‘Oh, yes,’ said Grandma. ‘Every time he came. At first he wasn’t great and he kept making mistakes, but he soon improved. He’s a high achiever, your brother.’
‘You never used to think that before,’ I blurted out.
I clapped my hand over my mouth. I couldn’t believe I’d said that aloud. I lowered my eyes waiting for Grandma to tell me to leave. But she sighed and said, ‘Maybe I didn’t say it enough. He’s very talented. In fact, you’re both intelligent. Only you’re much more grounded – I feel as if you know what you want to do with your life. Am I right?’
‘I want to be a writer,’ I said hesitantly. I almost immediately regretted it, but I saw that Grandma looked impressed.
‘A writer, eh? I’m sure you will be excellent. It’s a job that demands imagination and perseverance, and I think you have both. I should be glad to read something of yours. Luckily, I still have my eyes, though my legs are useless. Will you show me your writing?’
‘I’d like that.’ I also liked that Grandma was using the present tense when talking about Jack. I loved her for it.
‘I heard that Jack played a trick on you?’
Her eyes lit up.
At that point, Gertrude returned carrying a tray of tea and gougères. I took one and bit into the pastry as she put them on the table. Grandma had been right. They were even better than I remembered. For a moment I forgot the awfulness of everything that was happening, relishing the feather-light, cheesy wonder in my mouth.
‘Yes, he did. Well, now that I think about it, perhaps he only wanted to make me feel good. It was a late Friday afternoon in early December. I woke up to something hitting my bedroom window. I looked outside, but there was nobody there. Just the empty street and this beautiful tune coming from somewhere in the distance – it was divine, so slow and soulful. I called out to see whether anybody would answer, but there was nobody there. When I was leaving to go to the shop the next day, I found a rose outside the front door. It was frozen by the time I rescued it, but it was obviously from the same person who had serenaded me.’
‘And who did you think it was?’ I asked her. I imagined Jack with his guitar, his parka fastened up tight against the cold, strumming his guitar in a hidden spot in Grandma’s garden.
‘I thought,’ said Grandma, and she cleared her throat awkwardly, ‘that it was Martin.’
‘Martin?’
‘Mr Percy.’
‘Your gardener? You thought he was serenading you?’
‘Well, yes. Don’t look at me like that. I’m a stupid old woman to think that, I know. Truth be told, I always thought he was a bit stuck-up. He seemed to think that there was nobody better when it came to understanding plants, but he always looked at me in this peculiar way, you know.’
‘I know somebody exactly like that,’ I said, thinking of Duncan.
‘Really?’ asked Grandma. I could see her cheeks glowing red beneath her blusher.
‘You asked him, didn’t you? You asked if it was him? Oh, Grandma!’
‘I did. And naturally he denied everything. But… well…’
‘What happened?’ I demanded, seeing that there was more to it than she was letting on.
‘He asked if I wished that it had been from him, and I told him not to be so ridiculous. But we spoke frankly for the first time in years, and he invited me to dinner. I wore my red dress – the one I hadn’t worn since your parents’ wedding. It still fits, you know. We only went to the Italian place on the high street. It wasn’t anything that special.’
‘You went on a date?’ I asked, amazed. I couldn’t imagine Grandma in her red dress in a restaurant with the gardener. It sounded like something out of Cluedo.
‘But how did you go all the way to the high street?’ I looked at her legs stretched out, the knees swollen.
‘I have a new electric wheelchair,’ she told me. ‘Your mum arranged it for me – it’s very good of her. I just need to press a few buttons and I can go exactly where I want to. But sometimes Martin insists on pushing me. He’s such a gentleman, you know.’
‘Do you think that’s what Jack wanted to do? To set the two of you up?’
‘Quite possibly. He never admitted it though. He smiled at me in the way he always does – you know that cheeky half-smile he has?’
I knew it well. Only the left side of his mouth went up and a dimple appeared.
‘Of course.’
