The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon

137.  The next day Father said he was sorry that he had hit me and he didn’t mean to. He made me wash the cut on my cheek with Dettol to make sure that it wasn’t infected, then he got me to put a plaster on it so it didn’t bleed.

Then, because it was Saturday, he said he was going to take me on an expedition to show me that he was properly sorry, and we were going to Twycross Zoo. So he made me some sandwiches with white bread and tomatoes and lettuce and ham and strawberry jam for me to eat because I don’t like eating food from places I don’t know. And he said it would be OK because there wouldn’t be too many people at the zoo because it was forecast to rain, and I was glad about that because I don’t like crowds of people and I like it when it is raining. So I went and got my waterproof, which is orange.

Then we drove to Twycross Zoo.

I had never been to Twycross Zoo before so I didn’t have a picture in my mind before we got there. So we bought a guidebook from the information center and then we walked round the whole zoo and I decided which were my favorite animals.

My favorite animals were:

1. RANDYMAN , which is the name of the oldest Red-Faced Black Spider Monkey(Atelespaniscus paniscus) ever kept in captivity. Randyman is 44 years old, which is the same age as Father. He used to be a pet on a ship and have a metal band round his stomach, like in a story about pirates.
2. The PATAGONIAN SEA LIONS , which are called Miracle and Star.
3. MALIKU , which is an Orangutan . I liked it especially because it was lying in a kind of hammock made out of a pair of stripy green pajama bottoms and on the blue plastic notice next to the cage it said it made the hammock itself.

Then we went to the café and Father had plaice and chips and apple pie and ice cream and a pot of Earl Grey tea, and I had my sandwiches and I read the guidebook to the zoo.

And Father said, “I love you very much, Christopher. Don’t ever forget that. And I know I lose my rag occasionally. I know I get angry. I know I shout. And I know I shouldn’t. But I only do it because I worry about you, because I don’t want to see you getting into trouble, because I don’t want you to get hurt. Do you understand?”

I didn’t know whether I understood. So I said, “I don’t know.”

And Father said, “Christopher, do you understand that I love you?”

And I said “Yes,” because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.

And then he held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan, and I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other.

Then I got out a piece of paper from my bag and I did a map of the zoo from memory as a test. Then we went and looked at the giraffes. And the smell of their poo was like the smell inside the gerbil cage at school when we had gerbils, and when they ran their legs were so long it looked like they were running in slow motion.

Then Father said we had to get home before the roads got busy.