9. Under the Bed
Chapter 9
Under the Bed
‘ N inety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred. Coming, ready or not!’ called Amy from her seat beside the fire. She knew Matt and the boys had hidden upstairs, because they were hopeless at being quiet when they played hide-and-seek.
She climbed the stairs to the landing. It had only one tiny skylight in the roof so even in the middle of the day it was dark unless the bedroom doors were open. There was nowhere there anyone could hide, as the only piece of furniture was an old oak bookcase. The boys’ twin room was at the head of the stairs, and its door was firmly closed. Amy walked past it as, from the footsteps she’d heard, she suspected Oliver was hiding there and she didn’t want to find him yet. It would be best to find Matt first so that neither of the boys had to lose. The next door on her right opened into the main bathroom, in a small square room above the front door which had been a single bedroom when Amy had visited the cottage as a young girl. It had been small for a bedroom, but it was huge for a bathroom. Matt might be hidden in the bath, or perhaps behind the shower curtain … no, both were empty. Next, she opened the door and went down two steps into the brand-new sloping-ceilinged single bedroom in the attic above the kitchen. It had been created when the cottage was restored and it was so small that there was only room for a single bed, a chair and a bedside table. Unless Matt could fold himself into one of the drawers in the bedside table the only place he could hide was under the bed.
‘I’m looking under the bed,’ she announced loudly, and the wardrobe in the next room giggled loudly. That was Harry, then. Matt wasn’t under the bed so he must be in either the big double room with Harry, or in the boys’ twin bedroom with Oliver. She opened the door into the double room at the end of the landing, which was above the dining room. It was the largest of the bedrooms and had more potential hiding places than the others. She crept past the rustling wardrobe to look for Matt. He wasn’t tucked in the gap beside the chest of drawers, and he wasn’t behind the door. There was only one place left in there he could be. She lifted the heavy white bedspread and looked underneath the bed.
‘Found you, Matt!’ she announced loudly. ‘Come on then, out you come.’ He wriggled awkwardly out from under the bed.
‘You didn’t find me! You walked right past!’ crowed the wardrobe, and the door rattled. ‘Oh. Can’t open it. I’m stuck inside. Let me out!’
She opened the wardrobe door, whereupon Harry tumbled out, laughing.
‘She found you first, Matt, you lose!’ he gloated.
‘Shall we all look for Oliver?’ Matt suggested.
‘He’s very quiet. I wonder if he’s stuck in a wardrobe too?’ Harry bounced along the landing to their bedroom. ‘Come out, Oliver, you’ve won.’
Oliver’s hiding place wasn’t hard to spot; there was a boy-shaped lump in one of the beds, but when Matt pulled back the covers, it turned out to be a pile of pillows.
‘Good one, Olly. So where are you hiding?’
Silence.
They looked under the beds and in the wardrobe, and Oliver was in neither place. There was nowhere else left to hide.
‘I’m sure he was in here,’ Matt said. ‘I saw him come in.’
‘Perhaps he’s sneaked outside?’ Harry said. ‘Or perhaps he’s up the chimney?’ He crossed to the little fireplace between the two beds and got down on his hands and knees to look up the chimney.
‘Nope. Not up there,’ he announced. ‘He must be downstairs. Or he’s vanished. Pfft.’ He made a gesture as if he was casting a spell.
You couldn’t go downstairs quietly in this house; the landing floorboards were bare wood, and every tread of the staircase had its own creak or rattle. They would have heard if he’d gone downstairs.
‘I didn’t hear him.’ Amy started to worry. Since her mother’s sudden and unexpected death, coming so soon after her marriage break up, it was hard not to. What if Oliver had done something stupid like try to climb out of the window? It didn’t seem likely, but the boys had gone missing last summer. Even though she told herself it was ridiculous, still she imagined him out there, lost in the cold night on his own, straying out onto the high fells, or like her mother, falling into the beck or the tarn.
She pulled back the curtains to see if the window had been opened and to her huge relief Oliver leapt out.
‘I win!’ he yelled. He’d managed to tuck himself up onto the broad windowsill behind the curtain and stay there silent and still all this time. He certainly had more patience than Harry.
‘I’m the best at hiding, aren’t I?’ he demanded.
‘Yes. Yes, you are,’ Amy said, still recovering from the surprise of finding him and the fear of having lost him.
‘I would have been the best if I hadn’t decided to stop hiding,’ Harry said.
‘Look, I think that’s enough hide and seek for now. You got stuck and Oliver nearly gave me a heart attack, so I think it’s bedtime.’ Amy risked a glance at Matt, who smiled. ‘Why don’t you two put your ‘jamas on, then who wants a bedtime story?’
‘Me!’ yelled both boys, as they scrambled into their night clothes. If she’d told any of their classmates they were both looking forward to a bedtime story they would’ve denied it strongly, but within five minutes they were tucked up in bed, teeth brushed, ready and waiting, much like characters in an old children’s book. Any minute now, Peter Pan would fly in through the window and demand they accompany him to Never Land. That was one she hadn’t tried on Harry. He’d come to enjoy having books read to him, even though he still drew the line at reading them by himself, and since the summer they’d read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tom’s Midnight Garden, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Railway Children – all her old favourites.
‘You said it was a Christmas book,’ Harry prompted her, trying to see what book she had in her hand.
‘Because you both enjoyed Swallows and Amazons when we were here in the summer, I thought you’d like another story about the same children,’ she said. ‘It’s called Winter Holiday. ’ She held up an old hardback with an orange-and-white dust-wrapper.
‘Is it about Titty?’ Harry asked. The boys giggled, as they always did, at the mention of her name.
‘Yes. Only this time she’s not one of the main characters and she isn’t in it quite as much, so you’ll have to concentrate on the story and less on laughing at her name.’
‘Aw. I like Titty , ’ said Oliver, with a snigger which she chose to ignore.
‘There are two new characters in this one,’ she told them, ‘and you won’t find their names quite so amusing. They’re called … what was it? Something to do with Morse code. Dot and Dash, I think they call them – they were my favourites when I was your age.’
‘Dot and Dash? They’re crap … I mean very, very bad names,’ said Harry.
Amy sat down on the rug between the two beds, opened the book and began to read. It took her six lines to remember the lad wasn’t called Dash. Oh no. He was called –
‘Dick!’ Harry shouted.
‘He’s called Dick.’ Oliver laughed. ‘Dick and Titty!’
‘Let’s not be silly about this boys.’
They nodded seriously, and for about four seconds they tried very hard to keep it in, but then they looked at each other and burst out laughing.
‘Do you want me to read to you, or not?’ She hoped a stern tone of voice would encourage them to settle. Harry nodded vehemently, but there was a glint of mischief in Oliver’s eyes.
‘Yes, we want more about Dick,’ he said innocently and both boys dissolved into laughter again.
‘Boys, you mustn’t be like this when Olly’s Granny Diane gets here,’ she said. ‘You’re being very rude.’
‘She’s not here now,’ Harry pointed out.
‘It’s still very rude, even if Diane isn’t here. And remember your promise?’
‘Best behaviour. I know, you said.’ Harry pulled a face and Oliver smirked.
‘Granny Diane says it’ll help Harry to be around me. He might try to behave more like me, and less like he usually does,’ Oliver said smugly. ‘She thinks I’m a good influence.’
Amy raised her eyebrows. ‘Does she really? Well, perhaps I’ll have something to say to Granny Diane about that.’