by Lissa Evans
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said May reproachfully, going after her. ‘You know how sensitive she is. It’ll take hours and hours to talk her into coming back … Come on, June,’ she added commandingly, and June scuttled after her, followed by Charlie.
The back door slammed.
Stuart heard himself give a despairing moan. He looked at the Book of Peril, and saw the darkness being leached out of it, and he started to run after the triplets, and then changed his mind and plunged instead through the living-room door.
Letter E.
‘Salutations,’ said his father, sitting at the table with a pad of paper. ‘Your mother will be home from her quotidian microscopic investigations in approximately—’
‘Sorry, I’m in a hurry,’ gabbled Stuart, running straight out into the garden. Which was somehow different, though he didn’t have time to work out how, or why. He looked over the fence and saw the triplets sitting on their lawn, playing with Charlie, and he bellowed hoarsely to them, panic straining his voice.
‘Hurrah!’ shouted April, leaping to her feet. ‘I knew you’d come,’ and she hauled a garden chair across to the fence, and was over it in seconds, Charlie in her arms, her sisters hurriedly following.
‘Come on,’ said Stuart. ‘Come on come on come on come on come on come on.’
‘Would your visitors care for inter-prandial ingestion of—’
‘No time, Dad,’ said Stuart, hurling himself towards the Book of Peril. It looked like the top of an iced cake now, only a tiny section of the darkness visible around the edges. He gave it a shove and it buckled rather than opened, the top and the bottom curling in towards each other. He shoved again, and a crack opened on one side; he urged April and Charlie through, and then June, and then a wide-eyed May, and with one final look back at a kitchen that didn’t look quite the same as usual, Stuart leaped through himself.
There was a noise like a giant light bulb breaking, a whoosh of air, and he fell into darkness onto a pile of shouting bodies, Charlie yapping, dust everywhere, clouds of it, gritty and stinging.
A torch flashed on, and then another.
‘That was quick,’ said Clifford.
‘What?’ asked Stuart, coughing, scooping up the dog before he could be trodden on.
‘Less than half a minute. The door sort of twitched after twelve seconds and then disintegrated at twenty-eight.’
Stuart turned and looked at the gaping hole where the door had been. The dust hung in the air like icing sugar, and through it he could just see the socket where the final spoke of the Magic Star had fitted. It was empty now.
‘It might have been twenty-eight seconds for you, Stuart, but we were away for ages,’ grumbled May, getting to her feet. ‘When we went back to unglue April from that path, everything got sort of fuzzy, and then we found ourselves in our house – but it wasn’t really our house at all, it was like a stage set. There was no upstairs, the front garden was just mist, and there was nothing on the telly except static. We were just waiting and waiting and waiting, and it was all because no one listened to me when I said it would be dangerous, and then it was, and no one listened to me when I said we’d get stuck there, and then we did! Is it the same day, even?’
Stuart nodded.
‘Well, thank goodness for that!’
‘It was boring and weird and horrid,’ added April quietly. ‘But I knew you’d come and get us. Thank you.’
‘Yes, thanks, Stuart,’ said May, giving him a deeply embarrassing hug.
‘That’s all right,’ he said gruffly, ‘and I couldn’t have done it without help.’ He gestured to Clifford and Elaine.
‘We’d better get you all out of here,’ said Elaine. ‘Before we get caught.’
‘And before our mum does her nut,’ added April. She held out a hand to help up June, who was still sitting on the floor.
‘I’ve had the oddest dream,’ she said.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ screeched May, ‘it was not a dream. When are you ever going to admit it?’
April rolled her eyes at Stuart. ‘It’s been like this the whole time,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve had to be incredibly tolerant and patient, and then when she …’ She paused and frowned.
‘What?’ asked Stuart.
She looked at him, tilting her head. ‘You look different,’ she said. ‘Apart from being covered in dust, I mean.’
‘What sort of different?’
‘Older.’
‘What?’
