Daisy's Christmas Gift Shop

by Hannah Pearl

  ‘That’s great news,’ I said, jumping up to hug Lily. ‘We’re not far behind them after all.’

  ‘There’s also some bad news,’ Lily continued. ‘All of the passengers who weren’t able to travel yesterday were offered the chance to go today. We might not be able to get a ticket.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘I’ve never been in a queue at this time of the morning unless it involved alcohol,’ Lily said, stamping her feet to try and stay warm.

  ‘I remember.’ We’d been in a club and the queue for the ladies’ toilet had been ridiculous. Lily had used the gents instead.

  ‘They had no right to kick me out,’ Lily reminisced.

  ‘You were caught shagging the bouncer in there. You broke the cubicle door.’

  ‘It was hard to fit. He was massive. Not as big as Taylor though.’ She licked her lips. ‘But that’s my point,’ she said, looking at me as if I were stupid. ‘If I was with the bouncer, who did they find to kick me out?’

  The line in front of us shuffled forward and we finally came into sight of the ticket desk. Unfortunately, there were still another twenty people ahead of us. ‘So the plan is, get tickets for whichever ferries we can for today, if any, then just hang around and get on whenever we see Erin?’ Lily asked.

  I nodded. ‘And if we don’t see her, then you and Taylor take the last ferry of the day and check out her house. Eli and I will double back and check her flat in London again. But hopefully we’ll see her.’

  ‘And if we do but we can’t get tickets?’ Lily asked.

  ‘I don’t even want to think about it,’ I told her.

  When we finally made it to the front of the queue, I was nearly as grumpy as the woman behind the counter. She typed away on her keyboard for a good few minutes before she even looked up at us again, and when she did I swore that her eyes were so distant that she stared straight through us. ‘I know that you’re very busy,’ I started, and she looked like she was about to cry. ‘We just wondered if you had any tickets left at all for today. I know it’s not likely, but we’d really appreciate it if you could find some. We have to find my brother …’

  She held her hand up to halt my begging. ‘I’ve got a few seats left on the next ferry. After that what with Christmas coming there’s nothing until Wednesday.’

  She stared behind me at the queue before tapping on her keyboard again. She didn’t seem bothered whether we booked or not, she just wanted the waiting crowds to disappear. ‘We’ll take four tickets please.’ I handed her my credit card and hoped that I had enough on my limit to cover the cost.

  Eli and Taylor were arguing when we made it back to the cars. We were able to hear them before we saw them. ‘Dial it down before I knock some sense into the pair of you,’ Lily shouted. Given how they both towered over her, I almost hoped that they would continue to fight just to see her try. I’d seen her control a room full of overexcited and undersexed young men in the past when a new batch of magazines was delivered to her shop so my money would have been on Lily for the win.

  The men seemed to realise this too, as they quit arguing and got into their respective cars. Eli slammed his door, and Taylor left his open, his long legs splayed out to the side as he stared into space. Lily’s friend in the yellow coat jogged past us, and a few minutes later the line of lorries began to move.

  Lily climbed into Taylor’s car and I re-joined Eli. ‘If you’re going to stay this cheerful I can get out and travel with Taylor,’ I told him, as he continued to sit in silence.

  He reached past me and switched the stereo on. ‘Better?’ The upbeat music was a stark contrast to the frosty atmosphere inside the car.

  This time I ignored him. We were well into our stand-off when I spotted Erin. She was in the lane next to us but because it was moving slightly faster than our lane, when she halted she was stopped a couple of cars further ahead than we were. I shot upright and pointed out of the window. ‘There, look, she’s over there.’

  Eli waved me back down. ‘Subtle, Daisy. If she didn’t hear you shout then most likely she saw you almost jumping out of your seat.’

  ‘Next time you run a class in surveillance let me know and Lily and I will sign up, given that you’re such an expert. I don’t suppose you could spot whether Ben was with her?’ I wanted to jump out immediately but the car in front of us began to creep forward so I put my belt on and tried to both sink down in my seat and stare out of the window at the same time. ‘She’s in that row over. They’re going to be on the same ferry. We could try and overpower her now,’ I suggested.

