‘Yes, bit of a mix-up. Vera . . . er, Miss Creech here . . . is quite new to the job.’
The woman ignored him. ‘And now you’ve dropped it and lost it. Or perhaps it’s been stolen? Or maybe a mouse has got it? It’s not good enough.’
‘I had it here this morning ready for you,’ Dad said from the floor. ‘Vera?’
Vera held up a brown label with a string tie that was marked: Gold ring. Emerald stone. Found on Victoria Line at Green Park Station. Back of seat.
‘I know you had it here this morning ready for me because you phoned me to come in and collect it. I’d like to see the manager.’
Dad knelt upright and breathed slowly as if he had a pain. ‘I am the manager.’ He pointed to the badge pinned to his lapel. It read: Here to Serve You.
The woman looked appalled. There was a silence as Dad resumed his search, crawling his way along the skirting board.
‘Benedict!’ he called through into the back office. ‘We need the broom.’
‘All right, Mr Winter,’ shouted Benedict. He had just arrived and appeared in the doorway with his wrist wrapped up in a bandage. He waved at Edie with his other arm and retreated into the back office to find the broom.
‘You must have a manager,’ the woman was saying. ‘All managers have managers.’
‘Um . . . well . . . she’s called Ms Slate. Ursula Slate,’ said Dad, shuffling alongside the blue postal chute. ‘Please just give me another minute.’
Edie could tell that he was upset. Any mention of Ursula always upset him.
She also knew that recently there had been a high number of items of expensive jewellery reported missing on the Underground, but the items never reached the Lost Property Office.
People were beginning to talk and the London Herald had run a banner headline: Valuable items go missing on the Underground. Is Lost Property Office failing in its duty to find them and return them to their owners?
If Dad found this ring, maybe the London Herald would say better things.
Benedict had reappeared and was pushing an industrial-sized broom around the floor with his good arm. Dust began to cloud up around the woman, like talcum powder around a baby’s bottom. The woman coughed dramatically.
Out of the corner of her eye Edie saw something feathery dart across the room over Dad’s head and perch on top of a filing cabinet. It was the bird again. So she hadn’t imagined it, but how had it got back in?
‘It’s a magpin!’ hissed Impy.
A magpin? This was the creature that had attacked the flits. The magpin cocked its head and stared at Edie. In its orange beak she saw it was holding the gold ring, and she felt Impy climb down the twists of her plait and scuttle onto her shoulder.
‘Impy,’ she hissed.
Impy’s wings whirred in her ear as she lifted off and headed towards the magpin. Edie felt panicked.
‘Where’s Flum? What have you done with her?’ Impy yelled at the magpin as she fluttered dangerously close to its beak.
The magpin cocked its head to one side and flapped its wings, weighing up whether to snap its beak at Impy or keep hold of the ring.
Impy ducked under its beak out of its sight and dangled from the loop of the gold ring as if she was a circus trapeze artist. The magpin began to shake its beak from side to side.
Benedict clapped his hands together and cried, ‘Bird in the house.’
Snatching the broom out of Benedict’s hand, Edie swung it up into the air as if it were a lightsabre and charged at the magpin, waving the bristly end. The magpin flapped its wings and took off, landing on the overhead light. Edie swung the broom in a wild circle over her head, shouting, ‘Shoo! Get out!’
‘Don’t!’ cried Vera.
Alarmed by the commotion, the magpin flew down, landing briefly on the woman’s head before opening its beak to let out a loud squawk and dropping both Impy and the ring. Then it shot through the flap of an air vent and out into the street beyond.
Chapter Seven
Baker Street
‘I
t’s gone,’ shouted Benedict.
‘What on earth was it . . . ?’ said Dad.
‘Maybe one of those nasty pigeons?’ said the woman, patting wildly at her head.
‘It was a bird and it had the ring,’ said Edie, falling to the ground to find Impy. ‘Don’t move anyone!’ She lay on her front on the floorboards.
‘Impy?’ she whispered. ‘Where are you?’
Her eyes frantically scanned the floor, expecting to find Impy, her body broken or trodden underfoot, but there was nothing.
