I was in the living room pulling all the cushions off the sofa and the armchairs. The idea was to make Dad come in and ask me what the matter was but he didn’t, so I had to make some sad little sighing noises too. Dad still didn’t come in, so I had to make the sad little sighing noises louder and louder until they sounded like this: HOOOOOO-NAH. Yes I know that sounds more like a hippopotamus but at least it worked because at last Dad stuck his head in through the doorway.
‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘I thought you wanted to watch your programme.’
‘I do,’ I said all sweet and innocent. ‘But I don’t know where James has hidden the remote. Oh well . . .’ dejected sigh ‘. . . it’ll all be finished now. I’ll just have to watch the repeat on Monday. Or the backstage special on Tuesday or the highlights programme on Friday.’
Dad started picking up the cushions, feeling them for remote control-sized bumps, and then chucking them back. ‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘I want to watch the film later. Where is that remote? James? JAMES?’
Upstairs James’s bedroom door creaked open, and soon he was back down in the living room getting a good grilling. ‘I passed it to Agatha,’ he protested.
‘But I was in the kitchen,’ I said. ‘How could you pass it to me unless you had the longest arms in the world?’
James was not looking happy at all. ‘Well, I sort of passed it,’ he said. ‘It’ll be in there somewhere.’
‘Then get it now please,’ said Dad, and then he sat down in the armchair and opened his newspaper in front of his face in a daddish sort of way.
James went into the kitchen. He looked along the worktop, he looked under the table. Tee hee, no chance! He opened the fridge and looked inside, then he got the lid off the rubbish bin and poked around in that. Ha ha ha! Of course I was only having a secret inside-my-head laugh. All James could see was me standing by the door looking serious.
‘What did you do with it?’ he demanded.
‘You mean the remote? Don’t ask me. You’re the one who had it.’
‘You should have caught it,’ snapped James crossly. Oh deary me, the pressure was getting to him.
‘Caught it?’ I gasped in astonishment. ‘You mean you threw it? Then maybe it went in the sink.’
‘I hardly threw it at all,’ said James nervously, but all the same he went to look. The sink was full of sticky cloudy water so he pulled the plug out and gradually it drained away. Yuk! There was just one teaspoon lying in the bottom. For a moment James looked happy, because he knew he’d have been in real trouble if the remote had landed in the water. It might have short-circuited and zapped itself to bits ha ha!
James was looking round blankly again. Come on James, I thought to myself. Get that little baked-bean brain of yours going and THINK! Where is the very worst place that remote could have landed? Even worse than the sink?
It was no good, he was never going to manage to work it out for himself so I had to give him a clue. I took a long deep sniff . . .
‘Hmmm, that cake smells really nice Dad,’ I said. ‘How long before it comes out of the oven?’
‘It’ll be a few minutes yet,’ said Dad’s newspaper.
If James’s head had been a giant light bulb it would have suddenly come on – Ping! He spun round to stare at the oven and whispered to me: ‘When did Dad put the cake in?’
‘About the same time as you were stomping upstairs. Why?’
‘Oh no!’ His lip was trembling. ‘And before that, was the cake mixture just sitting on the table?’
‘Of course it was,’ I said, keeping it innocent. ‘Where else would it be?’
‘So the remote must have landed in the mixture, and now it’s in the . . . in the . . .’
‘In the what, James?’
But of course he didn’t need to answer. He was staring at the oven so hard that his eyes were almost out of his head HA HA HA!
My work was done. It was time for Agatha to casually walk out of the kitchen. Tumty tum. Tee tumtum. Tum.
