Alice-Miranda in Japan 9 (21 page)

 

Yuki rushed out the door into the alley, almost bumping into Yamato, who was scratching his head with a bewildered look on his face.

‘Where did she go?' Yuki demanded.

Yamato pointed to Millie, who was standing with Jacinta. ‘That girl said that she saw the boy leaving the house with a backpack hours ago.'

‘But the old woman said that she had just run away,' Yuki explained. ‘Someone is lying.'

Jacinta pulled on Millie's kimono sleeve. ‘Let's go and find Alice-Miranda.'

Millie shook her head. ‘No. If we go inside they'll know that the princess is still there. We should wait until they leave.'

‘Girls,' Mrs Oliver called as she caught sight of Millie and Jacinta. She'd been inside the limousine waiting for her tablet to take effect. Fortunately it had worked very quickly and she'd been able to explain to the driver exactly what was going on. The man had been visibly shocked and passed the telephone to Mrs Oliver, who had explained everything to Kenzo. At the moment she was having no trouble switching between English and Japanese.

Yuki and Yamato spun around as Mrs Oliver walked towards them.

‘Your game is up,' she said calmly in Japanese. ‘The authorities will be here any minute.'

‘What are you talking about?' Yuki looked at Yamato and gulped. ‘You're just a silly old woman.'

A sharp noise exploded in his eardrum. It was Hatsuko telling him much the same thing.

‘Well, what are you waiting for?' Mrs Oliver could hear the woman's screeching through the earpiece. ‘If I were you I'd get out of here quick smart.'

Millie nodded. ‘Kidnapping a princess must be one of the worst crimes you can commit. I've heard that Japanese prisons are harsh places,' she said in Japanese.

‘What are you two talking about?' Jacinta whined. ‘I don't understand.'

Over by the dumpster, Tatsu and Taro were hiding as best they could and trying to work out exactly what was going on.

‘Are those the men from the government?' Taro whispered to his father.

Tatsu shrugged. ‘I'm not sure.'

‘It sounds like they want Yoshi,' Taro said. ‘Maybe you burned all the papers for no reason.'

His father clipped him over the ear. He had been thinking that too.

There was another hissing sound in Yuki's ear. The two men looked at each other. ‘Let's go!' Yuki shouted.

He and Yamato ran towards their car and leapt in. The wheels spun as Yuki attempted to reverse down the narrow road. But his efforts were in vain as several cars sped towards him, blocking the car in. Yuki switched gears and drove forward, but between the limousine from the palace and another car which had entered the road from the other direction there was no escape.

 

Back inside the house, the doorbell rang again.

‘What now?' Obaasan called. ‘What is going on around here?' The old woman shuffled along the back hall towards the front entrance. She opened the door and squinted.

‘I beg your pardon, Obaasan.' A man dressed in a dinner suit bowed deeply. ‘Please may I come in?'

The old woman wrinkled her nose and stared. She pulled her thick glasses from her apron pocket and put them on.

‘Please let me introduce myself,' the man said.

Obaasan leaned forward. She looked up and tried her best to focus. ‘Oh! It is not possible!' she gasped. ‘What are you doing here?'

 

 

The two girls huddled down beside Ojiisan's chair as far from the door as they could go.

‘Please believe me,' Alice-Miranda said, as she looked into the princess's dark brown eyes. ‘Your father does care for you. He came to dinner with us tonight. We didn't expect to see him at all but he looked so well and he talked about you and he wanted you to be with us.'

Ojiisan stared out the window into the street below. He had watched as two men in black suits argued in the alley. There was a fire raging in the dumpster bin too. But he was listening to the children next to him.

Kiko sniffed and said, ‘It's my fault that my father's sick. He cannot stand to look at me. I remind him too much of my mother.'

Ojiisan picked up the leather-bound album and sat it on his knee. He opened it to the first page. Alice-Miranda glanced at it. She breathed in sharply and stared up at the old man. A knowing look settled on his face but he didn't say a word.

‘How were you going to survive with no money and no one to care for you?' Alice-Miranda asked Kiko. ‘Tokyo is a huge place and you're just a little girl.'

‘I have my mother's diary. In it is an address for my grandparents. I thought if I could just find them, they would look after me. But I got lost and I ended up here. Obaasan is prickly but she is not unkind.'

