Free Monkey and Me by David Gilman

our music teacher, the next day she read it and had quite a sad look on her face. And then she smiled and put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m sorry you’re going to miss singing today, Jez. It’s your favourite.”
    We’ve been practising ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ for the end of term concert. She bent down and held my shoulders and said, “It’ll be all right, Jez. We’ll do it again next week so you don’t miss it.”
    She is very caring, is Mrs Donovan, and I felt a bit bad for deceiving her. But I had to get to Monkey and save him and that was more important than anything else. Sometimes you have to give up things that are important to you so you can help someone else. Even singing my favourite song. Well, second favourite if you count ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
    Getting into Black Gate was less creepy now. It felt a bit like going into your own house. You know where the doors are, you know where the kitchen is. Of course, I hadn’t had a chance to explore the whole house yet, it was still very dark in most of the rooms and there were still shadows that tended to take on different shapes if I looked at them too long. So it was quite helpful to sing the words of the song to myself as I made my way through to the big greenhouse.
    When I emptied my backpack this time I had lots of treats for Monkey. I sat on the sacks and laid out books to read to him, some comics, a packet of fruit and nuts, some Juicy Fruits and a T-shirt, because I thought that, even though he was a chimpanzee, he might be getting a bit cold at this time of year.
    I sat on the sacks and waited. As soon as he heard my voice he came out of hiding and, without even asking, took an apple, and sat right in front of me, as if we were in class together and were going to do a reading project.
    I thought I should keep it simple to start with, so while he crunched away at the apple I started reading from one of my favourite stories about a boyin Africa who makes friends with a lion and then a terrible thing happens and the lion gets sent to a zoo and then the boy becomes a soldier and when he’s fighting in France he sees the lion in the cage and they are reunited.
    But after about a page and a bit the monkey seemed more interested in picking his toenails, which my mum would think was a pretty disgusting thing to do while you are eating.
    â€œIt’s a very good story and I think you’ll find the relationship between the lion and the boy is very similar to you and me,” I told him. But then I remembered when I first went to school that the teacher had taught us all to read using picture books, so I took out one of the comics I had brought with me. That way I could describe the picture and show him.
    â€œThis is the Silver Surfer, who travels faster than the speed of light. See, there’s the Silver Surfer zooming across the sky and he is about to go into battle with Doomsday Man.”
    Every time I explained the picture I showed it to him. He looked, grinned and made that funny noise with his lips again, so I think he was gettingthe hang of it. Once he had finished the banana, he got up and did a head over heels roll, which I think was his way of telling me he was happy. And then he walked back towards the kitchen, stopped and looked at me, as if he was waiting for me to join him. So I did.
    He scuttled off through the darkened kitchen and back into the hallway. I followed him through the hall, stepping in and out of those creepy shadows and listening as the wind came through the old window frames.
    He chatted and scampered up the stairs, but I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to go up there. There are times when having an imagination is a really bad thing, because what looks like an old light-fitting can suddenly become a snake’s head. The best thing to do in that situation is to tell your brain to shut up – you know it’s only a