‘Who is this girl?’ the woman asked from above her. Edie opened her mouth but nothing came out. She had to keep her eyes down.
‘She’s my daughter,’ said Dad, filling in the gap.
The dust slowly settled around them.
‘I think this has all gone far enough . . .’ the woman said very grandly.
With perfect timing Impy appeared, a little dusty, climbing out of the seam of a floorboard clutching a large gold ring with a green stone in her arms. She held it up towards Edie. Edie silently breathed a thank you and, taking the ring, she allowed Impy to scuttle back up her plait.
‘Is this what you were looking for?’ she said to the woman, standing up and opening her hand.
‘Ahh!’ the woman gave a gasp. She squeezed the ring back onto her finger and her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Mr Winter, may I congratulate you on your sharp-eyed daughter?’
Dad smiled weakly.
Edie felt Impy whir past her hair and relodge herself in her plait. No one seemed to have noticed the flit, although Vera was looking at her very fixedly from across the room and was fiddling with the eyeglass round her neck.
‘You should put her in charge,’ the woman went on, before opening her purse and handing her a twenty-pound note. She gave Edie a wink, revealing an eyelid that was shaded with a slick of peacock blue, and then she swept out of the office.
Dad threw his hands up in the air. ‘Well done, Edie. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t have done much better! You saved the day! Vera, mark up the computer entry as “Claimed”.’
Vera left to go back to her office.
‘I saved the day,’ said Impy indignantly from her perch just behind Edie’s ear.
‘Not bad!’ said Benedict, smiling, and he picked up the broom and walked out after Vera. ‘Strange bird, though. I’ll have to look it up.’
‘I was worried that woman would complain to Ursula,’ Dad carried on. His boss was particularly keen on order and lists and absolutely no mess anywhere.
‘At least you can tell her that you returned the ring,’ Edie said.
‘Yes. That should put me in her good books for once.’
Dad sat down heavily in his chair, his arm brushing against the box.
‘What’s this?’
‘Oh, it’s that box we found on the Bakerloo Line,’ Edie said, ‘I found it down in the room at the end. No one’s claimed it; I checked with Vera. Can I take it home, Dad?’
‘Edie, we’re supposed to wait three months. That’s the rule. It’s only two days since it arrived!’
‘Please, Dad. It’s just an old box.’
‘Huh!’ Dad said. ‘What’s so special about it then?’ He pulled it towards him to have a look inside.
Edie felt as if someone had wound her up into a tight spring. This was the moment. The real test of the flits’ invisibility.
‘It’s nothing much, Dad.’ She laid her hand protectively on the lid.
‘Come on, Edie.’
‘He can’t see us,’ whispered Impy.
Edie pressed the button at the back and opened the lid. Speckle was sat on the matchbox drawing and Nid was busy polishing one of his five-pence coins in his bedroom.
Dad adjusted his glasses and peered in. The flits turned to look up at him, each tiny face a pale disc the size of a fingernail. There was a long silence.
Eventually Dad said, ‘Strange. All that miniature furniture. Maybe so
meone kept tiny dolls in there or small furry animals like you used to? Those tiny furry things that you used to push around the room in a campervan with a little tent on top.’
‘Ye-es, Dad,’ said Edie. She tried to sound bored but inside she felt elated. He hadn’t seen the flits!
‘So can I take it home?’
‘No, Edie, you cannot. Three months and that’s the rule. It doesn’t belong to the LPO until then, and at that point it will most likely go to the charity shop.’
Edie felt Impy tugging at her plait. ‘Please, Dad.’
‘No, I’m sorry. Ursula would never forgive me if she found out.’
Edie knew she couldn’t push it. Dad was already in trouble with his boss for letting an expensive Wedgwood vase slip out of his hands like a piece of soap and smash into a hundred pieces, and then there was the issue of the missing valuables that the Lost Property Office had failed to find.
‘I’m taking it back where it belongs. Now get your coat, Edie.’
He clicked the lid shut with Nid and Speckle inside and disappeared back down the corridor with the box.