  ‘It’s not like there would be many witnesses,’ Eli scoffed, gesturing at the sea of cars around us.

  ‘So what? We get on the ferry? What if we do and Ben’s not with her?’ I picked up my handbag and began to rummage through it, just in case any James Bond style gadgets had mysteriously appeared that might allow me to capture Erin without risking being arrested myself. It was no use. Apart from my toothbrush, a comb and an emergency sanitary towel, all I carried was my purse and the teddy bear with an enormous boner.

  Eli drove forward another foot, and the cars paused again as we waited for the ramp to be lowered for us. Before I could think of a reason not to, I’d opened the door and climbed out. The driver of the car next to me noticed and frowned so I gave her a quick smile to reassure her that I was okay and hoped that she wouldn’t draw any more attention to me. I dropped to the floor and wriggled my way towards Erin, hunched over so that hopefully she wouldn’t spot me in her mirrors. I could hear Eli hissing my name but I ignored him. Clutching the teddy in my left hand, I waited until I had reached the back of Erin’s car. I wedged the bear as far into the exhaust pipe as I could. Then I raised my head, took the quickest peep I dared and hurried back to Eli.

  ‘What the hell were you thinking?’ he shouted.

  ‘I’ve got a plan. Put your fingers in your ears. There’s going to be a bang. Any second.’ I covered my own ears and waited. Eli looked at me as if I were crazy. Eventually I had to agree with him.

  ‘What did you do, shove a potato up her exhaust?’

  ‘No,’ I told him, rolling my eyes. ‘I didn’t have a potato. So I used a toy.’ I didn’t mention which part of the teddy had fitted into the pipe.

  ‘You do realise that that only works in movies?’

  ‘Damn,’ I said, slamming my hand against the dashboard. ‘I thought it would blow up. The port was shut yesterday because of the fireworks. I thought that they might freak out and close it again if they heard a loud bang. Then I was going to chase Erin somewhere quiet and get Ben back. I’m sure that he’s asleep on her back seat, there’s a blanket and I thought I saw something that looked like Ben’s Incredible Hulk T-shirt sticking out the side of it. So, what is going to happen?’

  ‘The car might stall, if you shoved it in far enough,’ he admitted.

  ‘Allowing us to sneak over in the confusion and rescue Ben.’

  There was a small pop and something furry and blackened flew over the roof. I glared at Eli, before slipping out of the car again. I could hear him hissing my name, but I ignored him. Following the trajectory, I found the teddy next to the bumper of an old VW campervan. His fur was singed and he looked very sorry for himself. I waved him to show the couple in the van that I’d found what I was looking for, and they waved back, until they spotted the furry protrusion under his leather pants. The driver’s mouth fell open, and I crept away hoping that the darkness would mean that they wouldn’t recognise me later.

  Climbing back into Eli’s car, I showed him the bear and I saw the first smile that he’d had since Taylor and Lily had arrived. A couple of rows away, the cars began to creep forward again, all apart from Erin’s. ‘It worked,’ I said, ‘quick, let’s go and rescue Ben.’ I opened my door, just as Erin must have tried the ignition again. Her line was soon loaded on to the enormous ship and the car ahead of us restarted their engine to follow on.

  ‘Well done, Miss Marple. You cracked the case.’
Eli started his own engine, and I quickly closed the car door before we drove onto the ferry.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I lost sight of Erin as we were directed on board by Lily’s friend in the yellow coat. He waved as he saw her and sent both of our cars to the front of a new line. Eli eased his way down the narrow lanes and parked behind Taylor’s car. There was barely a body width to spare between the cars, and I wondered how Taylor would fit. I watched him open his door gingerly and squeeze himself out, as slowly and carefully as he could, until he made it to the front of the parking area where a pedestrian path was marked out. Lily jumped out too, narrowly avoiding denting the door on the little blue Polo in the next row.

  ‘Oops,’ she said, not looking behind her to see the terrified expression on the men’s faces. ‘So, what’s the plan?’

