The Missing Link by Kate Thompson

was almost like a captive, forced along on this bizarre and dangerous journey against my will. By the time we stopped for lunch I was ready for a fight.
    ‘It’s all your fault,’ I said, breaking up a bar of chocolate and, meanly, keeping the biggest piece for myself. ‘How is it that your mother just happened to send for you just now, eh? When everything’s going haywire?’
    Danny sniggered. ‘Haywire,’ he said. ‘That’s funny.’
    My blood began to boil.
    ‘There’s nothing funny about it!’ I yelled. ‘I don ’t want to be here, understand? I don’t even know where we’re supposed to be going!’
    All three of them just stood and stared at me, as though I was the one who was mad, and not them. I stood up and began to walk back the way we had come. I suppose I thought the others would follow me, but they didn’t. I kept going, unwilling to back down now that I had tried to make a stand, but I was getting scared, being out there on my own, and despite what Maurice had said, I felt responsible for Danny.
    Besides, I had all the money. In the end I had to stop. But I wasn’t ready to go back to them, yet. I wasn’t going to back down that far.
    I sat on a wobbly stone wall in the damp, misty afternoon, and waited. Eventually, Darling arrived. I knew she was there but I didn’t look up. She tried to win me over by doing more impersonations; an owl, a football crowd, an opera singer, but I refused to be amused. Then she did a duck, and I couldn’t help laughing.
    ‘Come on, Christie,’ she said. ‘We need you.’
    I shook my head. ‘I just don’t know what’s going on,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to explain things to me, Darling.’
    ‘Explain what?’
    ‘How you and Oggy can talk, for one thing.’
    But Darling just looked perplexed. ‘I don’t know, Christie,’ she said. ‘How did
you
learn to talk?’
    ‘But that’s different. All people can talk. But animals can’t. They just can’t.’
    Darling hopped on to my arm and gobbled up a small spider that I hadn’t noticed. ‘All I know is that we’re not supposed to tell anyone. Except you and Danny.’
    ‘Why?’
    Darling had to think hard about that one. Eventually she said, ‘I think it’s something to do with Mother’s lab. She doesn’t want anyone to know about it.’
    ‘Her lab?’
    Before Darling could reply, Danny and Tina emerged from the mist, and I remembered that I was sulking.
    ‘Come on, Crimpy,’ said Danny.
    I looked away, remembering his mother. Striding down the street. A lab. So she really was a scientist. And maybe not so mad, if she had found a way of altering animal behaviour.
    ‘We’re going, whether you like it or not,’ said Tina. ‘Do you think we care if you come?’
    ‘Thanks, Tina,’ I said. ‘I’m definitely not coming now.’ Even though I wanted to again. More than ever. To see the lab, to know more about what Mother was doing.
    ‘I care, Christie. I care,’ said Danny. He was distressed, and beginning to wind up. I glared at Tina. She looked away.
    ‘All right,’ she snarled. ‘I want you to come, OK?’
    It wasn’t the enthusiastic response I would have liked, but it was enough to let me off the hook. Danny made delighted whooshing noises and threw his arms all over the place. Together again, we walked on into the enveloping mist.

2
    AS NIGHT FELL, we came upon a little farmhouse and, with Darling on the look-out, succeeded in sneaking into a dry outhouse at the back of the yard. It was a fuel shed, with a big stack of musty logs in one corner and neat bundles of kindling in another. In a third corner was a stack of old cardboard boxes and newspapers and, with a bit of quiet labour, we spread them out and made a fairly level sort of bed. It wasn’t much, but after the bone-deep dampness of the misty night it was five-star luxury. The covert adventure brought us all together again, despite our tiredness. We might even have been happy for a while, if it hadn’t been for Oggy. His