Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman Page A

ironing cupboard as Alistair sat down sulkily on the kitchen stool.
    â€˜Took me ages to make this grappling-iron to get us onto the cargo ship,’ said Alistair. ‘I’ll have to pull it to bits if we’re not going today. Dad goes spare if there’s nothing to hang his shirt on.’
    â€˜Hide it under your bed,’ said Colin. ‘I’ll buy some more hangers while I’m out.’
    â€˜Where are you going, anyway, that’s so important?’ sulked Alistair.
    â€˜Just helping a mate out,’ said Colin.
    â€˜That’s all very well,’ said Alistair, ‘but while you’re doing that, the ancient tribes of the Amazon are probably giving their cure for cancer to some Swiss chemical company who’ll put it in pills and sell them for a million pounds each.’
    Ted wasn’t grinning today.
    He was lying on the bed looking at his bandaged foot as if he wished he could chop it off.
    â€˜Perishing thing,’ he muttered. ‘Doctor says it’ll be another week before I can walk on it.’
    Colin looked at him sadly.
    A whole week without seeing the bloke you were in love with was pretty tough.
    â€˜OK,’ he said, trying to take Ted’s mind off it, ‘that’s fruit, shampoo and cough lollies.’ He put them all into the plastic bag. ‘Anything else?’
    â€˜You don’t have to do this, you know,’ said Ted, looking at him. ‘You’ve got problems of your own.’
    â€˜Does Griff like curry?’ asked Colin. ‘I could take him in some curry.’
    It was on his third visit to Griff that Colin had the idea.
    A nurse wheeled a patient past the doorway of Grill’s ward and the idea hit Colin like a lunch-box from a low-flying cropduster.
    Of course, why hadn’t he thought of it before?
    He finished telling Griff about Des Phipp’s elder brother who could fit a whole meat pie into his mouth and still have room for the sauce, and then it was time for Griff’s shower.
    Colin said goodbye and went out into the main corridor. He went up to the busiest nurse he could see, one who was hurrying along with an armful of bedpans and was about to drop them.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ said Colin, ‘where do they keep the wheelchairs?’
    â€˜Ugh ugh ugh,’ said the nurse, who had a clipboard in her mouth. She didn’t stop, but flipped her head towards a side corridor.
    There was only one door at the end of it.
    Colin held his breath as he opened it. Inside were ten or more neatly-folded wheelchairs.
    As he walked out of the hospital wheeling one of them, he kept telling himself not to run, not to bow his head, not to look guilty.
    After all, if a hospital had wheelchairs for its patients, why shouldn’t it have them for its visitors too?
    After a wobbly start, the wheelchair was a huge success.
    Getting Ted down the stairs was the problem at first, until Colin went and asked the Polish man in the bottom flat if he could help.
    It turned out the Polish man had a brother in Australia and he and his wife helped Colin carry Ted all the way down the stairs and into the street.
    â€˜You’re a genius,’ shouted Ted as Colin wheeled him towards the tube station.
    Colin considered asking Ted to put that in writing and send it to Mr Blair at school.
    Ted and Griff were so pleased to see each other that Colin suddenly felt like an intruder.
    Give them a bit of time alone, he thought.
    He slipped out of the room, muttering that he had to go to the loo.
    In fact, to kill time, he went for a wander through some of the other wards.
    Room after room full of seriously ill people.
    None of them with any reason to feel happy, thought Colin sadly as he walked on.
    But each time he went into a new ward, something struck him afresh. Something so obvious it would have made him shrug and say ‘so what’ if he’d been told about it a month before.
    Now, each time he saw it, he felt a strange