An Island of Our Own

by Sally Nicholls

  And I am an adventurous soul, I thought. And the thought that I could go anywhere, and do anything, and that I had all my life left to do it in made me so happy that I rolled over, closed my eyes, and went straight off to sleep, with Scotland rushing past the window beside me.

  WHAT JO SAID

  “Whatever you do,” I said to Jonathan when we got home, “you can’t do it without me and Davy. You can’t!”

  “No,” said Jonathan. He still had that in-focus look about him. “Whatever we do, we’re doing it together.”

  “What are we doing?” I asked.

  “We’re going to see Jo,” said Jonathan.

  We all went.

  I’d never been to Jo’s house before. It was an old-fashioned terrace like ours, but bigger, with a fancy bay window, and no chip shop on the ground floor. She looked dead surprised to see us.

  “We need to talk to you,” said Jonathan. “It’s important.”

  She took us into her living room. It had a big soft sofa, and a big TV, and lots of kids’ toys all over the floor. Her little boys were building a train track all down the middle of the room, and watching Peppa Pig. Her husband waved at us from the kitchen, then went back to cooking something with rice and real vegetables in it. I did what I always do in houses like this, which is feel super super jealous, and slightly ashamed of our stuck-together-with-Sellotape family, and then ashamed for feeling ashamed of Jonathan, and then just sad that my mum isn’t alive any more.

  I’d been really worried about what Jonathan would say. I thought – knowing Jonathan – that he’d get scared, or embarrassed, or awkward, or shy, and just stutter at her. But he didn’t. He didn’t even sit down on the sofa. He stood there in the living-room doorway and crossed his arms and said: “Jo, your father has our jewellery.”

  “What?” Jo looked startled. “Jonathan, are you sure?”

  “Absolutely,” said Jonathan. And he told Jo what had happened in Orkney, in far fewer words than I would have used.

  Jo sat down on the arm of a chair, and listened. Her face had a sort of closed look on it, tight and worried.

  “And I don’t know why he’d want it,” said Jonathan. “I mean, he’s loaded, isn’t he? He inherited everything Auntie Irene left. So I don’t see why he’d need our jewellery. But he has it. And you need to help us get it back. Otherwise I’m going to call the police, and I have a whole island full of witnesses who say he took it. Well, quite a lot, anyway. I’m serious, Jo.”

  “Of course you are,” said Jo. “And – Jonathan, I’m really sorry. But Dad doesn’t have much money – well, he didn’t. Mum hid all of it in those briefcases. There’s hardly anything in their joint account – Mum had most of it in savings, only we don’t know where, or how much, or anything. I’m sure he wasn’t trying to steal your jewellery. He’ll have been trying to find Mum’s paperwork. If what you say is true, and Mum moved the briefcases that were in Norfolk Island and Inspired Solutions, then that’s an awful lot of paperwork that’s missing, and that means an awful lot of money. And – you know – he has the money you guys found, but it takes money to run a business and keep paying a mortgage. That’ll be what he was trying to do, I’m sure.”

  “Are you?” said Jonathan. “I’m not. I’m going to go and talk to him, and I want you to come with us. And can we go now? I think the sooner the safer, don’t you? I don’t want him to sell the jewellery, or anything like that.”

  Jo sat without speaking. I wondered if she was as unnerved by stern Jonathan as I was. Her face was still tight with worry. But she said quietly, “Of course I’ll come, Jonathan. And of course we can go now. I’ll drive. We’ll go right away.”

  UNCLE EVAN’S HOUSE, AND WHAT WE FOUND THERE

  We went to Uncle Evan’s house. All of us.

  “Davy could stay here, if you wanted,” Jo said, a bit uncertainly.

  “No!” said Davy.

  “In our family,” I said proudly, “we do things together.”

  “Do you?” said Jo. “Good for you.”

  Jo didn’t bother to knock at Uncle Evan’s door. I thought it was a bit odd at the time, but Jonathan said she was probably too angry. She unlocked the door with her own key and marched straight in. “Dad!” she called. “Dad!”

  Uncle Evan came out of the sitting room. He stopped when he saw us all there. “What’s the school trip in aid of?” he said, to Jo.

  “Dad,” said Jo. “I’m sorry about your money. But you’ve got to let them have Mum’s jewels. I expect you just hadn’t got round to telling us you had them – had you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Uncle Evan. “If these—”

  “Listen,” said Jonathan. “Shut up now before you say anything you regret. We know you went to Papa Westray and brought back the briefcase. We know that briefcase had the jewellery in it – at least, we’re almost certain. And we’re sorry you don’t have all the money you were left, but we know how much money was in that briefcase we found in that railway siding, and really, you don’t have much to worry about. I think it would be best for everyone if you gave us the jewellery now, don’t you?”

  “If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head…” Uncle Evan began, but Jo interrupted.

  “Knock it off, Dad,” she said. “This isn’t one of your power games. It’s theft, or fraud, or concealment of property, or something illegal, anyway.”

  “Yeah!” said Davy. “And we’ll call the police on you!”

  “And we’ve got witnesses!” I said. “A whole island full of ’em!”

