An Island of Our Own

by Sally Nicholls

  We were back in Shirley and Derek’s kitchen. There was a pot of tea, and ginger biscuits.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “The other photograph worked. The one with the railway siding. We took the metal detector to the place where the photograph was taken, and the treasure was right there! So why didn’t it work this time?”

  I expected Derek and Shirley to say something reassuring, like “Oh well, you did your best.” But instead, they exchanged a glance.

  “I wonder…” said Shirley, and then she stopped.

  “You wonder what?” said Kate.

  “Oh…” Shirley stood up, and began gathering together the empty mugs. “Nothing really. Just…”

  “Just what?” I said.

  “Oh…” Shirley shook her head. “I’m just thinking out loud, that’s all. Don’t mind me.”

  “Thinking out loud about what?” I said. “What’s nothing? Is it something about Auntie Irene? Do you know where she hid the treasure?”

  But Shirley only smiled and said, “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. More tea?”

  SUPPER

  There were ninety-three people who lived on Derek and Shirley’s island. They all knew one another, and sixty-four of them turned up to the birthday dinner in the youth-hostel dining hall. Sixty-four people and us.

  They were all different. Some of them were farmers. Some of them worked in the shop and the youth hostel. Some of them had lots of weird jobs all strung together, like Gran had said Derek and Shirley used to, like taxi-driver-and-barman-on-Saturdays-and-postman-and-binman. Some of them were fishermen. And some of them had ordinary jobs like designing websites, only they did it on an island instead of in an office. There was a primary school with six kids in it, which sounded like something out of a picture book. The secondary-school kids went to school on Westray, by boat. Imagine going to school by boat!

  “I want to live here!” said Davy, waving his cracker around.

  The youth hostel was little, but full of people. There was a hall with tables full of food. There were pictures on the wall of old-fashioned islanders standing beside ploughs pulled by cows, and a mobile shop pulled by horses, and rows of schoolchildren in old-fashioned clothes. There was a bar in the corner which was the pub. Everyone was very friendly and interested in us and what we thought about Orkney. Even Davy forgot to be shy and started telling them about Sebastian, and his school in London, and the ferry with the mouth like a shark.

  At first, I just thought everyone was being friendly. I mean, Derek and Shirley had been coming anyway, hadn’t they? But as the evening went on, I began to wonder if something else was going on too. When I went to the loo, I caught Shirley standing in the doorway, a plate of meringues forgotten under one arm, talking away to one of the farmers.

  “Yes, about then. Do you remember? White-haired woman, very determined. Stayed with me. Yes…”

  I stopped.

  Shirley glanced up and saw me looking at her. “Hello, Holly!” she said. “You people doing all right, are you?”

  “Fine, thanks,” I said. Shirley and the farmer were looking at me with polite expectancy, so I had to carry on walking.

  But later, when I was helping take the plates back to the kitchen, I passed Derek talking to a couple of women.

  “Yes, I thought that’s what happened. They’ve come all the way from London, you see, so anything you can remember…”

  After the food, they cleared the tables away to one side of the room. Three of the islanders brought out a guitar and an accordion and a fiddle, and started playing dance music. The dances were a very energetic sort of country dance – lots of swinging people around, and galloping up and down the room. It was hot and exhausting, but surprisingly good fun.

  I went to find Kate, who was standing by the door, watching the musicians. “I think Derek and Shirley are up to something,” I said.

  “So do I,” said Kate. “Shirley was having a dead intense conversation with that old lady over there. I think it’s about your Auntie Irene.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Do you think she was friendly with Derek and Shirley too, like Grandad was?”

  The music started up. A man with a microphone shouted, “All right, people, find your partners!”

  Davy ran up to me and yelled, “Dancing! We need to dance!” and started tugging on my hand.

  “We should dance,” Kate agreed. “Shall we?”

  “Are you going to dance with Jonathan?” I asked.

  She looked a bit embarrassed. “Does he dance?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “But I bet he would if you asked him.”

  “Holly!” said Davy. “Come on! They’re going to start!”

