Dear Scarlett (4 page)

“Diamonds. Did he say diamonds?” asks Ellie.

“Yes,” I say. “He did. But it was only a rumour, remember – they can't possibly exist.”

“
Did
you know all that about your dad?”

I stare at the underneath of Ellie's bunk. “No, and I don't think he was supposed to tell us.”

“Probably not,” says Ellie. “But it's not your fault, you didn't really lie to him, did you? I mean, he just walked into it.”

“Yes,” I say, not really listening. I'm thinking about Dad. So he wasn't in prison, he was off on highly secret missions. Prison was just a cover
when he was really clambering in through embassy windows to “liberate” documents. He wasn't actually a burglar.

And he didn't steal jewels, he was paid in them.

So he was honest.

Yeah! My dad was honest.

He wasn't a thief, he was a hero – sort of.

He should be celebrated, not swept under the carpet.

I wind up the policeman torch and point it at the underside of Ellie's mattress.

Keep looking up, Scarlett, keep up the gym, and don't trust just ANYONE
.

He was a good man, my dad.

I shine the torch across the room at the little disco ball that hangs in my window. It twists in the breeze and shards of light sparkle on the walls.

I roll over and stick a sherbet raspberry in my mouth. It tastes disgusting with toothpaste but still does the fizzing thing on my tongue. I turn it over and over until a small hole becomes a big hole and I have to crunch down on it, smashing the shell into sticky shards that glue to my teeth.

I should really have enjoyed that, but I didn't because I've jumped to the wrong conclusion. I
thought that because Dad was a thief, coming from a long line of thieves, he wanted me to be one too. But he can't possibly have done.

Stupid me.

Stupid, stupid, stupid me.

Now what?

The box. It must be about something else, not thieving, but finding. Do I just need to find where the key fits? Is it as simple as that?

I feel the key round my neck. A key is an honest way of getting into things.

I remember the moment when I broke into the shop and squirm.

I got it completely wrong.

Everyone's got it completely wrong. All those people, and I'm thinking particularly of Mrs Gayton, who's always said that Dad was a thief, are wrong too.

But I can't tell them the truth, because of the Official Secrets thingy, and anyway, it's bound to come back to Mum, and Uncle Derek shouldn't have told us anyway, because he's signed it.

Rats.

I swing the torch across the ceiling; the light catches Ellie's hand dangling from the top bunk.

She knows the truth, she knows, and her dad knows that my dad was a good man. Although she's fantastically annoying with all her jangly little machines and their pingy music, she's always been truthful. Always been kind. Perhaps I can try to do the same.

Maybe, from now on, I can try to be honest, and do what Dad really wanted. I can help other people, and use the picklocks in a positive way.

If I've got the courage.

“You didn’t. That’s awful.” Ellie’s baby-blue eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them.

I nod my head and feel sick again. Saying it out loud is the worst thing, that’s probably why it’s taken me three days to confess.

“I thought you were being weird because of your dad, not because you’ve been…” She can’t actually say
stealing
. “But, Scarlett, that’s criminal.”

“I know,” I say, washing my hands for the millionth time.

“But whatever possessed you? You complete … idiot!”

“I know.” I try to find a bit of towel to dry my hands that isn’t completely disgusting.

Clangalangalangalangalang
.

The end of dinner. Time to come out from our hiding place in the toilets. We walk into class.

“Whatever happens, they’ll send you to prison.”

“What?”

“Yes – ten is the age of criminal responsibility, once you’re ten, you can be locked up.”

“Really?”

“There’s this thing,” says Ellie, “called the boot.”

“The boot?” I ask.

“Yes, they put your foot in this metal boot, fill it with sawdust and pour water on it.”

The Coven close in on our left.

“In the end, your foot falls off and you die of blood poisoning,” says Ellie.

“In prison, now?”

“No – in the fifteenth century, probably.”

“Right, class, sit quietly now.” No one pays any attention to Mrs Gayton, who sits with a
sucked-lemon
expression on her face at the front of the room.

When she pinches in her cheeks, all the hairs on her chin stick up and she looks more like a
potato than a teacher.

I don’t think she’s really a Mrs Gayton, I think she’s really a Mr. There isn’t an ounce of girliness in her. Perhaps she’s really a potato.

I stare at her chin. There are more hairs than ever.

She’s been teaching since the last century; or not teaching. I’ve certainly never learned anything.

The gnarled fingers of her left hand drum on the desk. With her right, she holds a biro and squeezes the life out of it.

