An Island of Our Own

by Sally Nicholls

  NO

  “No,” said Jonathan. “That’s all. No.”

  “Yes!” I said. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

  “Holly, don’t,” he said. “Just don’t. Think about it! Train tickets to Scotland! Boats, and… taxis, and… I don’t know. Hotel rooms! Food! How am I supposed to afford all of that?”

  “By finding the treasure!” I wailed. “It’ll solve everything!”

  “Yeah,” said Jonathan. “Like last time.”

  I started to cry. I couldn’t help it.

  Jonathan sighed. “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry. But there’s no way you can know for sure that Auntie Irene’s treasure is in that briefcase. She’d had a stroke! She could have been completely batty, for all you know! I’m not wasting what money we have on going all the way up to Scotland on a wild goose chase.”

  “I hate you!” I said. “You don’t care about Sebastian at all!”

  I ran upstairs and wrote a long and angry blog post all about Jonathan. Then I deleted it without posting. Jonathan’s all right. Even if he is an idiot.

  I called Jen instead and told her about it. Jen is a great listener. She kept quiet all the time I was talking, then she said, “How much money would you need?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s in Orkney, which is right at the top of Scotland. There’s a train journey, then a ferry, then a bus, then another ferry, then another ferry. I looked it up. It takes ages. We’d need places to stay, and money, and… I dunno. Maybe Jonathan’s right.”

  “Wait there,” said Jen. And she put the phone down.

  I waited.

  Davy came and knocked on my door. “Jonathan’s shut himself in his room and he won’t let me in,” he said. “Is there dinner?”

  “I dunno,” I said. “Shall we see?”

  We went and looked in the kitchen.

  “What do you want?”

  “Eggs and fried potatoes.”

  “I don’t know how to do fried potatoes.” That was one of Jonathan’s recipes. “I can do boiled.”

  I made scrambled eggs and boiled potatoes for Davy. They didn’t taste as nice as Jonathan’s potatoes, but we covered them in tomato ketchup, and they tasted OK. Jonathan came down and ate with us, but he didn’t say much. We watched Despicable Me and pretended like everything was all right. Jonathan went upstairs before the film had finished. He looked as though he’d been crying. I wondered if he had.

  LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE

  Gran rang just after Davy had gone to bed. I told her about the photographs, and the treasure in Orkney. She was like Jen – a brilliant person to tell.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said. “The Orkney Islands! One of my favourite places in the whole world.”

  “Are they?” I said. This was the first I’d heard of it. “What are they like?”

  “Old,” she said, after thinking about it for a moment. “They have villages there that were old when the Vikings came. Fairy hills, and standing stones and the tombs of kings. And really excellent fudge.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Two of my dearest friends live there,” she said. “Derek and Shirley. They live on the tiniest little island. Derek was the island postman, policeman and taxi driver. And Shirley was fireman, barkeep and driver of the school boat. I expect you’ll need somewhere to stay when you get there,” she went on. “Let me know when you’re going and I’ll tell Derek to expect you.”

  “We’re not going, Gran,” I said sadly. “Jonathan thinks it’s too far and too expensive.”

  “Oh, my dear,” said Gran. “I love Jonathan very much, but you tell him from me, life is an adventure. And there’s only one way to have an adventure – or a life, I suppose – and that’s just to do it.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I said. “Thanks, Gran.”

  But I was fairly sure he wouldn’t listen.

  MIRACLES AND WONDERS

  I was cleaning my teeth when Jen rang back.

  “OK,” she said. “I’ve spoken to Keith. He put a thing out on his mailing group, and he’s found a friend who has a bunch of complimentary rail vouchers which he got because he and his kids were on a long-distance train from London to Penzance which got delayed by three hours because the line got flooded, and then all the lights went out in his carriage, and the power sockets stopped working, and the café ran out of tea. But they were only valid for six months, and they’re about to expire, and he hasn’t used all of them, so he said you could have them.”

  “Seriously?” I said.

