Read The If Game for Free Online Page B

was a baby. But I don’t know her. I’ve never seen her before in my life. Not that I can remember, anyway.’
    Dad’s face was serious, even severe. He did not speak.
    â€˜Who are they, Dad? You know, don’t you?’
    Dad seemed to be having difficulty speaking. He swallowed once or twice. Then he said, ‘Show me where this happened.’
    Stephen did not want to have to admit that he had opened a door into a private garden. But with Dad looking like that, he had no chance of refusing. He said, ‘All right. When d’you want . . . ?’
    â€˜Now,’ his dad said, in a voice like a hammer blow. Dad got up and reached for his stick. That was odd. He very seldom walked with his stick. He didn’t speak again, but made for the front door. Stephen, unwilling, followed.
    Out in the street he had to take the lead. He walked as slowly as he thought Dad would bear. He was not looking forward to going back into that garden and seeing all the people who thought they knew him, but who were strangers. Especially with his dad in this savage mood. Several times Dad said, ‘Get a move on, can’t you?’, and even once or twice pushed him to try to hurry him up. At last they reached the square with the elegant houses. Dad looked around, surprised. ‘Here?’ he said, and Stephen said, ‘Yes, here.’
    â€˜Which house?’ Dad asked.
    â€˜It wasn’t in a house. It was a garden. There,’ Stephen said, pointing to the door in the brick wall.
    â€˜How’d you get in? There’s no bell here,’ Dad said.
    â€˜I had a key that worked,’ Stephen said.
    â€˜And you just walked in? Like that?’
    â€˜I didn’t think the key would fit. I just wanted to try it,’ Stephen said.
    â€˜Got the key now?’
    He wished he hadn’t. Why hadn’t he thought of leaving it at home? The affair was becoming too embarrassing. But he said that, yes, he had got the key.
    â€˜Go on, then. Let’s see,’ Dad said.
    Stephen produced the Yale key. He put it in the door. It did not turn.
    â€˜Sure it was this door?’
    He was quite sure.
    â€˜Let me try that key,’ Dad said. But the key in his hand did not turn in the lock when he tried it, any more than it had in Stephen’s. ‘Can’t have been this door. Must be one of the others,’ he said, standing back from the wall and looking up and down the road. ‘There’s plenty of other doors like this one,’ he said.
    Stephen didn’t know whether to insist that it had been this one and no other. He saw that Dad didn’t mean to give up, so he said, ‘All right. Let’s try the others.’
    Altogether there were fifteen doors of the same kind, set into the brick walls beside the house fronts. There were seven on one side of the square and eight on the other. They couldn’t try them all, because many hadn’t got Yale locks. But they did try Stephen’s key in about half of them and it did not fit any one. By the end of the exertion, Stephen was red with embarrassment, and his dad was angry.
    â€˜You sure it was this road?’ he asked.
    â€˜Certain.’
    â€˜We’ll go back and try that first one again,’ Dad said. But the key still didn’t turn in the lock. ‘Sure you’ve brought the same key with you?’ Dad asked.
    â€˜I haven’t got another one anything like it,’ Stephen said.
    â€˜Then we’ll have to ask at the door,’ Dad said. Stephen had no idea what he meant, till he saw his dad walk upto the front door of the house next to the garden wall. He cried out, ‘No! Don’t!’ but it was too late. Dad had already rung the bell.
    Stephen waited for the door to open and for his dad to try to explain. He would have liked to walk away but he knew Dad wouldn’t stand for that. He expected someone from inside that elegant house to shout that no one was allowed into the