Dear Scarlett (13 page)

Uncle Derek's told us to stay indoors. Which is a shame because today is the hottest day of the summer so far. On the other hand, I have no desire to run into Queenie and her brother, if that's who they are.

I haven't told Ellie about the conversation I overheard. I don't want to scare her. It's bad enough being scared on my own, I need her to be normal.

“Why, Dad?” asks Ellie.

He fingers his moustache. “Some undesirables around, girls, better if you stay in the house for
now.” He fiddles with my window blind, stopping the sun from baking the bedroom, although it's already boiling and stinks of warm washing powder.

Ellie lies on the floor and stares at the ceiling. I tuck my legs over the end of the top bunk and hang upside down so that my hair just touches the floor.

“Where's Mum?” I ask.

“Downstairs, with Syd,” he says. “I'll be out in the garden.”

“Hmm,” says Ellie, reaching for a pile of magazines. She starts flicking through them, so I look around for something to do, anything really, I'd even consider French knitting if I had any wool. I unhook myself from the bunk and slide to the floor. Dad's scrapbook's poking out from under the bed, and the Airfix kit.

I push the Airfix kit towards Ellie, with my foot. She grunts and empties the pieces into an opened magazine. “It's just an aeroplane – why would your dad give you an aeroplane to make?”

“Dunno,” I say.

“Got any glue?” she asks.

I point at my top drawer and she goes over to rustle through the pants and socks and badges
and rubbish that ends up in there. “Yes,” she says, pulling out an encrusted yellow tube.

I open the scrapbook and trawl through it for the millionth time. I practically know it by heart. The first half's full of tales of missing objects returned, the second, stories of gifts to charities. In between, Dad's pasted a load of random things, like the pasty wrapper and the ticket.

“There, that's the cockpit done.” Ellie's sticking the model together. “But there seem to be far too many pieces for just one little aeroplane.”

I stare at the scrapbook. “Why, Dad, why?”

“What?” says Ellie.

“Nothing, I didn't realise I spoke.” But there's something odd about the page I'm looking at. Dad's numbered the pages. This is page nineteen, and he's drawn some little eyes inside the nine, looking down towards the bottom of the page. I turn the page over, it should be page twenty, but it isn't; it's page twenty-two.

Pages twenty and twenty-one are missing.

Ellie's singing Take That songs under her breath and rattling the Airfix plastic.

I look at the edge of the page. I can see now that two sheets of paper are stuck together. My
fingernails are too long, Mrs Gayton was always telling me off about them, but this time, they're exactly what I need. I run my thumbnail down the tiny gap in the paper and it makes a quiet cracking sound. Glue giving way? I slip my forefinger nails into the gap and pull.

Crack.

The pages lie apart, and there, in the middle, is a picture of Dad with me as a baby on his shoulders. It's a big picture, and it isn't stuck down.

I stare at it.

I've never seen this photo before. But it was taken here, there's the corner of the house, and in the background the control tower of the aerodrome. The hedges are thick and green and the sky blue. It must have been a day in summer.

I hold the picture and stare into Dad's eyes, those funny, sparky eyes so full of life and laughing.

It's only then that I turn it over.

I read it six times. I put it down and pick it up and read it again.

“Scarlett?” Ellie says, landing a wonky aeroplane on the floor by my foot. “Are you OK? You’ve gone completely white.”

I hand the photograph to her and stare at the aeroplane she’s made. My fingers pick it up and trace the lumps of wet glue on the sides.

He was here, he saw me, the day I filled the teapot with sand and leaves. How long ago was that?

It must have been almost the week before he died. I was five? Maybe six?

Why didn’t he call on us?

And then I remember; I filled Mum’s teapot with sand and leaves because a plumber was working under the sink. I wanted to play washing-up, but he’d turned the water off and Mum told me to go outside and get water from the water butt, but it was cold and smelled of dead frogs. For a second, completely unreasonably, I hate the plumber because he stopped me seeing my dad for the last time.

Mum got really cross about her teapot. The tea was gritty all through Christmas.

“Scarlett,” Ellie says, staring at the letter in my hands. “Whoa.” Her eyebrows have practically disappeared into her hair.

“Yes, it means he was watching us, coming to the house, really soon before he died, but I didn’t see him.” I’m surprised by tears and try to blink them back under control, but they won’t be controlled, they just keep coming. I turn to wipe my nose on the duvet cover, but it isn’t enough.

“Oh, Scarlett.” Ellie puts her arm over my shoulder; it’s funny, I can tell she’s not really putting her weight behind it, but it’s nice all the same. “It must be awful not having a dad.”

I sniff. “It must be hard not having a mum. I can’t imagine it.”

We sit leaning against each other while the rush of tears slows, Ellie holding up the photo, and me still wiping my face on the duvet cover. She flips it over, and we both read the message one more time.

“You’re nearly there … Just keep looking up…”
says Ellie. “What does he mean?”

Nearly there.

Nearly there?

“Does he mean we’ve nearly found something?” I say, really really quietly.

Ellie shrugs, then grins. “Some leftover diamonds? Maybe?”

“Scarlett! Ellie!” It’s Mum, calling up the stairs, her feet just starting to thump on the treads. “Do you fancy some orange juice or something?”

We jump to our feet. I stuff the picture back in the scrapbook and slide it under the bed as if we were doing something wrong.

Mum sticks her head round the door. I look at the floor, playing with the pieces of the Airfix kit. I don’t want Mum to see that I’ve been crying.

“Phew – a bit hot in here, isn’t it?” says Mum, flapping her arms at the fug of Ellie and the
fabric conditioner.

“Can we go outside?”

Mum’s face wrinkles as she comes to a decision.

“Oh, go on then.”