I wonder if she’s ever stolen anything. She’s certainly confiscated loads of things; none of them ever come back. Is that stealing? They haven’t locked her up, yet.

Ellie, of course, sits down right at the front and gazes up at Mrs Gayton’s potato face. I find a chair near the back, with the boys. Sam Lewis budges up so that I can sit next to him. The Coven settle in right behind Ellie and snigger. I can see her stiffen, but she won’t say anything back to them, she never does, and Mrs Gayton says bullying doesn’t exist.

That’s because Mrs Gayton models herself on teachers from Mars. She certainly doesn’t model herself on teachers from Earth. I’m sure teachers
are supposed to listen to children and teach by example.

I’d sit at the front with Ellie, but I never know the answers to anything, so I feel safer here with the boys. I bet most of them have stolen something. In fact, I’m sure Sam Lewis got caught pinching crisps from the Grocery Basket last year and he’s not in prison. He looks rather happy.

I stare out of the window. If Ellie’s wrong and I don’t go to prison, I need to do the right thing. Even if Ellie’s right, and I do go to prison, I need to do the right thing. I need to use Dad’s picklocks to make the world a better place.

The light catches raindrops on the window.

Diamonds.

I stroke the little key around my neck, it looks like it would open a musical instrument case or a briefcase.

We haven’t got any musical instruments at home.

Or any briefcases.

And
Gone with the Wind
? What’s that supposed to tell me?

I will stop thinking about the diamonds as they almost certainly don’t exist and if they ever did, they’re at the bottom of the North Sea with Dad.

After about a century, everyone goes kind of quiet. Mrs Gayton’s practically sucked her lips inside her head and has to do a gurn before she can even speak.

“Ecology, Golden Class, what does it mean?”

Ellie’s hand shoots up. “Miss, Miss.”

No one else even moves. Mrs Gayton’s lip curls as she runs her gaze over the whole class.

Ellie’s going to pop in a minute and the Coven are in stitches watching her. So is everyone else. The boys sitting next to me, who never normally notice anything, start to giggle.

Eventually, without looking at her, Mrs Gayton sighs. “Ellie, give us your pearls of wisdom.”

“Ecology, miss, is the relationship between a creature or plant and its environment.”

Mrs Gayton nods. “Almost. It’s the
study
of the relationship between the living organism and its environment.”

Melissa, top witch, wrinkles up her nose and sticks it in the air, pointing her fingers at Ellie’s back.

“Now, Golden Class,
if
you’re capable of it, I want you to think about the creatures you saw in the excellent zoo on Monday, and the environments
they come from. What, for example, makes a flamingo pink?”

I think of the penguins in their sad concrete home, “SEALIFE CENTRE” written over the doorway into their hut in cracked blue lettering painted on to the brown pebble-dash. Ellie called it a prison. Could I live the rest of my life in somewhere like that?

I’d have to sleep on a concrete bench that smelled of fish.

I imagine Mrs Gayton throwing me sardines from a bucket.

I hate sardines.

What were the zoo keepers thinking when they put them in there? I can’t believe it’s very like the Arctic, or is it the Antarctic? I start to think myself into the cold. I’m imagining the ice and snow of a huge white empty freezing space, and I’m whizzing over the top of it, like one of those
helicopter-mounted
wildlife cameras, skimming over the icebergs till I find happy penguins plunging off the ice floes into the clear turquoise waters.

I draw the three penguins diving into the iceberg water.

They’re wearing diamond necklaces.

And then I rub them out.

Mrs Gayton views drawing as a weakness, it’s a sign of thought, and Mrs Gayton doesn’t like thought.

Also, the diamonds are just a rumour.

“Ellie!”

I look up. Ellie’s twitching around in the front of the class, trying to reach down her back. “I’m sorry, miss, but…”

The Coven’s hooting wildly, and Mrs Gayton’s sucked her cheeks back in, glaring at Ellie. I can’t see what’s happening, but something’s really wrong.

Mrs Gayton stands, boiling with fury. “Ellie! Out – recover yourself.” She stomps to the door and opens it. “Out! Now!”

Ellie stumbles to the door, both her hands stuck down the back of her neck, slapping at her sweatshirt. Her head’s twisted round as far as it will go, but judging by the expression on her face, she still can’t see what’s driving her mad. It does look ridiculous, and behind her the whole class explodes with laughter.

“Earwigs,” says Ellie.

“Earwigs?”

“Yes – when I got to the toilets I took my top off and a load of earwigs fell out.”

