Free The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan Page B

and shoot me.’
    She turned and seemed to hesitate and for one anxious moment Peter thought she would do just that. But she took out her scarf and wound it over her mouth, and pulled her cap down tight. She crossed to the window and began to climb out.
    ‘You know, I’ve had an awful lot of fun these past few months. Now I’ll have to go back to shouting at children.’

    ‘Yes,’ Peter said kindly. ‘You can’t get arrested for that.’ She flashed him one last yellow smile, and then she was gone. Peter heard the creak of her tread on the rungs, and the scrape of the ladder being pulled away from the wall. He sat down on the edge of his bed and put his head in his hands and sighed. That was very very close.
    He was still sitting in this position when he heard footsteps thundering up the stairs. The door flew open and his father rushed in and crouched at Peter’s side and took his hand.
    ‘Thank God you’re all right,’ Thomas Fortune said breathlessly.
    ‘Yes,’ Peter said. ‘It was very very …’
    ‘You’ve been up here asleep,’ his father said. ‘That’s just as well. You didn’t hear a thing. He took the TV, and the blanket, and all the soap from the bathroom. Cut a hole in the glass of a side window and undid the screws …’
    While his father went on talking, Peter was staring at the mouse-hole. During the days that followed, he was to spend hours on his stomach, searching in that hole with a length of straightened-out wire coat-hanger. Whenever he passed Mrs Goodgame in the street, she pretended not to know him. She never kept her word and returned the stolen goods, and mean- while the burglaries continued right to the end of the street. She would go to jail if he could just find those photographs, so he kept on jiggling and poking with his piece of wire. But he never found that roll of film, and nor did he ever find his model of the Eiffel Tower.

Chapter Six

The Baby
    One afternoon in spring, when the kitchen was filled with sun- light, Peter and Kate were told that their Aunt Laura and her baby, Kenneth, would be coming to live for a while. No reason was given, but it was clear from their parents’ solemn looks that not all was well with their aunt.
    ‘Laura and the baby will take your room, Kate,’ their mother said. ‘You’ll have to move in with Peter.’
    Kate nodded bravely.
    ‘Is that all right with you, Peter?’ his father asked.
    Peter shrugged. There didn’t seem to be much choice.
    And so it was arranged. In fact, Peter looked forward to Laura’s arrival. She was the youngest of his mother’s many sisters and brothers and he liked her. She was dangerous and fun. He had once watched her at a country fair leap off the top of a two-hundred-foot crane attached to an elastic rope. She had come hurtling out of the sky, and just before she was dashed to pieces on the grass, she had gone shooting up into the air again with a long scream of terror and hilarity.

    Kate moved into Peter’s room, bringing her newest game, a box of magic, with a wand and a book of spells. She also brought along a small detachment of thirty dolls. The same day a mountain of baby gear appeared in the house – a cot, a high chair, a playpen, a pram, a buggy, a push-cart, an indoor swing and five large bags of clothes and toys. Peter was suspicious. Surely one small person shouldn’t need this much stuff. Kate, on the other hand, was crazy with excitement. Even on Christmas Eve she had never been this far gone.
    The children were allowed to stay up late to greet the visitors. The sleeping baby was carried to the sofa and settled there. Kate knelt by it, as if she were in church, gazing into the infant face and occasionally sighing. Laura sat on the other side of the room and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. Peter could tell at a glance she was in no mood for fun or danger, unless, of course, you counted smoking. She replied to their mother’s gentle remarks and questions with short answers, and