Lamb to the Slaughter 2

Chapter 1

(you have to read the actual book really but you made be able to understand without reading the first book.)

10 years later

When I was born in 1972, August 10, I was a small baby. The doctors said to my momma it was from being to sporty and moving around to much. I was put into a special room to make me grow. I was born with a full head of brown hair and big blue eyes like my fathers. My momma is always saying how good of a detective I am and that sometimes I scare her when that is the last thing I want to do. I am named after my late father, Patrick Maloney. Everyone says he was murdered but Momma said it was suicide.

Today was my 10th birthday. All my friends are going round my grandma's house as we are moving and our house is full of boxes. It was the best birthday ever and all my friends enjoyed it and so did momma.

After my party me and Momma went home. She asked me if I could fetch her a newspaper from one of the boxes and then we could open my presents. As I walked into the front room, I saw a bright yellow piece of paper in the paper basket. It was screwed up and a bit torn. I lifted it up to have a look at it and read it. It was a diary entry from my momma's diary. It said:

May 2, 1972

Today was very overwhelming for me. Today Jack Noonan and other police and detectives came to question me on Patrick's death. It was hard for me to act natural but I think I managed to do it as I persuaded them...

The rest was torn off so I couldn't read it. Why was it hard to act natural? What did momma persuade them to do? Was there more to my momma then anyone knew? Including me?

Confused, I went back into the sitting room and showed it to my momma. She sat there frozen for a while and when she spoke it sounded quiet and squeaky.

'where did you get that darling' she said

'in the paper basket' I replied

'Well please put it in my bed side table. Its your aunts. She wanted me to throw it away for her.'

I slumped up to momma's bed room and went over to her bed side table.

'and don't go looking in momma's draws' I heard her say from downstairs.

I slowly opened her bottom draw where her diary was and lifted it up. I felt bad for wanting to look inside but I needed to know how my father really died.

I slowly eased open the diary. It was delicately decorated and I presumed it was quite expensive. It was a pale rose pink with gold satin ribbon running round the edge. The paper was a very pale yellow and her writing was always neatly in blue ink. I guess momma had written that entry on a separate piece since the shade of yellow is very different.

I started to read the first entry written on the first day my momma got her diary,when suddenly I heard my momma call which made me jump.

As I walked down stairs I could hear momma running around to get all my 10 presents in a pile. I sat down on the floor and started to unwrap my first gift from momma. I tore open the blue wrapping and inside I saw some dark green binoculars! My other gifts were a magnifying glass, some tops, two pairs of trousers, portable radio, pack of colourful pencils and a cuddly toy! All which must have been quite expensive. I thanked momma and went to bed as it was 9 o'clock and I had already stayed up an extra hour.

I put my presents in my room and went to bed with my new cuddly toy.