Pobby and Dingan Read Online Free PDF Page B

into the bush. After that I didn’t see him again for weeks, but.
    Well, I think Kellyanne was pretty amazed by all this, because her eyes were wide open. She turned and whispered to me: “Are all these people looking for Pobby and Dingan?”
    “That’s right,” I said. “Even the abos.”
    Kellyanne didn’t say anything after that. We took her back home and she went to sleep a little more peacefully. But when Jack the Quack came around later in the evening my mum was in floods of tears. I knew then that he must have told her that my little sis was really very ill and that my plan to make her feel better had failed. I went and hid in my room, feeling like there was a rock in my throat.
    My dad went walkabout that night. I heard him leaving. He was sniffing and sobbing and breathing heavy like a kettle.

6
    I woke up in the middle of the night all restless. I got out of bed, pulled open my car door and slid out of the room. A light was on in the living room and my mum was sitting on the floor with her back towards me and her chin resting on her knee. I tiptoed up to her and saw she had something rectangleish in her hand. “What you looking at, Mum?” I asked.
    My mum almost blasted off like a rocket. She jumped up onto her feet and turned around to face me all in one move. She was holding her hands out in a weird kind of karate chop. But when she saw it was me she calmed down and stopped trembling. She said: “Hey, Ashmol! It’s you! Not sleepy?” I noticed she had put the thing she was holding behind her back.
    “What were you looking at, Mum?” I said.
    Colour went over her cheeks like rolling-flash. “Oh. It’s just a photograph, Ashmol.”
    “Mind if I see? I really need something to knacker-out my eyes so as I can sleep.”
    Mum paused for a while, and then handed me the photograph with a trembling hand and sat back down on the floor. I sat down opposite her, cross-legged. The photograph was of four people standing in a line with their arms around each other. Two blokes and two women. Behind them was a sort of a hill with trees on it and the side of a building. And the hill was covered with purple dots. The sky was a mixture of blue patches and very bulging sorts of grey clouds. But the most amazing thing about the photo was the purple dots.
    “What are those?” I asked, pointing at the dots.
    “Bluebells,” said Mum. “It’s a photograph taken in England, Ashmol.”
    “And who’re those guys in the line?” I asked, scanning over their faces. The girls were very pretty and the blokes looked smart and rich and totally into themselves. And the blokes had expensive black suits and sharp noses, and the sheilas had flowers in their hair and pale skin and dresses like they wear at the Opal Princess competition.
    “That’s me, Ashmol,” said my mum, in a whisper. “Aged nineteen. In Granny Pom’s paddock before the Castleford Ball.”
    “What?” I said. “Which one?” And I looked again at the photo and saw her immediately. But she looked so different it was amazing. Much sparklier and cleaner in the photograph. Slimmer and with longer hair, but not as pretty as now, that’s for sure. And then I noticed one of the blokes was holding his face next to my mum’s, and was looking at her real close, and his hand was on her bare shoulder.
    “Who’s that bloke?”
    “Which one?”
    “That one.” I pointed to the man in the photograph with the side parting and the hand.
    “Peter Sidebottom.”
    “Peter what?”
    “Peter Juvenal Whiteway Sidebottom.”
    “That’s a funny sort of a name,” I said. “Was he a mate of yours?”
    “Yes. He was.” My mum paused and did her long-look-out-of-the-window thing. “He was my boyfriend before I met your father, as a matter of fact,” she said.
    “Oh,” I said, a bit embarrassed and not sure what to say next. “Did he know the Queen?”
    My mum laughed. “You’re a funny boy, Ashmol! What do you mean:
Did he know the Queen?
”
    “Well, he