Mum Gave Me an Envelope

Mum invented a time machine. She told me yesterday and said she’d prove it today.

She said dad had told her she would never do it and that she’d show him. Then she gave me an envelope with an X drawn on it and told me to hold it and not look at it until she asked and to not tell anyone about it.

Today she called a family meeting for five o’clock. We all agreed, that’s the rule, you can’t refuse to attend a family meeting, but as soon as she told us at breakfast she went out the back of the house to her shed and she’d been in there with the door closed all day.

Charlie thought she’s mad with us and that she was going to tell us off for something. Charlie is my older brother, he’s twelve and thinks he knows everything just because he’s in high school. I think mum is mad too, but not with us, and in a good way.

No one else’s mum says things like this. I was a Harry’s house last week and his mum said we could play computer games if we liked, then she took us to the park and let us climb all the trees we wanted, even the ones that we couldn’t get in to ourselves and she had to help us in.

Mum has always been an inventor, I think. She has shown me pictures of me and Charlie as babies. We’re dangling in weird hammocks that are slung between her and dad. She called it The Load Sharer. She said we never slept so well as when we were in those hammocks but that they were not very successful because as a rule people, mums and dads anyway, liked to be either more or less than 125 centimetres away from each other for lots of reasons.

Last month she made me a lunchbox that could keep food hot and cold, that was pretty cool and it worked too for a few days until it started leaking and ruined my history poster. She said she’d create a new version of it soon, so I could have hot spaghetti and cold yoghurt for lunch again.

Because it’s the weekend we were all doing our own things today until we heard her ringing the gong and we all came down to the table. Dad sat in his seat and looked a little annoyed. I think he’d been napping.

Charlie was next to me. He whispered ‘You’re so in trouble. She knows what happened to her jewellery box.’

That was very unfair. I didn’t break it I was just looking at it and it was broken when I put it back, I don’t think I broke it but I know I shouldn’t have been touching it so I would have got in trouble anyway.

‘I’ve invented a time machine.’ said mum when we were sitting quietly.

‘Cool.’ I said.

‘No you haven’t.’ said Dad. ‘I know this is one of your pranks.’

‘This is not a prank.’ Mum insisted. ‘I’ve invented one and I can just prove it, we don’t need to argue about.’

‘We’re not in trouble?’ asked Charlie cheerfully.

‘No not at all.’ said Mum. ‘Now all of you please humour me. Sit still, be quiet and give me five minutes.’

She pulled out a piece of paper and started writing on it very quickly. Dad almost stood up but she caught him out of the corner of her eye and made him sit down again with a hand gesture. She finished writing and then folded the paper in half. She pulled an envelope out of her pocket and put the paper inside, sealing it shut and drawing a big X on the front. She showed it to all of us. I recognised that X.

‘I’ll be back.’ she said.

Mum stood up and went out the back door to her shed. We heard her shut the shed door. I looked at dad but he just shook his head at me. He looked a little bit sad.

‘I think she’s lost it.’ said Charlie.

‘Shut up!’ I shouted at him. ‘You can’t say that about mum.’

The sound of the shed door opening was followed by mum coming back inside. She stopped by the door. Her hands were held out to show they were empty. She looked at me. ‘Okay, do you have the envelope I gave you yesterday?’

I nodded and pulled it out of my pocket, putting it on the table. The X on it was clear.

‘I would like you to open the envelope and read what is inside it.’

I did that. I opened it up. There was a handwritten note. It went:

It was the entire conversation we’d had in the meeting until she left the room, but mum had given it to me the day before.

‘Enough!’ said Dad angrily. He snatched the note from me and read it, then gave me a very mean look. ‘Why are you joining in with this prank, it’s ridiculous, we could not possibly believe it.’

‘I didn’t!’ I said. ‘Mum gave me this envelope yesterday and asked me to hold it for her that’s all.’

Dad crossed his arms. ‘You’re doing that mentalism thing again. You made us have this conversation. I don’t like being manipulated and I really don’t like it when you do it to the kids.’

‘I am not doing anything of the sort. I assure you…’ she started saying, but then Charlie interrupted her.

‘Mum! Is that smoke?’

She turned around. It definitely was smoke. It was her shed. It was on fire. She ran in to the kitchen to get the extinguisher and dad ran out with her and got the hose out, but they couldn’t stop it. The fire brigade came as well, but it was too late, there was nothing left.

After they’d gone dad was still annoyed. He wouldn’t talk to mum that night.

When she was tucking me in, she gave me a kiss and whispered in my ear. ‘I’ll work out the overheating problem in the next version.’

Mum definitely invented a time machine.