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do is for the birds.
    I lay still on the bed the whole time, turning the little key that Granddad had given me over and over in my hand until it was hot. I waited until everything was quiet and there were no bumps or murmurs or clicks coming from anywhere. Then I slid off the bed, and I inched my way downstairs very quietly. Hanging off the back of a chair in the kitchen was Ted’s bag. Inside it I found a notebook with a hard black cover, a few pens, and a wallet full of fifties and twenties. I crammed everything back in, grabbed the whole bag, and called a taxi.

    The taxi guy came pretty quickly. He wasn’t that talkative, but he knew where Blackbrick Abbey was, which was the first relief of that particular day. Soon we were on roads that I’d never been on before, all twisty and black.
    When silence grows in a small space, it gets harder and harder to say anything at all. For example, there were loads of times on that journey when I wanted to tell the taxi guy to turn back. I needed to ask Granddad what the heck he had meant and why, out of the complete blue, he’d wanted me to go to a place that I’d never heard of in my whole life, and why it was suddenly so important that he’d made me promise. But I wasn’t able to speak. Ages of time went by, and the taxi guy kept on driving, and it kepton getting darker and foggier. I started feeling quite stupid.
    It didn’t help that the taxi smelled as if someone had thrown up in it. For a while I thought I was going to throw up myself.
    But then there was an old black gate with stone pillars on either side and forbidding walls, and in part of the wall were carved tall letters. It was so shadowy that first I could only see a big B , but as we got closer, I saw that the B was only the beginning and that the whole sign did say BLACKBRICK ABBEY . The huge crumbly black gates were closed and locked. Behind them was the beginning of what looked like a massive driveway covered in brown shiny gravel.
    â€œAnywhere here is fine, thank you,” I said, even though anywhere there was not fine at all.
    I uncurled my hand and looked at Granddad’s key.
    I got out. Taxi Guy was sitting there waiting for me to pay, his big fat elbow resting saggily on the open car window. I felt lousy and on my own, and my heart had started to gallop around. It was something to do with the way the air smelled. Something to do with the sounds of the massive big trees that were creaking like hundreds of old doors opening very slowly, and it was also a little bit to do with the whistling of the wind through the black branches. But it was mainly to do with being in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the stupid night.
    â€œEm, listen,” I said. “Can you take me back, please?”
    â€œBack where?” he asked, looking kind of amazed.
    â€œYou know, back to where you picked me up.”
    â€œSorry. No can do,” he replied. “I’ve gone out of my way already.”
    â€œOut of your WAY?” I said. “Stop me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that the whole POINT of driving a stupid TAXI?”
    â€œCalm down, mate,” he said. “There’s no need to be rude.”
    As well as hating it when people tell me to calm down, I hate it even more when someone I don’t know calls me “mate,” especially if I’ve never met them before and it’s obvious that they don’t even like me. I paid him what I owed him, which was thirty-seven fifty, and then I pulled out another twenty. I kept my voice steady, and I said to him, “Okay, listen. I need you to give me fifteen minutes. That’s all. If I’m not back by then, you can go.”
    He sucked some air in through his nose for a second or two, calculating something in his head.
    â€œAll right, then,” he said, snatching the money with impressive skill and transforming it into a crumpled blur as he slid it into his pocket. Then he took a newspaper