The murmur of voices grew louder the higher I went. I cautiously opened the door.
‘Flick! You made it!’
And there they all were – Sutty, Manfy, Simon, Keira, even Finny.
‘All of Jack’s tree branches,’ Keira whispered in my ear. ‘I was planning to bring you here after school and then you escaped! But it looks like I know you too well – you seem to have wandered in this direction anyway,’ she said, smiling.
‘But… but what are you doing here?’
‘We’re here to show you that you’re not on your own,’ Keira explained, hugging me tight. ‘I hoped to bring your grandma, too, but the lift is still out of use and we’d struggle to get her wheelchair up the stairs. She sends her love and I said that we would try to FaceTime her later.’
‘But how did you manage to get everyone together?’ I asked, amazed.
‘I messaged Simon and Manfy at morning break. Then it turned out that Simon knew Finny too – I mean, Mr Finnegan,’ she said, glancing over at him and blushing, ‘so he emailed to find out whether he might be free. And then I went to Sutty’s shop on the way here, and he was closing up, so… we all made it.’
We sat down in my favourite spot, behind the roundabout where you could get the loveliest view of our town. Keira had brought blankets, mugs and a thermos of tea. She’d even thought to bring her spare coat and scarf, which she handed to me.
Finny took his guitar from its holder and started strumming a familiar tune. It was an interesting piece, which had long, slow and steady parts, giving way to an exciting, upbeat melody.
‘I love that,’ I told him. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s called “Octopus’s Garden” by The Beatles. It’s a song that your brother always loved playing. In fact, I think it’s one of the first full pieces of music that he learned off by heart.’
Manfy, who was sitting cross-legged next to me, pulled something out of her bag and gave it to me.
‘I know it’s not perfect,’ she told me, ‘but I think I did a pretty good job.’
I looked down to see a beautiful black and white photo of Jack. His head was tilted back and he was laughing at something. In the background I could see the shelves of Sutty’s shop.
‘Thank you,’ I said, hugging it to my chest.
‘And an evening of Jack would not be the same without his favourite snack,’ said Sutty, taking a huge box of chocolate frogs from his rucksack.
‘It doesn’t matter if your theory is wrong, you know,’ said Simon. ‘You’ve done so much. Look at this.’ He’d brought a print-out of the spreadsheet which listed all the schools he’d contacted. There were almost fifty on there.
‘It was you who called them,’ I corrected him.
‘Yes, but only because you asked me to. And you would have done it yourself if you could speak Spanish. I bet you’ve done more than the police have to find Jack. It’s incredible.’
I felt warmth rising in my face despite the freezing weather.
‘Promise us you won’t give up hope,’ said Manfy. ‘We won’t if you won’t.’
I looked around at all of their faces staring at me anxiously, and I said, ‘I promise. Of course I do.’
Then we sat eating chocolate frogs and drinking tea from Keira’s thermos. Finny continued to play and the snowflakes swirled around us. The tiny drummer in my head had not made a reappearance the entire time that I’d been there, and I had stopped frantically checking my phone.
‘I said that we’d call your grandma,’ said Keira, passing me her phone, where Grandma Sylvie’s face appeared on the screen.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said. ‘I wanted you to know how proud I am of you. I probably didn’t tell you enough when you were small, but there it is. I think your brother would be amazed at how far you’ve come with your search.’
‘Who is it, Sylvie?’ I heard a man’s voice in the background.
‘It’s my granddaughter, Martin. Do you want to see her?’
And then a large face filled the screen.
‘You can’t go that close,’ Grandma said, ‘pull it away a bit so she can see you.’
‘Ah yes, hello there. I’m Martin. Your grandmother always talks about you. Maybe we can meet in reality one day?’
‘I hope so,’ I told him.
‘Hello, Mr Percy,’ said Manfy, looking at the screen over my shoulder.
‘Samantha! Lovely to see you again. What are you doing there?’
