Read Online Emily's Penny Dreadful by Bill Nagelkerke - Free Book Online

“There’s another thing he’s sad about,” she added.
“He’s sad about Gran. Our Mum.”
      “ About Gran dying?”
Emily asked.
      “ Yes,” said
Mum.
    “ I was sad about that,
too,” said Emily. “So was
    Sibbie. We still are sad,
but not as sad as before, not all the time. Gran told us not to be
too sad when she was dead. She said we had to think about all the
nice times we had together. I wonder if she forgot to tell Uncle
Raymond that.”
      “ I’m sure she didn’t
forget,” said Mum. “And Gran was quite right. It’s important to
remember the nice times as well as the sad ones. That helps keep
everything balanced.”
      “ So is Uncle Raymond
unbalanced?” Emily asked.
      “ Not in the
slightest,” said Mum. “He’s just . . . well, I suppose he’s just
taking longer to remember the nice bits.”
      “ Should I remind
him?” said Emily.
      “ I guess you could
try,” said Mum.
      “ He was wearing his
glasses today. I didn’t know he wore glasses.”
      “ Yes, he does,” said
Mum.
      “ Like Gran
did?”
      “ Yes. You could
remind him how much he and Gran had in common. Mention the glasses.
That might be a nice thing for him to remember.”
      “ I’ve already tried
that,” said Emily. “But I don’t
    think he liked it when I said that meant he
was rather vain.”
      “ Oh,” said Mum. “No,
I don’t imagine he would.”
      “ Even when it’s a weak spot and makes him like an Ancient
Greek hero, just like Achilles? He should have been happy
about that ,” said
Emily.

Chapter 15
     
    ?
    Miley woke Ned up.
      “ Not again!” said
Ned. “That’s the second night in a row. I’ll be useless for
counting matchsticks in the morning.”
    “ You shouldn’t be counting
matchsticks,” said Miley in a whisper loud enough to be heard by
Ned but not loud enough to wake Athol and Charlie. She didn’t want
to frighten them. “None of us should. You should be back home with
you father, reading as many books as you want to read, and I should
be back home with my Mama and Papa and my dearest sister. Now I
wouldn’t even mind if my Uncle was there. Anything would be better
than this.”
      “ We’ve done our
best,” said Ned. “There no way out of here. We’ve been there and
done that already, Miley.”
     
     

Chapter Eleven
     
    It was no good. Emily had to agree with Ned.
There was no way out of the match factory. No way at all.
      Well, if she
couldn’t write an ending, she might as well go and try to cheer
Uncle Raymond up. Maybe she would have more luck with
that.
      Maybe.
    *
    “ Uncle Raymond?”
      “ Hmm?”
      “ Are you writing
today?”
      “ In my
head.”
      “ You know what,
Uncle Raymond?”
      “ Hmm?”
      “ You sound just like
Mum?”
      “ Do I? In what way,
precisely?”
      “ The way you say hmm .”
      “ I’ll take your word
for it.”
      “ Uncle
Raymond?”
      “ Hmm?”
      “ Do you remember the
time Gran took Sibbie and me all the way to visit you and Auntie
Dot in your house,
    the one that burnt down,
and you were really annoyed? You’d forgotten we were coming. Gran
told you not to be such an old stick-in-the-mud and we stayed for
ages and went to the park together and had ice creams and your ice
cream cone broke in two and splattered caramel all over your
trousers and everyone laughed, including you. That was a nice time,
wasn’t it?”
    That was one of the longest
sentences Emily had ever spoken. It left her breathless. Uncle
Raymond kept on staring at his blank, switched-off computer
screen. “I may have grimaced and you may have mistaken my
grimace for a sign of jollity,” he said, eventually - Emily had got
her breath back by then - “but I cannot be held responsible for
your misapprehensions. The fact is, I did not laugh. Those caramel stains
never came out of my trousers. They were one of my best pair. And I
had not forgotten that you were coming. Your Gran arrived on our
doorstep