Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

And then I noticed how the words Christopher and Swindon were written. They were written like this:

I only know 3 people who do little circles instead of dots over the letter i. And one of them is Siobhan, and one of them was Mr. Loxely, who used to teach at the school, and one of them was Mother.

And then I heard Father opening the front door, so I took one envelope from under the book and I put the lid back on the shirt box and I put the toolbox back on top of it and I closed the cupboard door really carefully.

Then Father called out, “Christopher?”

I said nothing because he might be able to hear where I was calling from. I stood up and walked around the bed to the door, holding the envelope, trying to make as little noise as possible.

Father was standing at the bottom of the stairs and I thought he might see me, but he was flicking through the post which had come that morning so his head was pointing downward. Then he walked away from the foot of the stairs toward the kitchen and I closed the door of his room very quietly and went into my own room.

I wanted to look at the envelope but I didn’t want to make Father angry, so I hid the envelope underneath my mattress. Then I walked downstairs and said hello to Father.

And he said, “So, what have you been up to today, young man?”

And I said, “Today we did Life Skills with Mrs. Gray. Which was Using Money and Public Transport. And I had tomato soup for lunch, and 5 apples. And I practiced some maths in the afternoon and we went for a walk in the park with Mrs. Peters and collected leaves for making collages.”

And Father said, “Excellent, excellent. What do you fancy for chow tonight?”

Chow is food.

I said I wanted baked beans and broccoli.

And Father said, “I think that can be very easily arranged.”

Then I sat on the sofa and I read some more of the book I was reading called Chaos by James Gleick.

Then I went into the kitchen and had my baked beans and broccoli while Father had sausages and eggs and fried bread and a mug of tea.

Then Father said, “I’m going to put those shelves up in the living room, if that’s all right with you. I’ll make a bit of a racket, I’m afraid, so if you want to watch television we’re going to have to shift it upstairs.”

And I said, “I’ll go and be on my own in my room.”

And he said, “Good man.”

And I said, “Thank you for supper,” because that is being polite.

And he said, “No problem, kiddo.”

And I went up to my room.

And when I was in my room I shut the door and I took out the envelope from underneath my mattress. I held the letter up to the light to see if I could detect what was inside the envelope, but the paper of the envelope was too thick. I wondered whether I should open the envelope because it was something I had taken from Father’s room. But then I reasoned that it was addressed to me so it belonged to me so it was OK to open it.

So I opened the envelope.

Inside there was a letter.

And this was what was written in the letter:

451c Chapter Road

Wittesden

London NW2 5NG

0208 887 8907

Dear Christopher,

I’m sorry it’s been such a very long time since I wrote my last letter to you. I’ve been very busy. I’ve got a new job working as a secretery for a factory that makes things out of steel. You’d like it a lot. The factory is full of huge machines that make the steel and cut it and bend it into watever shapes they need. This week they’re making a roof for a cafe in a shopping centre in Birmingham. It’s shaped like a huge flower and they’re going to stretch canvas over it to make it look like an enormus tent

Also we’ve moved into the new flat at last as you can see from the address. It’s not as nice as the old one and I don’t like Willesden very much, but it’s easier for Roger to get to work and he’s bought it (he only rented the other one), so we can get our own furnature and paint the walls the colour we want to.

And that’s why it’s such a long time since I wrote my last letter to you because it’s been hard work packing up all our things and then unpacking them and then getting used to this new job.

I’m very tired now and I must go to sleep and I want to put this into the letterbox tomorrow morning, so I’ll sign off now and write you another letter soon.

You haven’t written to me yet, so I know that you are probably still angry with me. I’m sorry Christopher. But I still love you. I hope you don’t stay angry with me forever. And I’d love it if you were able to write me a letter (but remember to send it to the new address!).

I think about you all the time.

Lots of Love,

Then I was really confused because Mother had never worked as a secretary for a firm that made things out of steel. Mother had worked as a secretary for a big garage in the center of town. And Mother had never lived in London. Mother had always lived with us. And Mother had never written a letter to me before.

There was no date on the letter so I couldn’t work out when Mother had written the letter and I wondered whether someone else had written the letter and pretended to be Mother.

And then I looked at the front of the envelope and I saw that there was a postmark and there was a date on the postmark and it was quite difficult to read, but it said:

Which meant that the letter was posted on 16 October 1997, which was 18 months after Mother had died.

And then the door of my bedroom opened and Father said, “What are you doing?”

I said, “I’m reading a letter.”

And he said, “I’ve finished the drilling. That David Attenborough nature program’s on telly if you’re interested.”

I said, “OK.”

Then he went downstairs again.

I looked at the letter and thought really hard. It was a mystery and I couldn’t work it out. Perhaps the letter was in the wrong envelope and it had been written before Mother had died. But why was she writing from London? The longest she had been away was a week when she went to visit her cousin Ruth, who had cancer, but Ruth lived in Manchester.

And then I thought that perhaps it wasn’t a letter from Mother. Perhaps it was a letter to another person called Christopher, from that Christopher’s mother.

I was excited. When I started writing my book there was only one mystery I had to solve. Now there were two.

I decided that I would not think about it anymore that night because I didn’t have enough information and could easily Leap to the Wrong Conclusions like Mr. Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard, which is a dangerous thing to do because you should make sure you have all the available clues before you start deducing things. That way you are much less likely to make a mistake.

I decided that I would wait until Father was out of the house. Then I would go into the cupboard in his bedroom and look at the other letters and see who they were from and what they said.

I folded the letter and hid it under my mattress in case Father found it and got cross. Then I went downstairs and watched the television.

151.Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer to them. It’s just that scientists haven’t found the answer yet.

For example, some people believe in the ghosts of people who have come back from the dead. And Uncle Terry said that he saw a ghost in a shoe shop in a shopping center in Northampton because he was going down into the basement when he saw someone dressed in gray walk across the bottom of the stairs. But when he got to the bottom of the stairs the basement was empty and there were no doors.