Milo and the Pirate Sisters by Mary Arrigan

Author:Mary Arrigan [Mary Arrigan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781847177117
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2014-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SLEEPOVER

Mum was taking a shepherd’s pie out of the microwave when I got home at teatime. I hoped it was the last one. Mum feels that she’s being really clever by making a load of pies at the same time and then freezing them. She says it makes life easier – though, frankly I prefer Dad’s idea of cooking, when Mum is out with friends and he phones for a delivery of fish and chips and we watch telly. I sneaked upstairs before she saw my muddy shoes and dirty hands.

‘Come on, Milo,’ she called up after a few minutes. ‘We can’t wait for your dad.’ (She always puts in the your dad bit when she’s annoyed with him.)

‘Any news, Milo?’ she asked when I sat down at the table.

The real answer went whirling inside my head. Yes, Mum. Me and Shane are going to spend the night saving a dead man from a couple of loco women who are driving him mad.

‘Nothing much, Mum,’ I said. ‘Me and Shane had a chat with Miss Lee about history stuff.’

‘Good lads,’ she nodded as she dished out the shepherd’s pie. ‘You two will go far.’

Well, that was for sure, I thought, considering my promise to Mister Lewis. ‘Going far’ might be somewhere up there on a cold moon with raggedy corpses floating about on it. But then I shook my head to stop crazy thoughts; after all, in spite of Mister Lewis’s weird imagination, a couple of poor women could be tamed.

Halfway through our meal, Dad came in. He was sweating and his shoes were even muddier than mine.

‘Heavens, man,’ Mum exclaimed. ‘Where have you been? Look at the state of you.’

‘We were out looking for Harry Donnelly’s horses,’ Dad said. ‘They were all over the place … Oh, shepherd’s pie again,’ he said as he dried his hands. ‘Lovely.’

‘Did you find them, Dad?’ I asked. ‘The horses.’

‘We did – eventually,’ he said, shaking lots of pepper on his dinner. ‘They broke into a couple of farms. Very strange,’ he went on. ‘Every one of them was shivering. They were really scared.’

‘What scared them?’ Mum asked. ‘Perhaps a couple of youngsters messing about in the night?’

‘No,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Those horses were extremely traumatised – as if the devil himself was after them. We had to put them into another farmer’s field because they refused to go back along the road to Harry’s. I’ve never heard such a commotion.’

‘Is it OK if I stay with Shane tonight?’ I cleverly asked while they were absorbed in the runaway horses.

‘Sure,’ said Mum. ‘That means we can watch what we like on telly.’

I rushed upstairs and packed two torches, matches and a couple of candles.

‘Have a good time, and be good,’ Mum called out as I ran down the stairs.

‘And stay alive,’ I muttered to myself, trying not to think of what might happen in a dreary old mill with just a dead man for company.

I called in for Shane, who had already told Big Ella that he’d be sleeping in my house.

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