The Key to Finding Jack

by Ewa Jozefkowicz

  I’d meant to stop reading much sooner, but somehow I’d managed to reach the end of what I’d written. When I looked up, I saw rows of faces staring at me expectantly.

  ‘That’s sensational,’ said Mrs Emmett. ‘I’m honestly lost for words.’ She was looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before.

  ‘I want to know what happens next,’ I heard one of the boys in the front row whisper.

  ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know that homework is composing your next chapter,’ said Mrs Emmett. ‘If you’re keen, you’re welcome to post your work on the class intranet for others to read. If Felicity decides she wants to do this, you’ll all have a chance to read her next instalment.’

  ‘It’s a bit weird to have lessons in being a “young lady”,’ I heard Duncan say. ‘Was that actually a thing?’

  ‘In Victorian England that was quite common in wealthy families,’ said Mrs Emmett. ‘They wanted to ensure their daughters would marry well and the best way to do that was to teach them how to behave appropriately and attractively in society. Of course, things are very different for girls and women now.’

  I looked in Duncan’s direction, interested to see how he would take this response.

  But I didn’t get a chance to find out, because at that moment there was a knock on the door and Mrs Lyme, the school receptionist, came in.

  ‘Felicity Chesterford? Could you come to Mrs Singh’s office?’ She was trying to keep her voice steady, but I could sense that something bad had happened.

  Three

  I followed her along the corridor to the head’s office and, when she opened the door, I saw Dad. There he stood in his work clothes, but they were wet and his hair was plastered to his forehead.

  ‘What are you doing here? How come you’re soaked?’ I asked.

  He looked down at his drenched clothes as if he’d barely noticed them, and then I saw the fear on his face. I’d never seen him scared before. He was always in control – it was part of his job as a barrister to be logical and never emotional. I didn’t know what was going on.

  ‘It’s Jack,’ he said. ‘There’s been an earthquake in Peru, near Lima. It happened early this morning. We didn’t want you to hear about it and worry. Mum and I haven’t been able to get hold of him yet, but I’m sure we will.’

  ‘What?’ I laughed in disbelief. Time slowed down.

  Suddenly, something in my stomach jolted. It was that feeling you get before you’re going to be sick. I pelted through the door and into the nearest toilet, where I retched until there was nothing left in my stomach. Afterwards, I slumped against the door and breathed in greedy mouthfuls of air. The strip lights on the ceiling multiplied before my eyes.

  I knew that I couldn’t go back to class. I returned to the head’s office where Dad was waiting for me. I took his hand in the way that I’d done when I was much smaller, and together we walked to the main doors, both feeling bewildered. I could see through the windows that it was still raining heavily. It was as if the world knew the awfulness of the news we’d been delivered.

  ‘Do you want to get the bus?’ I muttered to Dad.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ he answered quietly.

  After signing out at reception, we left, passing the blur of brick that was the new primary school, and the fields where we’d played football with Dad when we were younger. I focused on my feet, black smudges against the squelchy green and brown. Raindrops nestled in my hair and then trickled their way slowly down the back of my neck.

  ‘He’s going to be all right though? Isn’t he? They’ll find him and he’ll be all right?’ I asked Dad desperately. Of all people, Dad would know what to do. He’d dealt with some very tough cases. Surely, he would be able to make this OK too.

  He took a long time to answer – unbearably long.

  ‘I don’t know, Flick,’ he said eventually in a voice that didn’t sound as if it belonged to him at all. ‘The truth is that I don’t know.’

  My chest contracted. We walked on and on through the streets until eventually the rain stopped and we reached our scratched red front door. I noticed I’d been clutching Dad’s hand so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

  ‘Mum’s home,’ he said. But for some reason, instead of ringing the doorbell, I got out my keys.

  I made straight for the stairs. There was only one place I needed to be. I ran up all three flights without bothering to take off my shoes. When I reached the top floor my feet stopped at the threshold of his room.

