Dear Scarlett (3 page)

By the evening, I’m sick with nerves about the sweets. Like father like daughter, two happy thieves together, all in a thieves’ den. Perhaps Mum’s a burglar too? I could really do with an evening with Mum on the sofa, watching one of her soppy movies, eating peanut-butter sandwiches and drinking banana milkshakes, but instead it’s going to be Uncle Derek and Ellie.

Mum and Uncle Derek have swapped. She’s gone to work and he’s come back to look after us.

“Look after” is a bit of an exaggeration. He’s come back to burn some sausages and have a scrap
with Syd in the bathroom while they blacken.

They’re still up there. I can hear Syd fighting back. He’s already employed ordinary tools of warfare, now I imagine he’s entering the Roman phase. They used dead cows and balls of fire in their catapults. Syd makes do with bubble bath and the sink plunger. It has a similar effect, because Uncle Derek gives up and lets Syd out of the bath.

Syd can be quite feisty when it comes to Uncle Derek.

“Mrs Gayton was horrid again today,” says Ellie, over the burnt sausages.

“Hm?” says Uncle Derek; he’s stuffing potato in Syd’s mouth.

“Yes,” says Ellie. “How do you stand it, Scarlett? She’s vile about your dad.”

I shrug and fill my mouth with peas. It’s kind of nice of her to say it, but I also wish she wouldn’t.

“Is she?” asks Uncle Derek, looking right at me. “Does she do it often?”

I can’t answer, I’d cry if I did. I look back at my plate and make a face from the sausages. There’s nothing else to do with them.

When Syd’s finally gone to bed, Uncle Derek joins
us in front of the telly. We’ve been watching
Toy Story 3
for the six millionth time, but as he won’t let us watch anything that isn’t a U or a PG, it’s a choice of that or
Barbie on Ice
. At least, I’m watching it; Ellie’s on her DS.

On the screen, the toys have made their escape but they’re on the conveyor belt slipping down towards the rubbish. Here in the sitting room, Uncle Derek’s next to us, running on the spot with a stopwatch. I notice he’s growing a moustache. I think he thinks it makes him look cool. Actually, it just makes him look like a man who can’t grow a moustache properly.

“Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three,” he pants.

The toys tip into the rubbish chute.

Uncle Derek stops and takes his pulse
. “Fifty-five
, fifty-six.”

The toys clutch each other and sink towards the furnace in the middle.

Uncle Derek runs again.

The toys say their goodbyes – this is the bit where Mum starts crying if she’s here.

“Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one – hurgh.” Uncle Derek falls back on an armchair. “All done.”

The plastic aliens rescue the toys with the claw. I don’t really know what he’s “all done”, but I’m glad it’s over.

Uncle Derek is really quite annoying; I don’t mind him as a babysitter, but beyond that…

I get about a minute’s peace while Uncle Derek “tests his recovery rate”, and I’m sucked back into the story.

The toys are on their way back home, it’s all going to be all right.

“Blimey!” says Uncle Derek, leaping to his feet.

I stare at the screen, I was really hoping we could get to the end of the movie without more Uncle Derek fuss, but he’s really jumping about this time.

Ellie even looks up from the DS.

“Where did these come from?” He’s looking in my school bag.

“Dad,” says Ellie. “What’re you doing?”

“These.” Uncle Derek holds up the roll of tools.

“What are they?” asks Ellie.

They both stare at me.

Rats. I left the top open.

I stare at the telly, but I can feel the blush creeping down from my hairline.

“Dad’s,” I mutter.

“Yes – I guessed that – but did your mum have them all this time?” Uncle Derek looks worried, so I take a long time to answer.

“No, Dad’s solicitor brought them.”

“But what are they?” asks Ellie, again.

Uncle Derek looks at me really hard. “Does your mum know?”

I shrug. I’m not going to tell him, it’s none of his business.

“Oh.” He places the roll of tools on the arm of the chair and sits back.

We all stare at them, except for Woody and Buzz, who are climbing in and out of cardboard boxes on the screen.

Uncle Derek’s face is mostly white, with two little pink spots on his cheeks.

“D’you know what they’re for?” he asks.

I turn my head back to the screen. Perhaps he’ll just go away if I don’t show any interest.

Really slowly, he unrolls the tools so that they lie glinting on the floor. I look at them again. Long slender picks, with hooked pointy ends. He reaches into a pocket at the back of the pouch, and pulls out a key. Well, a sort of key. The end looks like a key, but the rest of it’s more like a saw. I’d never
noticed that one.

