Dear Scarlett (15 page)

It’s perfectly true that Mum nearly completely exploded when we told her about stealing the sweets and the toys, and following Dad’s trail across the countryside, but when she saw all the diamonds lying in the fruit bowl, she lost some of the really hot fury and simply simmered for the evening.

Then she cried and hugged me and told me she loved me, and told me off once more, and I wondered again how Ellie could possibly manage without a mum.

Uncle Derek thought it wasn’t a good idea for me to go up and pick the rest of the diamonds
from the dish, which was a shame, because we had to wait for some climbing friends of his to come back from holiday and go up with ropes and safety nets and helmets. In the meantime, he camped at the bottom of the tower, and Ellie and I joined him.

It was fun. We fried sausages and eggs in a police frying pan and ate them off police plates.

The climbing friends brought down the diamonds and handed me a small sandwich box that they found taped to the back of the satellite dish.

Uncle Derek paused, a sausage sandwich poking past his moustache as he watched me open it.

There was a dead rose, and another letter.

A badly written one, on a sheet of paper like the ones in the control tower.

After that, Uncle Derek kept the diamonds at the police station in case anyone stepped forward to claim them. He said that even though Dad had left a sort of a will, ownership was still hazy but that possession was nine tenths of the law. I’d no idea what he meant, but no one did come forward, so he gave them back to me.

There were one hundred and forty-four of them.

Twelve twelves.

A gross.

A gross of diamonds.

I put them in piles in my room. Ellie and I had a
diamond dinner for Barbie and Ken.

We let Syd push them round with a digger.

We glued them to our ears with wallpaper paste; we looked mad.

Then I stuck them all round the window frames in my bedroom with Blu-tack.

They made pretty patterns on my bedroom ceiling and I tried to imagine myself wearing them round my neck as a dazzling twenty-one-year-old, sweeping around a dance floor with some
old-fashioned
prince.

Then I’d look at my grubby feet and tatty jeans and feel a bit weird.

It took about a week to decide what to do.

The money sent the penguins to a lovely zoo in Canada. It also sent the monkeys to America and the flamingos to Gloucestershire.

It paid Mr Hammond for all the spoiled watercress. It bought Ellie some nice new clothes, without sparkles, Syd a box of cars, Mrs Gayton, a stretchy suit in her new life as an all-in wrestler, and Mum, a luxury holiday for five in the Greek Islands.

The rest?

I kept the three smallest diamonds, to make into that necklace, and I sponsored Uncle Derek to run the London Marathon.

He raised over a million pounds.

It was only about two days after that, that he and Ellie moved in.

I’d like to thank the people who helped Scarlett’s journey: many friends and family have been very supportive, but I would like to thank in particular my editor, Kirsty Stansfield, for seeing the future for Scarlett, and for caring like a midwife for every sentence; my agents, Pippa and Kate, for their patience; and Amanda for reading and Ian for re-reading drafts of the manuscript and being honest.