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

Dear Christopher,

Well, I said I’d write to you every week, and I have. In fact, this is the second letter this week, so I’m doing even better than I said.

I have got a job! I’m working in Camden, at Perkin and Rashid, which is a Chartered Survayors. That means they go around looking at houses and work out how much they should cost and what work needs to be done on them and how much that work will cost. And also they work out how much new houses and offices and factories will cost to build.

It’s a nice office. The other secretary is Angie. Her desk is covered in little teddy bears and furry toys and pictures of her children (so I’ve put a picture of you in a frame on my desk). She’s really nice and we always go out for lunch together.

I don’t know how long I’ll stay here, though I have to do a lot of adding up of numbers for when we send bills out to clients and I’m not very good at doing this (you’d be better at it than I am!).

The company is run by two men called Mr. Perkin and Mr. Rashid. Mr. Rashid is from Pakistan and very stern and always wants us to work faster. And Mr. Perkin is weird (Angie calls him Pervy Perkin). When he comes and stands next to me to ask a question he always puts his hand on my sholder and squots down so his face is really near mine and I can smell his toothpaste which gives me the creeps. And the pay is not very good, either. So I shall be looking for something better as soon as I get the chance.

I went up to Alexandra Palace the other day. It’s a big park just round the corner from our flat, and the park is a huge hill with a big conference center on the top and it made me think of you because if you came here we could go there and fly kites or watch the planes coming into Heathrow airport and I know you’d like that.

I have to go now, Christopher. I’m writing this in my lunch hour (Angie is off sick with the flu, so we can’t have lunch together). Please write to me sometime and tell me about how you are and what your doing at school.

I hope you got the present I sent you. Have you solved it yet? Roger and I saw it in a shop in Camden market and I know you’ve always liked puzles. Roger tried to get the two pieces apart before we wrapped it up and he couldn’t do it. He said that if you managed to do it you were a genius.

Loads and loads of love,

And this was the fourth letter:

23rd August

Flat 1

312 Lausanne Rd

London N8 5NG

0208 756 4321

Dear Christopher,

I’m sorry I didn’t write last week. I had to go to the dentist and have two of my molars out. You might not remember when we had to take you to the dentist. You wouldn’t let anyone put their hand inside your mouth so we had to put you to sleep so that the dentist could take one of your teeth out. Well, they didn’t put me to sleep, they just gave me what is called a local anathsetic which means that you can’t feel anything in your mouth, which is just as well because they had to saw through the bone to get the tooth out. And it didn’t hurt at all. In fact I was laughing because the dentist had to tug and pull and strain so much and it seemed really funny to me. But when I got home the pain started to come back and I had to lie on the sofa for two days and take lots of painkillers…

Then I stopped reading the letter because I felt sick.

Mother had not had a heart attack. Mother had not died. Mother had been alive all the time. And Father had lied about this.

I tried really hard to think if there was any other explanation but I couldn’t think of one. And then I couldn’t think of anything at all because my brain wasn’t working properly.

I felt giddy. It was like the room was swinging from side to side, as if it was at the top of a really tall building and the building was swinging backward and forward in a strong wind (this is a simile, too). But I knew that the room couldn’t be swinging backward and forward, so it must have been something which was happening inside my head.

I rolled onto the bed and curled up in a ball.

My stomach hurt.

I don’t know what happened then because there is a gap in my memory, like a bit of the tape had been erased. But I know that a lot of time must have passed because later on, when I opened my eyes again, I could see that it was dark outside the window. And I had been sick because there was sick all over the bed and on my hands and arms and face.

But before this I heard Father coming into the house and calling out my name, which is another reason why I know a lot of time had passed.

And it was strange because he was calling, “Christopher…? Christopher…?” and I could see my name written out as he was saying it. Often I can see what someone is saying written out like it is being printed on a computer screen, especially if they are in another room. But this was not on a computer screen. I could see it written really large, like it was on a big advert on the side of a bus. And it was in my mother’s handwriting, like this:

And then I heard Father come up the stairs and walk into the room.

He said, “Christopher, what the hell are you doing?” And I could tell that he was in the room, but his voice sounded tiny and far away, like people’s voices sometimes do when I am groaning and I don’t want them to be near me.

And he said, “What the fuck are you…? That’s my cupboard, Christopher. Those are… Oh shit… Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

Then he said nothing for a while.

Then he put his hand on my shoulder and moved me onto my side and he said, “Oh Christ.” But it didn’t hurt when he touched me, like it normally does. I could see him touching me, like I was watching a film of what was happening in the room, but I could hardly feel his hand at all. It was just like the wind blowing against me.

And then he was silent again for a while.

Then he said, “I’m sorry, Christopher. I’m so, so sorry.”

Then he said, “You read the letters.”

Then I could hear that he was crying because his breath sounded all bubbly and wet, like it does when someone has a cold and they have lots of snot in their nose.

Then he said, “I did it for your good, Christopher. Honestly I did. I never meant to lie. I just thought… I just thought it was better if you didn’t know… that… that… I didn’t mean to… I was going to show them to you when you were older.”

Then he was silent again.

Then he said, “It was an accident.”

Then he was silent again.

Then he said, “I didn’t know what to say… I was in such a mess… She left a note and… Then she rang and… I said she was in hospital because… because I didn’t know how to explain. It was so complicated. So difficult. And I… I said she was in hospital. And I know it wasn’t true. But once I’d said that… I couldn’t… I couldn’t change it. Do you understand… Christopher…? Christopher…? It just… It got out of control and I wish…”

Then he was silent for a really long time.

Then he touched me on the shoulder again and said, “Christopher, we have to get you cleaned up, OK?”

He shook my shoulder a little bit but I didn’t move.

And he said, “Christopher, I’m going to go to the bathroom and I’m going to run you a hot bath. Then I’m going to come back and take you to the bathroom, OK? Then I can put the sheets into the washing machine.”

Then I heard him get up and go to the bathroom and turn the taps on. I listened to the water running into the bath. He didn’t come back for a while. Then he came back and touched my shoulder again and said, “Let’s do this really gently, Christopher. Let’s sit you up and get your clothes off and get you into the bath, OK? I’m going to have to touch you, but it’s going to be all right.”