Fizzlebert Stump Read Online Free Page A

he ever lost the bit of paper, he’d taken to carrying an old tuna sandwich in another pocket in order to attract Fish, the circus’s sea lion, to his emergency location.)
    But the hope he’d been filled with upon stepping into the house fizzled away in a puff of gloom when he realised that the piece of paper and the sandwich were inside his jacket, which was in the clothes cupboard to the left of the toilet back in the caravan. All he had in the pocket of his dressing gown, which was what he was busy wearing, was a little label that said, ‘Wash at forty degrees’.
    â€˜Is that you, Piltdown?’ called a voice from further in the house.
    â€˜Yeah, Gran,’ shouted the girl, who, it seemed, was called Piltdown.
    â€˜D’you know what time it is?’
    â€˜Yeah, Gran.’
    Now they were in the light Fizz could see his rescuer properly. She was a girl, probably around his own age, certainly around his ownheight. She had scruffy red hair, cut short, and a big grin on her face as she held a finger to her mouth. She reminded him a bit of looking in a dirty mirror. It was rather uncanny. They could almost have been twins. If you didn’t look
too
closely.

    â€˜Don’t let ’er know you’re ’ere,’ she whispered. ‘She don’t like strangers much.’
    â€˜Where have you been, dear?’ the grandmother shouted.
    There was the sound of moving about in the other room, as if an old lady was getting out of bed.
    â€˜Poachers,’ the girl, Piltdown, shouted, while opening a door and pushing Fizz forward. ‘In there, ’n’ be quiet,’ she whispered.
    â€˜Poachers?’ Piltdown’s gran said, coming into the hallway.
    â€˜Yeah, I thought I ’eard someone out there, scuttling around. Just went to ’ave a look, ’n’ get a bitta fresh air too.’
    â€˜Hmm. Find anyone?’
    â€˜Nah, either they’d gorn, or they weren’t there to begin with.’
    As Fizz listened to the conversation he felt around himself (it was dark again). To his side were tall wooden things which might have been mops and to the other side were flaky cardboard boxes on shelves. As he edged his foot carefully forward, so he could lean more comfortably against the shelves, something went SNAP and clung to his slippers.
    â€˜What was that?’ he heard the old lady say.
    â€˜What was what?’ Piltdown answered.
    â€˜I thought I heard something?’
    â€˜I told you, it’s poachers. I ’eard ’em earlier.’
    â€˜Hmm.’
    Fizz wanted to reach down and dislodge whatever it was that had snapped shut on his slipper. He assumed it was a mousetrap, and was glad his toes hadn’t been right up at the edge. He’d got these slippers for Christmasand had been told, ‘You’ll grow into them’. He was getting there, slowly.
    Piltdown’s gran had obviously shuffled out of the hallway because the cupboard door opened a sliver and Piltdown’s voice whispered in.
    â€˜Boy,’ it said. ‘You’d best come out now. She’s in the kitchen. We’ll ’ide you in me bedroom ’til she’s gone out to work. No bother. Quick, run now while she’s busy.’
    She pointed across the hall to a half-open door.
    Fizz did as he was told, because there didn’t seem anything else to do.
    Secretly he would have liked to have spoken to her gran, because she might have been able to find a way to get in touch with his parents, because that’s what grown-ups did.She’d have more of an idea than her granddaughter would, probably. But at the same time, he’d had a bad experience with an old woman before, and the way Piltdown was so insistent about him not meeting her made him a little bit afraid of her, without even having seen her.
    â€˜I’m goin’ back to bed,’ Piltdown shouted at the kitchen from her bedroom. ‘Just for a coupla