Beware of the Foxes

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

Recap:

“Come on, let’s go see my dad.” Ian said and after I took off my shoes (the guys weren’t wearing any, naturally) we trotted along the hall towards a door in the rear of the house.

Ian knocked and almost immediately a male voice answered. “Come in.”

Ian pushed down the handle and opened the door slowly. I suddenly felt nervous again, all curiosity gone. 

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We entered the study and I looked around. This was the first time I got to see it in a long time. I had only ever been in here once before, when I was much younger and Nell had searched for her mother and finally found her at her desk in the very same study. Little had changed; to the left was Mrs. Grover’s desk with a sort of office style sideboard pushed against the wall behind the desk and a big painting above it. The desk was tidy and on it and on the sideboard behind, red office items provided blobs of colour to the room and made it look less official. Opposite to me, starting at the left hand side of Mrs. G’s desk and nearly all the way to Mr. Grover’s desk, ran a huge amount of bookshelves, full with lever arch files, books, memorabilia and pictures; only separated by two windows. A little to the right a third window of the room provided another empty space, but to its right a big file cabinet took up the space to the side of Mr. G’s desk. Both desks were situated at the opposite side of the room, facing each other. In the middle of the room, in front of most of the bookshelves was the small sitting group, two sofas facing each other, one facing the windows, the other facing the door, with a small rectangular coffee table in between. Mr. G’s desk had a small sideboard-like file cabinet behind it as well and two windows behind Mr. G faced the garden that was currently enveloped in darkness.

And there, behind his desk sat Mr. Grover, looking at the group of people that had filed into the study with a curious expression on his face. Both Grover parents still looked young and their children had clearly gotten their good looks from them, however Ian was the only one to get his dad’s hair colour, while Nell and Ben took after their mother in that department.

“To what do I owe this gathering?” Asked Mr. G with a raised eyebrow, but rather good-natured. Obviously Ian and the others had refrained from using the mind link so far.

“Dad, I think it’s best to just tell you. We were in the woods and we didn’t notice Anne here was walking around there-” Ian started.

“In our defence, she was way off the trail.” Ben cut in.

Ian gave him a look that said to let him do the talking. “As I said, we came across Anne, but we didn’t notice her at first and we happened to just run in wolf form and be stupid and… she saw me throwing Ben into a tree. And after that we turned back while Duncan, Toby and Nate stayed in wolf form. That’s when we heard Anne, but she already saw everything. That’s why I thought it best to bring her back here. I’m sorry dad.” Ian concluded.

Mr. Grover sighed heavily and his face had fallen during Ian’s explanation.

“So you’re telling me you didn’t realise she was there? Haven’t I told you to be careful when running around in the woods?”

Ian looked at the floor; he seemed really gutted that he let his dad down like this. “Sorry dad, we were so into messing around, we just didn’t think someone might be so deep in the woods.”

“Nothing we can do about it now. So Anne, what are we going to do about this now?” Mr. G wondered.

I swallowed. “Are you going to kill me?” It was silent for a second then Mr. G started laughing really hard.