I’m not exactly sure what happened next, and I couldn’t really ask the grown-ups to tell me, but I think it went something like this.
Mr Driver went over to the Johnsons’ house and spoke to Mrs Johnson. I don’t know what he said, but he must have said something big because Mr Johnson came home from work straight away. I think Mr Driver rang my dad too, because my dad also came home from work. I could hear yelling in the street in front of our house when I woke up, and when I looked out of Mr Driver’s best front room curtains, the three men were all standing in a kind of circle in the middle of the road. I could hear Mr Johnson’s voice the loudest and then my dad’s voice. Mr Driver either wasn’t speaking, or was talking quietly, because I couldn’t pick up the sound of his words.
Mum went out at one point but Dad must have sent her back inside. She didn’t come to get me from Mr Driver’s, and I was quite happy about that just then, because I didn’t know how she would be.
After quite a long time, Dad came into Mr Driver’s front room and sat next to me on the sofa. He asked me if Mr Johnson had hurt me, and I said no, he just made me look at some photos and tried to make me drink a cup of tea. I said I was sorry and that I know I should have been polite and stayed for the tea, and that maybe if I had, he wouldn’t have taken Sixpence away and built the big fence, but Dad said not to worry it wasn’t my fault, and that Mr Johnson had agreed I could have Sixpence and he was going to bring her home from the museum for me the next day. Dad didn’t seem cross, but he seemed a bit ‘something’. I couldn’t work out what it was, and decided I’d ask Ruthy for some good words for it so I could sort it out.
Dad thanked Mr Driver, who put his hand on my shoulder for a moment as I walked past him, and we went back into our house. Mum didn’t look at me, and she was a bit ‘something’ too, but she didn’t yell and instead asked if I’d like to watch the tellie for a while until the other kids came home. Dad went back to work, and Mum left me to watch whatever I liked while she went down the street to get things for tea.
It had started out one of the worst days, but now if felt like it might be one of the best days ever because I could watch tellie and I could have Sixpence, and at the moment no one seemed to be yelling at me for anything. I was so glad I’d fallen into Mr Driver’s yard, and I decided I would make him a very nice card and also write him a play we would perform in his garden for him as soon as my hand was feeling better. I was so happy my hand didn’t even seem to be hurting quite so much.
When Mum came back from the shops, she came in with a packet of frozen peas and wrapped them around my hand and tied it with a tea towel and a bit of her garden string. It was almost a bit too cold, but it helped the pain and I felt I had done enough crying and being weak so I thanked her and tried to focus on the tellie rather than on my very icy hand.
When Dad came home at the proper time, I was dying to ask him where he would make the guinea-pig hutch and whether I could help and what colour we could paint the little house for Sixpence we would need for inside the hutch and where we would get all the greens from and whether I could go to the new supermarket on St Bernards Road to ask for leftover lettuces. But I didn’t because, as Mum often said, I just don’t know when to shut up sometimes, so I thought I’d practise, even though I didn’t have to be perfect until Christmas anymore and could still have Sixpence home with me.
That night I heard Mum and Dad arguing, and I sat by the crack in the door to gather intelligence. Mum was telling Dad he could stay home from work and care for Caleb if the ‘rat’ caused an asthma attack, and Dad was saying don’t be ridiculous, and if Caleb didn’t touch the guinea pig he would be fine. Mum said it was okay for him to say that because he wasn’t stuck nursing a sick child all day, and Dad said she mollycoddled him and that a bit of dirt and rough and tumble would do Caleb the world of good. Mum said don’t tell me you agree with that dreadful sister-in-law of yours that it’s all in Caleb’s mind, and Dad said no he didn’t, but it was also important to try to toughen him up so he was strong enough to cope with it. The arguing went on like that for ages, and after a while I went back to bed.
Because there had been good things about the day, I tried to just think about happy stuff. It wasn’t easy because I’d start imagining what my knight’s armour would look like, and then suddenly I’d see Mr J’s nasty face in front of me. So then I imagined poking him a bit with a sword to keep him at a distance, but he just grabbed it and pulled it out of my hand. Then he threw it on the ground like a twig and laughed at me. I must have been trying very hard to just imagine good things, because when Ruthy walked in and looked at me, she asked why I had screwed my face up so tight.
The only thing I could think of to say was that I hoped my injury wouldn’t stop me from sword fights when I became the first girl knight of the round table. Ruthy just stood and looked at me with her little hands on her hips, and I knew I wasn’t fooling her. But then, fooling Ruthy for long was something I never did.