The Mum Detective by Gwyneth Rees

Author:Gwyneth Rees [Gwyneth Rees]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780330471770
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books

I went downstairs to show Jennifer and Matthew what I had discovered and walked in on them snogging on the sofa. How anyone can snog my brother is beyond me, but when I said that to Holly she didn’t agree with me. She said that Matthew has lips that are just the right thickness for snogging – unlike Jennifer’s, which are a little bit too thin.

‘Hey!’ I said loudly, which made them instantly jump about a mile apart from each other. ‘I want to show you something.’ I sat in between them on the sofa since there was now quite a big space there, holding the two letters I had been examining, one in each hand. ‘I’ve discovered something really weird,’ I told them. ‘Jennifer, I don’t think your mum really did send you that letter when you were a baby.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve examined the handwriting in both these letters,’ I said, sounding spookily like Sherlock Holmes, even if I do say so myself. I gave them to Jennifer to look at – the one her mum was meant to have sent her years ago and the one her dad had only just sent to our house. ‘Look at the handwriting! It looks different because one’s written in block capitals and the other isn’t, but if you look more closely –’ I pointed out the identical capital letter ‘a’s and the identical misspellings of ‘precious’ – ‘they must have both been written by the same person. Which means that the letter you thought was from your mum can’t have been from her at all. It must have been written by your dad. Only why would your dad want you to think your mum had sent you a letter if she hadn’t?’

Jennifer was staring at me as if I was talking in a foreign language. (I guess Sherlock Holmes got that a lot too.)

‘Read them,’ I persisted. I handed her the magnifying glass.

Jennifer read both letters, staring at them closely, saying nothing. Matthew was leaning over her shoulder to look too. As he murmured that he saw what I meant, Jennifer suddenly jumped up from the sofa.

‘That’s rubbish! Of course this letter’s from my mum!’

‘Jennifer, the writing does look really similar—’ Matthew began.

‘Stop it!’ she snapped. ‘Stop interfering! You don’t know what you’re talking about!’

Matthew looked surprised. ‘But you were the one who asked us to—’

‘I think you’d better go before my dad gets back. Here! Take this with you!’ She threw Dad’s letter in Matthew’s direction, keeping a tight hold on the one from her mother. ‘You’ve got an overactive imagination, Esmie, that’s your problem!’

And she practically threw us out of her house.

Matthew was really agitated on the way home, worrying about Jennifer. And I was worried too. Maybe I shouldn’t have just blurted it all out like that. Juliette used to say that it wasn’t always right to tell the truth if it was hurtful and if nobody had anything to gain by hearing it. But surely

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