The Key to Finding Jack

by Ewa Jozefkowicz

  ‘Woah, slow down. How do you know all this? Have you worked out what happened when he got off the bus?’

  ‘I think he decided a few days earlier that he would go to Llave instead of travelling back to Lima. He must have been curious about the place where the treasure legend comes from, and maybe this teacher, who he met on the bus, told him about a school in the area that runs a volunteering scheme – Simon is still looking into that part.’

  ‘And you think Jack will be able to call from this man’s phone?’ Keira asked, when I’d finished updating her.

  ‘Yeah, there’s a time difference. We need to wait another couple of hours. It’s still early morning there,’ I said confidently.

  Keira squeezed my hand.

  ‘What’s that for?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ She seemed surprised, almost as though she hadn’t realised she’d done it.

  ‘You’re worried I’ve got it wrong, aren’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘No I… You know I want Jack to be found, Flick. I’ve been helping you with this from the beginning. And I think we’re definitely getting closer. You could be onto something, but then again, we might have to cast the net wider. I want you to understand that if you’re wrong this time, it’s not the end…’

  I felt so angry about the tiny seed of doubt she’d planted in my head that I refused to speak again until we reached school. Because of me, we were seven minutes late and had to go into the school office to sign in.

  As luck would have it, Duncan was there registering his own lateness. He gave me a nervous smile and loitered, waiting for us to leave the office. He seemed to have a sixth sense for catching me at the very worst moments.

  ‘Hey, I spoke to my dad about your story,’ he said. ‘He’s willing to take a look at it. He might have some useful feedback.’

  Before I could answer, we heard a deep American voice ahead of us in the corridor.

  ‘Oi, squirt, where’s my hoodie?’

  Duncan’s face instantly changed, as if somebody had chucked a bucket of ice-cold water over him. His features rearranged themselves into a look of worry, maybe even fear. He shifted out of my line of sight, and I could see that the person talking to him was a tall, muscular guy of about Jack’s age, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt with two crossed tennis rackets. He loomed over Duncan, who seemed tiny in comparison.

  ‘I… I don’t have it,’ Duncan stammered.

  ‘Yeah, you do,’ said the older boy furiously, who I was now certain was his older brother. ‘I saw you take it from my room this morning when you thought I was asleep. If you don’t give it back by lunchtime, things are gonna get serious. D’you understand? They’ll get even more serious than they did before. And don’t think Dad is going to protect you this time!’

  His eyes narrowed as he said this, but Duncan had already turned on his heel and started walking away, before I could witness more of his shame.

  ‘Loser…’ hissed Duncan’s brother. ‘Get Mom to buy you your own stuff! And stop pretending to be me! You’re a poor imitation.’

  Duncan’s shoulders twitched at these words and I actually felt sorry for him. But when he glanced in our direction to work out how much we’d heard, our faces must have betrayed us. The colour rose in his cheeks as he pushed past us.

  ‘He’s an idiot,’ I heard him mutter. ‘He thinks he’s so great.’

  ‘You could say that about Duncan,’ I sniggered to Keira as we walked to class. But I began to understand where all of his snooty behaviour came from and felt a tiny bit guilty about being so snappy with him. He desperately wanted to be as good as his brother and his dad, I could see that now, and yet he hadn’t found something that he really excelled at.

  I’d noticed how awkward Duncan was in our sports lessons. He probably figured that he couldn’t follow in his brother’s footsteps and become a tennis star. Instead, he’d put all of his energy into writing, but maybe it was more difficult for him than he’d thought. Trying to live up to expectations made people behave in different ways – Jack avoided our dad, while Duncan clearly did everything to get the attention of his.

  The first two lessons of the day were maths and I couldn’t concentrate at all. I kept sneaking my phone out of my pocket to double-check that I hadn’t missed any calls. Jack’s face, which I’d changed to my screensaver, stared back at me, unblinking.