We take the Airfix kit down with us, and sit at a little table in the shade, fiddling with the pieces. We’ve still only got an aeroplane and a pile of random rods.

Uncle Derek’s trying to mow the grass with Mum’s electric lawnmower, but it doesn’t really mow so much as chew. I think all the tyre tracks are probably making it more difficult.

Mum’s putting new bean sticks in her vegetable patch.

Ellie’s struggling with the pile of spare Airfix pieces. There are eight girders, some random
discs, eight sides that almost make an octagonal shed, and a roof of sorts. Perhaps they really were just leftovers in the kit or maybe Ellie made the aeroplane so badly that she missed out all these essential parts.

But what aeroplane has a shed on it?

There has to be a reason.

I fly the little aeroplane over the table and land it on a leaf.

What on earth did Dad give me this for? Did he want me to become a pilot? Did he want to
be
a pilot? Was he not really a spy at all but in the Airforce, dropping bombs on someone? That wouldn’t have been good at all.

“Oh, Scarlett, I’ve just remembered,” says Mum. “There’s a letter for you, on the hall table; it must have been delivered this morning.” She pushes back a hair from her forehead. “Sorry, I should have told you earlier.”

A letter – for me? I never get letters.

I pop back inside the house, which seems completely pitch-black after the brightness of outside, and stumble into the hall. There’s a white envelope, but no stamp.

Hand-delivered and it’s been written on a
computer.

I turn it over and hold it up against the light coming through the glass front door.

Hmm.

Probably something to do with school?

I tear open the flap and there’s a tiny flash as I do so. Have you ever noticed that about envelopes, they flash? Anyway this one does and I pull open the letter.

I take the letter out to Ellie.

She reads it and I feel sick.

“We should show Dad,” she says. “It’s a threat.”

“We should.”

“But you’ll have to tell him about the sweets – and your mum – because we have to come clean about all of it, and the scrapbook and Fazackerley, and all the things that were in the box. All of it.”

I think about Mum’s reaction to the penguins and I imagine her reaction to the sweets. She won’t like that I’ve kept secrets from her and there are so many.

“I’m not sure I’ve got the courage.”

Ellie looks up at me. She points at Syd, who’s playing in mud again. “Really? With him at stake?”

“They’re not going to come now, not with your dad standing here,” I say. “It’s just that Dad left all this for me to solve. Whatever’s at the end of the trail, it’s mine, and I’ve got to find it. Later, if we haven’t worked it out, I promise I’ll tell them at supper.”

Ellie glares at me over her glasses. “I’ll hold you to it. If you don’t, I will.”

I swallow.

Mum suggests we go for a swim, and like a condemned man, I imagine this as my last treat on this earth. The water looks especially clear, especially inviting. The sun sparkles so beautifully on the surface. It makes me feel sad.

Sad because I might not get to the end of the chase. I feel as though Queenie and her brother have already beaten me. Not that they’ll find whatever it is Dad’s left, I’m not going to give them what they want, but I’m sorry that Uncle Derek’s going to have to deal with them, I’m sad because I still don’t understand what Dad wanted me to do.

I’m pretty sure he didn’t want me to steal sweets, or rescue penguins.

He might have been pleased that I dragged crabby old teachers from the bottom of the pool, but that was more to do with chance and Uncle Derek than Dad.

He couldn’t have expected me to give huge sums of money to charity, because I’m only eleven and I’ve only got my pocket money.

Just keep looking up.

I stare up into a cloudless blue sky.

We take ten minutes blowing up lilos, partly because Syd keeps sitting on them and all the air comes out instead of going in. They’re all sweaty and sticky, and mine’s got sand and algae on it from last summer and smells of wellington boots.

Ellie’s excited, so I try really hard to be happy too, stuffing the thought of the row to come out of my head.

We run to the tank and float the lilos on the water.

“This is the scary bit,” I say and clamber on to my lilo.

I last about a second before Ellie tries to get on to hers and tips us both in. I go right under and
I am probably dead, the water’s so cold. My feet press against the disturbing slimy things on the bottom and I push myself up, popping up to the surface.

Ellie’s still trying to climb on to her lilo. “Ha, ho, ha!” she yelps.

It’s so cold the water forces all the air out of my lungs and I have to clamber out and cough on the side.

Ellie swims to the side; her lips have already gone blue. I give her a hand out of the water.

“Oh,” she says, juddering. “That’s the coldest water I’ve ever been in.”

“Great, isn’t it?”

“Fab,” she says, and tries again. Her skin’s lobster veined with white, from the cold, and my bathing costume’s really too small for her. She balances on her hands and knees on the lilo, the water creeping in across the top. “S’freezing,” she yelps. Then she throws her weight forward and shoots across the tank.

She bobs gently, and shuffles herself forward until she’s lying flat, resting her chin on the back of her hands.

“Brilliant,” she says.

My teeth chattering, I jump, throwing one leg on either side of my lilo. It’s a risky strategy, but although I get utterly soaked, and nearly tip up, I just cling on and wriggle until I’m lying on my back, looking up.

The sky’s still utterly blue. Not a single cloud. Just a seagull hovering miles above me. I close my eyes and float.

Ellie’s singing. It’s the theme from
Stardust
. I think.

When I open my eyes again, I try to work out where I am, which way round. I push my foot against the side, and shoot backwards across the tank.

The sky whizzes over me. I can see the chimney of our house on one side, and the control tower of the airfield on the other.

And then I sit up, feeling hot and cold all at once.

“Ellie?”

She goes on singing.

“Ellie.”

“What?”

I point at the control tower.

“What about it?”

“What does it look like to you?”

“A control tower?”

“A shed, on legs. The Airfix kit, the leftovers?”

Ellie stares.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh!”