“A bump key,” he says, pulling out the longest of the tools in the pouch. “And this thing here is an overlifter, very handy on mortice locks.”

“What are you talking about?” asks Ellie, looking across between me and her dad.

Uncle Derek’s face moves through panic, confusion, sadness and lands in exhaustion. He looks at his watch. “What time’s your mum due back?”

We’re still sitting on the sofa with the tools laid out in front of us. Uncle Derek tried to offer us another film, a 12 this time, but Ellie wasn’t going to be bought off that easily. I really want him to go away but he can’t sit down now, it’s like he’s got popping candy in his pants. He keeps clicking the top of his stopwatch, in, out, in, out, in, out. “What d’you know about your dad, Scarlett?” He jogs from one foot to the other.

“He went to prison,” I mutter.

“That’s it? That’s all you know? You’ve never been told anything else, by anyone? Not even your
mum? So you’ve just grown up thinking your dad was a criminal?”

I nod.

“Oh – that’s fine, then,” he says.

What’s he getting at?

“Well – she has told me other things,” I say, trying to sound cautious and knowing at the same time.

“Like?” he asks.

I nod towards Ellie, as if there’s some huge secret I know but that she shouldn’t, and comb the past for any scrap that might make Uncle Derek think I know everything about Dad. What has Mum told me? “She’s told me he wasn’t all bad, that he didn’t
just
burgle…” I say it as significantly as I can.

“OK, fine.” He sits back in the chair.

There’s a silence while Uncle Derek clicks his stopwatch again. Did he believe me? I gaze at my fingernails, waiting.

“So are these something to do with being a burglar?” Ellie asks, prodding the tools.

Uncle Derek nods. “Yes, love, they’re for
lock-picking
. Scarlett’s dad probably had several sets. They were the tools of his trade. Sort of.”

“What do you mean – sort of?” asks Ellie.

“Nothing – nothing – I was just surprised to see them there – that’s all.” But I can see he’s got something else he’s dying to say.

I stare at the rug to stop myself speaking. I do the full-on stare, the one that would melt steel if the rug was made of steel. It helps. I manage not to say anything.

“Well, there
is
another little thing, Ellie; but wouldn’t you rather wait until your mum gets back, Scarlett?”

I shake my head. Ellie shakes hers. “It’s fine, you can say it in front of Ellie,” I say, still giving the rug my full attention. Uncle Derek may be really annoying, but just this once, I’m ready to listen to him. He might actually be about to tell me something interesting about my dad.

He doesn’t speak, so I risk looking up. He’s dangling by his fingernails from the door frame. “Really?” he says.

I nod.

“Come on, Dad,” says Ellie. “I want to know what Scarlett knows, what you know.”

Uncle Derek rubs his hands over his belly, only he hasn’t got a belly, he’s got a toast rack. He’s
looking at his stopwatch again. Perhaps he’s timing the conversation.

He sits down. “So your mum’s told you everything, then?” he says.

I try to look bored. I daren’t speak in case I say the wrong thing, so instead, I heave a long sigh.

“Did her dad do something really awful?” asks Ellie. “Like murder someone?”

Uncle Derek’s head whips round to look at Ellie. “NO – nothing like that. Quite the opposite, actually. He saved lives, all over the place.”

Saved lives?

I say nothing and keep staring at the pattern on the rug. I can feel my ears turning red.

“How come?” says Ellie.

I shrug. “You can tell her,” I say, struggling to keep the excitement out of my voice.

“Have you ever heard of the Official Secrets Act, Ellie, love?”

“Isn’t it about keeping quiet about government things?”

Uncle Derek sighs. “Loosely, yes. It means that years after something has happened that the government might want to keep secret, lots of people that worked for the government or who
lived with people who worked for the government are bound to silence.” He looks at me. “Scarlett’s mum’s one of them.”

“Are you?” asks Ellie.

Uncle Derek screws up his face. “Sort of.”

I glance up from the rug. Ellie’s staring at her dad.

“So what did Scarlett’s dad do? Work for the government?”

Uncle Derek nods. “Very much so.”

“So why did they put him in prison?” asks Ellie.

“They didn’t,” says Uncle Derek, staring at the rug, probably at the same spot as me. “He was on top-secret missions, all over the world. He needed a cover. Prison was perfect. They kept an imaginary ‘Quick’ Dick McNally in solitary confinement, so that he could spy for them.”

