Free The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir by John Mitchell Page A

dig all the way to Australia. Although we are also hungry and it would be quite nice to have some bananas and coconuts.
    We do have a biscuit tin. It’s in the pantry and that’s where Nana keeps her Dundee cake but I didn’t tell the men about that biscuit tin because the cake’s all gone so you will only find a few crumbs in there and certainly no money.
    If I was going to hide some money, I wouldn’t put it under my bed. I would dig a hole in the backyard and bury it. That’s what pirates do. They bury their treasure and make a map with a cross on it. I would make a treasure map in invisible ink and keep it in my pocket and if anyone found it they would just see a blank piece of paper and I would laugh because only I would know that it was a secret treasure map. Nana told me you can make invisible ink with lemon juice but I’ve never tried it because we don’t have money for lemons. But I saw a real lemon once in the grocery shop.
    If we were in Australia right now, I would go outside and pick a banana off a tree. A banana and a coconut. And I would give them to my mum because she is crying. She cries a lot and I think it’s because we don’t have any coal for the fire and my dad is away seeing a man about a dog. But I think he will come home soon and bring some coal with him and we will be warm again.
    Yes, he will come home soon and we will sit around the fire and he will tell us stories about where he has been and all the adventures he has seen. Maybe he will have a treasure map with him because he’s hidden some money somewhere and he’s not stupid enough to hide it in a biscuit tin under his bed.
    Mum has wrapped some blankets around us and told us to sit close together. Now Emily is crying too and the tears are making little tracks on her cheeks through all the mud on her face. I gave her back the hammer and told her to keep hold of it.
    I don’t want to dig to Australia now. It’s cold and dark tonight.

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    T hose men came back again with a policeman and they searched our whole house. They even looked under my bed but they only found my empty piss pot and my set of six whisky glasses with the Scottish soldiers on them. And the policeman was really excited when he found the biscuit tin in the kitchen cupboard but it only had some crumbs in it from the Dundee cake. I already knew that.
    The policeman said my dad is in a lot of trouble and that made my mum cry and the two men said there would be more tears before this is over. They’re going to get their money back one way or another. Then they all left.
    “What did they say?” Nana asked.
    “They said he’s a thief. He’s got the money from all those house moves and he should have handed it in at the end of the week. It’s not his money,” Mum replied.
    “So where is it, lassie? Where is all the money?”
    “Where do you think?”
    “Spent.”
    “Aye, spent. Spent on all his pals down the Fitzroy. Down his bloody throat, that’s where.”
    “My God. A sinner under our own roof. I’ve never heard the like of it. I will say an extra prayer tonight, that’s right enough. A sinner under our very own roof.”
    It’s not very nice to say those things about my dad. My dad is not a sinner because a sinner is a very bad person who will go to live with the Devil.I don’t want my dad to live with the Devil. He might be lost and that’s why he has been gone so long.
    So it’s good that Mum has now gone looking for him. I think she wants to find him before the policeman does but Nana said it’s a waste of time and we’ll never see him again. But she is wrong because he said he would never leave me. And if he has to run away from that policeman, he will come back for me and we will go far away to a place where no one can find us.
    And even though she said it was a waste of time, Nana has gone looking for Dad too.
    I don’t know why it’s so hard to find my dad because he always goes to the Fitzroy to see a man about a dog. But he might be