  “And,” said Jen, “Keith has a friend who works at King’s Cross, who says if you go down there and ask for him, he’ll tell you what the best trains are to get, and make sure Davy and Jonathan are in the same cabin together on the sleeper train – Keith thinks the sleeper train is the best one to get coming back, and I think he’s right, sleeper trains are awesome.”

  “Totally awesome,” I said. I meant it. I was feeling a bit dazed.

  “I put a thing out on the Maker Space mailing list,” Jen went on. “You’ll need someone to stay with on the way up. Because I know Jonathan can’t miss many days of work, so I thought you’d probably want to go on a Friday after school, right? I mean, if Jonathan can get time off work. And then you’ll miss the last ferry. So, anyway, depending on what train you get, there are lots of places you could stay that are sort of halfway between here and there. A couple of people from the Maker Space in Newcastle said you could stay with them, but I don’t know who either of them is, so wait if you want to stay in Newcastle and I’ll check them out. I also know someone in Glasgow, but she’s a bit grumpy, and Natalie Hollis has a friend in Aberdeen she thinks will probably let you stay, so there’ll definitely be someone, so find out from Jonathan what he’d like to do and let me know, OK?”

  “OK,” I said. “Um—”

  “I don’t know what you’re going to do when you get to Orkney, though,” Jen said. “I did ask if anyone knew anyone in Orkney, but nobody seemed to. I thought I might put out a thing on Facebook maybe, but I wanted to check with you first if that would be OK. I thought if the worst came to the worst you could camp? We’ve got an only-slightly-leaky tent you could borrow.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Gran knows someone in Orkney we can stay with. She already said we could.”

  “Oh,” said Jen. “Right. Good. Now, you’ll have to pay for ferries and buses and things – is that OK? If it’s not – I dunno, maybe we could do a whip-round?”

  I blinked.

  She waited.

  “I’ll ask,” I said. I poked my head round the living-room door, where Jonathan was on his laptop on the sofa. Obviously eavesdropping.

  “Do we have enough money to pay for ferries and buses?” I asked. “Because someone Keith knows is going to give us magic train tickets, and Jen’s found someone we can stay with in Aberdeen and we can go up on Friday night after school, she says, so you only have to miss work on Saturday and Monday, and do we want a collection? We could spend it on haggis. I’ve never had haggis.”

  Jonathan looked like I’d just thrown his hard drive into a pit of lava.

  I handed him the phone.

  “Now, look—” I heard Jen say. Then there was a lot of talking. Jonathan said, “But what about—” and “But I can’t—” and “But I couldn’t—” Then he shut up and just made squeaky, grunty, groany noises. Then he stopped making even those and just sat there shaking his head.

  Then he said, “Actually, we’ve still go some overdraft left. I was saving it for frivolities like dentist’s bills.”

  Then he said, “Is Natalie’s friend called Kate? Because I know her. We’ll stay with her.”

  Then he said, “Thank you. It’s really very – thank you.”

  Then he put the phone down.

  ACTUALLY ACTUAL

  “I don’t have much choice
really, do I?” said Jonathan grumpily. But he looked a bit pleased, I thought.

  “It’s a holiday!” I said. “To a foreign country! It’ll be wonderful! There’ll be bagpipes! And haggis! And kilts! And the Loch Ness monster! Oh, Jonathan, please don’t look like that. Aren’t you even a little bit excited?”

  “Maybe a bit,” said Jonathan. He looked at me. Then he did something he hardly ever does. He put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze. “But if it all goes wrong, I’m blaming you, OK?”

  Jonathan and I worked out the plan. Well, Jonathan did really, but I watched. Jonathan would leave work early, collect us both from school and we’d get the train to Aberdeen, stay the night with Natalie’s friend Kate, then get a ferry-bus-ferry-ferry to the island with the beach with the treasure. We’d bring a tent for the first night on the mainland, which was what the biggest Orkney island was called, and then stay with Gran’s friends on Papa Westray the second night. We had the tent we used to use for camping holidays when Mum was alive, so that was all right. Then we’d spend a day finding whatever it was that Auntie Irene had hidden in her safe, and then get the sleeper train home on Monday night. That way, Jonathan would only have to miss two days of work, and Davy and I would miss one day of school.