‘I thought the royal family all lived together at the palace,' Alice-Miranda said. ‘Why weren't your grandparents there?'

‘My mother was a commoner. When my father fell in love with her it caused many problems with his parents. They did not want him to marry outside of the royal circles and so my mother's parents were not invited to live at the palace. I asked Aunt Hatsuko and she said that my father would have nothing to do with them. But then I found my mother's diary and inside was their address. I wanted to find them. My mother wrote such beautiful words about her parents and I remember them just a little – I was only four when my mother was killed but I know she took me to see them once in their little house.'

Alice-Miranda looked over at the man. He'd closed his eyes and was clenching his hands. She reached up and took the album from Ojiisans's knee and passed it to the older girl. ‘I think you have found your grandfather, Princess Kiko.'

Kiko stared at the first picture. ‘That is my mother and my grandfather on my mother's wedding day.' She looked back at Alice-Miranda. ‘How . . .?'

Ojiisan opened his eyes and brushed the moisture from his face. ‘Kiko?' He bowed a little in his seat. ‘I am right here.'

Kiko stood up. ‘Ojiisan, is it really you?' She studied the man's face, then looked at the photograph.

‘
Hai
, it is me. I am a very old man now but that is me in the photograph. I should have known when I saw those hands of yours. But you always hid your face.'

Kiko took off her cap and looked at the man.

‘You have your mother's eyes.'

The child reached forward and embraced him. He kissed her forehead and held her as tightly as he could.

Alice-Miranda smiled and swept a tear from her own eye.

Outside in the hallway there were voices.

Kiko stepped back. ‘Please, Ojiisan, don't let Aunt Hatsuko's men take me away.'

The door opened and Kiko looked up. She felt as if the breath had been sucked from her body.

‘Kiko.'

‘Father,' she whispered.

‘You are safe now. I know all about my sister's plans. She cannot hurt you any more.' The Emperor rushed over and scooped her into his arms. ‘I am so sorry – please forgive me. I have been a terrible father. My heart has been so heavy with guilt. It was my fault that your mother died. I was careless and I almost killed you too.' He reached out to touch the scar on her face.

‘But Father, I am alive. I need you. I've needed you for so many years.' Tears began to fall down Kiko's cheeks.

‘And I realise now how much I need you too, my daughter. Please forgive me.' He pressed his lips against her forehead.

Obaasan shuffled to the door and watched as best she could the scene playing out in front of her.

Millie, Jacinta and Mrs Oliver had let themselves in the side door and made their way upstairs. They were standing behind Obaasan and peering into the room too.

The Emperor put his daughter back down and looked at the old man. ‘My goodness, is it really you? Father-in-law?'

The old man nodded slowly.

‘But how? Oh, I remember . . . I was very sick. Hatsuko was being so kind and helping look after my affairs. Or so I thought until tonight. She came to tell me that you and your wife had died. It was another sadness I could not bear,' the Emperor explained.

‘It is true my beloved wife has passed away. After that, some officials from the palace came to my home and insisted that it had been arranged for me to live here. I am too old to manage on my own. It was a kind gesture to look after me but I was always sad that my letters to you and Kiko were returned,' the old man explained.

Kiko and her father shook their heads. There had never been any letters.

Obaasan wrinkled her nose and peered into the room. ‘Do you mean to tell me that my good boy Yoshi is a princess and this Ojiisan is the princess's grandfather?'

Alice-Miranda nodded.

‘Hai,'
the Emperor said.

‘And the Emperor of Japan is in my house. What is going on around here? I am just an old woman with a crazy flying squirrel and lots of
really
old people to look after.'

The two girls smiled at each other.

‘I think we should be getting home,' the Emperor said.

Ojiisan nodded. ‘Perhaps you will come and see me sometime, my granddaughter.'

‘No,' said the Emperor. He shook his head emphatically.

Kiko's eyes welled with tears. ‘But Father, please.'

‘You will not have to come and visit Ojiisan, Kiko, because Ojiisan is coming to live with us where he should always have been.'

Alice-Miranda clapped her hands with delight. ‘That's wonderful news.'

Kiko embraced her father then her grandfather.

‘And if it weren't for you, I don't know where I might have ended up.' Kiko smiled at Alice-Miranda and hugged her too. The child caught sight of Mrs Oliver, Millie and Jacinta in the hallway.

‘You can thank Mrs Oliver, really. It was her new invention that saved the day.'

