Hammy bit people.
Charlie could understand why.
5
No Charlie
Charlie could never have survived the thirty-nine hours in Henry’s bedroom if it wasn’t for one thing.
His family.
After Charlie ran away, Charlie’s family took to visiting Henry’s family very often. They seemed to need to talk about Charlie. They would sit in the garden under Henry’s bedroom window and talk and talk. Charlie could hear every word.
At first their visits were quite cheerful. They talked in loud cheerful voices about what a good time they were having without Charlie, and what an even better time he must be having without them.
But by Friday afternoon, when Charlie had been gone for a whole day and a night, things were changing.
Charlie’s dad started it. He began to complain. He complained about the quietness at home.
‘Quiet makes me jumpy,’ he said. ‘Max is never any good at being properly noisy. Not, you know, totally noisy. I don’t know why, but he can never seem to manage it … We miss Charlie, for noise.’
This pleased Charlie very much, and he could understand it too. Quietness had never been his favourite thing, and lately it had begun to drive him mad.
The next person to complain was Max. Max said he was bored, and this must have been true because it took hardly any persuading to get him to be a goalie for Henry.
Max stopped twenty goals in a row, the last five with his hands behind his back to prove how useless Henry was at football.
Henry said no wonder Charlie had run away.
‘What do you know about Charlie running away?’ asked Max.
‘I know a lot,’ said Henry, looking at Max with sinister half-closed eyes to pay him back for stopping all his goals.
‘Do you think he’ll ever come back?’
‘Nope!’
‘I bet he’s getting pretty hungry by now.’
‘I bet he isn’t,’ said Henry.
‘Cold too, at night.’
‘Boiling hot,’ said Henry firmly.
‘It’s not much fun at home without him. Mum and Dad have no one to moan at except me.’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ said Henry. ‘It’s my turn in goal. Come on.’
So Max shot twenty goals past Henry, the last three with his eyes shut, and Henry said he wasn’t playing any more.
‘Were you watching?’ he asked Charlie in bed that night. ‘Did you see how hard your rotten brother kicked that ball?’
‘Much less hard than usual,’ said Charlie. ‘He was hardly trying.’
‘What’s he like when he tries, then?’
‘Fantastic. Do you think he’s missing me?’
‘No.’
‘Not even a bit?’
‘No.’
‘I think,’ said Charlie, ‘he’s missing me a lot.’
‘Henry and Hammy!’ called Henry’s mother up the stairs. ‘Shush now!’
So they shushed, and Charlie soon fell asleep, tired out with doing nothing. He woke on Saturday morning to the sound of Max’s voice, calling up under the bedroom window.
‘Henry!’
‘What?’ asked Henry. ‘What? What is it? Oh, Max! What d’you want?’
‘Tell Charlie there’s a great big parcel just come for him at our house!’
‘All right,’ said Henry. ‘I’ll tell him …’
‘Ha!’ said Max, sounding extremely pleased.
‘… if I ever see him again!’
Max stamped home, defeated, and later Charlie sent Henry to collect his parcel.
‘How?’ asked Henry.
‘Just ask,’ Charlie said. ‘They’ll let you have it. They let you have my other stuff, didn’t they?’
Charlie was right. They did let Henry have it. He returned to Charlie in triumph and Charlie tore off the wrappers and found a double-barrelled supersonic water-squirter, the perfect present from his Uncle Pete, exactly what he had been wanting all summer.
‘I need to try it out!’ he said.
‘Where?’
Charlie looked around. It was true that upstairs in someone else’s bedroom was not the place to test a double-barrelled water-squirter.
‘Out the window,’ he said at last.
‘You can’t,’ said Henry. ‘Your mum’s out there. Grumbling to my mum. About toast.’
‘Toast?’ asked Charlie, suddenly interested. ‘Toast!’ And he crept to the window to listen.
‘… so much in the habit,’ he heard. ‘I’ve got so much in the habit of making stacks of toast for Charlie that I can’t seem to stop! I’ve done it again this morning! The bird table’s piled high. The cat won’t touch it. I just can’t get used to him being gone …’
She sounded so sad that Charlie could hardly bear it.
‘I should write myself a reminder and stick it on the toaster …’
Charlie’s eyes prickled with tears.
‘… saying NO CHARLIE …’
Charlie could endure it no more. It wasn’t having a water-squirter and nowhere to squirt it. It wasn’t because Max was missing him so much he had to play football with Henry. It wasn’t the quietness that made his father jumpy.
It was the thought of that label on the toaster.
He pushed past Henry and ran down the stairs, through the door, past his amazed mother, out of the garden and along the street and into his own familiar kitchen. And by the time Henry caught up with him, it was like a party in there. A toast party, with a water fight afterwards, Charlie and Henry against Max and Lulu and Mellie, with the dads joining in, and the mothers hugging each other, and everyone saying, ‘Oh, isn’t it wonderful! Charlie’s come home!’
‘I never ran away myself,’ remarked Max, when he and Charlie were finally in bed that night. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Fantastic,’ said Charlie.
‘What’s the best bit?’
‘Oh,’ said Charlie. ‘The last bit, I think. Coming home. And everyone being sorry. And then forgiving them all. Like a hero …’
Max smiled in the dark.
‘… like me!’ said Charlie.
1
The First Tooth
Charlie had four wobbly teeth.
He had:
One that was rather wobbly.
One that was quite wobbly.
One that was slightly wobbly.
One that was just beginning to be wobbly.
He had them all together, and he was very excited about it because they were his first wobbly teeth.
Charlie also had a big brother called Max. Max was very clever. He knew things most other people didn’t know, like what chewing gum was made of and how magnets worked and the way to tell if strange dogs were friendly or not. Max knew so much and was right so often that it was hardly worth arguing with him.
Whenever Charlie wanted to know something he would go to Max for the answer. And if he wanted to prove to anyone that something was true he would say, ‘If you don’t believe me, ask Max!’
And then whoever Charlie was talking to would know that it really was true, because everyone knew how clever Max was.
So Max was a very useful brother to Charlie.
But Max was not useful when Charlie discovered that he had four wobbly teeth.
Charlie showed Max his wobbliest tooth, and asked, ‘How can I make it come out faster?’
Max looked at the tooth and said, ‘You can’t. It’s not that loose! It might be there for ages yet! Anyway, what’s the hurry?’
‘I need it for the tooth fairy,’ said Charlie, with his fingers in his mouth, giving his wobbliest tooth an extra wobble. Charlie was very much looking forward to getting his teeth out, one by one, and leaving them under his pillow for the tooth fairy. His best friend, Henry, had told him about her.
‘The tooth fairy!’ repeated Max. ‘The tooth fairy is for kids!’