‘He certainly knows how to bring fun into people’s lives, doesn’t he? And you know what? I’m glad that he does. I was worried about him when he was little and we first found out about his illness. His doctor at the time seemed to think that Jack should avoid all risk and that he should be taken entirely out of harm’s way. “Even a grazed knee might be dangerous,” she said. I’m sure you know, but for ages he wasn’t allowed to do loads of things.’
‘I know.’ When I’d insisted on going to a trampolining park for my sixth birthday Jack watched from the side, reading a book. He pretended that he was too old for bouncing madly up and down, but I could tell that he would have loved to have joined in if he could.
‘I’m glad he didn’t let haemophilia stop him,’ said Grandma and I had to agree with her.
‘Who knows what he’ll do next?’ she continued. ‘Martin thinks that Jack will play in a band of some sort. You know teenagers these days are into forming bands? Then they get into drinking and all sorts of trouble. But deep down I don’t think he’s that kind of a musician. You can tell that he really enjoys playing to individual people, not huge crowds. I bet he would love to teach guitar. He definitely has a knack for it.’
I didn’t know what to say. I stared at the TV where a black and white film was still running. Grandma must have turned off the sound when I’d arrived. On the screen, a band was playing on stage – two guitarists, a bass player and a singer. Before them, couples were rotating around the dance floor in time to the music. I wondered if it was soul, or blues or jazz.
I thought about all the different versions of Jack that I’d discovered since his disappearance: Jack the helper, the caring friend, the musician, the matchmaker. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that they weren’t new at all. They were versions that we didn’t see at home. Or maybe that we didn’t want to accept. I saw the exciting, daring older brother, and Mum and Dad saw the son who didn’t seem to want to take the road that they’d mapped out for him.
When I’d first found out these new things about Jack, I’d felt cheated and a little bit sad. But there were things that Jack didn’t know about me too. He had no idea how much I like writing as I’d never shared any of my stories with him. I wanted to perfect them – to make them as good as they could be before he read them. I wondered whether this was, in a way, what Jack had been doing too. Maybe he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do with his life and he was waiting until he’d made a decision before he told us. Although he knew Keira, who was always round at our house, he didn’t really know any of my other friends. So perhaps it wasn’t so strange that I didn’t know many of his.
Gertrude turned on the fire, and I crawled over to Jack’s wicker chair, nestling in it. We sat in silence, watching the dancing couples on the screen. My eyes grew heavy.
Grandma’s voice woke me up.
‘Felicity, it’s late. I’m going to ring your mother to say you’ll stay here tonight. Gertrude, will you make up the bed in the spare room? Felicity can borrow one of my nightgowns.’
‘I have some pyjamas with me,’ I mumbled. ‘I thought I was staying at Keira’s but, well, here I am.’
Half an hour later, I was lying in a huge double bed in what Grandma called the Yellow Room, which had been Mum’s room when she was little. Some of her old things were still here – the wooden house, home to a family of scary-looking dolls with oddly big heads, a pile of French storybooks and the postcards that Grandpa sent from all over the world when he travelled with the Navy. ‘Ma petite souris’ he’d called her – ‘my little mouse’.
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br /> At the top of the bed, there was a big photograph of Grandma and Grandpa when they were young, probably before Mum was born. They were standing in a valley, with green mountains towering above them and the outline of a river in the background. Grandpa was carrying a big backpack and they looked incredibly happy.
I curled up into a tight ball, breathing in the room’s faint musty smell, and thought what a good idea it had been to come here.
Eight
It was Monday morning and I’d set Mum’s old bedside alarm to 6.45 a.m. so that I had plenty of time to get home and change for school. As I was pulling on my jeans, I stepped up onto the bed and studied the picture again. I was trying to see how Grandad had looked when he was younger. I’d only been six when he died and Jack had been twelve. This young, smiling, blond man looked different to the grey-haired, stooping Grandpa I remembered, but there was definitely something about his eyes that was familiar. They were eyes which smiled, the corners creased up with kindness. I saw now that Jack had inherited those eyes.
