An Island of Our Own

  I’d better pay more attention on the way back in, I thought. I must see just where it starts. And then, How weird to live somewhere that isn’t London. It felt like travelling to another country, or somewhere completely alien, like Narnia. It felt like travelling to Narnia.

  TREASURE SIDING

  The station was small. There was no ticket office, no café. There was a footbridge, and a bus shelter on each platform, and a machine with a big button you could press for information. That was it.

  There was also a man waiting for us at the station platform. He was tall and skinny and sun-tanned, with thick white hair, waterproof gaiters and an expensive-looking camera around his neck. He was wearing another of Keith’s fluorescent jackets, just like the ones Keith had given us.

  “Neil,” he said, holding out his hand for all of us to shake, even Davy. “Keith asked me to come and show you what’s what. This is a bit of an adventure, isn’t it?”

  “Are you sure it’s OK,” Jonathan said, “what we’re doing? I mean, it’s not trespassing or anything, is it?”

  Neil gave him what my gran used to call an “old-fashioned look”. “Of course it’s trespassing,” he said. “But don’t worry – it’s not dangerous. The line isn’t electrified – well, not in the sidings, anyway. These tracks haven’t been used in years.” He leant down to look at Davy, slowly and majestically, like a sort of trainspotter Puddleglum. “You know you must never play on the railway lines, don’t you?” he said.

  Davy nodded, very serious. “You get squashed,” he said. “Strawberry jam!”

  “Exactly.” Neil looked pleased. “Never play on railway lines. Well. At least, not unless you’re with someone who knows what he’s doing. Come on.”

  Behind the station was a big, flat space with a whole mess of railway tracks. It was like a car park for trains. There were a couple of empty carriages parked waiting, and one of those flat-base things they lower shipping containers onto and then hook onto the back of trains. There were also old tracks. Neil was right – they really hadn’t been used in years. They were thick with rust, and huge green plants and little saplings sprouted up between the sleepers. And – yes – there was the signal box from the picture. Probably. The windows had been smashed and boarded up, and someone had spray-painted HEX in big black letters across the brickwork. And the tree in the picture was gone. There were some big old buddleia bushes there instead. But… yeah… it could have been the place in Auntie Irene’s photograph.

  We lined the photo up with the signal box and the railway tracks. We guessed that the safe would be buried in about the middle of the photo. Then we turned on the metal detector and began detecting.

  We let Davy go first. He swished the detector over the grass and earth in the picture, and whenever it went beep, one of us started digging. We dug up quite a lot of rubbish. An old cigarette lighter. Lots of nails. A screwdriver. A spoon. Seventy-five pence in loose change.

  And Auntie Irene’s safe.

  The safe was buried about a foot and a half deep. It looked less like a safe and more like a briefcase, a silvery metal briefcase that might have looked quite swanky if it wasn’t covered in earth. It had a handle, and a combination lock. Davy and I tried to open it, but couldn’t. Still!

  “We did it!” I said. I was so excited. I spun around in little circles of happiness, that’s how excited I was. “Look, Jonathan! I was right! It’s our treasure!”

  “Blimey,” said Neil. He looked impressed.

  Jonathan just shook his head. He didn’t seem to know what to say.

  “Are we rich now?” said Davy, hopefully. “Rich enough to buy a bicycle?”

  “You bet,” I said.

  “Mmm,” said Jonathan. “Let’s see about that.”

  IN WHICH I CRACK OPEN A SAFE, NINJA-STYLE

  We took the safe to the lock-picking class on Wednesday.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to get in?” I asked Steve, who ran the class. He was a big man with a brown beard that was beginning to go grey and twinkly eyes. He wasn’t fat exactly. Just burly.

  “All safes are hackable,” Steve said. He picked up the briefcase and peered at the combination lock. “They have to be, in case the person who owns it forgets the combination, or something goes wrong with the lock. You need a way in. If nothing else, you can melt it. You know, cut it with a thermic lance or plasma cutters. Or we could blow the lock off. All you need is some nitroglycerine and a battery, pretty much.”