  I wanted to walk up and down the rows until we spotted Ben, but a pre-recorded message announced that all passengers were required to leave the parking zone and go upstairs to the main deck. I tried to fight against the tides of people streaming past, but when I nearly got knocked over by a kid dressed as Superman, I had to admit that all of my plans were falling to pieces.

  Lily slung her arm around me and pulled me along. ‘Don’t worry. They’re trapped on a ship. There’s no exit now, we can’t lose them again.’ She had more faith in our skills than I did.

  She led us up to the main deck. We found portholes where we could watch the ferry slowly pull away from the shore, or we would have if it had been light yet. As it was, there was one streetlight on the pier that gradually grew smaller, until it seemed that we were alone on the sea, surrounded by nothing but fog.

  ‘There’s a map of the ferry,’ Eli said, spotting a display board screwed to the wall. ‘We’re here.’ He gestured at a massive arrow which echoed his words. ‘How about we split up. Lily, you take the café, shop and the seating area. Taylor, you search the decks outside. It looks like there are a bunch of private cabins. If I were Erin, I’d be trying to lie low and she’d have more privacy if she had a cabin. We might need to try and talk our way into them, and if she’s there then it could get messy, so I suggest that Daisy and I search those together.’

  I checked my mobile. ‘I still have a little signal. Try and message if you find them, but we’ll arrange to meet back here in an hour just in case we lose reception once we’re further from shore.’

  Taylor glanced at the windows that were covered in beaded drops of water from the rain that was now lashing the boat. He lifted his hood up to cover his head and made for the door. ‘Thanks Taylor,’ I said, ‘we owe you one.’ He gave me a mock salute to show that he appreciated my words, but his usual cheery smile was missing.

  ‘What are you going to do when he comes to claim it?’ Eli muttered.

  ‘I’ll sacrifice myself on your behalf,’ Lily said, fanning herself with a sick bag that she plucked from the counter.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be off looking for Ben?’ Eli asked her.

  ‘I’m on my way, and if I’m full of coffee and cakes when I return from the café, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t also been searching,’ Lily said. It seemed that we were all a little more relaxed now that Ben was so close. All we had to do was find him.

  She wandered off in search of caffeine, and Eli and I made for the corridor which led to the cabins. As the ferry drew further from land, the wind and waves picked up and the floor began to pitch and heave.

  I rolled with the motion, steadying myself with a hand on the wall when the movement grew too extreme. I turned to Eli.‘This is fun. It reminds me of going to Alton Towers with you and Ben to celebrate passing our A-levels.’

  ‘Have you forgotten that we had to leave early when Ben threw up over the third set of spare clothes?’ Eli gripped on to a door handle with both hands as the ferry took an especially big dip. He hung his head and groaned. ‘How are you coping with this? It’s horrible.’

  I shrugged and swayed my hips more than I needed to as I walked. ‘It’s not that bad.’ Turning to see how grey his skin had become made me realise that he didn’t agree. ‘We’re so close to finding Ben,’ I reminded Eli. ‘He was in Erin’s car, I know he was. There are four of us searching a ferry. How far can she go? Any minute now, one of us is going to spot her and then we’re getting my brother back. And if she hurt him then she might find herself accidentally falling overboard on one of these swells.’

  ‘Remind me never to hurt you,’ he muttered.

  I shut up before I could point out that he was ten years too late. ‘Come on, there’s another corridor that runs off the top of this one. Let’s see if there’s any sign of them down there.’ But there wasn’t. Eli suggested that we knock on the cabin doors to see if we could trick Erin into opening up, but when we got shouted at for the third time because we’d woken up a couple of small children, we retreated back to the café to try and find Lily.

  We arrived back at the same time as Taylor struggled in through the door from the outside deck, complete with a gust of frigid wind and a spray of salty water. If I had thought that Eli was struggling with the swells, Taylor was almost green. ‘No sign of them,’ he moaned, throwing himself into an empty chair. ‘And they’ve closed the decks now the wind has picked up, so I don’t need to go out there again’. He was probably relieved but his face was too green for me to be sure.