  I’m not sure what I expected to see. Jack’s room greeted me in silence. Dust particles danced. I’d always come in without knocking, but today it felt wrong. I had to stop my hand from rapping on the doorframe.

  There was something about his room that I’d always loved. It wasn’t the size – although, apart from the living room, it was the biggest room in the house. Jack had the whole top floor to himself. Dad said that an artist had lived in the house before us, and he’d converted the attic into a studio, with a skylight and a window overlooking the street and the river beyond, and a little seat on the ledge where he could look out and ponder the world.

  The place was messy but cosy, with Jack’s stuff still lying around. There was the soft smell of chocolate and washed sheets mingled together, and the spotted rug that always flipped upwards like a curl of hair.

  ‘Howdy,’ I said into the quiet. I forced my right foot inside and slowly made my way to the bed. I took out my phone and called Jack. It went straight to voicemail. I tried again a minute later with the same result. I hadn’t really expected him to answer, but I felt a sudden, desperate need to hear his voice. I replayed the video clip he’d sent me on my birthday when he was on the beach in Brazil. His nose was so sunburned that it had begun to peel. He was lying in a deckchair, eating watermelon. He seemed relaxed and happy, but there was a tiny shake in his voice when he said he missed us.

  I lay face down on the duvet and breathed in deeply. It wasn’t as strong as before, but I could still smell that faint sweetness. Then a thumping began in my head, like a tiny drummer beating a fierce, sad rhythm. My hand reached and felt for the roughness of the chocolate frog packet. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a hair – a single, blond strand, short and thick.

  I stared and stared at it, until my vision blurred. Picking it up carefully between my thumb and forefinger I looked for something that I could put it in. Suddenly, there was nothing more important than making sure that hair was safe.

  I scanned Jack’s desk. Then I kneeled down and peered under the bed – which was home to his most prized possessions – half-empty packs of cards (used for some of his more imaginative tricks), scrapbooks of ideas and pictures of friends and people he admired.

  When he was younger, my brother used to take his scrapbooks with him everywhere, even to school. He sketched his funny tricks, jokes he’d invented and notes on how to bring them to life.

  I could vividly remember his first detention. He thought it would be funny to put plastic cups of water along the corridor. When everyone came out of class, they had to navigate their way to their next lesson via a huge obstacle course. Obviously loads of water spilled in the process and the corridor soon became very wet. When somebody else was about to get the blame, Jack owned up. That was something everyone knew about him – he would never lie, and he always took responsibility for what he did.

  Mrs Singh was a great head and Jack didn’t always get caught. But his tricks didn’t stop and after many incidents, she must have written Mum and Dad a strongly worded email because Dad sat Jack down for ‘a chat’. Mum was at her after-work yoga class, which was a shame. She never liked any of us arguing. Without her there, I didn’t want to leave them alone in the kitchen, so I sat on the counter and waited to see what happened.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ Dad demanded. ‘You’re sitting your exams. You need to be revising. The competition out there is tough,’ he said, pointing randomly towards the window. I almost expected to see a queue of keen fu
ture barristers in our garden. ‘If you want to get onto your law course, you can’t be messing around at this stage.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jack muttered. He sounded strangely young in front of Dad. He swept his long fringe out of his eyes, something he did when he was nervous.

  ‘It seems as if you have no self-discipline,’ said Dad, which I thought was unfair, because Jack was extremely well-organised and on the whole very careful. He had to be, having haemophilia. It was a disorder that meant his blood didn’t clot in the way that other people’s did. He bled for a long time after injuries and bruised easily, and he could be in deep trouble if he ever got internal bleeding. Jack had to have injections every other day to help with his clotting, and for years he’d managed them himself.

  I felt like pointing this out to Dad, but it was probably the wrong time.

  ‘If you’re feeling stressed or need help you can ask,’ he said to Jack now, ‘but don’t resort to this silliness. You could have spent that useless detention writing your personal statement for your uni application. You’d better get onto that tonight. Don’t waste time planning practical jokes, Jack – they’re not funny.’ It wasn’t true, of course. His classmates found them hilarious. I bet he had brightened up everyone’s day.