  “Yeah!” I said. “Let’s do that! Where do you buy nitroglycerine from?”

  “Well…” Steve turned the safe over. “I’m not sure blowing it up or melting it is a good idea. I mean, what’s inside? Would it melt? Or burn?”

  “It’s jewellery,” I said. “Would a thermic lance melt jewellery?”

  “We don’t know it’s jewellery,” said Jonathan quickly. “It could be anything. Share certificates. Bank statements. Isn’t there a less destructive way to get in?”

  “Sure,” said Steve. “We can drill in. Drill straight through the cam. Although…” He frowned at the briefcase. “This is a pretty high-level high-security safe. See, a safe like this, they’ll put in cobalt plates to stop you drilling through. Well, you can drill through, but you need diamond-tipped drills, and it takes for ever.”

  “But you can get in?” I said. “Can’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” said Steve. “We’ll just drill round it.”

  As he set up the drill, he explained what he meant. There was a plate of thick metal in front of the lock. But if he drilled down at an angle over the top of the plate, he’d be able to reach the lock. And more importantly, reach the wheels that the combination turned to open the case.

  “And then drill through them!”

  “Not exactly,” said Steve. “Wait and see.”

  The lock-pickers started coming in as Steve began drilling. Some of them had heard about us and our money. Those people were pretty excited. Jen gave me a big thumbs-up and a grin to show me how pleased she was.

  Some of the lock-pickers were all snooty and pretended to be far too important to care and just sat in their corners, behind their laptops. I bet they cared really.

  When he’d finished the drilling, Steve called me over. “OK,” he said. He held up an instrument I’d never seen before – a long tube with a handle and an eyepiece at one end. He slotted the tube into the hole and handed me the handle. “Look in there,” he said.

  I looked into the eyehole. There was a little light shining at the end, and I could see a little row of silvery wheels. “It’s a periscope!” I said.

  “A borescope,” Steve corrected. “Periscopes are for looking around corners. OK, so there’s a groove in each of those wheels. And each correct number you put into the combination lines up the groove in one of those wheels. So when you put in the correct combination, all the grooves line up, the bolt slides out and the briefcase opens. Got that?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “OK,” said Steve. “So now it’s easy. All you have to do is turn each dial round in turn watching through the borescope. When the groove in the first wheel moves into place, you stop. Then you do the same thing for the next number, and so on until the grooves in all six wheels line up. Simple.”

  “Cool,” said one of the girls who’d come over to listen. That was how you learnt things at the Maker Space. They didn’t set you homework or yell at you or anything like that. They just offered you knowledge, and if you wanted it, you took it, and if you didn’t, you went and did something else.

  Steve made me look through the borescope while he turned the wheels. I’m sure he was just doing it to be nice, because looking and turning are totally multitaskable, but I didn’t care. I cracked a safe! I’m a safe-cracker! Sizwe would be well impressed.

  Maybe if the treasure wasn’t in the briefcase, I could get a part-time job as an international j
ewel thief, I thought. That could work. I could totally lower myself into museums on a wire through the skylight like jewel thieves do.

  And then the bolt slid.

  And the briefcase opened.

  WHAT WAS INSIDE THE BRIEFCASE…

  … was not jewellery.

  It was paper. Lots of paper, in clear plastic envelopes.

  “That’s not treasure!” said Davy. “It’s rubbish!”

  “Paper can be treasure,” said Jen. She picked one of the envelopes out of the box and looked at it. “Whoa. Your aunt was loaded.”

  “What is it?” I asked. The piece of paper didn’t make much sense to me. It had the name of some fancy company over the top, and then some numbers – big numbers, thousands of pounds’ worth of numbers – underneath. It wasn’t a bank statement, though.

  “It’s a shares certificate,” said Jen. “We have some of these for savings.” She flicked through the other pieces of paper. “This is a property deed – that’s the bit of paper that proves you own your house. Your uncle will be pleased you found that. This is a pension, I think.”

