Tom and Who?

By Rosemary Wilkie

Tom is a lively 9-year old whose mother has a new baby. A car accident puts Tom’s father into the same hospital, so Tom goes to stay with Grandma in a quiet village near the sea. He makes friends with Harry and the twins Jack and Samantha.
The children are upset when pets start to disappear. When some puppies and kittens reappear as stuffed toys, the children decide to act. This involves them in frightening adventures. They find most of the missing animals on a small island you can walk to when the tide is out. With great courage the children outwit the guards and ferry the animals safely back across the incoming tide on an old sea tractor. They are on the right track! Just a few more pets to find.
But Harry disappears on the way home. The police find his bicycle miles away at a railway station and think he has run away, but Tom and the others are convinced that Harry has been kidnapped by the baddies. How will they find him? And the rest of the pets? And who? is helping them? Download Tom and Who? and discover the amazing adventures that follow, including mayhem at the airport . . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosemary Wilkie
• Release date: Jun 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458078216

Rosemary Wilkie

As I wrote very good essays when I was nine, my parents and teachers hoped I would become a writer. I thought it would be much more exciting to be an architect or a sailor, but those careers were reserved for boys. At nineteen I ran away to discover the world, landed in the United States, married and started a family.My mother, undeterred, gave me a portable typewriter for my 21st birthday. I used it to start grown up novels poking fun at institutions and social customs - books never finished as my targets changed when I moved to France, Canada, France again and back to England.Two husbands, two sons, two stepsons and five grandchildren absorbed much of my time, as did brief careers in computers and the civil service, followed by many years as a psychotherapist and heart awakener.In the nineties, I began to write again, mostly non-fiction, but writing children's books is much more much more fun. 'Emily and the Angels' came out as a paperback and audio cassettes in 1999,and 'Tom and Who?' as a paperback in 2005. 'Poppy's Pendulum' was published as an ebook in 2011. All three books are available for download and purchase on this site. Enjoy!As well as writing children's books, I write articles, give talks and workshops on the development of consciousness.And I love storytelling I spent the winter of 2006/07 studying at the School of Storytelling at Emerson College, in Forest Row, East Sussex, and now seize every opportunity to tell stories.

Book preview

Tom and Who?

by Rosemary Wilkie

Illustrated by Zoë Collard

Copyright © Rosemary Wilkie 2011

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/64506 and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

First published by Morgan Books 1998

http://www.rosemarywilkie.co.uk

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This adventure was inspired by a visit to Bigbury-on-Sea and Burgh Island in South Devon.

Burgh Island hotel is a glamorous Art Deco hotel on a beautiful island.

The sea tractor travels through the sea when the tide is in to serve the hotel and 14th Century Pilchard Inn.

The island has offered refuge to kings and smugglers, 73 species of bird, rare orchids, badgers and rabbits.

Bigbury-on-Sea has great beaches.

But Grandma’s village and all the characters are entirely fictitious.

For Ken

Chapter 1

Tom’s Dad didn’t like drivers wearing hats. He said they crept along with twenty cars behind them, indicating left and turning right, or going the wrong way down a one-way street. But the worst ones come out of side roads without stopping.

That’s what happened to Dad and Tom on their way home from the hospital where Mum had just had Tom’s new sister. She was ever so small, just a reddish blob with a screwed up face. She didn’t move or say anything. Mum and Dad were holding hands, all googly-goo, and forgot to choose a name for the baby, so Tom called her Blob.

The other car struck them on Dad’s side with a horrid crump. Something hit Tom’s head and his arm hurt. Suddenly he was outside on the grass verge, feeling much better and jumping up and down like a man on the moon. The cars were jammed together and people were running to help.

Dad was still in their car and looked as if he had fallen asleep. Well, they had got up early, considering it was the beginning of the school holidays and Dad wasn’t going to work until Mum came home.

Lots of sirens, really loud, and blue lights flashing. Their car was surrounded by men in yellow jackets. Two of them carried Dad into the ambulance.

Tom called out, ‘Hey, wait for me!’ but no one took any notice.

A boy appeared from nowhere and put his arm round Tom’s shoulder. Tom felt happy just looking at him, he was so light and shimmery. ‘What’s your name?’ Tom said.

‘Mike, I’m your....’

‘Who?’

Then Tom woke up in hospital with a bandage round his head and a big bruise on his arm. The doctor said they were short of beds and Tom was well enough to go home, but his Dad had a broken leg and something called concussion. A nurse took Tom to see him, but he was asleep.

As Mum and Dad had to stay in hospital, there was no one at home to look after Tom. So Mum rang Grandma, who came all the way from her house near the sea. Meanwhile Tom had to hang around the baby ward. He was an active, wiry boy with freckles and unruly brown hair. The nurses smiled to cheer him up as they rushed past, but Mum was sleepy and there was nothing to do. Really boring.

At last Grandma arrived. She was plump and had long grey hair wound up on her head. She gave Tom a hug and took a quick look at Blob, then sat patiently while Mum wrote a long list of instructions telling her what to do with Tom. Grandma dropped the list in a bin on the way out.

At Tom’s house Grandma peeped underneath his bandage. She spread arnica cream on his arm and let him put everything he wanted in her car. As soon as they were out of town, she bought him a super meal of curry, chips and beans, with pancakes, ice-cream and hot chocolate to follow.

Before they drove on, she made room for Tom to lie down on the back seat. It was comfy with cushions and a blanket, and he fell asleep. He woke up as they drove into her garage and they went straight into the house through an inside door. It was a muddle. Computers, newspapers and wodges of knitting everywhere.

Grandma stood with her arms full of toys in the doorway of the guest room. It was nearly full with one big bed and a small one. ‘No room for your trains here,’ she said. ‘I’ll put you in the attic.’

The attic had been changed since Tom’s last visit. It was great. A little window at each end, a shiny wooden floor and a folding bed.

‘It was to be an office for my knitting business,’ said Grandma, ‘but there were too many stairs.’

Tom was glad. Lots of space, all to himself! They took everything up, including his white mice in their cage. He fetched water for them from the bathroom on the floor below.

Grandma produced tomato soup and cheese sandwiches for supper, then put more stuff on his arm.

‘Bedtime,’ she said, giving him a kiss. ‘Sleep well.’

* * * * *

Tom wasn’t tired, so he made a layout for his train using every single rail and lined up his cars for a car park by the station. When it got dark he lay down, thinking of Dad, Mum and Blob. He hoped they could all go home soon.

Grandma produced tomato soup and cheese sandwiches for supper

The moon rose and shone on his face. He got up and looked out of the windows. There wasn’t much to see. A garden at the front, then the village green all silvery, with houses beyond. At the back was more garden, and trees hiding the fields that went all the way to the sea.

Tom felt peckish so he crept downstairs into the kitchen and found the bikky jar. He went outside and sat on