Inside Grandad Read Online Free Page B

trying to find someone in Edinburgh who knew what Donald was doing that weekend.
    His last thought as he fell asleep was, I'll finish
Selkie
in time for my birthday.

ext day was Sunday. Gavin slept late, and when he came down Gran was already on the telephone, telling her friends what had happened. Mum started making plans the moment he came into the kitchen. He half listened as he got his breakfast together.
    "It's my Sunday on, darling, and I can't ask Mary or Bob to stand in because they've both got stuff fixed …"
    (Mum and two other people in her office took turns working on Sundays, showing people houses.)
    "… so Gran's going to take you in to Aberdeen on the train after lunch and I should be off by four so I'll come and pick you up and find out what's going on, if anything. And for tomorrow I'll ask Janet if she can have you after school until Gran gets home, or Bessie McCracken, or—"
    "But—" said Gavin. He'd already decided what he wanted to do.
    "All right, darling, if you don't get on with Ian I can always ask—"
    "No. Please. I get on fine with Ian, but I want to go and see Grandad after school."
    "No, darling. I'm sorry, but—"
    "Please, Mum. I'll be all right. I wouldn't talk to anybody I didn't know. And Gran can show me today about getting to the Royal Vic. Please. It would be good for Grandad, wouldn'tit, having someone with him he knows? Gran can't get there till the evening. And then I can come home with her or you can come and pick us up. Please."
    You could make Mum listen if you really tried. She started to shake her head.
    "Please," he said again.
    "I've got to go. I'll think about it, darling. Tell Gran, in case you want me today, I'll keep my mobile switched on and …"
    Her good-bye kiss was a sort of punctuation mark in the flow. She was still talking as she went out the front door.
    Gran could perfectly well have driven them in to the Royal Vic in Grandad's car, but she hated driving in Aberdeen. Almost as soon as the train pulled out of the station she started telling him about people who'd lived in some of the houses they passed, and their mothers and fathers, and (if the train hadn't come to another house for her to tell him about) grannies and granddads and who'd married who and then run away with who else, and so on. He realized it was only her way of stopping herself thinking about what had happened to Grandad, and Gran's talk could be pretty interesting if you were in the mood, but not now. He wanted to think. He got his homework out and pretended to be doing it, but that didn't make any difference. In the end he put his homework away and waited for a chance to interrupt her.
    "Gran?"
    "Yes, darling. What is it?"
    "Do you know anyone who goes from Stonehaven toAberdeen every afternoon? After school, so I can go and visit Grandad without having to wait for you? I'm sure I could go on my own, but Mum's not going to let me."
    "I don't know what we're coming to. Your age, I was on the bus out to Muchalls on my own for my piano lessons in the evening, Tuesdays, regular as clockwork, and that meant home in the dark wintertime, with the lighting nothing like so good as they've got it now, not that I couldn't've gone to Carrie Lennox—she was in Slug Road then, just a wee step away, but my mam had had words with her over us missing choir practice—those days we were all Auld Kirk, of course—so it was the bus to Muchalls for me, and Mr. McPhee, with his sister sitting in the corner so that none of us girls could make trouble saying he'd been stroking our knees or something, poor wee man, and to think he'd played in a concert once in front of the queen …"
    "Gran?"
    "Yes, darling."
    "Somebody to take me to Aberdeen after school."
    "I'm thinking, darling. Colin Smith could've done it, but he's been dead this eighteen years, since the train hit his van on the level crossing, hurrying, it came out, because of not wanting his boss to know he was taking a detour to visit Fiona Murray up at her