‘Thanks,’ said Edie. ‘Tomorrow we’ll go and look for Jot.’
Nid looked up and raised one sticky thumb in a tiny thumbs-up salute.
Chapter Sixteen
Alexandra Park Road to High Barnet
F
irst thing next day, Dad had already left for work.
Edie stayed at home, telling Dad that she had other plans and was going to spend the day with some ‘new friends’, which seemed to please him. She began to organise the search party. Each flit carried a bag with all sorts of practical tools like pins, torches and tweezers, but there was a dispute over a thimble of sugar sprinkles.
‘I’m carrying it!’ said Impy.
‘No, I am!’ said Nid.
‘Why do we need the sprinkles anyway?’ said Edie.
‘To lay a trail for Jot. He loves sugar. All flits do.’
Impy snatched the jar from Nid and stuffed it in her bag. Nid scooped up some loose sugar sprinkles and threw them at Impy, then he ran under the bed and reappeared rolling half a packet of Polos that he must have found in Edie’s school bag. He levered one of the mints out, holding it in his arms as if it were a flit-sized rubber ring.
‘You can’t take that,’ said Impy.
‘It’s OK,’ said Edie, holding up both her hands. If she put Nid and the Polo in her pocket, it might keep him out of mischief. The dog flap clattered open downstairs as Bilbo set off on a squirrel patrol round the garden. Nid paused, looking towards the open door.
‘No, Nid!’ said Edie. She did not want a rerun of yesterday. ‘If you come with us today, you have to stay in my sight!’
‘Remember our cousins,’ said Impy with a theatrical flourish.
She told Edie how Cousins Smidgen and Sprint had been stamped on during a particularly crowded rush hour and deaf old Uncle Wilmott had had a nasty accident in some train doors as they slid shut. Edie tried to imagine herself as flit-sized: ducking out of the way of bags and rucksacks, umbrellas and feet – so many smelly feet. Or, even worse, being sat on by a Londoner’s giant bottom. No wonder Smidgen and Sprint hadn’t survived.
Edie opened up her school planner and unfolded a map of the Underground, smoothing it down on her desk. ‘Dad told me there’s two hundred and fifty miles of track down there,’ said Edie. They looked at the coloured lines as they crossed and circled round London like strands of spaghetti.
‘First stop is the station near Charlie’s house. That’s where Jot said he would meet you. Can you remember where it was?’
Speckle eased himself out of the box for the first time and jumped down onto the map. He pointed at the marker for King’s Cross Station and ran his finger from there along the Northern Line to the very top of the map. His finger came to rest at High Barnet.
*
A forest of legs filled the huge ticket hall at King’s Cross. Shoes and boots clicked across the concourse, crossing this way and that as they headed for the barriers, and the air smelt of sweat and warm socks. It was hard not to think of Cousins Smidgen and Sprint.
Edie leant against the wall, checking that Nid and Speckle were still safely in her pocket. The floor was grimy and balls of dust and hair blew across it like tumbleweed. She pictured Jot alone, cowering in the shadows among the discarded takeaway boxes and old stubs of chewing gum, trying to navigate the busy platforms. She imagined the rush of warm air as the train came in, sucking at his arms and legs and wings, and clickety-click, clickety-click, pulling at him, trying to drag him into the windy blast.
The Northern Line train left the tunnel and travelled overground. They were in the suburbs of London, sandwiched between the inner city and the huge motorway that circled it like a ring doughnut. Edie looked out at the long back gardens either side of the tracks dotted with clumps of greenery and beyond them a sea of red-roofed houses. Metal footbridges crossed the line at every station and brambles grew along the fence. They started to climb uphill.
‘Can you see Charlie’s house from the station?’ Edie asked. She suddenly felt overcome by the need to share the secret of the flits with someone else.
‘Can we go there first . . . just to have a look?’
The train slid to a halt and Impy flew ahead up a pathway that led out of the station. It turned away from a busy high road and ran alongside a row of terraced houses. Charlie’s house was the first one. It was nicely shabby, Edie thought, with sash windows at the front and pots of geraniums beside the door. The path ran alongside the back garden.
