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expert at eavesdropping, but even I couldn’t tell much from Mum’s “Right”s and “Of course”s. I had to sit there squirming until she put down the phone and glared at me.
    “Well?” I said.
    Mum opened her mouth like she was about to shout and then shut it again. “He’s still in hospital,” she said.
    “And?”
    “And he’s still very poorly.” She hesitated, then she said, “Mickey says he’ll tell his mum we rang, but he said there isn’t really much point in visiting him. He’s sleeping a lot, he said.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “His dad’s coming up tomorrow, but they’re not sure when he’s going to get in. Sam—”
    I didn’t want to hear whatever she was going to say.
    “He was all right on Saturday,” I said. I couldn’t get over how unfair it all was. “There wasn’t anything wrong with him!”

 
     
THE STORY OF THE CURE
     
     
     
     
    This is a story that I made up.
    It starts with me at home. I’m cross and miserable. Mum’s cross too. We’re fighting. Mum’s crying.
    It seems as if nothing good is ever going to happen again.
    And then the phone rings.
    On the other end of the phone is Annie. She’s very excited. A team of scientists has found a new drug, which has cured leukaemia in lots of laboratory hamsters and mice. All the laboratory hamsters and mice were lying there, about to die, but after they were given this drug they got better and now they’re living happy lives as pets of the scientists’ children.
    The scientists need some human beings to test this drug on. They ring our hospital and talk to Annie.
    “We need lots of people with leukaemia,” they say. “Give us your sickest patients. The sicker the better. This drug is so good, they’ll just take one sniff and they’ll be disco dancing.”
    “Right you are,” says Annie. And straight away she rings up all her patients and tells them about the scientists.
    Some of the patients are doubtful.
    “No way,” they say.
    “He’s having us on.”
    “No drug can be that good.”
    But I say I’ll give it a go.
    The next day the scientists come round to our house. They give me a packet of little red-and-white striped pills.
    “Here you go,” they say. “This is it. Take two a day with a drink – whatever type you like best.”
    The drug is very good. As soon I have taken one pill I start to feel better. After I have taken two pills, I stop feeling tired. And after three pills I get up and start jumping on my bed. I run all around the house. I get out my bike and ride it up the hill and back down. I play basketball with Ella on the old hoop on our house and I beat her thirty-eight hoops to six.
    After I have taken all the pills in the packet I am completely cured. The scientists are delighted. I am on the World News . All the newspapers in the world have pictures of me coming down our hill on roller blades and visiting other children with leukaemia to tell them about the pills.
    The scientists make billions of pounds selling their pills to hospitals.
    They give some of the money to me and I go on a world cruise with my family and Felix and Granny.
    And no one ever dies of leukaemia. Ever again.

 
     
A PHONE CALL
5th February
     
     
     
     
    Felix’s mum rang the next evening.
    You could see Mum jump when the phone rang. She’d already jumped for Grandma-in-Orkney and a man selling kitchens. She shut the living-room door again, so me and Ella couldn’t hear what she was saying. I hate secrets and so does Ella. We looked at each other. Ella’s face was white and her eyes were huge. We would have listened anyway, but Dad was there and he turned the news right up so we couldn’t hear. Dad hadn’t said anything about Felix being in hospital.
    Not a thing.
    We heard Mum’s voice stop in the hall. There was a long, grippy silence. Then she came back in and sat on the edge of the sofa. She was wearing her serious look again. All of a sudden, I didn’t want to know.
    “Was it Felix’s mum?”