The Portal Read Online Free PDF Page B

in yellow. After that, there was the lift and Dad’s ‘pantry’, and then the kitchen which, William discovered, had a storeroom at the back containing an impressive range of food and drink.
    Along from the kitchen was the room with all the clothes and the laundry drawer. Next to that was a recreation room with a full-sized snooker table, a small gymnasium and some pinball machines, and the last door before William was back at the Portal opened into a room that was at least twice the size of any of the others he had seen.
    It was a sitting room, with two enormous sofas facing each other in the centre, a set of dining chairs grouped round a table in one corner, and a circle of armchairs in another. Around the walls there was a drinks cabinet, several bookcases, a television, and a vast collection of DVDs – but the real surprise for William was what he sawthrough the windows that ran along the back. They looked out on exactly the view you would get from the sitting room of the farmhouse above.
    Standing in front of them, he could see the lawn and flower beds directly ahead, the barn over to the left and the field that ran down to the river on the right. The whole picture looked completely real. The trees were swaying in the breeze, the sheep in the fields on the other side of the valley bent their heads as they grazed and, when he asked, Emma explained that he was seeing a real time image of exactly what you would see if you were upstairs in the farmhouse, transferred to the screen below.
    Not that it looked like a screen. Even right up close the illusion was complete. There was a slight haze on the field over to the right, you could see every detail in the swirls of the dust the chickens were kicking up in their pen and you could even see the little drips of oil coming from the chainsaw Daniel was carrying across to the barn…
    William paused.
    A chainsaw.
    Daniel had a chainsaw…
    William’s brother did not like being told that he couldn’t use the saw.
    â€˜I need it,’ he protested, ‘to cut up this wood.’
    â€˜It’s a chainsaw,’ said William, ‘and you’re eight. You know perfectly well you can’t use it. I’m five years older than you and
I’m
not allowed to touch it.’
    â€˜Uncle Larry said I could.’
    â€˜Uncle Larry would let you set fire to your bedroom if he thought it would keep you quiet,’ said William. ‘What were you trying to do with it anyway?’
    â€˜I’m making shelves.’ Daniel kicked at the dirt with his feet. ‘And I can’t cut up the planks without a saw, can I?’
    Amy appeared at the barn door with Timber, carrying an overnight bag.
    â€˜Is it all right then?’ she asked.
    William turned to her. ‘Is what all right?’
    â€˜Daniel was supposed to be asking if I could sleep over again tonight,’ said Amy. ‘Mum says she’s going to be out lambing.’
    â€˜There’s no point asking him,’ said Daniel crossly. ‘He won’t let anybody do anything.’
    â€˜Yes, of course you can stay,’ said William.
    â€˜Great!’ Amy smiled. ‘And she says did she leave her tool-belt here the other night?’
    â€˜I think it’s in the kitchen,’ said William, and he was about to walk back to the house to get it, when Timber trotted past him and pushed open the back door. He came back out a moment laterwith the tool-belt in his mouth and William thought, not for the first time, that there was something a bit creepy about a dog that understood quite so much of what people said.
    It turned out Daniel wanted a set of shelves so that he would have somewhere to display his collection of skulls and William suggested that, instead of making them, he use the bookshelves from the spare bedroom. He and Amy helped Daniel carry them through to his room, and William left him setting out the skulls while Amy printed labels to go on the front