Impy pointed through the shrubbery at a large green shed with cobwebs across the window. An old skateboard was leaning against the front and pinned over the door was a basketball hoop. ‘That’s Charlie’s shed,’ she whispered.
‘And Charlie’s bedroom is up there,’ said Nid, pointing up to the back of the house, but there were no lights on.
‘We should go,’ said Impy, hovering in front of Edie. She looked anxious and Edie imagined the shed clearance and bag of ‘jumble’ might be weighing on her mind.
Edie turned back reluctantly and saw a boy coming up the path from the station wheeling a bicycle. She could tell straight away from the spiked hair that it was the boy she had seen on the Tube – Charlie’s older brother Ivan. He was plugged into some earbuds and holding his phone. As he drew level with the house Edie knew she had to say something.
‘Um, sorry . . . can I just ask you . . .?’
She felt Impy withdraw into the twists of her plait. Ivan looked up and pulled one of his earbuds out. He looked at her warily. ‘Yeah?’
‘Is Charlie in?’
‘Um . . . no. He’s away for a few days. Scouts or something.’
Edie felt crushed. She stood there, not sure what to say next. Charlie didn’t even know who she was.
Nid scrabbled up her jacket and stood on her shoulder. ‘You forgot us!’ he shouted at the boy.
‘Nid!’ Edie whispered. Impy was sliding down her plait and in seconds she had grabbed hold of Nid’s top and pulled him back into the shadows of Edie’s neckline.
Ivan was looking at her blankly. ‘Do you want me to tell him you called by?’ It was clear he hadn’t seen or heard anything.
‘No. It’s all right, thanks.’ Edie turned and raced back down the path with the flits.
They carefully searched the station for any sign of Jot, looking along the walls, in among the flower planters and under the benches.
‘Nothing,’ said Impy.
Nid was distracted by a crisp packet blowing along the platform and he ran after it, dabbing his finger in the salty crumbs that had stuck to the sides, but Speckle had been studying a patch of wall just past the waiting room. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. About a metre off the ground there were three pencilled letters of wobbly handwriting.
Jot
A small, crudely drawn arrow beneath Jot’s name pointed to a crack in the wall and a corner of folded paper that was wedged there. Speckle eased it out and unfolded it and they all crowded round. Impy read aloud what he had written in tiny scratched lettering.
To my fambly,
I could not find u here even tho’ I looked for a long time. I know where Flum and the nut is, but have gone to find help. Look out for magpins and the spy bird. They are everywhere.
Your brother Jot
Speckle kicked at the paper and wiped away an angry tear.
‘Why didn’t he wait?’ said Impy. ‘Jot’s so impatient.’
‘We’ll come back tomorrow and the next day,’ said Edie. ‘And let’s leave something to tell him we’ve got his message.’
Nid had already climbed up the brickwork and, taking the silver thimble from his bag, he filled it with sugar sprinkles and placed it in the gap. Then as an afterthought he stuffed a Polo mint alongside it. Impy wrote a message on the back of a chocolate wrapper – We are all safe. Will come back soon – and Speckle threw Nid the bottle-top painting of the twin brothers. Nid stuck the bottle top to the wall just above Jot’s name with a tiny stub of chewing gum.
‘Could we go to Highgate?’ Impy called back. ‘It’s only six stations south of here.’
Speckle shook his head vigorously to say no.
‘We should go, Speckle,’ said Impy.
‘Why?’ asked Edie.
‘You’ll see,’ said Impy.
Chapter Seventeen
High Barnet to Highgate
E
die held her hands cupped together in the ticket hall at Highgate Tube Station. She could feel Impy’s breath as the flit peeped through her fingers. There were only a few passengers about.
‘Where next?’ whispered Edie.
‘There’s an old station above this one,’ said Impy. ‘You can get to it through a gap in the hedge across the car park.’
Edie climbed the steep staircase that led out of the ticket hall, and, as soon as they reached daylight, Impy eased Edie’s fingers apart and fluttered off across the tarmac.