‘No, not older …’ She paused, and her eyes widened. ‘Taller.’
‘What?’
‘Taller. A bit, anyway.’
‘Come on, everybody,’ said Elaine firmly. ‘Out. And let’s be as quiet as cats.’
Stuart, light-headed with shock, was scarcely aware of the tiptoed journey across the yard, the scurry over the ladder, the rushed farewells to Elaine and Clifford, the jog through the darkened town, with Charlie drooping tiredly in his arms.
What April said couldn’t be true, could it? And yet … in the Book of Peril, when he had dashed outside for the last time, he had spotted the triplets in their garden. Which meant that he had been able to see over the fence. Without jumping. Without standing on a box. And maybe the kitchen in that world had looked different, not because of anything in it, but because he’d suddenly been viewing it from a different height. And maybe the wrong factor in that particular world hadn’t been his dad or his mum, or even the triplets – it had been him.
‘There’s Mum,’ said April rather nervously, jerking Stuart out of his thoughts. They had reached Beech Road, and Mrs Kingley was standing on the front doorstep, her arms folded. She said nothing at all as they approached, but simply pointed inside.
‘Bye,’ mouthed April to Stuart. ‘See you tomorrow.’
He watched them file silently into their house. The front door clicked shut, there was a pause – and then the sound of Mrs Kingley shouting. Stuart scuttled off to his own front door, and bent his knees slightly before ringing the bell. Just in case his father spotted anything different.
But it was his mother who answered the door.
‘Surprise!’ she said. ‘I was actually phoning from the airport, but I didn’t—’ She stopped speaking and stared at him.
‘You’ve grown,’ she said. ‘And you’ve found a dog.’
‘I know,’ replied Stuart, his voice coming out a bit wobbly. ‘Surprise!’
IT WAS TWO days later, and Stuart was hanging around in the back garden, waiting for April to appear.
Charlie was also in the garden. Apart from eating, the little dog’s main occupation was following Stuart around, gazing up at him adoringly – so adoringly that even Stuart’s mother (who wasn’t particularly keen on pets) had agreed to keep him for the time being.
‘Until we can find the original owner,’ she’d insisted, and Stuart had happily gone along with that condition. At the present moment Charlie was resting his head on Stuart’s right shoe and nibbling the shoe-lace.
‘Good dog,’ said Stuart. The stump of tail wagged keenly.
Stuart looked at his watch. Since their return, April and her sisters had been confined to the house as a punishment for staying out late without permission, and April had communicated with Stuart by means of written messages held up to the window of her bedroom.
had been the first one, followed – a few hours later – by:
Stuart had gone and got paper of his own, and had written the word HOW? and held it up to her.
had been the answer.
asked Stuart.
wrote Stuart in reply.
On the second morning, a grinning April had brandished a sign reading:
It was five to eleven now.
Stuart looked at the triplets’ garden, still marvelling that he could actually see over the fence; he’d grown nearly four centimetres – which meant that although he was still short for his age, for the time being he was only a bit short. ‘A sudden growth spurt,’ his mother had decided,
after measuring him. ‘Unusual but not unprecedented. I expect it was the combination of the heat stress you endured and Dad’s splendidly healthy cooking. I’ve actually read a recent paper about the positive effects of spinach and kale on human bone growth – I think we should definitely keep them on the menu.’
Which meant that Stuart wasn’t particularly looking forward to the sort of meals he’d be getting from now on.
The Kingleys’ back door opened and one of the triplets came out.
‘Hi, June,’ said Stuart.
She looked surprised, and slightly gratified that he’d identified her correctly. ‘April says to tell you that she’s just coming. She’s been working on something to show you. And I wanted to say thank you for coming to get us. I’ve realized now that it wasn’t a dream.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Stuart, impressed. He hadn’t realized that June ever changed her mind.
‘No, it wasn’t a dream,’ she continued, ‘it was an extremely vivid hallucination probably brought on by inhaling fumes from the old-fashioned lead-based paint your great-uncle used in the illusions.’