  “So they’re worth money?”

  “No,” said Jonathan. He took the pieces of paper out of Jen’s hand.

  “Well…” Jen said.

  “But shares are money!” I said. “Aren’t they – Jen?”

  “They’re worth money,” said Jonathan. “But they don’t belong to us. They belonged to our Aunt Irene. And now they belong to Uncle Evan. We’ll have to give them back to him. Aunt Irene left us jewellery, Holly. She didn’t leave us cash to the value of the jewellery.”

  “Maybe your uncle—” said Jen.

  Jonathan laughed. “Ha!”

  I was trying really hard not to cry. Everyone was being so grown-up, and they were treating me like a grown up too. I didn’t want to be the little kid who bursts into tears because it’s not fair.

  But it wasn’t fair.

  It wasn’t.

  UNCLE EVAN

  Jonathan sent Uncle Evan an email about the bits of paper, and Uncle Evan rang him up and yelled down the phone at him. I don’t know what exactly he said, but Jonathan’s side was all “Yes – no – yes, I’m sorry – no, I know I should have – no, we didn’t know – yes, of course – yes, but – yes, sorry – I know, but—”

  “Isn’t he pleased?” I said.

  “No,” said Jonathan. He looked white and unhappy and most unJonathanlike. “He thinks we’re in league with Auntie Irene’s ghost or something. He wants to know why we didn’t tell him about the photographs straight away. And why we went off to find the treasure without telling him. He thinks we were hoping whatever was in the briefcases was something we could steal.”

  “What a creep!” I said. “Give me that phone – I’ll tell him! How dare he speak to you like that?”

  “Leave it,” said Jonathan.

  “I mean it!” I said. I wished Mum was here. Mum really hated Uncle Evan. She’d never have let him say things like that.

  “Please don’t,” said Jonathan. “Holly. Don’t.” He looked utterly miserable. Jonathan hates it when people think badly of him, which is hardly ever, because he usually never does anything interesting enough to offend anyone.

  Jo came by after school on Thursday to pick up the bits of paper. I wanted to hold them to ransom, but Jonathan told me I had to give them to her.

  “You are a dark horse, aren’t you?” said Jo, when I handed her the briefcase.

  I scowled. I didn’t want praise from people who were stealing the money we found.

  “Look,” said Jo. “I’m really sorry about Dad. I bet he was awful to you. I know you weren’t trying to steal anything, really I do.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well.”

  “He wants the photos too,” Jo said. She looked at me as though expecting me to fight, but I didn’t. After all, maybe Uncle Evan would recognize where the pictures were. Surely, if he found the jewellery, he’d give it to us? Wouldn’t he?

  “You didn’t recognize them, did you?” I asked. She shook her head. “I recognized our living room,” she said. “And the one with the palm trees is Norfolk Island, I’m almost sure. That’s in Polynesia – Mum used to have a house out there. She sold the house, though – if she buried anything there, it won’t be there now. I don’t know about the others.”

  “OK,” I said. I was relieved. Maybe if Jo didn’t recognize the photos, Uncle Evan wouldn’t either. “And Jonathan’s already emailed him the photos. He did it this morning. So.”

  There was an awkward pause. We were standing on the doorstep because I didn’t really want to let her into the flat. I didn’t want her to see how messy it was.

  “I’m sorry the briefcase didn’t have the jewellery in it,” she said.

  “Do you think—” I said. Jonathan would hate me for asking, but I couldn’t not. “Do you think Uncle Evan will give us a reward? We found his money, after all. Loads of it.”

  Jo looked uncomfortable.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think he will. Sorry. But—” She fumbled in her bag for her purse and opened it. She pulled out all the notes she had and handed them to me. “There,” she said. “That’s to say thank you. It’s the least we can do.”

  “Fifty-five pounds,” I told Jonathan. “Fifty-five pounds! There were thousands and thousands of pounds in that briefcase, and she gave us fifty-five pounds! The cheapskate!”