Then I studied Grandma, who gazed at her husband adoringly. That was when I noticed it. In the photo she was dressed in a white shirt with an open collar, and she wore a fine gold chain around her neck. From the chain dangled a tiny key.
I felt lightheaded. I opened the curtains to let in the sunshine, examining the necklace from every angle. I took Jack’s key from my pocket, held it up against the photo and compared the two. I was certain that they were the same key.
I ran down the stairs, still in my pyjamas.
‘Grandma! Grandma!’ I shouted. She was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a silk dressing gown with a frilly collar and ruffled sleeves, of the exact kind that I imagined Lady Abigail would wear. She jumped in her seat as I came into the kitchen.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Is this yours?’ I asked her breathlessly, opening my palm to show her the key.
‘Oh,’ she said staring at it calmly, ‘yes. Well, it used to be. I thought it was Jack’s now…’
‘Did you give it to him?’
‘Yes, a few years ago. He found it lying in my old jewellery dish and asked about it. I saw how much it fascinated him, so I gave it to him since I hardly wore it any more.’
‘Where is it from?’ I asked her.
‘Grandpa bought it for me when we were travelling on our honeymoon. It’s from a little key factory in Peru.’
‘In Peru?’ I asked in disbelief. ‘You’ve been to Peru? Is that where the photo upstairs was taken?’
‘The one in the Yellow Room? That’s from Patagonia in Chile,’ said Grandma. ‘Your grandfather travelled to Chile, Argentina and Peru with the Navy and told me wonderful things about South America. It made me want to go myself and I’m glad I did. Peru is the most fascinating country. I’m afraid that I told Jack all about it… I might have been the one who persuaded him to go there.’
Her voice began to shake, so I changed the subject.
‘Grandma, do you think Jack would have left the key for you?’ I asked her. ‘I don’t understand why he didn’t take it with him. He used to wear it every day, but here it is, and there was a note with it that says he’d left it “For S.F.”’
‘For S.F?’ Grandma asked, looking puzzled. I could sense straight away that the message meant nothing to her, but I thought it would be wise to double check.
‘You don’t think he meant you?’
‘I don’t think so, Felicity. We hadn’t spoken about the key. I’m not sure why he would have wanted to give it back to me. Besides, if he did, don’t you think he would have written “Grandma” instead of my initials?’
‘I suppose,’ I agreed. ‘Is there anything else that you can tell me about the key?’
‘Well, I’m not sure it’s worth very much. I think it’s made of iron. There were lots of them at this little market stall next to the key factory. The stall owner seemed a bit desperate to sell. He told us that the keys had magical powers. Apparently whoever bought one would be granted one wish that would come true. It was silly, but Grandpa loved it. He insisted on getting it for me.’
‘And did you make a wish?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said, and then she winked at me.
‘You did, didn’t you?’ I couldn’t help but smile. Since yesterday, I’d seen a whole new side to Grandma.
‘I wished that we would have a lovely house with a garden… I was a bit materialistic in those days.’
‘And?’
‘Your grandpa got promoted shortly after and we bought this place,’ she said. ‘It was good timing as I found out that I was pregnant with your mum. It was huge compared to the tiny flat that we lived in before. It was a coincidence… Or maybe not?’
I didn’t believe in magic, and yet there was something in Grandma’s story that made me wonder. Maybe there was the wildest possibility that I too could harness the power of the key and use it to bring Jack home.
‘Here, have some breakfast,’ Grandma motioned towards some croissants. ‘Gertrude has found a tolerable jam.’
My mind was racing with everything I wanted to tell Keira and update on the tree.
As we ate, Grandma told me more about her travels with Grandpa. I still couldn’t quite imagine her backpacking in the Amazon rainforest.
