109. That night I wrote some more of my book, and the next morning I took it into school so that Siobhan could read it and tell me if I had made mistakes with the spelling and the grammar.
Siobhan read the book during morning break when she has a cup of coffee and sits at the edge of the playground with the other teachers. And after morning break, she came and sat down next to me and said she had read the bit about my conversation with Mrs. Alexander, and she said, “Have you told your father about this?”
And I replied, “No.”
And she said, “Are you going to tell your father about this?”
And I replied, “No.”
And she said, “Good. I think that’s a good idea, Christopher.” And then she said, “Did it make you sad to find this out?”
And I asked, “Find what out?”
And she said, “Did it make you upset to find out that your mother and Mr. Shears had an affair?”
And I said, “No.”
And she said, “Are you telling the truth, Christopher?”
And then I said, “I always tell the truth.”
And she said, “I know you do, Christopher. But sometimes we get sad about things and we don’t like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes we are sad but we don’t really know we are sad. So we say we aren’t sad. But really we are.”
And I said, “I’m not sad.”
And she said, “If you do start to feel sad about this, I want you to know that you can come and talk to me about it. Because I think talking to me will help you feel less sad. And if you don’t feel sad but you just want to talk to me about it, that would be OK, too. Do you understand?”
And I said, “I understand.”
And she said, “Good.”
And I replied, “But I don’t feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn’t around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn’t real and doesn’t exist.
And that would be stupid.”
And then I practiced maths for the rest of the morning and at lunch I didn’t have the quiche because it was yellow, but I did have the carrots and the peas and lots of tomato ketchup. And for afters, I had some blackberry and apple crumble, but not the crumble bit because that was yellow, too, and I got Mrs. Davis to take the crumble bit off before she put it onto my plate because it doesn’t matter if different sorts of food are touching before they are actually on your plate.
Then, after lunch, I spent the afternoon doing art with Mrs. Peters and I painted some pictures of aliens.
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