  “She shouldn’t have given us anything,” said Jonathan. “That money in the briefcase wasn’t hers. It’s going to go straight to Uncle Evan, remember? Jo didn’t get any of it, and I bet he doesn’t give her anything either.”

  That was a good point. I’d forgotten that.

  “And actually,” Jonathan went on, “she did ring me and say maybe she could give some money, from what her mum left her. But I said no. We can’t take money from people, Holl. We can’t.”

  “You aren’t going to give my fifty-five quid back, are you?” I said anxiously.

  Jonathan screwed up his face. “I should,” he said. “But I can’t do that either. I need it to pay the rent.”

  He looked so unhappy that I put my arms around his waist and hugged him. He looked a bit surprised, but he hugged me back.

  “You’re a good big brother really,” I said.

  He patted me on the head. “Good,” he said. “Because you’re a demon sister from hell.”

  But I’m pretty sure he meant it as a compliment.

  STORIES

  We were all miserable that evening. Davy tipped the easy chair in the living room up to make a den, and hid in there with Sebastian. I could hear him in there, whispering secrets into Sebastian’s big floppy rabbit ears. I decided to leave him to it.

  Jonathan sat behind his computer being miserable and talking to his imaginary internet friends, who live in the pixels. That’s what Mum used to call them, anyway, when she wanted to tease him. I didn’t want to tease. I’d met some of Jonathan’s internet friends. They were real enough.

  At about seven o’clock he sat up and said, “This is ridiculous! I’m going to make curry.” And he did, an enormous pot of everything-we’ve-got-in-the-cupboard curry, bananas and peas and tuna fish and leftover cold potatoes and lots and lots of chilli powder. Everyone in our family likes hot curry.

  “Tell us a story!” said Davy, when we were all as full as could be.

  Jonathan is very good at stories. People don’t expect him to be, but he is. He does voices and everything, only not in public. His current story was about Princess Leia and Han Solo, who were going to Mordor to drop the Ring of Power into Mount Doom instead of Frodo and Sam, because Frodo and Sam are OK, but the Millennium Falcon is faster. We were halfway through, but we hadn’t had an instalment in ages.

  “Why are they sending the Millennium Falcon?” I said. Arguing with Jonathan is an important par
t of all his stories. “Why can’t they just send Superman? It would take him about half a second to get to Mount Doom, and he’d go so fast the Dark Lord would never catch him.”

  “Superman’s in Minas Tirith,” said Jonathan. “Fighting the orcs with Gandalf and Dumbledore. And he can’t use his super-hearing to hear them, because they’ve switched the Elven Cloaking Device on in the Millennium Falcon. And they can’t turn it off, because if they do the orcs will shoot them down with lasers.”

  “They should!” said Davy. “They should! They should!” We waited. “They should go in the TARDIS!”

  But Jonathan said nobody could Apparate or Disapparate in Mordor, so they couldn’t.

  Princess Leia and Han Solo were halfway across the Ash Mountains when they got shot down by werewolves with rocket launchers. The werewolves took them to their underground lair, “where Superman can’t hear them either,” because of the built-in soundproof underground-lair layer. And then the werewolves dangled Jar Jar Binks over a pit of molten lava and started lowering him to his death. Something like this always happened to Jar Jar Binks in Jonathan’s stories.

  “Give us the One Ring or the gungan gets it!” said the head werewolf. But then – how-woo! – he fell over dead, because Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games appeared and shot him in the back of the head with a silver arrow. The werewolves all went after Katniss, and they let go of the rope holding Jar Jar over the pit of molten lava and he plunged to his boiling death, and Davy and I cheered. And then Katniss charged off down the secret passageway, and all the werewolves followed, and she was running fast, but they were running faster, and a chasm opened up in the rock floor, and she leapt over it, but they all leapt after her, and Katniss pulled on a hidden lever handily concealed in a rock formation, and the chasm widened and all the werewolves plunged to their bloody deaths.