When Goober runs away and hides in a church he finds new friends, and an adventure which is larger than time itself.
An extract from the book
Chapter One
Running Away
Sly and Smith did not go looking for adventure, adventure came looking for them. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Back to the beginning.
The moment Goober heard about his parents, he ran away from home. He ran to his bedroom, pushed open the window and climbed out onto the fire escape. His family lived in a council flat three floors up from the ground. Goober was small for his age; he was ten, and could easily clamber down the back of the green metal stairs which led down to the ground. As usual he let go and jumped the last four steps, hanging off with his feet dangling for a second before dropping the last bit to the dirty tarmac below. Then he was up and running – running, running, running for his life, running to get away from the bad news, running across the hard ground, his feet pounding like a bouncing football – bang, bang, bang. The sound of his steps echoed around the blocks of council flats, but still he ran. Even when he got tired he ran. He ran, and ran, and ran, until his legs got so wobbly and weak that he had to stop. He wobbled around like a jelly and then flopped down beside the main road, sitting on the pavement with the cars whizzing by him like speeding bullets. He was breathing really fast and his hands and feet felt red hot. He lay down on the grass beside the pavement and stared up at the sky; his eyes were a bit blurred from all the running. He watched the dark grey clouds and thought about his mum and dad.
His dad was a big man, as big as a bear. He worked on the local building sites, mixing cement and carrying bricks and doing lots of other jobs to build the big new houses that were going up everywhere. His mum was a dinner lady at Goober’s school, the kind of dinner lady who was strict but friendly. She would always smile at him as he queued up for his lunch and always made sure he was having a good day, but if he started messing about, or ended up in trouble in the playground she would be down on him like a ton of bricks, the sort of big heavy bricks his dad carried about on those building sites. Every night when Goober got home his mum would cook some tea and when his dad got in they would eat it together in front of the television. His dad never said that much but he always gave Goober a huge bear hug before Goober went up to bed. At weekends, his dad would go fishing on Sundays, and quite often he took Goober along too. They would sit on the bank of the local river, watching the water and sipping hot tea. They never talked much but Goober loved those times with his dad, just the birds and the river and the people who nodded quietly as they went past with their children and their dogs. Sometimes Goober would see his friends from school but he only nodded at them – Sundays were for fishing quietly with his dad, not chasing his friends or swapping talk about football or pop music.
Goober had no brothers or sisters but he was used to that now. He was happy on his own, happy at home in his mum and dad’s flat, happy at school. He was not particularly bright or clever, he often got bored in the classroom, but it was okay. And he always had fishing to look forward to on a Sunday. Until now.
He opened his eyes again and looked up, the sky was going dark. The grey clouds had turned black and the bits in between looked smoky and fuzzy. He suddenly felt scared, he was on his own and he was not sure where he was. He looked around. The cars were still whizzing past, now they had bright headlights that dazzled him as he watched them go by. Goober stood up, brushed some dirt from his arms and ran towards the town. He stopped when he came to the large building with the big stone steps and the blue door. White letters over the window read Police Station. He went inside.
‘I think I’m lost,’ he said, looking up at the man in the uniform behind the desk.
The man in the uniform stared down at him but did not smile.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked.
‘With my mum and dad,’ said Goober, and then he started to cry.
After that the police could not get much sense out of him. Poor Goober sat in one of their offices and cried all night. After a while they found out who he was and what had happened and they made some phone calls. A policewoman took him home and put him to bed. She smiled as she tucked him in and tidied his dirty clothes but he didn’t smile back. He wanted to, Goober really wanted to be nice to her but something stopped him. He couldn’t stop thinking about his mum and dad, and he felt very angry about what had happened. The policewoman gave him a last smile and she switched off the light. As he lay there in the dark Goober could hear her moving around in the front room, moving around like his mum and dad had done. He shut his eyes tight and tried to sleep. But he couldn’t.