  I danced two dances with Davy, and one with Kate, and one with Derek, and one with a bloke called Conrad with white hair and a pointy beard like a faun. Then I stopped for a rest, and I saw Jonathan dancing with Kate. At first he looked very serious and concentrate-y, like he was worried he was going to do it wrong. But then the dance meant he had to spin her around, and he did, and she was laughing, and he was laughing too.

  And then I realized I hadn’t seen Jonathan laugh like that in ages. I’d got so used to him looking awkward and worried and embarrassed and sad, I’d sort of forgotten that a long time ago, he used to be funny and happy and silly. I remembered Jonathan who used to laugh and laugh at his favourite TV programmes, who dressed up as a Jedi for the library World Book Day when he was in sixth form and took it all dead seriously, staying in costume all day and challenging the year sevens to lightsabre fights. I was in primary school then, but the school posted videos to YouTube, so I knew what happened.

  Watching Jonathan laughing with Kate, and then them both sticking on the dance floor for the next song, even though he didn’t have to, like he actually wanted to… it made me ashamed. I know it’s not really my job to look after Jonathan, but it is a bit, because looking after your family is part of what it means to be a grown-up, and I am a sort of almost-grown-up. And if that is my job, then I haven’t been doing it well, if a happy Jonathan is someone I can barely even remember exists.

  TREASURE

  And then it was time to go.

  “There’s a boat at half past seven,” said Jonathan, before we went to bed. “We should get that one. We’re getting the sleeper train from Aberdeen – I don’t want to miss it.”

  But Derek shook his head. “No, you shouldn’t,” he said. “There’s something you need to do here first.”

  “But…” said Jonathan. “We can’t. We need to get back to London. We’ve got a train booked and everything.”

  “Conrad’s taking a boatload of sheep to Orkney mainland,” said Derek. Conrad was the man I’d danced with last night. And the “mainland” meant the biggest Orkney island, the one we’d camped on that first night. “He’ll give you a lift. You’ll be in Aberdeen in time for the sleeper.”

  “But—?” said Jonathan. “I don’t understand. What’s all this about?”

  But Derek wouldn’t say. “You’ll see,” he said.

  Kate and I looked at each other. There was this little excited fairy creature dancing about inside my chest. I knew it, I thought. I did!

  Derek and Shirley woke us up early for breakfast. It was porridge with salt in it, which tasted nicer than it sounds, but still kind of weird.

  “Where are we going?” said Kate.

  “I’ll tell you in the car,” said Derek.

  Derek’s car was a rusty old jeep. Not the expensive sort, but the sort that has seats and windows and battered metal frame and not much else. It bounced about on the bumps in the road, making Davy giggle. Kate sat in the front, and Jonathan, Davy and I piled into the back.

  “The thing is,” said Derek, as we drove out of the farmyard. It was just beginning to get light. The sky was pale peach and yellow around the horizon, and a cl
ear, light, aching blue and white over the sea.

  “Thing is,” he said. “I expect you’ve been wondering why your auntie took her briefcase all the way up to Orkney to hide. It’s not the easiest of places to get to, as you know, and she’d presumably want to pick it up again sometime, after all.”

  “I did wonder,” said Jonathan. “It’s not like she had a house here, or anything.”

  “No,” said Derek. “But she had Shirley and me. We go back years, your grandad and I – we were at school together, you know – and Irene and I go back nearly as far. I always liked your Auntie Irene. Smart as they come – and bloody-minded with it.”

  “Are you saying you and Auntie Irene were friends?” I leant forward. “Did she used to come and visit you here?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” said Derek. “She used to come and lecture every year at the university at Inverness – just for a couple of days, you know, and afterwards she’d come and see us. She’d stay on the farm, when we still had the farm, and help with the animals. We used to have a little dinghy that she used to take out and sail. Just her, never Evan or Jo. She said she liked the time alone, to think, and look at the world from a distance. We were always happy to have her. She was one of the most interesting people I ever met.”

  “She was, wasn’t she?” said Jonathan, nodding away.

