Chapter 2

I find the diary the next day.
It’s in a box in the garage, hidden underneath a pileof rubbish.
You know how grown-ups always think you’re tooyoung to understand anything and talk to you like you’re a baby and you want to shout at them but you can’t because you have to Respect Your Elders?

That’s happening to me now.

‘It’ll be better than the old house in no time,’ Mum says. ‘I promise.’

‘I just don’t get why we had to move,’ I say, flicking through a bag of old newspaper cuttings. ‘It would have been loads easier for Grandma to live closer to us.’

‘He’s right,’ Jess says.

Mum stops shifting boxes and glares at us, but after a moment her eyes soften.‘Grandma’s lived in Swanbury her whole life. She’d hate to be anywhere else.’

I’m about to say, She wouldn’t realize she’s moved anyway, but I don’t want to upset Mum, even if she doesn’t care that she’s upset me. I liked our old house. I had the best room, and our garden was so big that Daisy could run laps around it. This house is much smaller. It was all right for Grandma and Granddad because all they ever did was sit around watching TV. Plus they didn’t have Jess playing loud music through the walls.

‘I forgot about this,’ Jess says, holding up an old photo.

It must be from ages ago, because I look tiny. It’s of Grandma and Granddad with Mum, Jess and me watching a play at their local pub, and –My breath catches, and I glance at Mum to make sure she’s OK.

Because Dad’s there too, running to try to make it into the photo before the timer goes off. Sometimes when Mum sees photos of Dad she goes still, and silent tears trickle down her face.

She takes the picture from Jess and her eyes glaze over.

‘What a lovely photo,’ she says.
Then she smiles, and my whole body sags in relief.
I know we moved to Swanbury so we could be closerto Grandma, but Jess reckons we moved because of Dad. Even though he left seven years ago, you could still feel him all around the old house.

When Dad walked out, Mum said nothing would change. She said she would always be there for us and that she would be a mum and a dad at the same time.

But Dad’s gone to live with his girlfriend in Australia and the only way I can talk to him is on Skype. And now we’re living here in a dusty old house a million miles away from my best friends, Sam and Dave, and I’ve got to go to a new school where I won’t know anyone and I’ll just be standing around all day with no one to talk to.

‘Here,’ Mum says. ‘Help me with this, will you?’

We lift one of the boxes out of the garage and leave it in the storage pile. I asked Mum why we didn’t just throw it all away but she said family might want to take a look at it, so we need to hang on to it.

‘Have you seen anything you want?’ she says as we tiptoe back through the mess.

‘Not yet.’

The first thing we did when we moved in was sort through all the junk. Mum said if we liked the look ofanything, we could keep it to remember Granddad by, or Grandma before she went in the care home.

I open the nearest box and peer in. More papers, more photos, so old that they’re in black and white. At the bottom there’s an album in a red leather jacket.

I lift it up and there it is –
The diary. 
It’s impossible to miss. On the front cover is a pencildrawing, a monster or a demon, tall and black with burning amber eyes. I hold it up so the eyes catch the light, and my heart stops . . .

The thing I saw last night. It looked like this.

‘What have you got there?’ Jess says, looking over my shoulder.

‘Nothing. Just a book.’

I pretend to put it back, then quickly hide it in the front pocket of my hoody.

I don’t know why. I just need to have a proper look at it. Mum and Jess have already taken loads of good stuff and I haven’t found anything yet. If Jess sees it then maybe she’ll want it too.

After a while we stop for dinner.

Mum starts singing in the kitchen as she cooks, and Jess is hogging the TV, so I take the book up to my room. I sit on my bed and turn it in my hands, trying not to smear the shading. The cover’s old and battered. It’s probably been lying there for ages, because Grandma’s been in the home for almost as long as I can remember. And I’m eleven years old – so that’s a pretty long time.

I open the cover gently and peer at the first page.

Diary of Margaret Williams, age 13

TOP SECRET

Grandma Williams . . . these words were written by her. Does that mean she did the drawing on the front too? I can’t imagine her drawing anything now. I’ve seen her trying to write her name before and the pen just wandered and wobbled until Mum took it off her. The page was covered in so many inky squiggles that they had to get a new piece of paper.

Thirteen years old. That would make her the same age as Jess. I’ve never thought about Grandma being a little girl before. She’s old and wrinkly and calls me Robert even though that’s Dad’s name, and she gives me one pound when I visit, unless it’s my birthday and then she gives me two.

I hold the cover up to the light. It’s a good drawing, part eagle, part lion. The pencil shading makes it look like stone. Like a –Like a gargoyle.

Suddenly the diary feels weird in my hands. My fingers tingle and my head goes all foggy. I take one more look at it, then slide it under my bed.