Edie waited until the passengers thinned out and there was no one about and then hurried after her, past a row of parked cars and through the gap in the hedge. There was a sign saying No Entrance and beyond it a path wound upwards between overgrown brambles and bushes. Edie edged around the sign and up the pathway, ignoring the thorns that caught in her hair and snagged at her ankles.
She reached a clearing and a set of concrete steps. Climbing the steps, she found herself standing on the platform of a disused station that led straight into a hillside.
The station was hidden from the car park by a tangle of plants that had sprung up right along the line of the fence. Stinging nettles curled themselves round the edges of the platform and moss covered the walls like old patchwork. Brittle autumn leaves blew this way and that, piling up against the old station buildings and catching in the metal shutters of the ticket office. It looked deserted and unloved, but to Edie it was magical. A railway wilderness.
There was no sign of Impy.
Edie put her hand in her pocket and lifted out Nid and Speckle. Nid stood up, looked around him and did a series of excited star jumps on the palm of her hand, but Speckle crouched down and hid behind the ball of her thumb.
‘What is this place?’ Edie asked.
‘It’s our home,’ said Nid.
It was so much bigger than she had imagined and so quiet and peaceful. A hidden corner of London that lay over Highgate Underground Station like a secret cloak. The distant rumble under her feet told her that the Tube trains ran deep below.
‘The Hillside Camp?’
‘Yes. The Camp’s just up there,’ said Nid, pointing up beyond the platform. ‘But the spy bird found it and gave us away.’
‘The spy bird?’ said Edie.
‘The crow.’
Edie thought about Shadwell, the tame crow with the nipping beak that sat on Vera’s windowsill, but, as Vera had said, there were a lot of crows in London.
Edie looked up towards the hillside. The two tunnel entrances that had once carried trains through it were boarded up. She walked to the end of the platform and jumped down. Nature had completely taken over. Brambles snaked this way and that and tree roots were sticking out of the ground where the train tracks would have run. She could smell rotting wood and wild thyme.
Nid dropped down into the long stalks of autumn grass and sprinted off and Edie tried to keep up with him as he darted through the undergrowth. She could hear Impy calling above her. ‘Jo-ot? Flu-uum?’
A bat, soft and mouse-like, skimmed past Edie’s ear. It startled her. Speckle slithered down her arm and back into her pocket.
‘Impy?’ Edie called out.
‘Up here,’ said a small choked voice.
Impy was sitting to one side of the tunnel entrance halfway up a bank. Tears dripped down her nose. ‘There’s nothing left,’ she said.
Edie followed her gaze and saw amid the undergrowth rows of terraces like small streets cut into the side of the bank. Tiny houses that were built from the discarded rubbish of city life. Many were damaged. Wooden lollipop-stick planks were tossed about, tin-can walls buckled and bent, and an egg-box roof was crumpled and broken. Tiny cooking pots were turned over, chairs and tables scattered, beds unmade. The place was deserted.
Nid ran along one of the terraces and stopped at one of the houses. Outside it Number 9 was painted in spidery writing. ‘This was our house,’ he said.
‘Flu-uum? Jot?’ cried Impy, jumping up and running after him. ‘Is there anyone there?’
Her tiny cries echoed around the old station, bouncing off the brickwork round the old tunnels.
There was no reply.
Chapter Eighteen
High Barnet
F
or the next two days Edie and the flits travelled back to High Barnet, checking to see if Jot had returned, but the thimble of sugar sprinkles remained untouched and there were no more messages.
While Dad was at work they went further into town, searching Underground stations for Jot’s name. At Brixton Station Speckle found a graffiti tag with Aidan loves Bea scratched inside a love heart. At Highbury Edie found three Arsenals written in large red letters and Nid found Fuzz Bear scrawled in thick black felt-tip behind a bench in Moorgate, but there weren’t any tags like Jot’s.
Impy flew into numerous tunnels calling into the darkness. ‘Jot! Jo-ot!’
She would emerge minutes later, buffeted and grimy from the passing trains. She had said very little since they had left the deserted camp. All her energy and fizz had disappeared.
