The Yoghurt Plot Read Online Free PDF Page A

wearing a black suit, a white shirt, a bow tie. She’s got a peachy-pink dress with a huge feathery skirt, and although the photo’s faded and cracked, I can make out chandeliers and pale green flocked wallpaper. At the bottom it says:
To Arnold – hoping to make this victory the first of many, Doreen
. Arnold is Granddad’s name. I examine the photo – I suppose the face is Granddad’s, but you’d hardly know that the shambling thing in the kitchen and the man in the photo were remotely related.
    Back in the kitchen, I hand Granddad his glasses, reach into the cupboard for a bowl and the cornflakes, and that’s when I spot the yoghurt pots on the side.
    Two of them, empty. Spoons sticking out of the top, and not the ones that we ate yesterday. Two more yoghurt pots.

Chapter 8
    Dilan and I sit with Granddad while we all eat bowls of cereal. I’m in the room, but my mind’s elsewhere.
    Gone. They’ve gone, and worse than that, they’ve left us with Granddad. I glance over at the yoghurt pots. They look different from the ones that Dilan and I tried yesterday. More cone-shaped. I wonder if they’ve gone back to 1974 – or even further. Perhaps they’re meeting Dave Dando. And then an awful thought jumps into my mind. Perhaps Dad’s meeting himself – as a baby.
    I don’t know what happens if you meet yourself. In all the books I’ve ever read it’s meant instant death, or sparks, or one of you has to disappear.
    I imagine Dad leaning over the side of a pram and both he and the baby melting into each other.
    He might end up as some hideous hybrid. Half man, half baby.
    He wouldn’t stand a chance.
    I look back at Granddad. He’s managed to fleck globs of gloopy food down his pyjama top. If Mum or Dad were here, they’d whisk it off him and bung it in the washing machine, but I don’t feel able to do that, so I pass him a tissue and point at the slobber and hope for the best.
    When we finally leave for school, the bus doesn’t come for ages. We wait at the bus stop and neither of us says the thing that’s hanging over us. Neither of us mentions the awful possibility that our parents might be lost in time. Instead Dilan listens to his iPod and fiddles with his phone.
    â€˜Weird,’ he says. ‘I’ve got loads of random texts. They must have come through yesterday – I just didn’t notice.’
    â€˜Who from?’ I say, hoping it could be Mum and Dad.
    â€˜Me,’ he says. ‘They’re from me. I’m telling myself what’s going to be for lunch – what?’
    I scrape lichen from the glass, worried.
    By the time we arrive it’s nearly break time and we have to explain ourselves.
    The school secretary, Miss Golightly, is behind her desk, picking peanut brittle out of her teeth. She thinks we don’t know that she eats all the time, but we do, and it’s fairly obviously peanut brittle because the wrappers overflow from the bin beside the door  …  and because she’s absolutely enormous.
    â€˜Bugg, Dilan – what happened to you? I was just going to ring home.’ She’s a got a deep warm hot-chocolate voice. It makes her difficult to resist.
    â€˜Mum and Dad—’ starts Dilan, but I cut him off. I know what he’s going to say, but he shouldn’t – not yet.
    â€˜The alarm didn’t go off, sorry, and then there was a bit of trouble with Granddad,’ I say.
    â€˜Oh – dear Arnold.’ Her face creases into a look of genuine sorrow. ‘How is he – any better?’
    I think about Granddad dancing with the
Radio Times
. ‘Much the same thanks, Miss Golightly.’
    She heaves a sigh. ‘Such a shame, such a shame – and to think what could have been if things had been different.’ She sighs again and flaps her hands at us. ‘Off to break – and then into class.’
    â€˜Why did you