  ‘But,’ I kept telling myself, ‘it’s only 5 a.m. there…’ Then ‘only 6 a.m.’ and ‘only 7 a.m.’. As the hours mercilessly ticked away, I felt less and less sure of myself.

  Sixteen

  After break we had English again. Mrs Emmett pulled me aside at the beginning of the lesson and asked whether I would read my latest extract to the class. ‘Only if you want to, Flick.’

  I’d already refused once, so I nodded reluctantly. It was the worst possible timing. What if I got the phone call right in the middle of reading?

  ‘We only have two more lessons in which to finish off our crime thrillers,’ Mrs Emmett said, banging the palm of her hand on the desk to signal quiet, ‘so hopefully you should be getting to the heart of your story by now. I’ll make sure that I leave ten minutes at the end of the lesson to hear some of your creations. Meanwhile, you have forty minutes to get on with your writing. I also have an important announcement to make, so don’t let me forget.’

  I managed to collect my thoughts enough to focus on the story. It was a welcome relief from constantly worrying about Jack.

  When Mrs Emmett called me to the front, I slid my phone to Keira under the desk and made her promise that she’d signal to me if it rang.

  Behind us, Duncan scrambled around with his books and pencil case, accidentally dropping things onto the floor which he then had to noisily pick up. I wondered if he was deliberately trying to sabotage my reading. Any regret I’d felt at snapping at him vanished in an instant.

  ‘Duncan, when you’ve sorted yourself out, perhaps you would like to volunteer?’ said Mrs Emmett coldly.

  ‘Maybe later,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m not really ready.’

  ‘I’ve called this story “The Case of the Beret and the Bell”,’ I told everyone. ‘This is the part after Abigail has found out from her old friends what Margot has been doing to help them.’ As I started reading, I felt strangely self-conscious, as if I was revealing a secret part of myself to the class.

  ‘Who is Margot?’ The question swirled around and around in Lady Abigail’s mind as she went about her day. It had replaced her previous question, ‘Where is Margot?’ because it seemed more important.

  The bobbies had been no use – they were too busy catching pickpockets and vagrants to worry about a young lady going missing. Lady Abigail felt so desperate that she had decided to begin her own investigation. But the more she found out, the more she realised she didn’t know her daughter at all.

  Over the past week, since visiting Louisa, she had uncovered many surprising things about Margot and written them all down as a list at the back of her pocketbook:

  • Helping the Bells when they were struggling

  • Visiting and caring for an elderly neighbour who was very sick

  • Helping the maids with the Christmas preparations so that they could leave early to see their own families

  • Handing out money to the poor begging outside St Paul’s Cathedral

  • Secretly giving reading lessons to Sally, one of the cook’s daughters, who wanted to go to school but had to work alongside her mother.

  To Lady Abigail it seemed that wherever she turned, somebody knew Margot and remembered something wonderful that she had done. She felt terrible that she hadn’t known any of these things about her own daughter. She would still have tried to stop Margot from doing them though. After all, helping the maids with their work was not a task becoming for a young lady.

  And yet, despite Margot’s goodness, somebody had set out to snatch her from her family. The thought of her daughter lying in a cold, dark cellar somewhere and in this freezing weat
her, made Lady Abigail feel sick. Recent stories in The Illustrated London News told of a child-snatcher who had been nicknamed ‘The Bearded Fiend’. It was believed that he had stolen eight children so far and was using them to start a ring of thieves in the west of the city.

  The Bearded Fiend seemed to operate in the Chelsea area, which was far from the Jacksons’ home, but she feared that he could have extended his reach.

  Lady Abigail found that she could no longer eat. She couldn’t sleep. She suffered from waking nightmares so severe that they left her in a cold sweat.

  One day when Henry was having his eggs in the dining room, it occurred to her that her son, although quiet, hadn’t seemed anywhere near as distraught by Margot’s disappearance as she was. She decided to ask him why. Henry was startled by the question.

  ‘Because I don’t think that she has been snatched, Mother,’ he admitted eventually.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You believe that Margot’s been taken, but maybe… Well, maybe she chose to leave.’

