Dear Scarlett (9 page)

We run all the way to school. Running’s good because it makes me breathe, and I don’t think I’ve done that for at least half an hour.

We haven’t spoken either.

I don’t want to discuss what the man said. I don’t want it to be real. I want it to go away.

“I’ve got it,” yells Ellie, panting behind me.

“What?”

“
Letter Boxes, Dead and Live.
I slipped it into my bag.”

I stop, diving into a bus shelter.

“How?”

“It was there, in the shelves.” She’s so out of breath she can hardly speak.

“What! Let’s see it.”

Ellie takes it out. It’s a small brown hardback, speckled with mildew. “Here,” she says.

I hold the book in my hands and flick through the pages.

Nothing falls out, nothing’s written inside, and there’s nothing to say it’s our copy.

Clangalangalangaclang
.

School time.

I feel completely sick now. Completely like giving them the box, the key, all of it. Through maths I was thinking about Mum and Syd, they could be anywhere in the town, and no one would ever suspect the lady mayoress. Mum would just climb into that car and go…

Ellie doesn’t seem to be worried. Maybe it’s because her dad’s a policeman, he can always rescue her – keep her safe. We’re hiding out in the school library and I’ve been through the book and it’s surprisingly dull. From the things I’ve heard about Dad, I’d have thought that he’d have chosen some racier reading. There’s miles of Russian names, and
chapters with headings like: “The Idiosyncrasies of the Cargle Case.” I drift off the moment I start to read and have to keep reminding myself that there might be something important in there.

Although the book’s truly toothgrindingly uninteresting, we do discover what a dead letter box is. It’s a public place, mostly used by spies, where one person leaves a message for another. Like, tucked into a cereal packet in a supermarket, or stuck under the sugar in a café, or in the left luggage department of a station.

But it doesn’t mean anything to me.

“Oh, this is hopeless,” I say, handing the book to Ellie.

I pick up a comic annual and sink into a beanbag. I can’t help feeling that Dad’s box has been a bad thing.

I was perfectly all right before it came into my life.

Bored, perhaps, but all right, all the same.

It’s been a roller coaster ever since. Not a roller coaster, maybe more of a dodgem car ride or one of those giant tea cups that make you throw up.

“But, Scarlett, look!” says Ellie. She’s waving the book in my face. I can’t see anything but strings of
meaningless names. “This – this is a dead letter box message itself.”

“Is it?” I ask.

“Look – here!” She points at page five. “…
F
undamentally
…” but the F has been underlined. Not very strongly, but definitely underlined. “And here.” She turns over a couple of pages. “…
A
sk yourself
… The A?”

We scour the pages, collecting letters. F. A. Z. A. C. K. E. R. L. E. Y.

“Fazackerley?” I say. “The only Fazackerley I know of is the hall place? With the café and stuff.”

It takes Ellie about a nanosecond to log on to the library computer, enter Mrs Gayton’s password and get the Internet on screen.

“Fazackerley Hall,” she says, typing the words in.

Pictures of a large house pop up on the screen. It’s red and brick and covered in tea-shop signs and full of old people. I’ve been there with Mum.

“Open daily, 10–5, located two miles from Dampmouth Bay, five miles from Dampington,”
reads Ellie. “Bingo,” she says.

“How,” I ask, “did
you
know Mrs Gayton’s password?”

I’m feeling bouncy on the school bus. Ellie gets off before me, taking the dead-letter-box book (apparently it could make good bedtime reading), and although Melissa and Amber sit on the back seat singing: “
Scarlett, Scarlett, give me your answer do
…” I don’t really mind.

We’ve made a discovery; we know more than the box does.

We know more than the mayoress and her driver.

We know where we need to go next. I’m imagining us finding a chest of secrets in the corridors of Fazackerley Hall, one that the current owners
haven’t noticed. They’re so grateful, they share it with us, and give me a DVD that Dad made before he died, explaining everything.

The lady mayoress and her driver don’t feature in this scenario at all.

I’m just getting to the bit where Dad turns out not to be dead after all.

“Uh-oh!” says the bus driver. “Trouble?”

Two police cars stand on the gravel driveway of the watercress beds. Even from here, I can see that the kitchen window’s been smashed.

“Ooooooo-ooooh,” screech the Coven.

But I don’t answer them, because my mouth has gone dry. I clamber from the bus in silence and as I get closer to the house, I begin to feel dizzy.

There’s a policeman crouching below the kitchen window, taking photos of the ground.

“Oh – scene of crime,” he says. “You’ll have to wait there.”