  He laid sprawled out, deep breathing with his mouth open like a fish as we headed back to the café. ‘I’m hungry. Anyone else fancy some more breakfast? Daisy, you can get some beans on toast.’ Taylor sat up, clapped both hands over his mouth before getting up and running to the toilet as the ship rolled and dipped once more. ‘Something I said?’ Lily asked, before pulling a face when we heard heaving noises coming through the closed door.

  Lily and I had finished our second breakfast before Taylor emerged. Lily handed him a bottle of water and apologised for making him sick. ‘You heard, huh?’ he groaned, rubbing his face with both hands.

  ‘It sounded pretty bad,’ Eli told him, clapping him on the shoulder a little harder than was strictly necessary. ‘I’m glad I didn’t do anything embarrassing, you know, like puke on my shoes.’

  We all glanced down at the suspicious splodges on Taylor’s otherwise impeccable brown loafers. ‘Yeah, you looked really cool trying to pretend you weren’t about to puke when that last lady shouted at us,’ I told him. ‘Turns out waking up a couple of toddlers who’ve been really sick themselves doesn’t endear you to people.’

  ‘The smell.’ Eli shuddered. The ferry pitched so hard that we heard a crashing coming from the direction of the café.

  ‘You’d have thought that they’d use plastic in weather like this,’ Lily commented. ‘The guy I was chatting to behind the counter was saying that the winds are due to pick up later this morning.’

  ‘You mean this is just the start of the storm?’ Eli asked, his eyes wide and his skin growing paler than I’d ever seen it.

  The overhead speaker blasted to life with a tone so loud that I jumped, spilling coffee all over my hand. I licked it off and tried to make sense of the announcement. ‘Something about engine parts?’ I hazarded.

  ‘Wow, hasn’t a life of trying to decipher announcements on the tube taught you anything?’ Lily asked. ‘I thought all those years on the underground should have been good practice for you. He said that one of the engines has developed a fault. They’re sending out a smaller boat from the Irish port to meet us with a spare part, but it can’t leave until the wind dies down, so we’re here for the foreseeable.’

  Taylor stretched out even further in his chair. ‘If anyone needs me, I’m going to be dying quietly over here.’

  Eli laid his head back in his own chair. ‘I would take the piss, but I feel sick too.’

  Lily and I looked at each other. ‘I guess it’s down to us to save Ben,’ I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The wind howled as though it were a living creature in agony, sounding especially loud and unsettling
now that the engines had died and there was no mechanical hum to drown it out. Lily’s friend from the port flung the door open and threw himself inside. His gasped to catch his breath, his face every bit as red as his coat was yellow. ‘Outside is clear, I’m locking the doors,’ he announced, as if anyone was stupid enough to want to go outside in the pouring rain. Even Eli wouldn’t have made Taylor go out if the weather had been as bad as this when we first boarded the ferry. Probably.

  Lily returned from her search. ‘They’re not in the café,’ she said. ‘I talked to Aidan who works there. He says he hasn’t seen anyone matching their descriptions.’

  ‘No one remembers Erin,’ I pointed out. ‘It was a couple of days before we even realised that she had anything to do with Ben disappearing.’

  ‘Let’s try the shop again.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re going to be in there stocking up on duty free,’ I said, but in the absence of any other great ideas we tried the shop nonetheless. The girl behind the counter stood up straighter when we came in, but sank back down to rest her head on her palm when she recognised Lily again. Clearly my friend had already been in several times to ask about my brother. The girl’s long, blonde hair fell over her face, and she looked so bored that she couldn’t even be bothered to move it from where it blocked her view.

  ‘Quiet night in here?’ I asked. She didn’t bother to answer.

  ‘At least when I have a shift this empty I can try watching the new DVDs,’ Lily said, finger walking her way through the display of comedy T-shirts. ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I saw my neighbour in one? Honestly, I had no idea he was into things like that. I took him home some brochures for a better quality range of bondage equipment that we stock. His wife went mental. I was only trying to be helpful. How was I supposed to know that he hadn’t told her about his new job?’