  ‘You’re saying she disappeared on purpose?’ asked Lady Abigail. She couldn’t accept the words even as she said them.

  Henry nodded.

  The red beret, which the bobbies had returned after deciding it offered no further clues, was hanging on the carved wooden coatrack. Lady Abigail wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but she took it to bed with her every night.

  Henry glanced at it now as he finished his breakfast.

  ‘They sell them outside the hospital, Mother. They are worn by the nurses. They raise money to look after the poor and infirm; those destined for the workhouse.’

  ‘What? Henry, why did you not mention this earlier?’

  ‘I didn’t think it mattered.’

  ‘Which hospital is it? St Bartholemew’s?’

  ‘No, the Evelina Hospital. The children’s hospital near London Bridge.’

  Lady Abigail put on her coat, drank a glass of water which the maid passed to her, and headed straight for the door.

  This was as much as I’d managed to write and I felt it was a good line on which to end the chapter. I glanced back at the class. I’d almost forgotten that they were there. I looked over to Keira hopefully, but she shook her head. He hadn’t called.

  ‘Thank you very much, Felicity. Very intriguing.’

  Next, we heard from Duncan’s sidekick, Max, whose story was surprisingly good, and from a shy boy called Errol who’d slightly misinterpreted what we were supposed to be doing and had written a complicated sci-fi crime comic, complete with detailed illustrations.

  Finally, Duncan strolled up with his next instalment of ‘The Cabin’. By now, I was certain that everyone in the class must have figured out that the weapon of death had been an icicle.

  ‘Thank you, all,’ said Mrs Emmett at the end of the lesson. ‘Before you go, I want to announce something exciting. There’s a countrywide new Young Writers’ Award which has been brought to my attention, and a particular part of it is dedicated to crime fiction. It’s one entry per school and I’d like us to take part. Having read your stories, I’ve selected five which I think are particularly strong, and I want you as a class to help me choose the one we should submit. We’re mature writers in this class, so it isn’t a popularity contest. I trust you to be fair and not just to vote for your friends.

  ‘The people whose stories I’ve shortlisted are: Vera, Max, Felicity, Siobhan and Rafe.’

  An excited murmur went round the room. Normally, I would have been thrilled at the news, but I felt nothing. I couldn’t even muster a smile when Keira slapped me on the shoulder.

  Behind me, Duncan was boasting about all the big literary prizes that his dad had won.

  ‘I’m pleased for you, dude,’ he said eventually to Max, and then more quietly, ‘we’ll make sure you win, yeah?’

  Seventeen

  By lunchtime, Jack still hadn’t called and I couldn’t wait any longer. I sneaked away to a far corner of the netball courts and rang Simon. He picked up on the first ring.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘We need to keep waiting. I’ll try calling again in a few hours, but I don’t want him to get annoyed with me. I’m sure there are loads of people trying to find their friends and loved ones.’

  ‘You know you don’t have to stay here,’ said Keira when I updated her, ‘you can go home. Everyone will understand.’

  But for some reason, I insisted on staying in the lunchroom, staring at my plate, picking at my chips. I thought going home might jinx things – that Jack definitely wouldn’t call if I gave up on my day.

  I was trying to avoid everyone’s gaze, even Keira’s. I could see Duncan throwing me odd looks from behind one of the canteen pillars.

  ‘What does he want now?’ I muttered to Keira.

  ‘Oh, ignore him. He’s an idiot.’

  But as we were putting away our trays, he walked over to us nervously, clutching something in his hand which, on closer inspection, seemed to be a folded piece of paper. I could tell by the way he was holding it that he didn’t want anyone else to see it.

  Before I could ask what he was playing at, he thrust the clammy square into my hand and was gone.

  Keira was burning with curiosity.

  ‘I’m not in the mood,’ I told her, putting the paper in my jacket pocket. ‘It’s probably information about one of his dad’s creative writing courses or something. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.’