“What’s happened? Where’s Mum?”

“Sergeant!” the policeman yells through the broken window. “There’s a girl out here. Wait there, love,” he says.

I stand outside the front door.

My front door.

I’m utterly numb.

I can’t think.

Where’s Mum?

Where’s Syd?

The silence seems to last for hours. I watch the swallows swoop over the watercress beds, catching flies as if nothing’s happened.

A buzzard sweeps overhead.

Then feet sound on the stairs, and Mum bursts out of the front door, closely followed by Uncle Derek. He’s carrying Syd.

“Scarlett!” says Mum, rushing towards me, her arms wide. She’s been crying. “We’ve been burgled.”

I let her hold me tight. Burgled? I think of the twenty-year-old TV and the second-hand laptop. “What did they take?”

Uncle Derek lets Syd slide to the ground. “We thought you might know.”

I feel suddenly sick. “Why?”

“Because it’s your bedroom that’s been turned upside down.”

The house smells strange. It stinks of what Mum calls “manly sweat” with low tones of policeman aftershave.

There are four policemen. One of them’s Uncle Derek, one seems to be making tea and the other two are dusting everything with grey powder.

“Do you need my fingerprints?” I ask.

Uncle Derek pats me on the head. “No need, Scarlett, love – your hands are small, like Syd’s, we can tell which ones belong to you.”

“Upstairs, sweetheart,” says Mum, behind me. She sounds oddly jolly, but I can hear a quiver in
her voice, like she might cry.

My feet thunder on the stairs; the stair gate seems more awkward than usual, and the landing sad and grubby.

The door to my room’s smeared with the grey powder, so I don’t touch it. I just shove against it with my shoulder.

And I have to shove, because the door will barely open.

They’re right. My room
has
been turned upside down.

Completely.

The bunk’s lying on its head, like there’s been an earthquake. The floor’s centimetres deep in clothes and teddies and games. On top of them lie the books, ripped from their shelves and left for dead like broken seagulls.

I want to scream and cry at the same time, but instead I stand mutely staring at the mess.

“Scarlett?” Uncle Derek’s holding my arm. “What’s missing, love – what should be here that isn’t?”

At first I look for electrical things. The MP3, the CD player, my camera. They’re all there. The old tape player’s still plugged in, but my jumble-sale
tapes have gone.

Weird.

I look around, trying to remember where things were before the burglar hurricane hit them.

I remember Dad’s tools, but they’re in Mum’s room.

They would have been under the bunk with the rest of the things from the box.

The box? Dad’s photos?

I search frantically in the space where “under the bunk” should be.

I look around for the box. It’s not here. It’s not anywhere.

I stumble through the rubble on the floor. Combing it with my hands. I can’t see any of the photos, or the book. Or even a piece of squashed cardboard.

I shake my head, tears fill my eyes; I’ve lost everything of Dad’s, but out loud I say, “Apart from some old tapes, nothing’s missing.”

“Really – nothing at all, love?” asks Uncle Derek.

I shake my head again and sniff.

I’ve lost everything but the stupid tools.

Then I feel the key round my neck, and the library card in my pocket.

Almost everything.

“Strange,” says Uncle Derek. “Strange,” he says again, and clicks his stopwatch.

We sleep at Uncle Derek’s.

For once, I don’t really mind.

Earlier, Uncle Derek cooked while Mum rang friends and cried and laughed and drank billions of cups of tea.

We had oven chips, fish fingers, frozen peas and tinned sweetcorn. It was delicious, and we all sat together round the table, with Syd in Ellie’s old sparkly high chair, squeezing ketchup over everything.

It was almost as if the robbery hadn’t happened.

As if we were a proper family that always ate
together, but I knew that Dad’s clues were lurking in the background, that we had to do something about them, and soon.

I was trying to think of a way of asking about Fazackerley Hall, when Ellie spoke.

“D-ad?” she said.

“Yes, pumpkin.” Uncle Derek grinned over the table at her.

“We need to go to Fazackerley Hall.”

It wasn’t the way I’d have said it. How was she going to explain a sudden interest in old buildings and tea shops?

Mum blinked. “Why?”

Exactly. Why? I stared at Ellie.

She stared back at me.

“Homework?” I said.

“A competition?” she said.

Mum and Uncle Derek gazed at us, as if we’d just turned into hamsters.

“Competition?” If Mum’s eyebrows could meet in the middle, they would have done.

“Homework?” said Uncle Derek.

“Ho-wuk, ’arlet,” said Syd, ploughing the ketchup with a fish finger.