  “So, who is this Kate person?” I asked Jonathan. “Do you know her?”

  Jonathan went red. “Well…” he said. “Sort of. She’s… I know her online. A bit.”

  “Is she the person you’re always talking to online?” I asked. “She is! Is she your internet girlfriend?”

  “No.” Jonathan went even redder. “Shut up. She’s just… someone I know, that’s all.”

  “I bet she’s fifty and bald in real life,” I told him.

  But he said Alex had met her, and she wasn’t.

  Jonathan wasn’t at all sure we should bring Davy.

  “He’s expensive,” he said. “Extra tickets for everywhere. And late nights, and sleeping in tents, and not knowing what we’re going to find when we get there. He could stay with Gran, maybe, like Sebastian is?”

  The vet had given Sebastian an injection, which had stopped him lying there in that awful, half-dead way. But he still didn’t look very happy. We’d left him with Gran and half a value pack of carrots. Davy had originally wanted Sebastian to come to Orkney too, but even I thought that was a bad idea.

  “No!” said Davy. He folded his arms and glared at Jonathan.

  “No,” I said. There was only one step from “let’s leave Davy behind” to “let’s leave Holly behind”, and I wasn’t having that. This was our quest. It belonged to us.

  Jonathan knew that, I think. He didn’t argue, anyway. He folded his arms – just like Davy – and leant against the wall, and sighed. “Seven hours!” he said. “Seven hours on a train with a seven year old! And then a ferry! Three ferries! And then back! I must be mad! Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay with Gran, Davy?”

  “No,” said Davy, again. “I’m coming too. So don’t try and stop me!”

  HERE WE COME

  Really, it should be me whose job it is to look after our family. I do it way better than Jonathan does. I did all the packing for me and Davy. Jonathan just packed the tent and camping stuff, and an overnight bag. I packed:

  All the scrap paper from the scrap-paper box.

  Felt-tip pens.

  All eight Harry Potter DVDs, and headphones.

  Three books for me and two for Davy.

  Travel Scrabble and Uno and a pack of cards.

  Food. You can buy food on trains, but it’s expensive, so we brought our own. We brought a loaf of bread, and a packet of cheese, and a penknife and three apples and three bananas and a packet of chocolate biscuits. And two bottles of orange squash. The bananas got a bit crushed, but the rest of the food was OK.

  Actually, the whole journey was OK. Keith’s railway friend at King’s Cross was brilliant. “Orkney, eh?” he said, as we handed over the vouchers Keith had given us and he set about printing our tickets. “Good-oh.”

  We had a table, which we shared with a grumpy businessman, who looked a bit annoyed when we brought out the Scrabble board. But after Darlington, he got replaced by a friendly lady, who thought the whole thing was very exciting, and played Shop Snap with me and Davy all the way to Newcastle. And then Jonathan and Davy watched Harry Potter with one headphone each, and I read A Study in Scarlet. And after a while I got too tired to read, so I just sat in my seat and looked out of the window and… wondered.

  ABERDEEN

  It was late when we got to Aberdeen. Kate, Jonathan’s mysterious internet girlfriend, had given us directions, which involved a bus and then a walk through the dark streets. It was hard to tell what Aberdeen was really like. Dark. Tall buildings. Fresher air than London. And all the people on the bus had Scottish accents, which was strange and exciting.

  “How much further?” said Davy. Davy was so tired he was nearly falling over. I was tired too. And hungry.

  “Not far,” said Jonathan, but he looked worried. He had his am I being a proper grown up? face on. The one he wears when we have cheese sandwiches for tea three nights in a row.

  Kate lived in a little flat in a tenement building, just like the poor kids did in Greyfriars Bobby. It looked like what you’d imagine a Victorian block of flats would look like. Tall and rectangular and made out of dirty grey stone.

