Shrinking Ralph Perfect Read Online Free Page B

places. Cellars. Toilets. Drains. Shoes. Spreads like a fog. Checked behind your washing machine lately, have you?’
    ‘Oh,’ went Annie, beating her chest. ‘This is terrible. Just when I was thinking of selling the house.’
    Jack put the mushroom into his pocket. ‘Of course, that’s not the end of it,’ he said, with a grin so oily it could cure a mouse’s squeak. He stamped a heel on the polished wooden boards. The thump so startled Ralph that he lost his footing and dislodged a plant pot of fuchsias from a stand. The pot fell with a thud onto softly-turned soil. Another centimetre either way and it would have smashed to pieces on a border-stone.
    Knocker was quickly on his feet and growling. Jackhadn’t heard the shuffle outside, but his strange little guard dog had. Letting his twitching nose do the leading, Knocker padded towards the open window. Ralph was about to cut away and run when Jack rasped quietly, ‘Git down, Knocker,’ and stamped the boards once more. ‘Do you hear them?’ he asked.
    Annie clutched her blouse to her throat in terror.
    ‘Worms,’ hissed Jack.
    The old dear’s eyes almost popped from their sockets.
    ‘Worms that likes to eat wood, my dear.’
    ‘No,’ said Annie, cocking her head.
    ‘Takes an experienced ear,’ said the builder. He grabbed hold of the rug and whisked it aside. ‘If we was to take up a board,’ he said, ‘the proof would be there in the joists, in the pudding .’ He pulled a jemmy from inside his jacket. ‘Do it for you, but the back’s playing up. Old injury, rescuing the dog.’ He handed the tool to Annie.
    ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’
    ‘It’s easy,’ snapped the builder, eyes shrinking to points. ‘Wedge it in a gap and put your weight on it.’
    To Ralph’s horror, Annie did.
    With a snap, and another, a board sprang loose, throwing a rusty brad across the room.
    Meanwhile, out of sight of Annie, but not of Ralph, Jack Bilt ordered Knocker into position, then twiddledthe strange contraption on his wrist. Ralph saw it clearly: two touches on the red knob, one on the green. Almost immediately, a cloud of fine dust began to pother upwards from the gap in the floor.
    ‘Tut, tut. Worse than I thought,’ said Jack. He kicked the board fully out of position and a firework of wood motes shot into the air. ‘Look at them go,’ he whooped, dancing like a man from the backwoods of America. ‘More holes than a Swiss cheese. They’re chewing it to bits. They’re gobbling it up!’
    ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ wailed Annie. ‘I’ve lived here for sixty-seven years. I never knew. Rot and woodworm. Insects and fungi. I can’t leave now. Who will give me ninety thousand pounds for this?’
    Jack tapped her on the shoulder. ‘In stormy times, there’s always an umbrella in the rack.’ He spat on his palm and held it for her handshake. ‘Give you fifty thousand – cash.’

A Strange Discovery
    And so the deal was done. Within a fortnight, Annie had packed up and gone and the house next door was no more than a shell, stripped of its furniture (bar an old sofa), awaiting the arrival of the builder, Bilt.
    He didn’t come immediately. There was a gap of nearly a week, in fact, between Annie’s departure and Jack’s moving in. And when he did come, the moment was very low key. No removal vans pulling up outside, just the battered white van (still minus one wiper) that Ralph had spotted that first afternoon. Ralph was in the front room, following the afternoon football results, when headlights panned across the TV alcove and there was a slight crunch of wood, as if someone had clipped next door’s gatepost with their bumper. He leapt up at once and saw Jack’s van pulling onto Annie’s drive. Annie’s ex-drive. He must get used to that.
    ‘Mum, he’s here,’ he announced, watching the builder reverse and re-park, this time knocking over a plastic flower urn that Annie had left as a ‘housewarming’ present. Her good