‘I’m with Flick. We’ve had a gathering of Jack’s biggest fans.’
‘Ah, that’s fantastic. Everyone at St Austin’s misses him, me especially. I hope so very much that you hear from him soon. Stay warm!’
The sky was almost entirely dark now and the light from our phones wasn’t enough to see by.
As we started to head home, I asked Manfy, ‘How do you know my grandma’s boyfriend?’
‘Mr Percy? He does the gardening at St Austin’s nursing home. I used to go there with Jack every Thursday afternoon after he’d finished his exams. We would play guitar to the residents. It was nothing like I imagined. The men and women who live there have such interesting lives. We could listen to them talking for hours. And they seemed to love us playing to them. Sometimes they would put in requests for songs that they hadn’t heard in years. Jack would play them the octopus song – the one that Finny was playing. One old man even brought out sheet music for a piece that he composed back in the sixties. He really wanted us to play it. We practised for a few weeks to try and get it exactly right…’
But I was no longer listening to what Manfy was saying, because an idea had formed in my mind which I needed to act on straight away.
Eighteen
Nursing homes. Why hadn’t I thought of it earlier? It all made sense. Jack serenading Grandma and getting her together with Mr Percy, his love of the Rolling Earth schools employing older teachers, and now, the visits to St Austin’s that Manfy described.
His words came back to me: ‘I sometimes feel like we forget about older people.’ But maybe in Peru they did things differently? Maybe there was some sort of organisation for the elderly that he’d found and wanted to visit? It was a long shot, but it was definitely worth a try.
‘Sorry,’ I said to Manfy, ‘I’ve got to dash. Simon, would it be all right if I came to yours on the way home? Just for ten minutes?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he said, surprised. ‘What is it?’
‘Let’s look up old people’s homes near Llave,’ I said, as soon as we got through his front door.
I was glad to see that his parents were out. I felt I couldn’t waste time explaining anything.
We ran up to his room and Simon switched on his laptop. But the search in Spanish brought up no results.
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Nothing in the immediate area. Remember that it’s a remote town. I reckon that most families in rural Peru are able to take care of the elderly themselves. They probably don’t use nursing homes as much as we do. Hold on, let me try the search in English, just in case,’ he said, seeing my disappointed face.
We saw the top search result at the same time.
Oro Homes – free accommodation in return for your time.
Simon clicked on the link.
Why not stay in one of our breathtaking treetop hostel rooms nestled among the Chila mountains, in return for your voluntary work?
Oro is a retirement community with a difference. Apart from our core team of regular staff, we rely on voluntary support provided by tourism. Our residents come from all over the world to enjoy our wonderful setting in the Chila mountain range.
We encourage volunteers from a host of different countries to stay with us and spend time with the men and women who have made Oro their home. Voluntary work can include reading, playing games, listening to music and sharing life experiences.
In return we offer beautiful treetop accommodation with unforgettable views. Stays can range from two weeks to three months.
The
more I read, the more my heart sped up.
‘Call them,’ I said to Simon, before I noticed that he’d already picked up his phone.
‘No connection. They’re pretty far outside the town, look,’ he said, enlarging the online map of the local area. ‘And they could be quite high up in the mountains. If there are a lot of fallen trees their access to the roads might be blocked. I imagine the phone signal is usually patchy, let alone now.’
‘Shall we contact your guy at the community centre to see if he knows anything?’
Simon checked his watch and called the number.
For ages nobody picked up. Then I heard a sudden ‘Buenas tardes’ on the other end of the line.
Simon started speaking in Spanish and I waited, frantically picking at the skin around my fingernails, like Mum when she was stressed.
Then, the man’s voice went quiet, although Simon still held the phone to his ear.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Wait,’ he mouthed at me.
Then the voice returned and Simon’s eyebrows shot up.
‘Gracias,’ he said, ‘muchas gracias.’