Kiko frowned. ‘Invention?'

Alice-Miranda opened her mouth, then closed it again for a moment. ‘Never mind. I'm just glad that we found you.' She reached up and undid the clasp on her locket. She pulled it out from under the collar of her kimono. ‘I think this belongs to you.'

Kiko shook her head and closed Alice-Miranda's palm around the locket. ‘No. It is yours. You have given me something much more precious than that.' She smiled at her father and grandfather. Alice-Miranda reached out and the two children embraced again.

‘Oh great, now I have to find someone else for Ojiisan's room,' Obaasan grouched. ‘Always work to do, phone calls, squirrels . . . and who are you people?' She looked at Mrs Oliver and Millie and Jacinta. ‘Maybe I am getting too oooooold for all this,' she sputtered to herself as she shuffled away down the hall.

Alice-Miranda giggled. The princess did too.

 

 

That night, Princess Kiko returned to the palace with her father and grandfather. It seemed that her grandfather's letters had been intercepted by Princess Hatsuko as part of her grand plan to seize power from her brother and get rid of her niece. She had always resented the fact that, although she was the eldest sibling, because she was a woman she would never rule. When there were moves afoot to change the law so that Kiko would inherit the crown, Hatsuko saw her opportunity. She had found the Empress's diary and planted it in Kiko's room. She knew that when the child found her grandparents' address, she would want to search for them. After all, her life in the palace was such a miserable one. Hatsuko had made it easy to run away. She ensured that staff were off-duty, doors were open and gates unlocked. She never intended to kill the child, but she had set up what amounted to a prison in an abandoned castle in a remote part of Kobe.

The Emperor was horrified to learn of his sister's intentions and the evil treatment of his only child. He vowed that Hatsuko's life would now be equally unpleasant and decided that rather than lock her away, as she would have done to Kiko, she should be made to do something useful in society. She was appointed as Obaasan's new live-in assistant – with strict instructions that the old woman keep her under lock and key. Yuki and Yamato and their technical friend found themselves reassigned too – to the city's waste management team.

Kenzo was heartbroken to learn that the woman he loved could be so cruel. The torch that he had carried for her for many years was well and truly extinguished, and he resigned himself to the fact that he would most likely be a bachelor for the rest of his days. Hugh disagreed with his friend. As he pointed out, there were at least a couple of hundred single young women working in the palace who might be very interested in the particularly handsome Grand Chamberlain.

It turned out that Obaasan had been completely unaware of her son's fraudulent activities. While it was true that she collected old people to live in her house, her son deliberately neglected to report any of their deaths to the authorities and continued to collect their pension money for years afterwards. Obaasan thought she had a safe full of cash because her Itoshii Squirrel business was booming. Sadly, that was just a front for Tatsu to launder the money. Tatsu was wrong about anyone reporting him. It seems he had become increasingly paranoid about being caught and with the appearance of police cars and men in black sitting in the alley, he brought himself unstuck in the end. Tatsu was forced to pay the money back to the government. The judge decided he should be kept under house arrest with Obaasan in charge of him – after all, she could inflict much more pain than any prison.

Obaasan's dreams of a giant Itoshii Squirrel seemed thwarted until the Emperor decided to commission the creature in recognition of her kindness to his father-in-law and daughter. A two-metre tall squirrel in aviation goggles now stands proudly at the entrance to the Senso-ji Temple arcade.

Hugh Kennington-Jones decided that Dolly's language pill development was one of the most exciting things he'd ever heard about. But it had to remain top-secret until they could be sure that there were no strange side effects. Millie enjoyed her night being able to speak Japanese and couldn't wait until the pills were available for regular use. Jacinta, on the other hand, was sorely disappointed that her Spanish never got past a few words.

Princess Kiko invited the children back to the palace to thank them for everything they had done. They had a wonderful time exploring, and when Alice-Miranda opened her locket and pulled out the photograph of the Empress for Kiko to keep, she discovered the tracker. At once, it became clear why Yuki and Yamato had been following the wrong child. Princess Kiko took the little device and threw it into one of the palace ponds, where a giant koi carp rose to the surface and swallowed it in one gulp.

As the girls wandered through the garden, they could hear warbling birdsong. A little yellow canary landed on a branch of a cherry blossom tree. It seemed that Kiko wasn't the only one who had come home.