Read Online The Truth is Dead by Marcus Sedgwick, Marcus Sedgwick - Free Book Online Page A

feeling like I hadn’t returned home in years. “I’m not sure,” he said, and cleared his throat. “What did they tell you at school?”
    I drew a chair from the table and sat with them. “The Russians are claiming a test firing went badly wrong. That’s what our form teacher told us before the bell rang. They’re suggesting the target coordinates were changed as an act of sabotage by the United States.”
    Mum clasped her mug with both hands. Not once did she take her eyes off it. “The last time I looked at the moon,” she said, “it was on the wane.”
    I glanced at Dad, confused by her comment. “Mum,” I said, “it isn’t coming back.”
    Outside, the wind had strengthened so much that it began to moan and whistle. Only then did I notice that the curtains had been closed against the night sky. I looked at my dad, and found his focus upon me once again.
    “This isn’t about the moon,” he said. “It’s about us.”
    Until they told me Mum was moving out, I really hadn’t known that my parents had been having problems. As it turned out, I don’t think my dad had either. Sure, Mum would sometimes say that he loved his work more than he loved us, but we’d never taken her seriously. Looking back, I suppose this was her way of quietly convincing herself that the changes in her heart were for the best. I didn’t cry when Mum revealed that she’d met someone else. I just nodded when she promised me that everything would be OK, and stared at the table when Dad began to weep.
    “I should go,” my mother said. “I would ask you to come with me, Lottie, but space is an issue and this is only for the very short term. Your father and I have a lot of sorting out to do, but we’ve agreed that you come first. Once we sell this house, we’ll have enough money to provide you with two places you can call home.”
    “But I don’t want to move,” I said. “And I don’t want you to go.”
    My mother rose from the table. She circled behind my father, touched his shoulder for a moment and then headed for the door. When she opened it, the howling I could hear out there sounded like another world entirely.
    The first few nights were the worst. I suppose we had to get used to the loss and what it meant for us all. The winds struck at sunset and only calmed as dawn broke. In the darkest hours gusts would rampage across town and country with such violence that I couldn’t sleep. The experts explained how this was due to the absence of a gravitational pull. As I looked at the impact around me, it seemed more like the loss of a calming influence.
    On the television Dad and I watched endless news footage of tidal surges and oceanic whirlpools. It looked to me like God had got fed up with us all and decided to pull the plug. All my favourite programmes were replaced by reports about emerging changes to our planet. Birds flocked in unusual directions, clouds formed strange new shapes, and dogs howled after midnight as if plagued by a frequency beyond our hearing.
    Even people behaved differently. Many panicked, with riots taking place as far afield as Reykjavik, Moscow and Rio de Janeiro. I also heard from Maisie that her neighbour had switched to a day shift on account of all the late night looting. As for me, I found my hay fever disappeared completely.
    At home our cat reacted badly to the situation. It didn’t help that Mum was the one who had always taken care of him. After she left he went hungry for several days because Dad and I completely forgot to feed him. Worse still, the high winds really spooked the poor thing. Instead of spending his nights out on the prowl, he chose to stay indoors. Even with the calm that came at daybreak, he would pop out only for a very short time. Then he’d crash back through the cat flap as if chased in by a snarling dog.
    “What’s frightening him?” I asked on one occasion.
    My father considered this for a moment, watching the fur on the cat’s back settle. “Change,”