  I was shocked when Jack didn’t say anything. He was normally the first to argue with Dad when it came to stuff like sport, the environment, or things on the news – they seemed to have such completely opposite opinions about everything. But on this subject, Jack was silent. He nodded, then turned and ran up the stairs.

  Watching Dad with Jack made me wonder how he would react if I told him I hoped to become a writer one day. What if he wanted me to be a lawyer too? I made a mental note to tell him soon that law wasn’t something I was interested in.

  Dad’s reaction got worse after each detention, because Jack kept getting them – he couldn’t seem to resist plotting new tricks. But then he got his mock exam results the following January, and I knew our parents were secretly amazed at how good they were. I was the only one who wasn’t surprised. Jack had always done incredibly well at most things without having to put in much effort.

  I snapped out of my daydream when I saw it, peeking out from under the bed, almost asking to be picked up – a small, black, glossy box with a pink flamingo on top. I recognised it immediately. It had been given to Jack on his twelfth birthday by Grandpa. I remembered Jack showing me the card that went with it.

  To keep all your treasures in, it had said.

  I opened it – the perfect place for that lonely strand of hair. But it turned out that Jack had already used it as a hiding place for one of his treasures: a beautiful, fine gold chain with a small key attached. It was the key he had always worn around his neck. I didn’t know he’d parted with it when he went travelling, but here it was, separated from him, lying on a bed of cotton wool. A scrap of paper was tucked beside it.

  For S.F. to keep until I’m back, it read.

  I’m not sure how long I sat there staring at the tiny key, rubbing it between my thumb and index finger. It could have been minutes or hours. Time seemed to hang suspended now that Jack was missing. It stretched before me like an invisible elastic band, ready to snap at any moment. The more I examined the key, the more certain I became that it would lead me to my brother. If only I could solve the riddle of who Jack had chosen as its temporary owner. I wasn’t sure why – it was just a feeling I had.

  Carefully, I put the key back beneath the flamingo lid, and slid the box into my pocket. I had no idea who S.F. was, but I had to make it my mission to find out.

  Four

  ‘It’s only ten months,’ Jack said as he was packing his rucksack one night in late September. He’d been working double shifts at Sutty’s shop since his exams ended in June, to save enough money for going away. ‘In fact, it’s less than that. I’ve worked out that it’s exactly 294 days until I come back. Look – I’ve scanned in a copy of my return flight so you can pin it on your noticeboard. And who knows, if you’re lucky, Dad might fork out for a flight so you guys can come and see me in the Easter holidays. Wouldn’t that be ace?’

  Dad was on better terms with Jack since his A-level results, so it was possible that he might pay for us to visit him. I was keeping everything crossed that he would.

  But somewhere, beneath the excitement surrounding Jack’s trip, I knew that it was the end of how things used to be. He would return from his travels and then he’d go to uni and only be home in the holidays, and after that… well… he would probably move out for good. The thought of it made me so sad that I put it away in a locked chest in my mind and refused to open it again for a very long time.

  I pictured myself at Jack’s age and the choices I might make. I decided that if I took a gap year after finishing school, I probably wouldn’t go travelling. Instead, I would spend time writing, without anyone disturbing me. I would start with my collection of riddle tales and later, maybe, I would write a whole book. I imagined finding a detective agency that might take me on as a part-time assistant, giving me real-life inspiration for my writing. Or working for a newspaper with a team of investigative journalists, provided they found me a spot on the crime desk.

  I helped Jack fasten his backpack and checked under his bed to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, while he drew a mini countdown of dates for me.

  ‘Look,’ he said proudly, ‘every day you tick off means I’ll be a day closer to home again.’ And this is what I focused on to stop my mind wandering too far into the scary future.

  I’d been carefully ticking the dates off every morning, but today, the date of the earthquake, I called ‘The Day That Everything Changed’.

