Summary: Chapter 127

Upon returning from school, Father is still at work. Christopher goes into the kitchen and puts his things on the table, including his book. 

He makes a raspberry milkshake and sits down to watch a documentary on underwater life called Blue Planet. 

Father returns and goes into the kitchen. He comes back a few minutes later holding Christopher’s book. He speaks quietly and Christopher doesn’t understand for a moment that he is annoyed . 

Father questions if the conversation that he had with Mrs. Alexander is true. Christopher replies that it is and his father grabs him hard, like he never has before. 

Frightened and upset, Christopher hits his father. After this his memory goes blank. When he comes to he has blood on his hand and the side of his head hurts. 

Father’s shirt is torn, he has a big scratch on his neck, and he still holds Christopher’s book. 

Father goes into the kitchen, and then out into the garden, where Christopher can hear him drop the book into the trashcan. When Father comes back into the kitchen, he locks the back door and hides the key to it in a china pot.

Summary: Chapter 131

Christopher describes some of the reasons why he hates the colours yellow and brown. 

Mr. Forbes thinks that hating colors is silly, Siobhan disagrees. Christopher compares his hatred for certain colours to all the decisions people make in life. If we didn’t make poor decisions then nothing would ever happen.

Summary: Chapter 137

The following day, Father apologises for hitting him and decides that he will take Christopher to Twycross Zoo to make up for it. 

Father informs Christopher of how much he loves him, and says he was only angry because he doesn’t want Christopher to get into trouble by sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. 

Christopher is grated for all the things Father has done for him, like picking him up from the police station, and cooking his meals. 

Christopher sees love as helping someone when they get into trouble, and telling them the truth. They press their hands together in their substitute for hugging.

Summary: Chapter 139

Christopher talks about photographs taken in 1917 that appear to show live fairies. However it was confirmed buy the author that these weren’t real . The author being the same as the one who wrote his favourite book.

Summary: Chapter 149

At school Siobhan asks about the bruise on his face , he explains he had a fight with his father. 

Christopher returns from school before Father gets back from work. Christopher gets the key to the garden from the china pot and attempts to get his book back. 

He eventually discovers the book in a shirt box underneath a toolbox in Father’s bedroom closet. 

Just then, Father returns home. Christopher panics and puts everything back the way he found it. 

At the last moment he notices a letter in the shirt box addressed to him and sees there are several such letters. He takes one of the letters, puts his book back, and tiptoes back to his room.

Christopher reads the letter alone in his room. It’s from his mother, it talks about her new job as a secretary in a factory. 

She talks about her apartment that she has moved into in London with a man named Roger and notes that she has not received any letters back from Christopher. 

She explains that she loves him very much anyway. The letter leaves Christopher puzzled as Mother never worked at a factory or lived in London. 

The letter has no date, but on the envelope it bears the postmark “16th of October 1997,” eighteen months after Mother’s supposed passing. 

Christopher feels overjoyed to have a new mystery on his hands, but he decides not to jump to conclusions. He hides the letter and goes downstairs to watch television.

Summary: Chapter 151

Christopher explains that ghosts are only a mystery because the science behind them isn’t there.

Christopher explains that sometimes complex problems follow simple rules, and that whole populations can die out for no reason other than the way the numbers work.

Summary: Chapter 157

Father heads to fix a flooded basement. So Christopher returns to Father’s room and he counts 43 letters addressed to him in the same handwriting. 

The first of the letters talks about Christopher making timetables for all of the his toy trains. Spelling errors are prominent throughout the letter, like “woodden” and “timetabel.” At the bottom it is signed “Love, Your Mum.”

The next letter is Mother explaining why she left the family. She talks about a memory of when Christopher had a fit in a crowded store while she was Christmas shopping. 

Christopher was frightened by the number of people in the store, and when Mother tried to move him he started screaming and broke two mixers by knocking them off a nearby shelf and then he wet himself. 

Mother cried to Father, who then became angry with her for being selfish. She describes how she began to feel very lonely and argue with Father a lot. 

She began to spend a lot of time with Roger. Roger said he didn’t love Eileen anymore and asked Mother to leave Father.

One evening at supper Christopher threw a cutting board, which broke her toes. She had to go to the hospital and couldn’t walk for a month. 

She saw how much more calmly Christopher acted around Father than with her. She decided Christopher and Father would be better off without her in the house and moved in with Roger in London. 

Father was livid and hurt by her abandonment that he forbade her from calling Christopher or coming to visit. She ends the letter by asking Christopher to please write her back.

Mother then writes about her new job as a secretary in a real estate office. She asks if he received the present she sent.

He now understands that that Mother didn’t have a heart attack and that Father has been lying to him for years. He curls into a ball on the bed and passes out. 

When he wakes up it is dark outside. He has vomited all over. Father comes into the room, but to Christopher his voice sounds small and distant. 

Father sees the letters and begins to cry. When Father touches Christopher to guide him to the bath it does not hurt like it usually does.