The Great Goldfish Mystery
My first pets were two goldfish, bought by my rather reluctant mum and subsequently named Jack and Jill, after the comic which I read every week. I would far rather have had a dog, or at least a cat, but mum said that they would need too much looking after, so we had to be content with our fishy friends instead. I suspect that mum was trying to protect her garden, which was her pride and joy: cats were a no-no as they insisted on digging up her precious plants when they used the soil as a bathroom, and a dog would undoubtedly have been a great source of trouble if it turned out to be good at excavating!
They were very ordinary goldfish, and I have to confess that I found them rather boring; all they seemed to do was swim around in a round glass bowl and google at us with their rather watery eyes. I much preferred next door's cat, which rapidly developed the ability to disappear into thin air when it saw me coming, as I was prone to scoop up the unfortunate creature and hug it enthusiastically.
Then one day something rather exciting happened to our fishy pets. We gave them their night-time flecks of fish-food on the surface of their little tank, and everyone retired to bed as normal. Next morning mum called us down to breakfast and I glanced idly towards the fish tank. There was Jack - but where was Jill? Only one goldfish resided in the round glass bowl. We searched and searched, but found no sign of the missing fish. To this day, the mystery of the disappearing creature remains: we can only presume that Jack ate his little companion. He certainly looked suspiciously large, now I come to think of it...
