CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

NAME AND BLAME

‘How dare you show your face in here again!’ Charlie shouted when Jonny stepped inside the corner shop.

Jonny froze. Charlie was nice, normally. He was friendly and helpful, normally. He never, ever yelled, normally.

‘Get out, thief!’ shouted Charlie, running towards him.

Jonny tore out of the shop, his mind a swirly whirl of confusion, his hair in his eyes and then …

CRASH!

He ran straight into Mrs Algernon.

‘Stop right there!’ she boomed. ‘I want to speak with you!’

She looked even meaner than usual. Oh stuffed-crust misery! thought Jonny. They’re all out to get me!

‘You deliberately let your dog off the lead today when you could see my cat was out on the front step,’ she growled.

Jonny had no idea what Mrs Algernon was on about. Cat? Front step? Today? Eh?

Charlie had caught up with him now.

‘He stole from my shop earlier,’ puffed Charlie. ‘A sherbet fountain and a couple of those curly sweets.’

‘Frizzy Pops?’ asked Mrs Algernon.

‘No, not them,’ said Charlie.

‘Corkscrew Curlers?’ suggested Mrs Algernon.

‘No,’ said Charlie.

‘Honeycomb Helix? Insanity Spirals? Midget Twists? Tupenny Twine Bars? Mint Crimps?’

‘Mint Crimps!’ said Charlie. ‘That’s them!’

‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Algernon. ‘You should never, ever steal Mint Crimps.’

‘But I was in school all day,’ Jonny protested.

‘No, you weren’t,’ said both the adults.

‘With my own eyes, I saw you walk into my shop, help yourself to my sweets and leg it,’ said Charlie. ‘Are you calling my own eyes liars?’

Jonny wasn’t doing that, no.

‘Your dog had my cat pinned down,’ said Mrs Algernon. ‘If I hadn’t given him a smart kick up the necessaries, he might have killed poor Stanley.’

Widget loathed Fat Stanley, and Jonny could easily believe that he would want to pin him down, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that none of this was Jonny. He had not been involved in any of this nicking and narkery.

‘It must have been someone who looks like me,’ said Jonny, guessing who was to blame here. This just made the two grown-ups do a sort of ‘don’t give me that’ laugh.

‘We know what you look like, young man,’ said Mrs Algernon. ‘We wouldn’t be fooled by anyone else.’

‘What’s going on?’ asked Jonny’s mum, arriving at the scene on her way home from work.

‘He’s been stealing and allowing his dog to menace my cat,’ said Mrs Algernon.

‘He called my eyes liars!’ said Charlie.

‘Really?’ she said. She looked at Jonny and then back at Charlie and Mrs Algernon.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Leave this with me. I’d like to speak to my son in private if you don’t mind.’

The two angry adults looked like they did mind, actually, but they stood aside as Jonny’s mum led him back to the house.