When I woke up this morning, I thought maybe I had landed on another planet and I was in someone else’s body. This was partly because I had slept the night on the floor and partly because of what greeted us when we got to Bompie’s last night.
We found the village of Thorpe without too much trouble, but since the houses don’t have numbers, finding Bompie’s house in the dark was a little harder. The houses all have names, like Glenacre and The Yellow Cottage and The Green Cottage and The Old Post Office.
The name of Bompie’s house is Walnut Tree Cottage, so we spent a lot of time peering out at trees, looking for a walnut tree, and as it turned out there is no longer a walnut tree at Bompie’s house anyway. The way we finally found it was by stopping at a house and when I went up and knocked on the door, a woman answered and said, “You’ll be wanting that one across the way, love,” and she pointed to a little white cottage across the street.
All the lights were on in Bompie’s cottage. We tapped on the door, and when it opened, a nurse answered. Uncle Dock explained who we were and then we all squeezed inside, and Uncle Dock said, “Where is he?”
She led us through one room and then another, where the ceilings are so low you bump your head, and we followed her on through another room and down a skinny hallway and into Bompie’s bedroom.
And there was Bompie, lying in his bed with his eyes closed. I was pretty sure our luck had run out and he was dead.