‘Impy,’ Edie said to her plait. ‘You have to go back too.’
‘No I won’t,’ said Impy furiously. ‘I’ve only just got out. What if the magpin comes back?’
‘You can’t come with me,’ said Edie.
‘Plee-ase,’ said Impy. ‘Just tonight. We need supplies. I’ve got a list. Your dad won’t see me. The others will be safe here for one more night and Speckle doesn’t like to leave the box anyway.’
Edie hesitated. More than anything she didn’t want to get Dad into trouble, but she couldn’t ignore the flicker of excitement that bounced about in her chest and ran down her arms to her fingertips at the thought of Impy going home with her.
‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘But you’ll have to hide in my pocket.’ Impy scuttled down her arm and slid into the pocket of her dungarees.
As they walked to the station Edie said, ‘Here, Dad . . . you take the money.’ She tried to hand him the twenty-pound note that the woman had given her.
‘Certainly not, Edie. It’s yours to spend on whatever you like. You earned it.’
Edie could think of a hundred things to spend it on, but one thing stood out.
‘Could I get new school shoes, Dad?’
‘That’s a bit boring, isn’t it? You’ve already got school shoes.’
‘Mum bought them two sizes too big for me and they flap when I walk.’
Surprisingly Dad understood. ‘Well, that won’t do,’ he said. ‘We’ll get new ones tomorrow.’ As they waited for the train, Edie opened her pocket a fraction to look inside. Two tiny fierce eyes were staring back at her.
Chapter Eight
Alexandra Park Road
E
die stood beside the draining board in the kitchen, longing for Dad to finish scrubbing the spaghetti pot. He was taking ages refilling the sink with soapy water and rubbing at the sides of the pot with wire wool.
‘Can’t you go faster?’ she said, twisting a soggy tea towel into a knot.
‘What’s the hurry?’ said Dad.
How could he know that a tiny flying person was waiting for her upstairs in her bedroom? Impy had agreed to stay under Edie’s bed while she ate supper. In return Edie had promised they would raid the kitchen as soon as Dad had gone to bed. She had left Impy with water and an egg cup of Rice Krispies, but she hadn’t intended to be so long.
At last Dad tugged at the fingers of his rubber gloves and peeled them off. ‘Now we have to call Mum.’
‘I-I’ve got homework, Dad!’
‘It’s half-term, Edie. What’s got into you? You always look forward to these calls.’
He flipped open the laptop and clicked on Skype.
It was two days since Mum had gone to Finland to look after Granny Agata. Agata was eighty and lived on her own, but she had fallen in the kitchen and needed help.
The laptop beeped and suddenly there was Mum on the grainy blue screen with her hair scraped back behind her ears. She looked tired.
Edie waved. ‘How’s Granny Agata?’
‘Today was a good day,’ said Mum, ‘She got up for a while and sat in her chair by the window. We could hear the migrating geese honking overhead as they left the lake.’
‘Aark! Aark!’ honked Dad, flapping a tea towel in the background.
Both Edie and Mum laughed.
‘How about you, Edie? Anything exciting happen?’
Edie swallowed hard. She longed to spill out everything to her mother in a tumble of words – how she had found the box of thumb-sized flits, how Impy’s wings whirred like a hummingbird’s and how Flum and the nut baby were missing, but she couldn’t. She almost had to pinch her tongue.
‘I helped Dad in the office,’ she said instead. ‘And I catalogued forty-nine missing umbrellas.’
‘Wow,’ said Mum, ‘I’m impressed.’ After telling her about the rabbit alarm clock with the wiggly ears (and avoiding any talk of Naz and Linny), Edie handed the laptop over to Dad.
‘I’ll see you very soon,’ Mum said.
For a moment Edie sat beside Dad as he talked to Mum. She thought of Granny Agata’s window in her rust-coloured house by the lake and the geese with their long necks stretched out as they took to the air. Then Impy flitted back into her mind, filling every corner of it, and she hurried towards the stairs mouthing to Dad that she was going upstairs.