  My phone was silent through the last period of double chemistry, and when Keira’s mum came to collect us, I told her that I would rather walk home on my own. Her eyes widened in surprise and worry, but she agreed.

  ‘Message your mum and tell her that’s what you’re doing,’ she made me promise.

  I took the long route home, dragging out each step. Remembering what Charlie had said, I took my phone from my pocket and messaged Mum.

  Back late, I wrote simply. Don’t worry x.

  I walked past the edge of Ottoman’s Field and sat down at the corner, exhausted. The last few days had been cold, but I hadn’t noticed quite how freezing it had become. It was only when I stopped moving that I regretted not wearing my proper winter coat. As I was pulling my thin jacket tightly around my shoulders, it began to snow.

  At the other end of the field, a group of kids who’d been playing football stopped their game and looked up at the sky with wonder.

  As the snow continued to fall, I squinted. Through the flurry of white, I could make out two figures spinning round and round. One was small and chubby with pigtails, wearing a thick woolly hairband, and the other was tall and skinny with long arms that flew outwards as he turned.

  ‘Look, it’s settling on the ground, Sergeant Flick,’ Jack shouted, ‘we can make snow angels.’ And he picked me up and threw me in the air, before we both toppled down and lay there, flapping our arms to make angel wings.

  I stared and stared at those two angels, willing them, more than anything, to be real. My eyes stung with the cold and before I knew it, streams of tears were running down my cheeks and my shoulders were shaking.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  I hadn’t noticed that one of the kids had run over to me – a young girl, her hair swept up in a messy ponytail, her cheeks red from the cold.

  ‘Oh yeah, fine,’ I muttered.

  I forced myself to stand up and walked slowly in the direction of the high street. My feet took an unexpected left turn, and I found myself outside Uncle Michael’s old flat. He’d lived there on his own for many years before he’d met Auntie Hannah and set up Gilmore’s, and he’d sometimes offered to look after us when Mum and Dad went out, although Jack always insisted that he didn’t need babysitting. I loved being at his place, mainly because, like me, he was a big fan of reading, and gave me books that he’d enjoyed as a kid.

  From the outside, the flat looked exactly the same as it had done when we were small. Even the balcony that we’d spent so much time on was still covered in ivy. Jack had loved that he c
ould be completely hidden, while spying on everyone who passed below in the street.

  I had a memory of an old man standing on the pavement, smoking, and Jack singing in a low voice: ‘You’re having such a lovely puff, but your lungs are shouting “Please, enough! We’re filled to the brim with awful tar and soon we’ll end up in a jar!”’

  The man had frantically turned around to see where the song was coming from, and not seeing anyone, quickly stamped out his cigarette and made a run for it.

  I’d dangled my feet through the rails of the balcony and laughed so hard that my stomach hurt.

  I wished that I could be up on that balcony now, looking down at the world below, but new tenants had been living there for years.

  As I stood gazing at the balcony, the snow began to settle more thickly, and that beautiful blanket of white made even the drab, grey buildings seem somehow magical. I stopped for a moment and watched the fairy-dust flakes falling into the open palms of my hands. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a smudge of red. Margot! She passed me on the other side of the street, wearing her red beret. My first instinct was to call after her, but something stopped me. Instead, I followed her, my boots filling the footprints created by hers.

  She sang as she walked. I couldn’t hear the words, but it was a beautiful, upbeat melody. For a moment, I shut my eyes to savour the soft snowflakes on my face, and the sound of her song. When I opened them again, she was gone. I looked desperately around for the red beret, but it was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I found the dilapidated entrance to Fairwick Estate a few feet away from me, seeming to invite me inside. I realised how much I wanted to be up on the roof.

  But when I got closer, I could hear voices from above. I groaned inwardly. Some local kids must have rediscovered the playground and were playing in the snow up there. I thought of turning back. I wasn’t used to sharing the roof with anyone other than Jack. But something – perhaps the smallest possibility that Margot could be up there – led me to climb the stairs.