  “And I don’t care if you are my uncle,” said Jonathan, looking fiercer than I’d ever seen him look in my life. “I’ll see you in jail before I let you hurt my family.”

  Uncle Evan looked partly angry and partly guilty and partly confounded, like a kid caught out in a lie. His face was reddish pink, and there was sweat beading on his forehead.

  “Oh, I’ve got the blasted briefcase,” he said. “But there’s no law against that. I don’t know what’s in it. I haven’t even opened it. I don’t know how.”

  BREAKING AND ENTERING

  Wednesday evening, we took the briefcase to the Maker Space. Everyone was there: Jen and Alex, Peter, Keith and Steve, Jo. Even Sizwe and his mum came. Even Gran came. “I want to see where my Christmas money goes,” she said.

  But really she just wanted to see what was inside the safe, like everyone else.

  Steve opened the safe, while everyone watched and Gran said things like, “Goodness, aren’t you clever? Could you teach me how to get into my flat when I lose my front-door keys?” And then looked really interested when Steve started telling her about the lock-picking classes.

  Inside the safe was the jewellery.

  Auntie Irene’s jewellery was somewhat disappointing. I’d been imagining a heap of gold and jewels, like Smaug’s hoard in The Hobbit – glittery, shiny things, possibly made of diamonds, or emeralds, or rubies. Something a bit like the crown jewels. But instead, the case was full of lots of jewellery boxes: flat boxes, and square boxes, and old-looking leather boxes. And inside the boxes were dull rings and ugly necklaces. They did have jewels in them, but not the enormous stonking great glittering jewels I’d been hoping for.

  “Are these valuable?” I asked Gran. “I thought they’d be… shinier.”

  “I don’t know,” said Gran. She was turning one of the brooches over in her hands. “But nothing Irene ever owned was second-rate.”

  “They’re ugly,” I said, taking the brooch from her.

  She smiled. “Your Auntie Irene wore this brooch when she met President Eisenhower,” she said. “So!”

  Jonathan came over to where we were standing.

  Gran put her arm around him. “Look at my clever grandchildren,” she said. “Look what you did.”

  “Holly did it really,” said Jonathan.
/>   “And me!” said Davy.

  “Well, I’m proud of all three of you,” said Gran. She gave Jonathan a kiss. He looked startled. “But then, I already was, you know.”

  THE VIEW FROM NOW

  Writing a book takes a lot of time. I suppose it’s quicker if writing books is your job, and you do nothing all day except sit in your shed and make stuff up. But if you’re thirteen, and have to go to school, and do homework, and help look after your little brother, it takes ages. I was twelve when we went to Orkney, and thirteen when I started writing this story. I’m nearly fourteen now, and everything is different.

  We took Auntie Irene’s jewellery to a jeweller who is a friend of Alex’s. He bought it for fifty thousand pounds. Jonathan said I could keep a piece for myself, if I wanted. (Neither of the boys wanted any of it.) Most of Auntie Irene’s jewellery was really old-fashioned and fussy, but there was a ring I liked, with a dark red ruby in it.

  “Do you think it was Auntie Irene’s engagement ring?” I asked Jo.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve got that. But I think Dad gave that one to Mum when they were first married. Do you like it?”

  “Yeah.” I said. Then, “Are you still mad at your dad?”

  “Oh, well…” said Jo. She smiled at me. “I think he quite liked that I stood up to him, actually. That’s what he liked in Mum, you know. That she fought back. He spontaneously offered to look after the boys for the weekend the other day, so it looks like I might have to forgive him.”

  Having fifty thousand pounds suddenly drop into our bank account made a big difference to life. So did Jonathan getting promoted to a proper foster-carer allowance, which happened about three months after we came back from Orkney. If I suddenly found myself with fifty thousand pounds, I’d want to spend it all on cool stuff, like Caribbean cruises, and new clothes, and a swimming pool in the back garden, and a real private island all of my own, for holidays. Jonathan put most of it into savings, which at the time I thought was rubbish, but I suppose was quite sensible really. We did buy Davy a bike, though, and a red bike helmet. And I got a new school coat, and a skirt and a sparkly top to wear to parties. And Jonathan got a dishwasher.

  We also paid for Sebastian to have a proper operation. He’s much better now. He still has to have injections, and he will for ages and ages, but he’s his normal rabbit self again. Jonathan says that Davy is not allowed to have any more pets ever again, and if he does, he has to pay for their medical treatments by robbing banks. But I think he’s joking. Probably. Or maybe it’s just because Davy says he wants a tarantula for Christmas.

  We used some of the money to pay for Davy to stay in after-school club until half past five, which means I now get loads of time all to myself to do whatever I want. Which was amazing at first, but then I found I sort of missed having Davy around a bit. So now I look after him every Monday and Friday, and Jonathan pays me babysitting money. And Davy started Cub Scouts, and I started guitar lessons, and Jonathan joined a Dungeons and Dragons group every Monday in a room over a pub.

