Jasper watches from his window to ensure that Ollie keeps his promise. As Ollie approaches Bee’s bird feeders he is intercepted by David Gilbert who leads him into Number 22. Believing that David has kidnapped Ollie, Jasper calls the police. Later, police officers visit Jasper to assure him that he did not witness a kidnap. Jasper, however, starts screaming and blacks out. The police call an ambulance and contact Ed. In hospital, a doctor examines Jasper and sees the wound to his stomach. Jasper’s father is interviewed by a social worker when he arrives at the hospital.
18 January
Jasper sees his new neighbour come out of her house in a cobalt blue dressing gown and is reminded of his dead mother. Jasper misses his mother (who also experienced synaesthesia) and remembers her voice as being cobalt blue. After watching the woman throwing items from the house into a skip, Ed observes that passers-by will probably forage through it. Jasper calls 999 to report ‘A potential future theft’.
Jasper goes over the road to introduce himself to the new neighbour and discovers her name is Bee Larkham. She tells him that she has been living in Australia and has returned to attend a friend’s wedding and to sell her mother’s house. Bee says that she is a professional musician and is going to give piano and guitar lessons while she is living there.
Later, Jasper sees Bee and a man he is unable to identify arguing on her doorstep. After the man has gone Bee empties another box of belongings into the skip. Jasper wakes in the early hours of the morning and sees a man inside the skip searching for something. He knocks on the window to scare the man away.
Thursday, 14 April
During door to door enquiries by police officers, Jasper overhears his father tell the police that he last saw Bee on Friday evening. Later, when Ed comes to check on him, Jasper pretends to be asleep. Seizing the opportunity when Ed goes out for a run, Jasper searches the house for evidence. Despite looking everywhere he can think of, however, he fails to find the murder weapon or his bloody clothes.
Jasper wonders if his father remembered to replace Bee’s back door key in its hiding place after disposing of her body. He sneaks into Bee’s back garden and finds that the key, which is usually kept under a stone flamingo, is missing. Hearing someone else entering the garden, Jasper hides behind the recycling bins. From his hiding place, he sees a man wearing a dark blue baseball cap break the glass of Bee’s back door. As the mystery man steps inside, a second man arrives, catching the first red-handed. Jasper identifies the new arrival as David Gilbert by his distinctive ‘cherry cords’ just as David spots him hiding behind the bins. When the man in the baseball cap grabs Jasper, demanding to know if Bee was abusing twelve-year-old Lee as well as Lucas, Jasper comprehends that this must be Lucas Drury’s father. David steps in to protect Jasper and receives a punch in the face from Mr Drury. Terrified, Jasper blurts out that Bee and her baby are dead. Spotting something glittering on the ground, he picks it up and sees that it is one of Bee’s favourite swallow-shaped earrings.
Mr Drury is arrested by the police, while David Gilbert is taken to hospital. When Jasper’s father returns from his run, DC Richard Chamberlain is waiting to speak to him. The detective constable explains that, in his father’s absence, Jasper has claimed that Bee is dead and was pregnant. He also reveals that Jasper was hiding a blood-stained earring in his hand when the police arrived and became distressed when they tried to take it away from him.
The police are now treating Bee’s absence as suspicious, as she has been officially reported missing after failing to turn up for her friend’s hen do. Chamberlain asks to speak to Jasper but Ed refuses, saying that in future he must go through their solicitor. The detective constable says that he will have to inform social services that Jasper has again been placed in danger after being left home alone. When Chamberlain has gone, Jasper accuses his father of forgetting to return Bee’s key to its hiding place. Ed tells Jasper that he did not use the key, as he went to Bee’s front door.
19 January
Bee Larkham intercepts Jasper outside school and asks him to help her hand out flyers advertising her music lessons. She tells Jasper that she has bought some bird feeders to attract more parakeets to her garden.
22 January
Jasper and Bee Larkham are delighted when a flock (or pandemonium) of parakeets arrives in Vincent Gardens. David Gilbert is much less enthusiastic. He complains about the noise they make and says he would like to shoot them. Jasper begins to keep detailed notes on David Gilbert’s movements (as well as those of the other neighbours) in an attempt to keep the parakeets safe.
Jasper worries about the parakeets while he is at school and calls 999 again. Later that day, he accompanies his father when he goes over the road to introduce himself to Bee. Bee tells Jasper that he can watch the parakeets from her bedroom if he hands out some more flyers at school.
27 January
Jasper goes to Bee’s house to watch the parakeets from her bedroom while she gives a music lesson. In her room, he sees an assortment of china ladies sticking out of a cardboard box and places one of them on a chest of drawers near the window. Later, as Jasper is leaving, Bee introduces him to two boys from his school: Lee Drury, who has been having a guitar lesson, and his fifteen-year-old brother, Lucas. Jasper senses that Bee likes Lucas more than she likes him.
28 January
Bee asks Jasper to deliver a note to Lucas at school. Reluctant to admit to Bee that he cannot recognise faces, Jasper leaves the sealed letter on the teacher’s desk in Lucas’s form room.
6 February
Bee invites Jasper over to see the parakeets, which are nesting in her eaves. She then asks him to deliver a parcel to Lucas containing a mobile phone. Sensing Jasper’s reluctance, Bee promises that, in return, he can watch the parakeets from her window for an hour every day that week.
8 February
On Monday morning Jasper goes into Lucas’s form room and tells the teacher that he has a message for Lucas from Bee Larkham. Outside, Lucas grabs Jasper and tells him never to come to his classroom again. He instructs Jasper to leave any future notes in a drawer in the science lab.
12 February
When Bee throws a party for her friends and neighbours, Jasper and his father go along. While Ed socialises, Jasper keeps watch on the parakeets through night-vision binoculars from Bee’s bedroom. Jasper’s surveillance is briefly interrupted when someone with a ‘scratchy red’ voice opens the door claiming to be looking for the bathroom. Jasper notes that the mystery person goes straight back downstairs without visiting the facilities.
Later that evening, Jasper goes in search of his father. He finds him drunkenly chatting to a friendly man with a claret red voice. Only when the man makes a joke about shooting parakeets does Jasper realise that he is none other than David Gilbert. An argument breaks out between David and Jasper about the parakeets and Bee also becomes involved. David criticises Bee’s inconsiderate behaviour, pointing out that her loud music is torturing Ollie’s mother in her final days. Bee responds by asking David to leave. Jasper becomes hysterical, screaming and telling David that he hopes he dies of lung cancer.
Back at home, Ed tells Jasper that he will have to apologise to David in the morning. Later, Jasper thinks he hears the front door open. He believes he must be mistaken, however, as he is certain his father would never leave him alone at night.
Friday, 15 April
A police forensics team arrive to search for evidence in Bee’s house. Meanwhile, a social worker visits Jasper and asks questions about how he hurt his stomach. Jasper sticks to the story he has agreed with his father, claiming that his hand slipped when he was playing with a knife in the kitchen.
13 February
Jasper reports David Gilbert’s parakeet threats