‘No, Mr Driver, I did this yesterday and the doctor said to stay home and rest it up on pillows, which I did, but then I had a big problem to solve and I think better on your fence. I’m sorry.’ All I seemed to do was cry lately, and here I was crying again.

Mr Driver helped me to stand up and took me into his kitchen. He sat next to me and took a careful look at my hand. He was as gentle as Dr Frayne, and just as kind. He made me a cup of instant coffee with a lot of milk and sugar. He said the sugar was good for shock. And then he asked me what the really big problem was that made me climb his fence.

I hadn’t been intending to tell him but I was so worried about Sixpence that the river of words started to flow again and it all tumbled out onto his kitchen table. I told him about Mr Johnson and the nudie girl, and Mum being cross about visiting the Johnsons, about the new side gate and Sixpence living in the museum, and about the problem of getting Sixpence home on the bus if I managed to steal her back. I asked if he would let me hide Sixpence in his garage until I could be very well behaved up to Christmas and Dad would let me keep her in the garden. By the time the whole story was out there to look at, I felt quite tired and put my head on the kitchen table, which was very cool and made me feel a bit better.

Mr Driver asked me about my hand. I said I hurt it falling out of a tree. He asked me again how I hurt it, and I just looked at him and said very slowly again that I hurt it falling out of a tree. He helped me to stand up and took me into his best front room and laid me on the sofa. He put my sore hand up on pillows that were a bit dusty but smelled of roses and lavender and asked me to try to have a little rest and he would see if he could ring and find out if Sixpence was in the museum for me. I felt a bit worried about that, but I knew I could basically trust Mr Driver, and it would be good to know if she was okay. He told me to wait until he got back, and I bit off every nail down until they all hurt.

CHAPTER 6

I’m not exactly sure what happened next, and I couldn’t really ask the grown-ups to tell me, but I think it went something like this.

Mr Driver went over to the Johnsons’ house and spoke to Mrs Johnson. I don’t know what he said, but he must have said something big because Mr Johnson came home from work straight away. I think Mr Driver rang my dad too, because my dad also came home from work. I could hear yelling in the street in front of our house when I woke up, and when I looked out of Mr Driver’s best front room curtains, the three men were all standing in a kind of circle in the middle of the road. I could hear Mr Johnson’s voice the loudest and then my dad’s voice. Mr Driver either wasn’t speaking, or was talking quietly, because I couldn’t pick up the sound of his words.