What We Saw

Chapter Twenty

I gulped hard as Granddad’s car rolled up onto the drive. He looked up at me and frowned, a little puzzled at our gaze as we peered toward the headlights. He pulled himself out of the car.

‘You okay, lads?’ he asked, before his eyes moved towards the crumbled wreck of the caravan window. His face dropped. He had to grab his car door for support. Gran sat open-mouthed in the passenger seat. Granddad looked like he had seen a ghost. He stormed towards us and narrowed his eyes. ‘What have you done?’ he yelled, looking from me to Adam and back again.

The accusation hurt, even though it was part of our plan. It’d be better if we took the blame. Better than Granddad finding out about the note.

I shuffled my feet, kicking at the rocks beneath me. ‘It was an accident, Grandda—’

Granddad stamped his foot against the pavement. ‘I don’t care whether it’s a bloody accident or not,’ he roared. ‘Go on, who broke it?’

I looked at Adam and he turned back to me. ‘It was—’

‘It was him—’

‘Boys!’ Granddad exploded.

I held my head down as my face began to blush. I turned to Gran, who perched on the step where the note had sat earlier.

‘Don’t you look at me like that, Liam,’ she said. ‘I thought you were more trustworthy than this.’ She tutted and shook her head from side to side. Carla barked, trying her best to out our lies and confess the truth. Thank God she’s only a dog.

Before Gran and Granddad came back, Adam and I had argued about telling them everything. The thought of the whole situation made my head spin. I wanted to get the truth out there. I didn’t understand, and I didn’t want to understand. Did it mean that Donald was on to us? If so, maybe it was best to keep quiet and pretend we didn’t know what was going on.

It wasn’t long before Martin, the repairman, turned up to assess the damage. He shook his head disapprovingly as Adam and I tried not to make eye contact with anybody else.

‘I should be able to get this sorted in the morning,’ Martin said. ‘Until then, you might want to sleep in a friend’s van or something, ‘cause I’m gonna have someone up here pretty early tomorrow, and there’ll be a lot of banging.’

Granddad shook his head and glanced towards us. ‘The lads should stay in here for the night, really,’ he said. ‘Might knock some sense into them.’

‘You can always stay in mine for the night.’ We turned round and saw Mrs. Jeeves approaching in her dressing gown and slippers. I bet she’d been waiting and listening to everything that had been going on for ages, the nosey woman. Adam tutted, and Gran shot evils at him.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Granddad said, turning back to Gran. ‘What d’you say, eh?’

Gran nodded and pulled herself up from the step. I remembered the note. That writing.

‘I’ve only got space for two, so two of you will have to sleep on the floor,’ Mrs Jeeves said, glancing at Adam and me.

Granddad coughed and followed her towards her caravan. ‘They’re lucky they aren’t sleeping outside tonight.’

Mrs Jeeves’ living room was a carbon copy of ours, right down to the positioning of the picture frames. Instead of family shots, photographs of cats dominated the scene. The van smelled of stale wee and old sweat. Adam and I slept on the floor in the living room. A woodlouse caught my eye under the dust-covered landscape of the carpet. I suppose this was our punishment. Even worse, Mrs. Jeeves had given up her bed to Gran and Granddad, and she slept on the sofa next to us. I had to listen to her wheezy lungs as she snored, saliva dribbling from the corner of her mouth towards the rough pink carpet we lay on.

But we had something else on our mind. Not being able to talk freely about what we had seen was brutal. The note. The truth. We stared at each other. Our mystery had been taken in a new direction. Before, we were just the witnesses. Now, we were targets.

I reached into my back pocket, being sure to check that Mrs. Jeeves’ disapproving eyes were still glued shut. I waited for Adam’s breathing to slow. Even the woodlouse stopped moving, twitching on the spot as it tugged against a tuft of old, discoloured material.

I felt the note in my hand and gulped. The crumpled, yellow paper was stiff against my fingers. Even though it was quite dark, the prominent, unmistakable black lettering still stood out in the dead of the night. The words burned into my eyelids, and I blinked to refocus on them.

Keep your mouths shut, or I’ll shut them for you.