‘On the second shelf of the white bookcase in the living room, you’ll find a row of photo albums. If you want to see more of our travels, you can have a look at the dark green one. Why don’t you bring it here?’
I found it quickly and brought it back to the table. I flipped open the front cover and saw another copy of the same photo that was in the bedroom on the front page.
‘Can I borrow it to have a proper look?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, if you promise to bring it back. I like to look over it sometimes and reminisce.’
‘I promise.’
I was putting the album in my bag and preparing to leave, when I noticed a series of framed posters on the wall behind Grandma Sylvie’s head. Each had a small illustration and French words written in a swirly font.
‘What are those?’
‘Ah, Gertrude found them at an art exhibition. They make me laugh. Jack loves that middle one the most.’
‘N’oubliez pas de vivre,’ I read aloud. A small girl wearing a red hat was smiling, staring up at a vast blue sky, where a single bird, a tiny ‘V’ shape, was disappearing into the sunset. She immediately made me think of Margot. There was a look of hope on her face and she filled me with a new optimism.
‘What does it mean?’ I’d always been terrible at French, much to Mum’s disappointment.
‘Don’t forget to live.’
‘Don’t forget to live? It’s not the kind of thing you’d forget.’
‘It’s exactly the kind of thing people forget,’ Grandma disagreed. ‘They are often so engrossed with their jobs and the tiny things that they do day to day, that they lose sight of what’s really important, often until it’s too late.’
She was right. Of everything my brother had been accused of, forgetting to live was not one of them.
‘I need to run,’ I told Grandma. ‘Thank you for talking to me, and for letting me stay the night. I promise I’ll ring you straight away if we hear anything.’
‘Thank you for coming to visit me,’ said Grandma Sylvie, ‘it’s been wonderful to see you.’ And for the first time in what seemed like ages, she pulled me in for a bony hug.
Nine
It was freezing outside so I borrowed one of Grandma’s thick cardigans for the cycle home. The rain had finally stopped, and the gentle touch of sun made everything appear brighter. I took a shortcut through the field, the sandy path sparkling and crunching like sugar under my wheels. In the tufts of grass at the edge of the playing field I spied the tiny green humps that promised daffodil leaves. I hoped that the frost wouldn’t get to them before they managed to flower.
But when I got home, hope evaporated. Mum looked so pale that I wasn’t sure whether she’d
gone to bed at all. Last night’s phone call had clearly made her feel worse about everything. I knew Pickles was only doing his job by updating us, but I couldn’t help but feel annoyed with him.
The news on TV no longer featured regular updates on the earthquake, so Mum had taken to trawling the internet for any smidgen of information she could find. She was sitting on the sofa scrolling frantically on her laptop. She reminded me of a sad ghost.
‘Hi, pet,’ she said, looking up as I walked in. I noted the flicker of surprise at my cardigan, before she remembered where I’d been. ‘How’s Grandma?’
‘Yes, she’s fine. Gertrude is nice. Grandma really seems to like her.’
‘Oh that’s good,’ she said. ‘And how are you feeling?’
‘All right.’ A part of me wanted to tell her about everything that I’d discovered, because I thought it might make her feel better, but at the same time, I wanted to spend longer mulling over all this new information about Jack to make sense of it. So I gave Mum a hug instead.
‘It’s lovely to see you,’ she said, braving a smile. ‘You cheer us up, you know. If you want some breakfast, Dad’s in the kitchen. I promise we’ll try to cook something nice tonight. I’m going to do my best to drag myself away from all this news – it’s not doing me any good.’
I walked down the hallway to find Dad sitting at the kitchen table, scribbling a shopping list on a piece of paper. A tuft of hair stood up on the top of his head. He looked young and helpless. Not like my dad at all.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, Flick. Yes, well – I’m trying to do something practical, so I thought I might go out and do the food shopping. It’s all this waiting that’s killing me,’ he admitted, and then his brave face suddenly disappeared.
The Key to Finding Jack Page 6