  “So,” said Derek. “About a year ago, she called and asked us if she could come and stay. Completely out of the blue – she’d stopped the lecturing by then. And when she got here, she was obviously upset. She kept talking a lot of nonsense about Evan and Jo – things I wouldn’t care to repeat. She didn’t seem herself at all.”

  “Jo thought she might have had a stroke no one knew about,” Jonathan said. “The hospital thought so too.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” said Derek. “But, anyway, she didn’t seem exactly ill last year. Just… agitated. She kept disappearing off on her own, and going for walks around the island.”

  “She was looking for somewhere to hide the briefcase!” I said, excitedly. “She did hide it here! Didn’t she?”

  “I’m almost sure she did,” said Derek.

  “But,” said Kate, “we went to the place in the photograph. There wasn’t anything there.”

  “I know,” said Derek. “But I was thinking. That last year… she was awfully muddled in her head. And she was always taking photographs – she loved photography. What if she just put the wrong picture into the book? I can’t quite picture her as the sort of storybook aunt who wants you to crack a code before she lets you inherit her money. No, I think she just meant the pictures as a visual reminder for herself. So what if the briefcase was hidden on a beach that looked a bit like that one, somewhere not too far from here?”

  “Yeah!” I said. “Oh, Derek, you hero! Let’s go and look at them all!”

  “I don’t think we need to,” said Kate. “I think Derek knows where it is.”

  “Not exactly,” said Derek. “Come and listen to this.” He turned the jeep off onto a bumpy dirt track that led through the fields and into a farmyard.

  A man in an old flannel shirt came out of the barn as we drove in, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Now then,” he said. He had a dog with him, a shaggy black-and-white sheepdog collie, like something out of a picture book. “Yes, you can stroke her if you want. Rub her under the neck – she likes that. What? Oh, Jessie. Her name’s Jessie. And I’m Liam. And you’re Davy, aren’t you? Ah, you see, I know all about you.”

  “People around here knew your aunt,” said Derek. “Not well, but… I asked if any of them remembered seeing her when she came last year. I hope you don’t mind, Holly, but I showed them that photograph of yours. She must have been going to a beach that looked a bit like that one, so I thought I’d ask…”

  “I remember your Auntie Irene,” said Liam. “She spent a whole morning out on the beach down from the house, December last year. Terrible cold day it was – I was out too, fixing a hole in one of my boundary walls. I don’t think she saw me, but I saw her, digging away. I couldn’t work out what she was doing. I was worried, because I thought she’d leave a big hole on the beach, and it might be dangerous. But when I went to have a look, she’d filled it all in, and there was nothing there but sand.”

  “That’s it!” I said. I gave a little bounce of excitement. “Thank you! We need to go there right now!”

  “Not so fast,” said Derek.

  “No,” said Liam. “Because, you see, it sat there safe as houses until a couple of weeks ago, when a man came up from England looking for it. He said he was your Auntie Irene’s husband. He had a photograph of a beach, and some pages that looked like they’d been ripped from a diary. I don’t know what that was about.”

  “That was Uncle Evan!” I said. “He came up here and didn’t tell us! What did you do? Did you give him the briefcase?”

  “The briefcase wasn’t mine to give,” said Liam. “But it’s a free country. We have a right to roam here – you can’t stop someone going for a walk on the shore. So, yeah, I showed him where her beach was. He didn’t stay long. But when he went, he took the briefcase with him.”

  WHAT JONATHAN PROMISED

  “Uncle Evan!” I said, on the boat back to Orkney mainland. “Uncle Evan! I’m going to kill him! I’m going to go round his house and blow him up! And then burgle our briefcase! And then shop him to the police!”

  “No,” said Jonathan.

  “Yes!” I said. “That’s our jewellery! It belongs to us! We can’t let him have it!”

  “We’re not going to let him have it,” said Jonathan. There was a curious intensity to his voice that I’d never heard before. Jonathan’s usually so quiet and vague. But not now. It was like he’d been blurry before and now he’d come into focus. “We’re not going to burgle his house. And we’re not going to call the police. But Auntie Irene gave that jewellery to us. And we’re going to get it back. I promise.”