  We still see a lot of Kate. That summer after we found the treasure, when she came home for the holidays, she spent an awful lot of time at our flat, and she took Jonathan to Late Nights at the Science Museum, and he took her to the Maker Space and she came to the pub afterwards and had lightsabre fights with Alex and Jen. And on the way home, I saw her and Jonathan kissing.

  And all the next year, they rang each other up a lot, and talked on the phone for ages, and giggled and giggled. And we all went over to her mum and dad’s house for dinner on Christmas Eve, and played board games, and her parents treated Jonathan exactly as though raising your little brother and sister was the sort of thing nineteen year olds did all the time, which was what most people at the Maker Space do, but normal grown-ups do hardly ever. And Kate lent me a whole stack of books she thought I’d like – Good Omens, and Jane Eyre, and On the Beach, and The Innocence of Father Brown, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, because she said otherwise they’d just sit in her old bedroom unread. And we went camping in Scotland for a week in the Easter holidays, all three of us and Kate. And then this year, she moved back down to London and got a little room in a shared flat and a job working for a youth theatre, and we saw a lot more of her. I keep asking her to move in with Jonathan properly, but she won’t.

  “Not just yet,” she says. “Don’t I see enough of you already?” Which I suppose is true.

  And somehow, it’s like all the people in our life have noticed that maybe we need a bit more help, now and then. Keith keeps inviting Davy round to play with his kids, who have this mad model railway track all around their garden, which Davy loves. And Peter gave him about six shoe boxes full of Lego Technic that he had in his attic from when he was a kid, which made Davy go bright pink with joy. And Jo started inviting him along every time she took her little boys to the pantomime, or the London Eye, or the zoo. And when Jonathan gave me a clothing allowance, she took me out to spend it, and bought me chocolate gâteau in a café, just me and her. And for my thirteenth-birthday present she took me to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Hyde Park, just me and Sizwe, which was amazing, and I understood nearly all of the words without anyone having to explain them, which I think means I’m practically a grown-up already.

  And everything is mostly just the same as it always was, but somehow everything is different as well. I still feel like we’re climbing a mountain most days. But instead of trying to run up Everest, it’s more like plodding up Helvellyn. Sometimes it’s rainy, but sometimes the sun shines. And we’ve got packed lunches, and friends to keep us company, and occasionally something amazing happens, which makes it all worthwhile.

  And the view’s to die for.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to everyone in the Oxford Hackspace for answering my questions and suggesting interesting things for Holly to Make and Do. Thanks to Dan Taylor at Virgin Trains for going above and beyond the call of duty when answering helpline questions along the lines of “So how could someone get from London to Orkney without paying any money in a way that would be legal, and if it wasn’t legal, how plausible would this illegal method be?” I didn’t use your solution in the end, but your advice made sure the rail journeys in the book don’t break the law and actually work.

  Thanks to Stephen Barber for an incredibly useful afternoon explaining what happens at a review and what social services would and wouldn’t be able to do for Jonathan. Any social-service inadequacies in the book are entirely down to Plot Monkeys.

  I made my first trip to the Orkney Islands with Nicola Bowerman and have been in love with them ever since. Thanks for taking me there. Also thanks to Tom Nicholls, Caro Humphries, Matt Piatkus and Nick Wedd for being so accommodating when asked “Can we go on holiday to Orkney? I’m writing a thing.” Holly would have loved you all. Particular thanks to Tom Nicholls for talking me through how to hack into computers and find the location of buried treasure from photographs, and generally reminding me to leave the house occasionally. On these most useful of skills are great marriages made.

  Much gratitude as ever to book-wranglers, typing-buddies, joy-cheerers and woe-sympathizers on and offline, particularly Susie Day, Pita Harris, Jo Cotterill, Tara Button, Lee Weatherly, Teri Terry and Cas Lester. Also thanks to my editors Gen Herr and Emily Lamm for their good sense and enthusiasm, and my agent Jodie Hodges for understanding the sort of author I want to be and allowing me to be it. And a grateful shout-out to the writers retreat at La Muse, Labastide Esparbairenque, where much editing and cheese-eating was achieved.

  An Island of Our Own owes a great debt to Nevil Shute’s Trustee from the Toolroom, which I read and loved when I was twelve years old, although the finished product bears little resemblance to it. I don’t know what story Shute would have written if his characters had had the internet, but it would have been amazing. And would almost certainly have involved more aeroplanes.

&
nbsp; Papa Westray is a real island, and Makerspaces (or Hackspaces) are a real thing. The people I’ve populated them with are entirely fictional, though.

  Sally Nicholls was born in Stockton, just after midnight, in a thunderstorm. Her father died when she was two, and she and her brother were brought up by her mother. She has always loved reading, and spent most of her childhood trying to make real life work like it did in books.

  After school, she worked in Japan for six months and travelled around Australia and New Zealand, then came back and did a degree in Philosophy and Literature at Warwick. In her third year, realizing with some panic that she now had to earn a living, she enrolled in a master’s in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa. It was here that she wrote her first novel, Ways to Live Forever, which won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2008, and many other awards, both in the UK and abroad. Her subsequent books, Season of Secrets, All Fall Down and Close Your Pretty Eyes have all been published to critical acclaim.

  www.sallynicholls.com

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