Free The Finding of Freddie Perkins by Liz Baddaley Page B

quietly to leave the space free for the Fynd and its paper.
    The wait this time was sat out in the sitting room, and Freddie found it unbearably long.
    He wasn’t exactly surprised that Granny P fell asleep only ten minutes in, because they had had such an exciting and exhausting day. But all the same it was hard because now he didn’t even have anyone to talk to him to help pass the time.
    He couldn’t settle to anything.
    He tried reading his favourite comic, watching TV, and playing computer games, but somehow none of their made-up worlds captivated his interest half as much as what he now knew was going on just across the hall.
    This was the kind of agonising waiting time that only drawing could fill, and he even got as far as getting out his sketchpad and pencils. But it was no good, the ideas just wouldn’t come like they used to.
    There was nothing for it. He would simply have to sit it out.
    * * *
    At two minutes before five, when the hour was not quite entirely up, but Freddie’s patience absolutely was, he woke Granny P. Despite her nap, she was as impatient as him to see what the Fynd had said, and so they both rushed into the dining room.
    There on the table were more words – quite a lot more than the two short phrases they had seen so far.

    â€˜Wow!’ said Freddie, ‘Wow!’
    Granny P was just about to say that she could think of no other word for it when the front door shut and Dad called out that he was home.
    Nothing more needed to be said. Granny P and Freddie quickly tidied up the pieces of paper into Freddie’s earlier created ‘Fynd studies’ folder, and hid it in the sideboard drawer with the booklet he had made about taking care of the Fynd.
    * * *
    Dinner that night was a bit tricky to navigate.
    Dad and Freddie were still a bit uneasy with each other. And Freddie and Granny P were struggling a bit too, because everything that was said seemed to remind them of the Fynd. But of course they couldn’t say anything about it, so there were lots of sudden halts in the conversation.
    All in all, Freddie was relieved to go up to bed that night so he could just relax and go over the magical day in his head.
    But as he lay there, revelling in the excitement of it, he couldn’t help but still feel sad about his dad.
    He didn’t know how he or Granny P could everexplain to him that they had a Fynd in the house, and without an explanation, how could he ever break through the silence that was back between them since the terrible row?
    Exhausted from trying so hard to conjure up a solution, he fell asleep. But his dreams were full of treasure hunts and chewed up paper words floating around, and strange, mythical creatures from Grandpa P’s book.

12
Find and seek

    The next morning, Freddie woke up to the sound of his door being gently shut. He turned over towards his bedside table thinking that Granny P must have brought him a drink in bed, and left itnext to the genie teapot. But there was nothing there besides the pot itself.
    Freddie half sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he did so, and looking around the room puzzled, and still half asleep.
    It was then that he saw it.
    Over in the right-hand back corner of his room, near his desk, his waste-paper bin had been knocked over and some of its contents spilled out on the floor. ‘How did that happen?’ he wondered.
    Now he was properly awake.
    He sat up straight, and pulled back the curtain nearest to him, letting the bright July morning into his room. What was that behind the bin? It looked like some kind of book… and what was his glue stick doing off the shelf and on the floor?
    Barely three seconds had passed before Freddie was up, over in the corner, and down on his knees to investigate. Who had put it there?
    He gasped with excitement as he looked at its cover. The book was large, heavy and beautifully bound. Freddie didn’t know for certain if it was leather, but