There were more and more reports of valuables disappearing on the Underground. Passengers described leaving home wearing valuable items and how they had magically disappeared, unfelt and unseen. The papers spoke of pickpockets so light-fingered and deft that they must have had powers of invisibility. Strange birds appeared too, flapping out of tunnels, perching on escalators and pecking at people’s hats. Edie immediately thought that these could be magpins seizing anything that was shiny. The Lost Property Office now was inundated with enquiries.
Edie tried to tell Dad that maybe it was birds that were stealing things, but he dismissed the idea as a flight of fancy.
*
Sunday was the last day before half-term ended, and Dad was going to spend the afternoon at the Lost Property Office with Benedict as he was working overtime to respond to all the reports of missing items.
‘Meet me there at five p.m. and we’ll go for a fish-and-chip supper on Lisson Grove,’ he said.
That meant there would be time for one last search for Jot. At about four o’clock Edie and the flits stopped for a snack on a bench at the far end of the platform at Russell Square. The flits sat in a circle on Edie’s rucksack nibbling at a digestive biscuit.
There was a lull in the trains and passengers were beginning to congregate. A woman came to sit beside Edie and after a few minutes she closed her eyes with her hands resting on her lap. Edie noticed that she was wearing rings on her left hand. One was gold with a red stone and another had a spray of small flowers picked out in tiny chips of diamond. They looked expensive. The woman dozed fitfully and Edie was eating a biscuit when a sudden movement caught her eye. A small creature was creeping up onto the back of the woman’s hand.
‘Impy,’ whispered Edie, ‘look!’
The creature looked to Edie like a very young flit. It was smaller even than Nid and its hair looked soft and fluffy, but it was dressed in rough clothes and had bare feet. It reached the woman’s finger and with tiny deft hands it began to ease one of the rings off. Impy flew upwards and hovered over the flit just as it was slipping the ring round its waist like a gym hoop.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
The tiny flit stared up at her and then ran back across the woman’s lap. Impy followed it, leaning downwards to tug at the ring.
‘You can’t take that,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know your Ten Forager Don’t Ever Dos?’
The f
lit said nothing and struggled with the hoop.
Impy tugged too and bombarded it with questions. ‘Who are you? Where are you from?’
This time the flit turned and bit her on the hand to make her let go, and then scrabbled along the bench and down to the floor.
‘Ow!’ said Impy, nursing her hand.
It ran fast, bobbing along the seam of the wall in among the dust and hair balls. Up ahead of it Edie spotted a thin gold chain snaking along the floor.
‘There’s more of them!’ Nid cried, and somersaulted off the bench after them. The small flits ran faster, even with the chain bumping along behind them, but Nid was quick. He had almost caught them when a magpin hopped out from behind a bin. It had been waiting for them. It lowered its wing and the flit thieves scrabbled up it and clung onto its neck feathers. It turned and flew like a dart over the heads of the waiting passengers and into the tunnel. The gold chain streamed out like a banner behind them.
‘Did you see that?’ said Edie. ‘They’re working together.’
At that moment the train came in and the woman woke up and leapt up to catch it.
Edie didn’t dare call out to the woman. If she rang the police and they discovered her dad worked at the Lost Property Office it would only make everything worse. No one would believe her. She could only watch as the Tube-train doors slid shut behind her. It wouldn’t be long before the woman looked down at her hands and realised that her ring was missing.
Chapter Nineteen
Baker Street
D
ad and Benedict were alone when Edie arrived at the Lost Property Office. They were going through the Cabinet of Valuables, trying to match up dozens of enquiries to the items they had actually found.
Edie went to the first floor to make them tea. As she waited for the kettle to boil she looked up the stairs towards Vera’s office, but it was in darkness. She left the flits playing football with a paper-clip goal and a dried pea and went upstairs. There was something she wanted to check. Switching on the light, she picked up Vera’s notebook, and ran her finger down the entries for Tuesday 26 October. She found the toy dog and the school bag, but nothing about any jewelled bird pendant.
Edie and the Box of Flits Page 6