  I glanced sideways at Kate and saw something in her face that made me wish I hadn’t. Something in the way she looked at Jonathan. It wasn’t quite pride, and it wasn’t quite affection, and it wasn’t quite admiration. I don’t really know how someone looks at someone they’re in love with, except in films. But it made me feel ashamed to be watching, like I was spying on something private. I looked quickly away, and hoped she hadn’t seen me stare.

  A FUNNY LITTLE BASIN YOU CAN USE TO WASH YOUR FACE IN

  And then we had to go home.

  Kate drove us off the ferry and to the train station in Aberdeen. We said goodbye on the station platform.

  “Let me know what happens,” she said. “If the jewellery isn’t in there and you need to get to Polynesia, call me. We’ll work something out.”

  “We could hijack a pirate ship!” said Davy, and Kate grinned.

  “We absolutely could,” she said, and she gave him a hug.

  “Are we ever going to see you again?” I said.

  “Are you kidding?” she said. “Of course you are! Holly, my mum and dad live in Stoke Newington. That’s practically next door to you guys. I’ll be home for the summer holidays in a couple of days – I’ll see you then.”

  “Really?” I said and she laughed.

  “Really. Now, shoo. Go and find your cabin. I want to say goodbye to your brother. In private.”

  We didn’t let them be private, though. We ran down the corridor to where they couldn’t see us and pressed our faces up against the window. I thought maybe they were going to snog, but they didn’t. She held his hands, though – both hands – and talked to him like what she was saying was which-wire-do-you-cut-to-defuse-the-bomb important. When she stopped talking, they hugged for ages, like couples do on telly when they’ve just survived something terrible, like the end of the world. That’s what their hug was like. But then the guards started walking down the train shutting the doors,
so Jonathan had to come on board.

  “Is she your girlfriend now?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “Shut up.”

  “She’s nice,” I said. “We like her. If you wanted to be her boyfriend, we’d totally approve.”

  “Shut up now,” said Jonathan. But he was grinning.

  I ought to have been sad on the way home, because we hadn’t found the treasure. But I felt weirdly… well, not exactly happy. Well, maybe happy. Content. And then, I’d never been on a sleeper train before, and it was exactly as cool as it sounds. Jonathan and Davy had a cabin, and I had a cabin that I shared with a Japanese lady whose name was Momoko, and had never been to Britain before. She’d been here for two weeks and so far she’d been to Edinburgh, and Skye, and London, and Oxford, and Stonehenge, and York Minster and Beatrix Potter’s house in the Lake District. She was going home the next day, and you could tell she was sad about it. I thought how wonderful it was that she’d wanted to go to Britain, so she’d just got on a plane and done it, and how when I was grown-up I’d do that too, only I wouldn’t go to Edinburgh and Oxford, I’d go to India, and Africa, and Nepal, and America, and that little island in Polynesia that Auntie Irene had loved so much that she’d buried a part of Jo’s inheritance there. And I wouldn’t go on a plane, because of the environment. I’d build a yacht and sail there.

  The train was just how I’d imagined it would be. I didn’t have my own bathroom, but I had a bunk bed, and a blanket, and a nice gentleman on the platform asked if we wanted tea or coffee in the morning. There was a first-class lounge, with a notice that said that non-first-class people could sit in it if it wasn’t too busy, which it wasn’t, so we went and played Uno on one of the tables, and pretended we were characters in Murder on the Orient Express. Well, I did. Davy just pretended to murder everyone in the carriage.

  Afterwards, back in my cabin, I lay on my stomach and watched the Scottish darkness swishing by through the window, and thought about how big and exciting the world is, and how full of adventures, and mystery, and beauty, and how happy and lucky I was to be alive. I am lucky, I thought. And I fell asleep to the clackety-clack, clackety-clack of the train going over the joins in the track, like in one of those films where James Bond is fighting the bad guys on a train roof. Life is an adventure, the train seemed to be saying. Life is an adventure, an adventure, an adventure.