  Jonathan rang the bell, and this girl answered. She looked at Jonathan and burst out laughing. Jonathan looked hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” said the girl. “I really am. Don’t look like that! But just—” She tried to catch her breath, but it got lost in something somewhere between a hiccup and a giggle. “Just look at us!”

  I looked at the girl, and then I looked at Jonathan. Jonathan gave a reluctant sort of half-smile. Then he giggled too.

  “What?” said Davy. “What’s so funny? I don’t get it!”

  I did. The girl – Kate – looked like a female version of Jonathan. She was tall and skinny and dressed in blue jeans with holes in the knee, and a hoodie that said Aberdeen University Quidditch Team. She had yellowy-red hair. I wondered if it was auburn, like Anne’s in Anne of Green Gables, but she told me later it was strawberry blonde. She had pale skin, not creepy-vampire pale, more like a china doll. She had freckles all across her nose. She was laughing.

  “Hello,” she said, and she stuck out her hand. “I’m Kate. I know you’re Jonathan.” She made an expression of exaggerated surprise at Davy and me. “And you’re Holly and Davy, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Weren’t you expecting us?”

  “Oh yes,” Kate said cheerfully. “I just didn’t realize you were kids, that’s all. I thought you were grown-ups.”

  “Didn’t you read our website?” I said, and she said she hadn’t.

  I started to explain, but she stopped me and said, “Davy looks like he’s about to fall asleep on his feet. Shall we eat?”

  We’d already eaten cheese sandwiches on the train, but we were still hungry. Kate had made a sort of pasta thing with cheese and mushrooms and peppers and chunks of sausage. It was amazing. I told her so. “This is so good. Is it hard to make?”

  “It mostly came out of a jar,” Kate whispered. “The sauce did, anyway. But don’t tell, OK?”

  But I totally am. If food in jars is this good, Jonathan should buy it, and then we wouldn’t have to eat so many jacket potatoes and peanut-butter sandwiches.

  Kate was right about Davy. Even the cheesy sausage pasta wasn’t enough to keep him awake. He was nearly falling over into his bowl. In the end, Jonathan took him off to clean his teeth and go to bed. Jonathan and Davy were sleeping in Kate’s flatmate’s bed, because Kate’s flatmate had gone home for the summer holidays. I was on the fold-out sofa in the living room.

  When Jonathan had gone, Kate said, “OK. Spill. What exactly’s going on?”
r />   So I told her all about Jonathan and Auntie Irene and the treasure and Sebastian, and the wonderful way everyone seemed to want to help us. “Didn’t you know about this?” I said. “I thought you and Jonathan were friends.” And Kate explained that they were friends in a reading-each-other’s-stories-and-sharing-funny-stuff sort of way, and that she’d known that Jonathan lived in London and worked in a café, but she hadn’t known about Mum, or us, or why he wasn’t at university.

  “The internet’s not like that,” she said. “You share the stuff you want to share, and you keep the rest quiet.”

  “But how can you be friends if you don’t know stuff like that?” I asked, and Kate shrugged.

  “Do your friends know everything about you?” she said, which shut me up. Nobody knows everything about me. Even you, reading this book, even you don’t know everything.

  “The thing I don’t understand,” said Kate, as Jonathan came back, “is, if your mum was in the police and Jonathan’s a waiter, then – no offence – but how do you earn enough money to pay the rent? I mean, everything’s expensive in London, isn’t it?”

  “We get other money,” I explained. “We get money from the police, from Mum’s pension. And Jonathan gets some from social services, cause he’s a foster dad. And anyway, even with the extra money, we don’t have enough. There’s loads of stuff Jonathan can’t afford, like proper birthday presents.”

  “You don’t get proper birthday presents?” said Kate.

  “They do,” said Jonathan. He looked even more embarrassed than before.

  We did get proper birthday presents last year, because Jonathan spent some of Mum’s savings on them. But that money’s gone now.

  Davy’s birthday isn’t until September, but he’s already excited about it. He wants a bike.