‘Oh.’ He couldn’t be bothered to argue. ‘OK.’
‘But you snapped us out of it and got us home. So thanks.’
She disappeared back into the house, and after a moment April came out. Stuart felt ridiculously pleased to see her; they’d only known each other for just over a month, but he felt as if they’d been friends for years and years and years. She grinned back at him over the fence and then held up a piece of paper for him to see.
‘I’ve been working and working on this,’ she said. ‘I tried every anagram possible and then gave up on that idea, and then I thought that they might be initials for something. SWOT could stand for South West Of The.’
‘South West Of The what?’ asked Stuart.
‘That’s the trouble – I could only think of stupid things. Icelandic Egg. Idiotic Exhibition.’
‘Irish Elephant,’ suggested Stuart.
‘So then I wondered if it was a number thing – you know, S is the nineteenth letter of the alphabet, and W is the twenty-third, and so on, so I added up all the numbers and got two hundred and twenty-five. Does that seem a significant number to you at all?’
Stuart shook his head.
‘Nor me,’ said April. ‘So then I read a code book that June got for Christmas, and there’s hundreds of ways to write codes: you can substitute one letter for another, or decide to move them so many places up or down the alphabet, or swap them round, or count backwards, and I tried loads and loads and loads of them – I mean, I didn’t have anything else to do apart from practise “Dance of the Shepherd Girls” – and in the end I came to a conclusion.’
‘What?’ asked Stuart.
‘That it’s not a code. Because in the end, all a code would give you is a six-letter word, and that wouldn’t be enough of a clue. Even if it was inside or behind or mirror or swivel. I mean, we’ve pretty much explored every nook and cranny of those illusions and we haven’t found the will, have we? It must be hidden somewhere complicated and hard to find, and one word just isn’t going to give us the answer.’
She was probably right, Stuart thought – she generally was, about most things. But there was something else nagging at the back of his mind.
‘I had another phone call,’ he said, ‘from Miss Edie. When you were trapped with your sisters. I didn’t have time to talk to her properly, but she said she’d remembered a couple of things that might help with the search.’
‘What?’
‘She said that her grandma told her that the will was well hidden, but that we should use the male to find it.’
‘The male?’
‘Yes.’
‘What, as in man? Does that mean only you can find it, and not me? Or does she mean that only a grown-up can get it?’
‘I don’t know. And she said something else – something really, really odd. She said that her grandma hadn’t liked me much.’
‘Her grandma who died eighty years ago?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘How could she ever have met you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, what do you know about her?’
‘That she was a very clever businesswoman. She came to Canada from England. And she said that I was nothing but trouble.’
Stuart and April looked at each other across the top of the fence – stared at each other really hard – and the same idea came to them simultaneously, so that they both gave a little hop, as if electrocuted, and spoke the two syllables at the same time.
‘Jeannie!’
JEANNIE CARR, THE mayoress of Beeton, was Miss Edie’s grandmother!
Jeannie Carr, who had been so desperate to find Great-Uncle Tony’s workshop that she had threatened and bribed and followed Stuart, and had finally been catapulted back into Victorian England by the Well of Wishes – a Victorian England that had also contained Great-Uncle Tony, who had gone back in search of his fiancée. That’s where Jeannie had found out about the hidden will.
‘She never stopped wanting to get the tricks,’ said April, eyes wide, ‘her whole life long!’
Stuart thought about the last time he’d seen Jeannie, standing furious and aghast on the stage of a Victorian theatre, doomed to remain in the past. A tiny part of him felt slightly relieved that she had not only survived being flung back into history but had actually flourished – had emigrated and founded a family and a fortune. She left England with ten pounds in her pocket and a headful of ideas, Miss Edie had said, and she set up a factory in Canada and made more money than you would ever believe …
‘So did Miss Edie tell you how much she was prepared to pay for the tricks?’ asked April.