Relief flooded through Edie as she peered under her bed. Impy was sitting inside the egg cup, looking bored. She flew up onto Edie’s bedside table and crooked one arm onto her hip. ‘You took ages.’
‘I had to help with the washing-up.’
‘What about my list?’ said Impy.
‘We’ll go as soon as Dad’s asleep.’
Edie snapped on her bedside lamp so that Impy was standing in a pool of light. They stared at each other. Edie could see Impy’s ribcage fluttering in and out as a heart the size of a biscuit crumb pumped blood around her tiny body. Her sweet-wrapper jacket gleamed.
‘It’s stitched with fuse wire to withstand collisions with insects and hailstones,’ she said proudly, and pointed to a tiny badge stitched onto it with the letters F7.
‘What’s that stand for?’ asked Edie.
‘Foraging. Top set. I can read the train map and find useful stuff in the Underground.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well . . . wooden lolly sticks to build houses, chewing gum for sticking things together, leftover sandwich crusts for toast . . .’
Edie had so many more questions, but she thought she shouldn’t ask them all at once. Impy, on the other hand, was keen to explore. She took off and hovered in the air for a moment with her tiny cobweb wings beating hard, before flitting around the room to look at Edie’s belongings. She paused by a photograph of two figures at the beach smiling and clutching a baby. The woman’s hair was blown back from her face.
‘That’s Mum and Dad with me when I was little,’ said Edie.
‘Where is your flum now?’ said Impy.
‘She’s gone to Finland for a few days to look after my grandmother. She grew up there and she doesn’t like London winters much. Too foggy and wet, she says, and not enough snow. She misses the cold. The real cold. It always makes her laugh that Dad’s family name is Winter.’
Impy flew on past a string of lights hanging from Edie’s wardrobe and peered through the glass of a fish tank that contained two guppy fish. They darted away from the glass and watched Impy curiously from behind a clump of weeds. Then she flew over to the window and stared out into the street. So fish could see flits.
Edie came and stood beside her. She had looked out of this window countless times – at the row of houses with their postage-stamp front gardens and crooked lines of bins. The whole scene was bathed in the orange glow of the street lamps and in the distance they could hear the rattle and rumble of the long freight trains as they passed through London on their way to the ports on the eas
t coast.
They stood there for some time, listening, until the TV went silent downstairs and the rush of water in the bathroom signalled that Dad was brushing his teeth. Eventually Edie heard the click of his light switch in the next-door bedroom.
It was time for the midnight raid.
Chapter Nine
Alexandra Park Road
‘S
ugar sprinkles,’ Impy ordered. ‘And more Rice Krispies.’
Edie’s bare feet padded back and forth across the cold kitchen tiles as she searched for the items on Impy’s list. She found a tub of coloured sugar strands at the back of a kitchen cupboard and the cereal packet was already out on the counter.
‘Sunflower seeds and raisins,’ Impy went on. ‘And some grapes with the pips taken out.’
The grapes were fiddly, but the list carried on: chocolate spread, three digestive biscuits, a triangle of cheese and some wine gums. Impy pointed to a string bag full of walnuts on top of the fridge.
‘Can we take one of those for Speckle? As a sort of “comfort nut” to remind him of ours. He used to take care of it the most.’
Edie picked out a small oval-shaped walnut and found an egg box that made the perfect container for the seeds and raisins. She scraped out some chocolate spread into a bottle top and filled a jam jar with water. Then she hid everything in her sports bag and left it by the front door. Soon after midnight Edie padded back up the stairs to the bedroom with a second egg box. She filled one of the egg holders with cotton wool and put it on her desk.
‘Here’s where you can sleep.’
Impy hovered in the air, whirring in front of Edie’s face.
‘Do you ever sleep, Impy?’
‘Not much,’ said Impy. ‘Flum says I’ve got a lot of energy.’ She landed on the desk and prodded at the cotton-wool mattress.
‘Why do you need me to look after you?’ Edie said.
Impy folded her arms. ‘We have to find Flum and I don’t think Jot can do it alone. He’s brave in a stupid way. It makes him leap into danger without thinking.’
‘Where is he now?’
Edie and the Box of Flits Page 3