“Homework.” Uncle Derek gave everyone a bowl
of perfectly round pink ice cream, and whisked the fish finger out of Syd’s hand. “Homework’s fun, challenges the mind.”

I can think of a million ways of describing homework and none of them are “fun”.

“I’ll take you,” said Uncle Derek.

Mum touched his arm and smiled up at him. “Good idea, thank you, Derek.”

And they kissed.

That was hours ago. The house is really quiet now.

Although Uncle Derek and Ellie aren’t really my family, it’s nice to be staying with them, having them around us. Sleeping.

Just this once.

After being burgled.

Mum and I are in Uncle Derek’s big double bed, with Syd. I could have slept with Ellie, but I chose Mum, I really wanted to be with her.

I don’t think anyone’s properly asleep, but I feel safe. It’s not very comfortable, and it smells of Uncle Derek’s deodorant. He’s downstairs on the sofa; he’s got Houdini, our cat, for company.

We had to bring Houdini, because of all the broken glass.

I imagine Houdini’s lying on Uncle Derek’s head.

I lie awake listening to Syd breathing, Uncle Derek snoring downstairs, and Ellie’s mass of electronic things recharging overnight.

The house hums.

Over us is a lampshade in the shape of a jellyfish. I don’t suppose it’s deliberately a jellyfish, but in the dark, that’s what it looks like.

There are eyes, and tendrils.

I snuggle next to Mum and even though I don’t want to, I think about the burglary.

I know who it is, of course.

But I can’t say.

Mum thinks it’s a good idea that we go to Fazackerly Hall. She’s not coming with us, she’s going home to clear up.

We’re going with Syd and Uncle Derek, so we won’t have to walk which makes Ellie happy, but which is going to make it more complicated.

It also means that Mum’s at home on her own.

“Mum, don’t go with anyone – don’t get in any cars, will you?”

“Darling – what do you mean?”

“I mean, be careful – don’t take lifts from strangers.”

Mum laughs. “I’m supposed to say that to you, aren’t I?”

She’s not taking me seriously. “Please, Mum – I want you to promise me.”

Mum kisses me on the forehead. “I doubt I’ll even leave the house, I’ll drive myself over and back. I won’t need to take a lift from a stranger. Anyway, Derek’s police friends will be dusting for fingerprints again today, I won’t be on my own.”

“Well, just make sure,” I say, pulling on my trainers. “I had a sort of dream – I was worried.”

“OK, love,” says Mum. “I’ll be extra careful.”

There are about a million ancient people parked in the car park, with spotless boring cars. Uncle Derek’s fits in perfectly. If Syd hadn’t left smeary handprints all over the inside of the window you wouldn’t know the car belonged to a comparatively young person.

Uncle Derek has one of those bobbly wooden bead seat covers like taxi drivers. He says it’s ergonomically good for his back.

We follow the ancient people to the ticket office.

They take hours to go through, and Syd gets whiny and I can see Uncle Derek’s just dying to
run across all the lovely green lawns. I’m looking around at everything and I realise that I’ve no idea what I’m looking for or where I’m looking for it. Ellie raises an eyebrow at me and points at the guide book. I nod, and she slips one into Uncle Derek’s hand.

“Seventeen quid?” he yelps, when the woman gives him three tickets.

“Well, sir, the guidebook’s three pounds fifty and the house does have the finest collection of weighing scales in the country.”

“Not to mention the East Wing,” says a passing guide.

Uncle Derek looks at us. “Are you sure about this?”

Ellie nods firmly. “We’ve got to go because of homework, and we need the book for the same reason.”

She’s turning into an excellent liar.

The house is gobsmackingly dull. The room of eighteenth-century weighing scales is especially boring. But we have to examine everything. Looking for notes, or keyholes, or anywhere Dad could have left a message.

Ellie looks interested in everything, but it could just be a ruse. Syd rubs slime over the tapestries and demands ice creams.

Uncle Derek gets trapped in a room with a guide determined to show him every one of the fine collection of sugar tongs.

“Girls,” says Uncle Derek, fighting his way to the door. “Haven’t we done enough?”

“But we haven’t done the East Wing,” Ellie says, thwacking the guidebook against her thigh. Neither of us have read a single word from it.

“No,” Uncle Derek sighs. “We haven’t.” We all look at Syd. He’s lolling out of his pushchair singing “Incy Wincy Spider” over and over again in a high squeak. “Tell you what, I’ll take Sydney here out in the gardens, we can run around, have an ice cream.” He looks at his watch. “See you in thirty-two minutes.”

“OK, Dad,” says Ellie.