House of the Lost Read Online Free Page B

articles into envelopes and going off to post them.
    ‘So you see,’ said the man, ‘you’d be helping your father by doing this.’
    A tiny voice was whispering inside Matthew’s head that this was all wrong, these men did not want him to help his father and they did not want to prove his father’s innocence. They wanted to prove that he really was a traitor. They wanted him to be a traitor.
    He was trying to find a polite way of saying he could not do any of this and wondering if they would believe him if he said he was not allowed in the study or that it was locked when his father was out of the house, when the first man said, ‘I expect you’ve got a lot of friends, a boy like you. I expect you’re very fond of them, those friends. You’d want to help them all you could.’
    ‘There are all kinds of ways of helping friends,’ said the other one. ‘One way is to make sure they stay safe.’
    Their voices sounded different when they said this, and Matthew began to feel more frightened than ever. He had no idea how to reply, so he hunched a shoulder and stared determinedly through the window so he would not have to look at either of them.
    ‘Well, Matthew?’ said the leader after a moment, and although his voice was smiley and nice again, Matthew could still hear what he had said earlier: ‘You’d want to help them . . . to make sure they stay safe.’ Did they mean friends like Mara?
    But if these men could say his father was a traitor, he would be taken away and put in prison – perhaps for years. Or he would die because they would shoot him or chop off his head.
    ‘I won’t do it,’ said Matthew, looking the man straight in the eyes. And then, because his father said he must be polite to everyone no matter who they might be, he said again, ‘I’m very sorry indeed, but I won’t do it.’
    He had expected them to return, but they did not, and after a while he began to think he might be safe. Life was ordinary again. Matthew went to school each day and Wilma cooked the meals, and his father worked in the study. Sometimes he went into the town to buy paper or ink, or post one of the large envelopes he said contained an article. If it was a Saturday Matthew could go with him on these trips, which he liked because of seeing shops and people. It was quite a long journey to make, so they nearly always had lunch while they were out. Matthew liked this as well, because it was different and interesting.
    It was on one of these trips that his father said, ‘Matthew, I know there’s something troubling you – I can sense there is – and I won’t pry because everyone’s allowed a few secrets. But I hope you know you can always talk to me about things. I’d never be shocked or upset by anything, and I might be able to make things right for you.’ He paused, then said, ‘Your mother could always make things right for people – it was a gift she had. I don’t have her gift, but I can try.’
    His father hardly ever mentioned Matthew’s mother, but when he did it always sounded as if the words were being scraped out of some deep hurting place inside him. Matthew could not remember his mother at all, but he could not bear hearing this scraping pain in his father’s voice. He had been drinking lemonade which was served in a frosty glass, and he kept his eyes on the glass so he would not have to see the pain in his father’s eyes. ‘There’s nothing wrong,’ he said in an awkward mumble. ‘Well, only school things, I s’pose.’
    ‘School things?’ Was there a note of relief in his father’s voice?
    Matthew hunched a shoulder. ‘Arithmetic.’ He risked a glance at his father and saw his face break into the rare, sweet smile he loved, but which he sometimes found painful without understanding why.
    ‘Oh God, figures,’ said his father. ‘I hated them at school, as well. I used to make up stories about how the figures were in a conspiracy – that’s a plot – to confuse me. How the eight