  I didn’t go to school on Friday. I’d spent the night lying on Jack’s bed, unable to fall asleep. So much had changed in the last twenty-four hours that I half expected the 10.15 p.m. to New York to no longer appear in the skylight, but there it was – bang on schedule. Seeing that tiny flashing light made the breath catch in my throat. What if Jack and I never sat here again watching it together? And then I thought about all the unsolved riddles, all the unspoken conversations, all the advice not given – of everything that wouldn’t happen if Jack didn’t come home. I hadn’t even managed to tell him that I’d decided to become a writer. I felt sick.

  In the middle of the night, I went down to get a glass of water from the kitchen. I found Mum sitting there alone. Smiling sadly, she beckoned me to her.

  ‘I can’t sleep either, pet,’ she said, giving me a squeeze. ‘The whole thing seems so surreal, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, like it’s happening to somebody else.’ I’d had this feeling ever since coming home from school, and in a strange way, it was a relief to hear that Mum felt the same.

  ‘Here,’ said Mum, handing me a cup of herbal tea. ‘We need to get some rest so that we can speak to the police tomorrow. That’s all we can do for now.’

  In the end, we fell asleep together beneath a heavy throw on the living-room sofa.

  We were awoken next morning by Dad speaking on the phone to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, giving them as much detail as we had on Jack’s whereabouts. Then he tried to get in touch with the Peruvian police, but the phone lines were down.

  We’d just managed to eat a slice of toast when a Detective Inspector Pickles came round – Dad had reported Jack missing the previous night. When I first heard Pickles’ name, I thought how it would have made Jack laugh. He sounded like a comic book character. But it turned out that DI Pickles was as thorough as Sherlock Holmes. He sat down at the kitchen table with us, and scribbled in his pad as we talked. His questions seemed to be never-ending.

  Who was Jack travelling with? He was on his own. ‘A lone traveller.’ When he put it that way, it made me wonder whether Jack had felt lonely. The thought made the drumming start in my head, and I had to get up and walk around the room to try to make it stop.

  When had he last been in touch with us? He’d FaceTimed Mum the previous we
ek on Thursday, and he’d left Dad a voicemail on Monday. He’d sent me a text on Tuesday morning. Pickles wanted to see the message. I wished I hadn’t told him about it, but Dad threw me a look and I handed over my phone.

  How you doing, Flick? it said, I’m heading to an awesome town called Arequipa. So many llamas here. Maybe I’ll bring you one back if they let me smuggle him (or her) on the plane x

  Pickles raised his eyebrow and jotted something down. I tried to lean over to see what he was writing, but he angled his notebook away from me.

  Did he post anything on social media that might have given a clue as to his whereabouts? Jack wasn’t a regular poster, and his WiFi access had been unreliable for some of his journey. His last post on Facebook asked for hostel recommendations in Cusco, and his last photo on Instagram showed Jack in Arequipa, sandwiched between two volcanoes in the background. He looked thin, tanned and very happy. I gave Pickles the details of his accounts.

  What were Jack’s distinguishing characteristics? His blood, which wouldn’t clot – although this wasn’t something that anyone would know if they saw him. Mum told Pickles about his special medical kit which he carried at all times. It included his injections and a note from his doctor about what steps he, or those around him, must take if an accident occurred, causing Jack to lose blood quickly. Just saying that aloud made her panic even more.

  Had he travelled alone before? No.

  And so on. He was making us so nervous. I was desperate for him to leave. But when he finally did, things got even worse.

  Dad tried to occupy himself by unloading the dishwasher, but his hands were shaking and he dropped one of Mum’s favourite mugs. It was only a cheesy one with a cartoon superwoman on it that Jack had given her for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago, but when the handle came off Mum burst into tears.

  Dad went to hug her close. For a few moments, he held Mum as her shoulders trembled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered and I didn’t think he was talking about the mug. ‘They’re doing everything they possibly can, Gina. You know they are. And as soon as the power is up, they’ll get on to the guys in Peru. He will be found.’