‘There’s a backpacker at the centre from Oro,’ he told me, as soon as he’d disconnected. I noticed that he was trying hard to keep his voice steady. ‘He came into town last night. He says that he remembers a British guy who turned up just as he was leaving Oro. He matches Jack’s description. They’ve had charity food aid delivered by helicopter at the community centre – the trucks would have taken too long to get there because the place is so far out. Apparently the same charity had been to the nursing home and made a delivery there. It sounds like the people are OK. They have no electricity, their access is blocked off and the phone lines are still down, like I guessed, but they’re otherwise fine.’
‘Oh my goodness. What do we do now?’ I asked Simon. I could feel my arms shaking.
‘I think your parents need to tell the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They’ll know who to contact on the ground in Peru.’
‘But we still don’t know for certain that it’s him,’ I said, struggling to contain my excitement.
‘No, we don’t, that’s true,’ said Simon carefully. ‘But his physical description matches almost exactly.’
I ran home as fast as I possibly could. When Mum opened the door, I could barely breathe.
‘There’s been a sighting of somebody who looks a lot like Jack,’ I told her, ‘I think I know where he is.’
I told my parents what Simon and I had managed to find out and within minutes, Dad was on the phone to the FCO. He had me on speakerphone so that I could add in any information that he’d missed. The woman on the other end said that they would let us know as soon as they had news.
‘But Flick, how in the world did you find this out?’ Dad asked, amazed, after he’d put down the phone.
‘Just by piecing together the clues, one by one – like Jack taught me. It was through Grandma and Jack’s friend Manfy that I found out about him playing guitar at St Austin’s and I took a gamble that he might want to do something similar in Peru. As for why we searched in that part of the country – well, that’s a longer story.’
‘I still think you should tell us about it. I’d like to hear.’
The three of us gathered in Jack’s room and I talked Mum and Dad through my latest research.
‘I can’t believe he went to play to the elderly residents,’ said Dad. ‘And Grandma knew about this? Why didn’t she tell us?’
‘Maybe she thought we knew?’
‘Why didn’t Jack tell us?’ Mum asked.
‘That’s the main question,’ Dad agreed. ‘It’s because he thought we had a certain opinion of him, and he’d given up trying to make us change it. But he has, without knowing it, in the biggest way possible.’
It must have been around three in the morning when we finally fell asleep – me and Mum in Jack’s bed and Dad on the floor.
The sunshine was already streaming in through the window when we were woken up by the phone ringing downstairs.
I leaped up and ran down to the kitchen.
‘Hello, can I speak to Mr Chesterford?’ the voice asked.
‘Have you found Jack?’ My voice came out in a croak.
Dad gently took the receiver from me, introduced himself and repeated my question. He put the man on speakerphone.
‘Yes, we believe we have. We can’t be one hundred per cent certain, but one of the Peruvian rescue teams has located a young man who matches your son’s description in the Oro resort. We’ve transported him to the nearest hospital in Cusco. He’s being treated for some minor injuries, but we should be able to speak to him later today. If we ascertain that it is Jack, we will of course get him to contact you right away.’
‘He has haemophilia. The doctors need to know that he has it. His blood doesn’t clot properly, so it’s very important that he has regular injections.’
‘Ah OK, I do believe that the doctors may already be aware of this. I will confirm though.’
My heart raced against my chest. If they were aware, then it had to be him.
‘Who is it?’ I heard Mum’s frantic voice behind me.
‘They think they’ve found Jack.’
There it was. I’d said the words that I was scared I would never say.
I still couldn’t believe they were true when I sent them in a message to Keira, to Simon and to Manfy, and later when I repeated them to Grandma on the phone.
But I needed to hear Jack’s voice to make sure that it was real.
‘Please can I be the first to speak to him if he calls?’ I begged Mum. After all, I’d been the one to find him. It was only fair.