In the days that followed Goober went to school but didn’t do much there. He sat on his own, stayed on his own in the playground and didn’t talk to the others or chase them or hang about with them anymore. They all tried to talk to him, and his teachers looked concerned whenever they spoke to him, but it didn’t make any difference.
Before long Goober moved house. He went to live in a foster home. It was a large Victorian house with three floors and a wide staircase in the hall. The other children in the home had races to see who could slide down the banisters the fastest, but Goober never joined in. Now he wasn’t the only child in the house, now he had four foster brothers and two sisters. Now they sat around a big wooden table to eat their meals. Now there were no quiet Sundays out fishing, Sundays were loud and noisy and full of children running about the house. Lots of boys would have loved this kind of family. It would have been fun. But not Goober, he wasn’t used to it. Goober hated it. Now he had new parents too. John and Lucy. They were kind and caring and tried to treat all the children the same. But it made little difference to Goober. Suddenly the world was not the same anymore. The days were different, his home was different and even his family was different. Goober had always been a quiet person, but now he hardly said anything to anyone at all. Before long Goober began to plot. He plotted a way to escape from his new home. He watched what the others did and when they did it. He did not want to just run down the road for a while – he wanted to get away for good. John had a study upstairs in the house. It had a fire escape that led to the roof. Goober decided he would wait until John went to bed – John always went to bed at 11.30 at night, Goober had noticed – then he would slip into John’s study, open the door with the key hidden in John’s desk, slip out of the fire door and escape over the roofs of the houses. He could get a long way before he would have to climb down to the road again. Then he would just keep going until he found somewhere better. Goober had no idea what better might be, but it couldn’t be worse than this. Three nights later, Goober went to bed as usual, waited until it was late then dressed himself for the journey. He took a small knapsack of food and an extra jumper, and waited until he heard John go to bed. Then he tiptoed along the corridor, crept into John’s study and opened the desk.
‘What are you doing Goober?’ said a voice.
Goober spun round. John was standing there behind the door. He was a very thin man with a small goatee beard and steel glasses. He usually smiled a lot but he was not smiling now.
‘Goober,’ he said, ‘you’re not in trouble but you must tell me the truth. We know you’ve been through a terrible time, we know you’ve been unhappy, but you can’t come in here and steal from my desk.’
‘I wasn’t stealing,’ Goober blurted out.
‘Goober, you shouldn’t be in here. What are you doing?’
Goober shrugged. He looked down at the desk. The drawer was open and the key was in there, glinting up at him in the shadows and moonlight.
‘Goober, we care about you, you know. We really do. Lucy and I pray for you every night. D’you know that? We’re sure that God wants to help you. We’re sure of it. I think he’s got some very special future planned for you.’
Goober was only half listening. He was slowly moving his hand towards the drawer. John was looking at his face, he couldn’t see what Goober was doing.
‘I’m sure life is going to get better for you again,’ he said. ‘We all think that. We want to help you, we really do.’
Goober’s hand hovered right over the key. All he needed now was a distraction. He glanced up at John and looked over his shoulder and out of the door towards the hall and the bedrooms.
‘Who’s that behind you?’ he said, looking worried.
John fell for it. He turned and put his head out into the hall.
‘Hello? Mike? Tanya?’ John looked around but the place was quiet. ‘There’s no one here Goober...’
He stopped as he turned back. There certainly was no one there, not even Goober. The door to the fire escape was open and there was the sound of distant footsteps clattering over the roof.
Chapter Two
The Deserted Church on the Edge of Town
It was not too hard to clamber over the line of houses, then down the last fire escape to the road and freedom. Once on solid ground Goober ran and ran. He realised as he sped down the street that his life was nothing but running now. Running and hiding and staying in quiet corners away from people he did not know and did not want to know. Running did not make him happy but it stopped him from thinking too much about his life now and all that had happened. He ran for a whole day. He ran behind shops, across fields, through hedges, past gardens and beside garages. He ran... and ran... and ran. Nothing but running. Even when it rained and the rain turned to stinging hailstones.