Read How the Trouble Started for Free Online Page B

and hung in the air, but he almost immediately started laughing, and he’d enjoyed it, I could tell. We sat there for a while and it didn’t seem like the time to be reading the books, and Jake was more interested in the story of the haunted house than the ghost story in his bag anyway. After half an hour of chatting and making more stuff up I told him we should get him home. As we were walking down the stairs I said, ‘It’s a pity we won’t be here tonight Jake, that’s when she’ll come out and start with her wailing.’
    ‘You think she’ll be here tonight?’ he asked.
    ‘Saturday nights she’s  always  about and she’s always the loudest then,’ I told him. ‘Saturday nights her husband met his friends in town and they drank till they were silly, so she always took the opportunity to meet the other man. She cries the loudest on Saturday nights.’
    ‘Maybe we should come back tonight then,’ he said, and I had to laugh at that. Even I didn’t want to be creeping around the quarry house in the dark. We walked back in the direction of his house, his pace not as fast now there were no haunted houses at the end of the walk.
    ‘Do you not go out anywhere on Saturday afternoons Jake?’ I asked him.
    He shook his head.
    ‘Won’t your mum have noticed you’ve been gone so long?’
    ‘Steve comes round and they like to be alone, so I have to play out till teatime. Can we go back to the haunted house?’
    ‘Next Saturday?’
    He nodded.
    ‘We can if you want.’
    ‘Maybe we’ll see her next week,’ he said.
    We agreed to meet at the playground and I walked him back to the end of Fox Road, and stood and watched until he walked through his front door.
    There was nothing left for me to do other than go home and I set off feeling flat after the fun we’d had that afternoon. All I had to look forward to for the rest of the day was Mum and her moods. I walked up our street, the house came into view and I slowed – I could sniff trouble on the air. Sometimes just by looking at our house you can see that you’ll be walking into a fight. I stopped fifty yards off and had a think. I thought about not going in at all, but I knew that was just kicking trouble and running away when you had to come back down the same road later. The sooner it’s done the better, like throwing up – get it out of the way, clean your teeth and move on. I shut the front door behind me, careful not to be too quiet like I was sneaking, careful not to slam and set her on edge. Noise was coming from the kitchen and I followed the sound. She was at the sink, shoulders up round her ears, scrubbing at a pan like it was a bad dog that’d rolled in muck. She didn’t turn round.
    ‘You’ve got a fine. For a book about fishing communities in Scotland or some nonsense. They say it’s important you bring it back, they got it you from  Oxford  or somewhere and they need to send it back now.’
     She carried on rubbing that pan raw and I saw the letter and the torn envelope on the kitchen table.
    ‘They shouldn’t bother with your silly requests.’
    As I watched her tight back, her strong arms, jutting in and out, rubbing away, words came into my head and I told myself not to risk it. I told myself to run up to my bedroom and everything would be fine.
    ‘You shouldn’t open my mail. It’s illegal to open somebody else’s mail.’
    That did it. She spun round and was upon me. Suds were flying as she waved her white candyfloss arms in the air. Her eyes were bright and clear with the certainty of the mad. She ranted about a mother’s eternal right to know every thought and action of any child she bore.
    ‘Particularly with you Donald, though, yes? With what you’ve put this family through? You can’t blame me at all for wanting to know the details of what you’ve been up to, can you?’ I started edging my way to the door and towards the sanctuary of my bedroom. I already wished I hadn’t provoked her. I didn’t want