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would rather have seen at that moment than my mother. But she, as luck would have it, was about as far away as it was possible for her to be, happily ignorant of the storm that surrounded the rest of us. She was at a conference way down under, in the home of the notorious flatworm.

10
    D AD TOOK THE JOB , inevitably, but it took some time for all the details to be worked out and it wasn’t until August that he went to London to meet Mr Davenport and sign a contract. He told us that he had to sign the Official Secrets Act as well. When Mum heard that she went ballistic.
    ‘The Official Secrets Act? I thought only soldiers and spies had to sign that. Since when have squirrels been enemies of the state?’
    ‘It’s the animal rights activists again,’ said Dad. ‘There have been some terrible cases recently. People intimidated, places closed down. They don’t want loose talk wasting them a humungous amount of money, that’s all.’
    ‘Well, we all know. Did anyone think of that? What happens if Laurie or Alex tell their mates?’
    ‘They won’t,’ said Dad, looking daggers at us.
    We wouldn’t, of course, but it did all seem a bit sloppy if it was so important.
    ‘Well,’ said Mum, ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing.’
    ‘I know exactly what I’m doing,’ said Dad.
    Within a few days of Dad signing the contract, a courier arrived at our house with a fantastic brand-new state-of-the-art computer. He and Dad manhandled the huge box into the study and Alex and I brought in the printer and the scanner and other smaller things. One of them was a package containing DVDs, which had the squirrel genome information from the company in the USA.
    For the next couple of days Dad immersed himself in the study, feverishly clearing out all the debris that had gathered there over the last ten years and making a clear space for the launch of his new venture. Alex and I hovered in the wings, carrying out rubbish, helping to move tables and desks from one part of the house to the other as Dad tried to decide what the best arrangement would be. We begged for a go on the new computer but Dad said no. Finally and categorically no. We could use his old computer but the new one—and the study as well for that matter—was completely out of bounds to us and there were to be no exceptions. This job was too important.
    We didn’t ask Dad how much the government was paying him, but we had the impression that it was a princely wage. He talked about building a chalet in the garden when the mortgage was paid off so he could have a proper study outside in peace and quiet and not be in everybody’s way. He put in an order to one of the office supply companies and another courier arrived the next day with four huge boxes. There was a new swivel chair and a smart red filing cabinet. There were thirty reams of paper, a half-dozen printer cartridges, bulk wrapped jotter pads and a gross of ballpoint pens. There was every kind of file, folder and storage box under the sun, in all the colours of the rainbow.
    ‘Are we opening a shop, Dad?’ Alex asked.
    ‘Help yourselves,’ said Dad, and we did. We were the best supplied students in our school when we started back for the new year the following week. But it didn’t do Alex any good. In fact, it might have been one of the reasons that he got into trouble.

11
    I COULDN’T THINK OF who else to call on as my ‘appropriate adult’. Attiya Malik kept coming into my head, but I knew that she would probably be called in to be with Javed, and I doubted that we could share her. We knew loads of people in the area, but I couldn’t think of anyone who would be just right. Our nearest neighbours were the Davidsons and I had known them all my life, but they were getting on and they both had medical conditions which wouldn’t respond particularly well to the stress of being called into the police station. Mum’s parents had moved to Ireland a few years ago, and Dad’s were in their house