Mum and Dad let me take the day off school especially. The phone rang after lunch. Every part of me believed that the call would come, but I was shocked when it happened.
It was a beautiful, cold day at the end of January. The warm sun shone for the first time in days. Outside the window, the determined heads of daffodils were already beginning to emerge – specks of brilliant yellow among the sea of green.
I’d been sitting in the kitchen with Mum and Dad eating blueberry pancakes, which we’d all made together, like we used to on the weekends.
My hands shook as I held the receiver but I managed to keep my voice steady.
‘Hello?’
‘Flick? Is it you?’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ I said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
‘You won’t believe how happy I am to hear your voice.’
‘Same,’ I said. And then the tears came. I couldn’t hold them back any longer and they flooded down my cheeks like rainwater.
‘It turns out that you managed to solve the biggest mystery of your career to date without my help.’
‘I suppose I did. Are you all right?’
‘Yes. It’s been horrible, but I was lucky. I always am, aren’t I?’
His voice was exactly the same and it sounded as though he was smiling. I imagined him now with his mouth turned up at the corner.
‘You are, always,’ I told him. ‘Will you come back now, Jack?’ I asked, suddenly freaked out that he planned to carry on travelling.
‘Obviously, Sergeant Flick. You can’t continue to do all your work alone. Even the best detective needs a sidekick, so I’ll be back to help you. I promise.’
Nineteen
On Saturday we were all at the airport, waiting for Jack’s plane to land – me, Mum, Dad, Simon and Grandma Sylvie, in her new wheelchair and wearing her best red lipstick. Mum clutched my hand. I think neither of us would believe that Jack was truly safe until he was home with us. What if something had happened to him on the way to the airport? What if he didn’t make the flight?
I hadn’t told anyone, but that morning I’d woken from a nightmare. Jack was about to get on the plane when a giant hand appeared out of the sky, slowly forming a fist which pounded the runway and made the ground crack. I woke up shaking.
But whe
n we arrived at the airport, things seemed more reassuring. A few minutes earlier we’d heard an announcement that said the flight from Lima had landed with no delays, and yet my back tensed even tighter. I stepped closer to the arrivals gate as a group of people began to emerge. The hall was suddenly full of children’s excited shouts and the steady, rhythmic rolling of suitcase wheels. The sun beamed, reflecting the black tiles beneath my feet. I shaded my eyes with my hand, breathed deeply and waited.
Around me, people hugged friends and relatives who had just landed, and the steady trickle of newly arrived travellers seemed to dwindle. My throat tightened. And then, through the sunshine, I saw a person walking towards me – a head of blond hair, a pair of angular shoulders, a fast, familiar walk.
‘Sergeant Flick.’
He was suddenly there, with his arms around me, as if nothing had happened, as if he’d been here all along. And then Mum and Dad joined us, to complete the family hug which we’d missed for so long. I breathed in Jack’s familiar smell and all the fear and distance was gone.
We all wanted to keep touching Jack when he got home, as if to make sure that we hadn’t imagined him – that he was really there. And when we’d eaten and he was sitting on the sofa, we finally heard the answers to all the questions from when he was missing.
‘I found out about Oro from a man I met on the bus,’ he told us.
‘The teacher called Rowan?’ I asked and Jack looked impressed.
‘Yes, exactly. He’d been there the previous month and he told me that the whole project was quite new, so they hadn’t recruited many volunteers. He said he’d learned so much in his short time there and met some incredible people who he was still in touch with. I asked where the place was, and he showed me on the map – that was when I saw that it was close to the village of Llave.’
‘It’s as if it was meant to be,’ said Grandma Sylvie, smiling. ‘It’s where I went with Grandpa all those years ago.’ I looked at the framed photo of the two of them that I’d copied from Grandma’s album and placed with the other family snaps on the mantelpiece.
‘I know, and I’d wanted to visit that area at some point in the trip because it’s near Cortegana, where—’
The Key to Finding Jack Page 12