Paul scrambles up the river bank. The cottage pie will have to wait.
Chapter Thirty
Six months later
The charity shops of New Heath are filled with old ‘Find Max’ T-shirts. Passers-by still sometimes recognise her in the street; she’s a local celebrity. The sight of her cheers them up. ‘A good news story for once!’ they shout; or ‘Hope your life’s back to normal now, love.’ Max smiles shyly and says, ‘Yes thanks.’ But she’s not really telling the truth. Her life is not back to normal. Normal was changing schools every six months, switching off in class and having no friends. Why would she want to go back to that? Since Lori found her, Max can’t help but notice that no one’s life has gone back to normal.
Julie
… is in prison awaiting trial, along with Karl. Julie still doesn’t really understand what actually happened on that last day. Suddenly everything went very wrong. When she went upstairs to check what was going on, she found the bedroom door unlocked and some random other girl standing next to Max. It was one of the few occasions in her life when words completely failed Julie. She remembers Karl panicked. ‘There’s two of them! Oh my God, they’re multiplying!’ And then a loud crash and police officers were everywhere.
Julie Pickering is her full name but the newspapers just call her ‘Evil Julie’. Privately, Max thinks ‘evil’ is a bit much. Julie isn’t evil. She’s greedy and not very clever, and that’s just a really bad combination.
Max thought at first that a prison sentence was a bit tough on Karl as none of it had been his idea. But Lori reminded her that in the end he was the one who wanted to ‘get rid’ of Max. When she remembers that Max feels less sorry for him.
Lori
… got the £50,000 reward for finding Max. But Lori said she was only able to do it because of Max’s coded message in the letter, so she gave half to Max. Despite the money, Lori still hasn’t changed her bedroom into the kind of slick detective office she’s always dreamed of. She reckons she’ll stick with the unicorns and rainbows a little longer. She has, though, bought a top-of-the-range leather executive swivel chair from Paperclips Office Supplies. She likes to spin around in it while thinking her detective thoughts.
Detective Superintendent Alison Burrows
… presented both Lori and Max with medals for courage at a special awards ceremony. She shook their hands and said that with their brains and ingenuity they would make brilliant detectives one day. Max smiled politely and said, ‘Thanks, but Lori’s already a brilliant detective and I’m actually going to be a zoologist.’
Max’s dad
… doesn’t live with Max any more. She still sees him but, after her abduction, he realised that it was best for everyone if he moved out until he finally beat his gambling problem. He has a job and he’s doing OK. Sometimes, when he visits Max, he cries a bit and says he’s sorry, and she holds his hand and tells him it’s OK. He got her snake charm back.
Max’s mum
… and Max have moved to a new flat that doesn’t even slightly smell of fried chicken. She has managed to cut down on her medication and no longer sleeps for most of the day. She’s started studying Italian and needlework at night school and volunteers at a charity shop which has turned out to be an endless source of crazy hats for Lori’s nan.
Lori’s nan
… has realised that she is a born campaigner. After happily disbanding the Find Max Campaign, she has set up a national missing pet website – lassiecomehome.com – with her friend Mad Marjorie and her neighbor, Mrs Cromarty. The logo is a dog dressed as Sherlock Holmes.
Christina Aisley
… visited the Great Wall of China with her family last month. Her brother Kieron told Max that it was definitely the best wall he’d ever travelled halfway across the world to see. Max thinks he’d still have preferred Disneyland. Christina loved the wall so much she even sent a postcard to Josh Ryman telling him that she forgave him for stealing all her collection money.
Josh Ryman
… goes to a different school now where he’s tried to turn over a new leaf. He volunteers at the local animal shelter and has taken up the clarinet. Max sees him sometimes walking round New Heath looking a bit lost. His curls have all been shaved off. He pretends he doesn’t know her.
Miss Casey
… finally got a new photocopying card and is always in class on time now. She still calls Max, Maxine.
Mr Cheetham
… is trying to give up smoking. He’s quite grumpy a lot of the time, but the bike sheds have never been so clean.
Mr Meacham
… is a little disappointed that sales of Dandelion and Burdock have come to a halt once more. Apart from him, Max was the only person in New Heath who ever drank it and she never wants to touch a drop in her life again. Peggoty has yet to catch a mouse.
Paul
… caught a lovely big perch last week and got his photo in Angling News.
Max
… is the new Hamster Monitor. She’s working hard with Cuddles to help him overcome some of his anger issues. He’s coming along well.
It’s a sort of tradition now that Max and her mum go to Lori’s house every Sunday to have a proper roast dinner. Lori’s nan will never reveal the secret of her amazingly fluffy Yorkshire pudding, but she has shown Max how to make sensational jam roly-poly. After lunch they normally go out for a walk, but today the rain hammers on the window so Nan suggests that they all stay in and settle down with a pot of tea and a DVD.
‘What do you fancy?’ she says. ‘We’ve got everything. Well, that’s not true. We’ve got everything to do with detectives and private eyes and that kind of caper; we’ve got precious little of anything else. Just my Zumba workout DVD.’
Lori and Max’s mum are doing the washing-up. Max can hear her mum out in the kitchen trying to teach Lori useful Italian phrases.
‘Let’s watch a detective one, keep Lori happy,’ Max says.
‘Have a look through and choose whatever you fancy. Whatever it is, Lori will love it.’
‘I’ve never seen any of The Clandestinos,’ Max says looking through the pile.
‘Who’s that, love?’ asks Nan.
‘The Clandestinos.’
‘I’ve never heard of them. What series are they in? I get them all mixed up.’
‘No, that’s the name of the series. They made loads – back in the Eighties wasn’t it? You must have heard of them, they’re Lori’s favourites. I thought you watched them all the time. All she ever goes on about is Jim and Sylvie Clandestino – her heroes.’
Nan looks at Max with a strange expression.
‘What is it?’ says Max.
‘Jim and Sylvie, did you say?’
‘Yeah – Jim and Sylvie Clandestino – the husband and wife crime fighters.’
Nan smiles sadly. ‘They were husband and wife alright.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sylvie was the name of my daughter. She married someone called Jim. They weren’t on telly and they weren’t detectives, they were just Lori’s mum and dad. They died back when she was a baby.’
‘But…’ Max starts to say as her mum and Lori walk back into the room.
‘What’s up?’ says Lori.
‘Nothing, sweetheart,’ says Nan.
Max smiles at Lori Mason – secret detective, orphan and her best friend. ‘I was just saying – shall we have a game of Cluedo?’
The End
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Lucy Luck for agreeing to venture with me into the world of children’s literature.
Thanks to Rebecca, Penny and Megan at Firefly for their belief, support and massive lack of nonsense.
Thanks to the Royal Literary Fund for help paying the bills when I was writing this.
Thanks to my family and friends for nothing but encouragement in the face of endless whining and faffing about.
Thanks most of all to Peter, Edie and Dory for seeing it all with me.
&nbs
p; First published in 2019
by Firefly Press
25 Gabalfa Road, Llandaff North, Cardiff, CF14 2JJ
www.fireflypress.co.uk
Copyright © Catherine O’Flynn 2019
The author asserts her moral right to be identified as author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-913102-03-6
This book has been published with the support of the Welsh Books Council.
Typeset by Elaine Sharples
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A
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