‘No… not a chance! It just needs a bit more effort, that’s all.’
And raising the hammer high into the air, he brought it down with such an almighty whack that he lost his grip completely, allowing it to fly out of his hand, narrowly missing his head and ricocheting off the roof. The chisel, launching in an entirely different direction, embedded itself into the far wall with a loud cracking sound.
‘You okay?’ Arthur whispered, having thrown himself on to the floor.
‘I think my whiskers have gone grey,’ meowed the cat, poking his head around the corner of the wood pile in the corner.
‘Really?’
‘Could be. Shocks like that can definitely age a cat!’
Taking a deep breath, Arthur raised his head up to see what had happened to the box. But it was just sitting there in the middle of the work surface, exactly where he’d put it.
‘But how? That’s not possible. I hit it really hard—you saw me, right?!’
At that moment, the latch on the door rattled, followed by a loud banging.
‘Arthur! You open this door immediately, do you hear me?!’
‘O-o, Cat!’ he said. ‘Now we’re in for it.’
‘No, not me, my friend, I’m just an innocent cat. And don’t forget to hide the box!’
Quick as a flash, Arthur stuffed it into the little pack which he always took fishing with him and put the hammer back. Attempting to retrieve the chisel from the wall, he found that it was in too deep and was forced to leave it.
‘Arthur! Open this door right now!’
With a last look around, he straightened his T-shirt and unbarred the door.
His mother was even more cross with him than he’d expected. Not only because going into the tool shed was expressly forbidden; but also, because, as luck would have it, she also spotted the chisel. The fact that he couldn’t give her a reasonable explanation as to how it’d gotten there only made matters worse.
‘So, you’re telling me that you have no idea how that chisel came to be stuck so far into the side of the tool shed wall that it can’t even be pulled out?’
‘Yes, Mama… I must have fallen over, and it flew out of my hand, I guess.’
‘You guess?’
‘Yes, Mama.’
‘And what were you doing with it in the first place?’
‘Trying to fix my backpack.’
‘Your backpack? With a chisel?’
‘Yes, well, I thought…’
‘Just you wait until Sasha hears about this. And what do you think your grandfather is going to say when he learns what you’ve done to his chisel, not to mention his tool shed. Again!’