Escape from Shangri-La by Michael Morpurgo

again,’ said my mother, wagging her finger playfully at Popsicle. ‘Frightened us half to death, you did. Promise?’
    â€˜Promise,’ Popsicle replied, holding up his hand. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
    â€˜We don’t want you doing that either,’ she said, and we all laughed at that, even my father.
    â€˜Well,’ my mother went on, getting to her feet, ‘now that’s settled, we can get on with life, can’t we? And you know what that means, don’t you, Cessie Stevens?’
    â€˜No.’ But I knew exactly what she was getting at.
    â€˜I have this feeling that, in all the excitement, you might have forgotten something.’ I played dumb. ‘Your violin practice?’ There was no point in arguing. I made the best of it and got up to leave.
    â€˜You want me to come up and hear you?’ my father asked.
    â€˜It’s all right,’ I replied. I was so angry with him, and I wanted him to know it. ‘Popsicle’ll come, won’t you? We’ll do some Beatles songs.’
    â€˜â€œNowhere Man”,’ said Popsicle, as I helped him to his feet. ‘We’ll do “Nowhere Man”.’
    So we went upstairs and, sitting on the bed in my room, Popsicle taught me ‘Nowhere Man’ till I knew it through and through. I played. He sang. We were good together, very good. But my mind wasn’t on it. I just couldn’t enjoy it as much as I usually did. I kept thinking of my father downstairs, and I kept wishing I hadn’t been so cruel.
    When I’d finished, Popsicle looked at me for a while, and then he said, ‘You and me, we’re friends, aren’t we? And friends have to be honest with each other, right?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜You’ve always been good to me, Cessie. You spoke up for me last night, and I shan’t forget that, not ever.But you mustn’t judge your dad like you do. You mustn’t hurt him. You’re the apple of his eye, you are. So you be kind to him, eh? There’s a girl.’
    Popsicle had been reading my mind again, and I wondered how he did it.

6 AND ALL SHALL BE WELL
    IT WAS SOON AFTER THIS THAT I BEGAN TO NOTICE Popsicle talking to himself. I’d hear him in his bedroom, a muffled monologue, so muffled that I could never make out much of what he was saying. I noticed too that he was becoming more and more absent-minded. Once, he went wandering out into the garden in the rain with just his socks on; and time and again he’d make the tea and forget to put any tea in the pot. He’d think that lunch-time was tea-time and tea-time was lunch-time. Every time he’d try to laugh it off and call himself a ‘silly old codger’, but I could see that it worried him as much as it worried us.
    Then one day he lit a bonfire too close to the garden shed and Mr Goldsmith’s fence. I wasn’t at home when it happened. I was out at Madame Poitou’s for my violinlesson. When I came back the fire-engine was already there and a pall of brown smoke was hanging over the house. I ran inside. Popsicle was sitting on the bottom stair in the hallway, his face in his hands, and my mother was crouched down beside him trying to comfort him.
    â€˜It’s not your fault, Popsicle,’ she was saying. ‘These things happen. Why don’t you go upstairs and have a nice wash? You’ll feel a lot better.’ His eyes were red, his face tear-stained and besmirched. He went up the stairs very slowly.
    I followed my mother out into the garden. It was a mess out there, a real mess. The fire-fighters were packing up and going. As one of them passed us, he stopped. ‘Could have been a lot worse, missus. Whatever does he think he was doing anyway? First he builds a bonfire too close to the shed and then he goes off and leaves it. Got to be a bit doolally, if you ask me.’
    When they had all gone I gave her a hand tidying up what we could in