Ellie lets out a squeak. I can’t make any noise at all but I stand up, as if my legs want to leave the room.

“So yes, he stole things, but he wasn’t an ordinary, run-of-the-mill housebreaker. He stole for the government. He stole secrets. He … repatriated things. He was a secret-agent burglar, if you like. And Scarlett’s mum knew, but she’s not allowed to
tell anyone, even now, because she’d be breaking the Official Secrets Act.”

I sit back down, or rather, my legs fold.

“So how come she told Scarlett?” asks Ellie.

I freeze, waiting for Uncle Derek to ask me, but he doesn’t. “He was Scarlett’s dad, it’s fair enough.” Uncle Derek turns to me. “How long ago did she tell you?”

I take a deep breath but Ellie cuts in. “So what was all that about him being a jewel thief?” she asks.

“Well, he might have started off that way – but essentially, he was an international safe-cracker, a very good one, and once he started to work for the government, he wasn’t even outside the law…”

I reach for a picture of Dad that Mum’s put on the piano. There he sits, smiling, relaxed, lolling. He looks kind of ordinary.

A spy?

Today is getting really weird.

“So how do
you
know?” Ellie says, asking the question that’s on the tip of my tongue.

Uncle Derek clicks the stopwatch about five million times. “I’ve – worked it out, sort of, and things, you know, at work. This and that.”

This time I stare at him.

“I don’t believe you,” says Ellie. “If everyone’s signed the Official Secrets Act, then no one would tell you anything, unless you were supposed to know.”

Uncle Derek flushes a deep beetroot. “He’s always been a part of my job,” he says to the rug.

“What part?” I ask, remembering how Uncle Derek turned up so suddenly the day we first met him, the day we broke down; and how quickly he came round to tea, trailing Ellie behind him.

“He was on my patch, I had to know,” says Uncle Derek. “I needed to know that he wasn’t just a jewel thief, that he was really a spy, otherwise when there was a burglary roundabouts, I’d have been knocking on Carole’s door instead of finding the real criminal.” Uncle Derek looks quite pleased with his explanation.

“Crikey,” says Ellie.

Uncle Derek’s talking again. “And – of course, there were enemies.”

Ellie’s eyes widen. “International spies?”

“Not spies so much as gangsters, and not all that international. Some of his jobs were here in Britain, and he upset some nasty characters on
the way past.” Uncle Derek takes a deep breath. “Spying isn’t all about the government. Some of it’s to do with uncovering corruption, and thwarting out-and-out lawbreaking. There was a big jewellery heist in South London; Dick McNally took the jewels back from under the thieves’ noses.”

Uncle Derek stands up and throws a couple of punches into the air, as if downing an invisible criminal. “The Queenie Gang, they were called. They didn’t like it. There were a lot of threats after that. As a policeman, I needed to be on the lookout. Dick McNally was always vulnerable, they all knew about him, and we needed to keep you and your mum secret,” he says, looking at me.

“Oooo,” says Ellie. “You mean someone might have been after Scarlett because of her dad?”

“Yes,” says Uncle Derek. “But not any more, that’s all in the past. Though it’s odd that the solicitor brought you the tools now. Was there anything else with them?”

I stare at Ellie. “No,” I say.

It’s Ellie’s turn to stare at the rug. I don’t think she likes lying.

“It’s only that it’s rumoured that Dick McNally was always paid in diamonds.”

“Why paid in diamonds?” I ask.

Uncle Derek raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t know that?”

“I didn’t,” I say quite truthfully.

“Oh,” says Uncle Derek quietly. He sighs. “If it’s true, which it probably isn’t, maybe he was putting them away for a rainy day. They’re smaller than gold, and safer than bank accounts. And they’re international. As it is, the rainy day came before he told anyone where they were. Or if they really existed.”

We sit watching the blank screen of the TV thinking about imaginary diamonds that were never found.

“How did he die?” asks Ellie.

Uncle Derek looks up at me.

“He went over a cliff,” I say. “They said he was going too fast. His hands slipped on the wheel.” I shrug.

“He was being chased,” says Uncle Derek quietly. “Someone was after him, witnesses saw it, and at the last minute, he swerved and drove himself over the edge.”

My spine prickles.

“On purpose?” asks Ellie.

“Who knows,” says Uncle Derek, checking his watch for the millionth time. “Now I’ve already told you too much. Off you go, bedtime.”