Stuart hesitated before answering. April and he had been through so much together; he felt that he owed her the truth.
‘Enough to make me very, very rich. Enough for limousines and club class on aeroplanes and months in Disneyland.’
‘Oh,’ said April, for once lost for words. ‘Wow. I didn’t realize.’
A silence fell between them, broken only by Charlie growling at Stuart’s shoe-lace.
‘I expect you’d move house, then,’ said April. ‘To somewhere bigger. With a swimming pool and stuff.’
‘Well,’ said Stuart awkwardly, ‘it’s too early to say. And I haven’t even found the will yet, have I? And I can’t really ask Elaine to keep breaking into your dad’s yard, and I don’t suppose he’ll let us just walk in, will he?’
‘No.’ April smiled ruefully. ‘He says that’s the last time he’ll ever do us a favour, ever. He’s keeping the key until the museum’s got room for the illusions again.’
‘And when’s that going to be?’
‘When the Roman Beeton exhibition opens on Saturday. Rod Felton rang Dad to say he was going to try and squeeze them into the storeroom, since so many people had signed the Beech Road Guardian’s petition.’ She bridled at Stuart’s amazed expression. ‘I know you don’t think much of our newspaper,’ she said, rather huffily, ‘but it’s actually read by people as far away as Chestnut Avenue. And May sold the photo of Rod Felton crashing into that reporter to a national newspaper for a two-figure sum. Eleven pounds, to be exact.’
‘So you’re going to carry on writing for it?’
‘Of course. I’ll be reviewing the exhibition. And while we’re there we should get a chance to look at the tricks again – and maybe by then we’ll have worked out what the clues mean.’
In the days that followed, Stuart was kept occupied with quite ordinary things – buying PE kit and uniform for his new school, and visiting his grandparents – but the ordinary things felt extraordinary, since the PE kit was two sizes larger than he’d needed at the beginning of the summer, and his grandparents kept going on and on about how much he’d shot up. And all the while, the letters SWOTIE seemed to rattle around inside his head, like marbles in a tin.
On the day before the opening he heard a familiar
voice from the living room, and he hurried through to look at the TV.
‘And that’s all from Midlands at Midday,’ announced Rowena Allsopp, smiling toothily. ‘Tomorrow I’m off to the museum in the historic town of Beeton to sign copies of my autobiography, Rowena’s Way, and also to open two brand-new exhibitions.’
‘And what are those exhibitions about, Rowena?’ asked the man in the suit sitting next to her.
‘One of them is a fascinating display of the outfits I’ve worn over the years on this very programme, and the other one’s about, er, history or something. So see you tomorrow!’ She waved and then pretended to tidy up her papers.
‘Yup,’ said Stuart to the television. ‘See you tomorrow.’
THERE WAS A surprisingly large crowd waiting outside the museum the next day, and quite a lot of dissatisfied muttering when Stuart and April and Stuart’s father went straight to the head of the queue and were let in by the receptionist.
‘How come you’re getting in early?’ asked one man, who was holding a black-and-gold autograph book and wearing a badge with a smiling picture of Rowena Allsopp on it.
‘I’m a reporter,’ said April, holding up her notebook.
‘I’m a mini curator,’ said Stuart, pointing to his badge.
‘I’m merely the possessor of an ardent and enduring curiosity anent the pre-Christian antecedents of contemporary Midland conurbations,’ said Stuart’s father.
‘Oh,’ said the Rowena fan. ‘Fair enough.’
Rod Felton met them in the foyer. He was wearing a mustard-coloured tweed suit and a tie covered in Roman numerals, and he was practically dancing with excitement. ‘Just wait till you see the centrepiece,’ he said. ‘We have a full-sized ballista, and a replica apodyterium with adjoining balneum with niches for subligaculae!’
‘A replica what?’ asked April, scribbling frantically.
‘And we have a gastraphetes!’
‘A gastraphetes?’ gasped Stuart’s father, apparently awestruck.