Switchers by Kate Thompson

Author:Kate Thompson [Thompson, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-2420-3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-04-30T17:07:00+00:00

Tess sat back in her chair. She knew without doubt where that letter would have ended its life, and she wondered how many similar letters from cranks passed through government offices in the course of a year. She sighed and sat back. The cat made a tour of her lap and resettled itself.

‘Well?’ said Lizzie. ‘What does you think?’

‘It’s a good letter, Lizzie,’ said Tess. ‘It’s very good. But the trouble is, people don’t … I mean people in government don’t very often take much notice of letters.’

‘Whoever they’re from,’ Kevin added.

‘You’s right, there,’ said Lizzie, ‘and you knows why that is, doesn’t you?’

‘Why?’

‘Because they thinks they knows it all, that’s why.’

Tess’s face was among the first that John Maloney saw in the room where the files on missing persons were kept. ‘There she is,’ he said to Oliver Griffin. ‘I knew I’d seen her before.’

‘Who?’

‘Lizzie’s niece.’

‘But Lizzie hasn’t got a niece,’ said Oliver.

‘I believe you, Olly,’ said John. ‘Now let’s go.’

‘People in general,’ said Lizzie, ‘thinks they knows it all. And if they doesn’t know it then they puts it in front of a microscope or a periscope and makes it bigger, and there’s things in this world should be left the same size they always was and not interfered with at all.’

Tess looked at her watch. She would be home before her parents went to bed.

‘They doesn’t use plain common sense,’ Lizzie went on. ‘They sees things that is plain and simple and they goes to great lengths to make them as difficult and complicated as they can. They sees that the world is cold at both ends so they comes up with a cock and bull story about how we’s all spinning around in the air like a football. But you can throw a football around all day and it never gets colder at the ends than it is in the middle.’

‘I don’t think it’s the spinning that causes the Poles to be cold, Lizzie,’ said Kevin. ‘I think it’s the way the earth tilts.’

‘Tilts?’

‘Yes. It’s sort of leaning as it goes around, so some bits don’t get as much sun.’

‘And where did you find that out?’

‘I read about it in the library.’

Lizzie got up angrily, spilling two cats on to the floor. ‘That’s exactly what I’s talking about,’ she said. ‘What does a nice boy like you want to go poking around libraries for? Nosing out all kinds of nonsense you has no use for? Then when you gets a chance of learning what you needs to know, there’s no room left in your head for it.’ She strode over to the fire. ‘And you get a move on!’ she said to the kettle, giving it a poke.

‘Why don’t you tell us anyway, Lizzie?’ said Tess. ‘About your krools.’

‘My krools?’ said Lizzie. ‘They isn’t my krools. They isn’t anybody’s krools. They’s just krools.’

‘Well, tell us about them anyway, will you?’

‘We’s too far south to know about them here, that’s all. They knows about them in Finland and Norwiegerland, and they knows about them in Siberia, except they has a different name for them.

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