Free Princess Phoebe by Scilla James

grins.
    â€˜I’ll want you to help me next week Ellie,’ Mum says, as she hands me the salt and vinegar to put on the table. ‘I’m going down to the council to tell them they’ve got to find us a bigger place. I’m going crazy here with all of us and no space. I’ll want you to look after Jack and Patrick while I’m talking to the Man.’
    Oh great , I think. Hours of pushing the pram up and down a smelly council office and trying to stop Patrick running off, while Mum queues up to speak to a man who’ll put her in an even worse mood than usual. But before I can say anything, Dad interrupts. He’s been so quiet in his chair I’d forgotten he was there.
    â€˜I’ll go Pearl,’ he says.
    â€˜You?’ says Mum. ‘You don’t usually go down there. Are you sure? D’you promise?’
    â€˜Yes,’ says Dad. He seems about to go on and say something else when there’s a loud banging on the door.
    â€˜Frank,’ says Dad.
    I try my best to sink through the floor, but in reality I can only sit in the corner of one of the chairs and concentrate on feeding Jack. I try to breathe normally in case Frank can hear my heart hammering. He comes lumbering in and without saying hello, he lowers himself down into his usual place on the sofa. I can feel him looking at me, hard.
    â€˜I’m missing a dog Charlie,’ he says. ‘I had her last night in my van, and when I got to my brother Alex’s place she’d turned into thin air.’
    â€˜I heard you had a spot of bother last night,’ says Dad.
    â€˜You could say that,’ says Frank. ‘But it’s this dog I’m thinking of. I just want to know if your Nick, or even your little girl here,’ and he looks at me again, ‘might have some information for me. The dog I lost looked a lot like the one she had for a while.’
    â€˜How could Ellie have anything for you,’ says Dad, ‘she’s eleven!’
    â€˜Eleven she might be,’ says Frank, ‘but that doesn’t stop her being a thief.’
    â€˜Don’t be ridiculous,’ says Dad, but then Mum comes round to the sofa and stands in front of Frank. She raises her voice.
    â€˜Don’t you go calling my girl a thief,’ she says, ‘it’s bad enough that you took Ellie’s dog from her, but to come here accusing her of stealing it back is going too far! Does she look like she’s got a dog?’
    Frank seems surprised. It must be a shock, Mum standing up to him.
    â€˜Where’s your Nick?’ he asks instead.
    â€˜At work,’ says Mum, ‘and he hasn’t got any dogs either!’
    â€˜All right, all right,’ says Frank. ‘Calm down Pearl. Don’t get in a sweat.’ Frank’s voice goes quiet and he stares straight at Mum. ‘The dog disappeared somewhere between Lennie putting her in my van, and me looking to get her out again when we reached my brother’s place. Lennie swears he shut the door when he got out to be sick, and I know I only threw one dog out in the woods when we stopped the second time. So how d’you explain that Pearl? That’s my question.’
    â€˜How would I know? And what were you throwing a dog out into the woods for?’ asks Mum, her voice still indignant.
    â€˜Past its best,’ says Frank leaning back on the sofa, as if that explained everything. ‘There’s a rescue just down the road from there and they usually pick them up.’
    â€˜If they don’t get run over first,’ Mum says.
    â€˜That too, Pearl. It’s a tough life,’ he says, as he gets to his feet again and looks in my direction. ‘Only I can’t just leave it, that’s the problem. No one gets one over on Frank Skally and I think that might be what’s happening here. So I’ll be making further enquiries.’
    Then as he goes to leave he turns to Dad and says, ‘By the way