The Missing Link
Authors: Kate Thompson
Contents
About the Book
Danny has always believed that his scientist mother is dead. But when a talking dog tells him it isn’t true, Danny sets out on a mission to find his mother and her hidden laboratory in Fourth World. But Danny is locked in his own world, so he will need the help of his step-brother Christie, if he is to succeed. After a long and difficult journey the boys discover that Danny’s mother is involved in some complex genetic engineering, and she holds the key to Danny’s past and his future.
For Conor
PART ONE
1
EVERYBODY IN OUR
town had their own ideas about my stepbrother, Danny. Some of them called him disabled, some said he was autistic, and some just referred to him as ‘that poor boy’. The truth was that there were only two people who knew what Danny really was. One was his father, who didn’t believe it. The other was his mother, who did.
2
I WAS ON
the
Titanic
. All my friends were there, and Mom and Dad; my real dad, not Maurice, and hundreds of other people. Inside, the lights were blazing, but it was dark outside the portholes and I knew that Danny was out there, swimming around in the freezing waters. I looked down and discovered that I had a fiddle in my hand. When I looked around, I saw that everyone else had fiddles, too. On the stage in front of us, Leonardo di Caprio was tapping a music stand with a conductor’s baton.
Tap, tap.
I lifted the fiddle, and at the same time I realised that I didn’t know how to play it.
Tap, tap.
Flames began to spring up among the people. All over the place. Just from nowhere. I looked at the blank portholes and wondered how to get out; how to join Danny out there. I couldn’t remember how I had got in. Fear began to clutch at me.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap.
I opened my eyes, delighted to find that I was dreaming. The first light of a dull autumn morning was illuminating my chaotic bedroom.
Mom
refused to come into it any more. Maurice said it was bad Feng Shui. At least, I think that’s what he said.
Tap, tap.
Leonardo again. Except that it couldn’t be. Dreams were mad. Danny swimming. Danny, who was terrified of any stretch of water bigger than the bathtub.
Tap, tap. Rattatap.
The sound was coming from the window. Outside it, in the bluish morning, I could see the dark shape of a bird. As I watched, it turned its head and peered through the glass with a little, bright eye. Then it tapped again with its beak.
I looked at my clock. Just half-past seven. I could have lived with that if it hadn’t been Sunday. The bird tapped again. I sat up, hauled one of my pillows out from behind me, and launched it at the window. There was an Action Man and a baked beans money box on the sill and they both went flying, but the bird did as well, and that was what mattered. It gave a funny little squawk as it lifted off, and as I flopped back on to my bed and doubled up my other pillow I laughed. It had sounded just like, ‘Cor! Flaming heck!’
I would have to tell Danny about that.
But I forgot. I went back to sleep and when I next saw Danny he didn’t put me in the mood to share jokes.
‘Come with me to the woods,’ he said,
lowering
himself as carefully as he could on to the end of my bed.
I yelped and pulled my foot out from under him. It was still only eight-thirty.
‘Sod off, Danny!’ I said.
‘Just a little walk,’ he said. ‘Come on, Christerbie.’
‘Christie,’ I said. ‘Say it properly or don’t say it at all.’
Living with Danny was like living with a little brother. Except that he wasn’t little. He was big. Fifteen. Two years older than me.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
He was at his best in the mornings. It was the only time I found him good company. As the day wore on he always lost his clarity and got confused and silly. But it was still Sunday.
‘I want a lie-in,’ I said. ‘It’s all right for you. I have to go to school all week.’
I turned over and yanked at my covers, but they were trapped underneath him. I shut my eyes and hoped, but he didn’t budge. I could feel his disappointment in the air and I steeled myself against giving in to him.
Everything was so difficult for him. He had been born with some kind of abnormality which made him heavy and clumsy. He had a big, barrel chest and skinny legs which didn’t bend quite right, and huge flat feet which always seemed to be in the way. They said he was mentally subnormal, and I suppose they were right, although sometimes, especially in the mornings, I wondered.
When Mom first married Maurice I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, not only having to get used to a new father but this freak as well. I hated Mom for marrying Maurice and Maurice for marrying Mom. But most of all I hated Danny. I thought he was just an overgrown toddler, constantly the centre of attention, ruling every waking hour in the new house.
But then, one morning, he came in and sat on my bed, just like he was doing now. I was wide awake that time; still grieving over the change in my life. I told him to go away and leave me alone. But he was clear and lucid, and he said, ‘Sorry, Christie. I don’t know why I’m like this. I’m some kind of a mistake, aren’t I?’
I was shocked. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re not a mistake. You’re just . . .’
‘Just what?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’re just different.’
After that I could never be angry with him any more. I was still angry with Mom and Maurice, but not with Danny.
‘Will you come out with me later?’ he asked me now.
I groaned. In the early mornings we sometimes managed to get in our walk without meeting anyone else. If we went later, we would be bound to encounter people, and I would have to fend off their attention. ‘I want to watch
Top Thirty Hits
,’ I said, knowing how feeble I must sound. ‘And I want to play on the computer, and then there’s a match on.’
‘I hate the telly,’ said Danny. ‘Real life is better.’
He pointed at the window and I was briefly reminded of the black bird. Then I noticed something else.
‘It’s raining, anyway,’ I said, delighted at the reprieve.
‘It’s OK,’ said Danny. ‘We’re waterproof.’
‘What did he say?’ said Maurice, appearing at the doorway in his dressing-gown.
‘He thinks he’s waterproof,’ I said.
‘Just as well,’ said Maurice. ‘It’s high time he had a bath.’
Danny loved the bath. He whooped and giggled and followed Maurice off towards the bathroom. As I turned over and snuggled back into the warmth of my lost sleep I remembered the dream. Dreams were mad. Danny swimming. As if.
3
DANNY STOOD AT
the sitting-room window.
‘Look, Christerly,’ he said. ‘My darling has come back.’
‘Your darling?’ I said, tearing my eyes away from the match. ‘What are you on about, your darling?’
He pointed into the front garden. ‘My darling. My darling.’
I usually tried to ignore him, but I had to look.
‘See?’ he said. ‘My darling.’
I joined him at the window and followed the line of his pointing finger, to where a bird like a small black crow sat on the garden wall.
‘Starling, Danny,’ I said. ‘Not “darling”. Say “starling”.’
‘Starling,’ said Danny. ‘Darling starling.’
‘And say “Christie”,’ I said. ‘Not “Christerly”.’
‘Christerbie,’ he said. ‘Christmassy, Cricketty, Crinkly.’
‘Oh brilliant,’ I said. ‘And now shut up. I want to watch the match.’
Danny giggled. ‘Shut up, smut up, squash up,’ he sang, and I knew we were in for trouble.
‘Enough, Danny,’ I said, with as much threat in my tone as I could muster. ‘Don’t start now, all right? Just don’t start.’
But he had already started, and he was only just getting going. ‘Chuff up, Christine, my darling starling, oh my darling saviour starling, follow me up to Scotland.’
He began to dance clumsily about the floor, lurching dangerously close to the television and singing higher and faster. I could have stopped him if I’d had the patience, but he was really annoying me, and I was slipping back into the familiar resentment that ruled my new life.
‘Mom!’ I shouted. ‘Mom! Do something about Danny, will you!’
I knew it wasn’t really her problem, either, though she did her best to cope. But I wasn’t going to call my stepfather. It would have been an admission of a relationship that I still refused to acknowledge.