“Yuk,” I say, pulling our front door closed.

“Exactly, yuk.” Ellie holds the gate open for me and we set off for town across the fields. It’s stopped raining now, but the hedgerows drip, and the path’s got thin mud on it.

“So that’s what Melissa was doing – putting earwigs down your back.” With every step I feel crosser on Ellie’s behalf. I also feel cross with myself
for keeping silent. I knew there was something wrong, but I just sat there watching. “You should tell Mrs Gayton, or Mrs Mason,” I say. “I should tell Mrs Mason.”

Ellie turns her big blue glasses on me. “No – please don’t, I don’t want to go there.”

“But, Ellie? It’s wrong.”

Ellie shakes her head. “It’s silly, they’ll grow out of it. They’ll stop soon.”

I climb over the stile. Ellie follows.

“That’s your dad talking, but I bet
he
wouldn’t just let it happen to
him
.”

She turns to face me; I can see the tears bursting up behind her eyes. “Scarlett, if you tell anyone, anyone at all, I’ll never be your friend again.”

I stare at her. For a moment, I’m speechless. Never be
my
friend. I thought
I
was the one befriending
her
. And then I think of it from her point of view. “OK, I won’t, I promise.”

“Good. Now, let’s take those things back to the shop.”

Ellie’s convinced that if I give all the stuff back, I’ll stop feeling ill. I suggested posting it, or stuffing it through the letter box after closing, but she
stared at me through her glasses until I agreed. We went home on the school bus and now I’ve got it all jammed inside my coat, except for the sherbet raspberries; there’s only one left and we’ve decided I won’t go to prison for that.

The thing is, it’s not that easy to return things to a shop without being spotted.

Especially when the shop turns out to be completely empty, and the woman behind the counter glares at you like you might be about to steal something.

“Can I help you?” The woman stares at us over her glasses. She looks like a close relative of Mrs Gayton’s. She probably is and probably hates me already.

Ellie freezes. I’m desperate to freeze but have a brilliant idea and fumble for my pocket money.

I look for the tallest jar. “Some fruit pips, please?”

“A hundred grams?” The woman checks me over her glasses, again, and turns to the shelves behind her. It only takes her a second to stand on a stool to get the fruit pips and she’s pouring them out on to the scales.

“Blackjacks?” I say, looking for the lowest sweets.

“How many?” She whips round and replaces one
jar while getting the next.

“Ten?” I say.

“I only sell them in sixes.”

“OK – twelve then.”

She starts counting them out.

I haven’t been able to put anything back, although the bubblegums are now in my hand, waiting to be dropped into their basket.

“Anything else?”

My eyes race over the shelves. Some of the jars look heavier than others, they might be harder to move. “Blue bubble chews? Six, please?”

The woman turns round, hands on her hips. “Those come in fours.” She jabs a finger at the jar. “See?”

“Eight, then, please.”

The woman takes out eight sweets. But she’s facing me the whole time.

Ellie drops two pounds into my hand. “Gobstoppers?” she says, pointing to a box under the counter.

“Three small gobstoppers?”

“I only sell them in fives.”

The woman gets down on her hands and knees to pull the box out of the drawer.

It gives me time to dump the bubblegums.

We spend almost our entire pocket money in her shop. We end up with gobstoppers, fruit pips, blue bubble chews, flying saucers and humbugs. I hate humbugs, but they were the best because they were all stuck together in the jar and it took the woman ages to separate them. She had to get a knife from the back room.

We step back on to the pavement, our pockets full of legal sweets. Ellie’s right, I do feel better, not only have I put everything, nearly everything, back, but I’ve spent more money than I ate.

Ellie sticks a gobstopper in her mouth. “Where did you put the Lego torch?”

“In the Barbie display,” I say.

Ellie laughs and nearly chokes.

We swing out of the alley, carefree and loaded down with sugar. I’ve replaced the sweets, paid back the shop, and best of all, even if I can’t tell anyone, I know my dad wasn’t really a burglar, he was really a hero. Sort of. He did good things, and I’ve started to do good things too, now.

And good things make you feel good.

That must be why Dad changed from being a
burglar to being a spy.

He was more like Ellie’s dad than someone that Ellie’s dad would lock up.

We would just walk on the road, but we have to climb up on to the high pavement to get past the mayoress’s car. I can tell it’s hers because it’s got a tiny flag on the front.

“What a funny place to park,” says Ellie, stopping to examine the tax disc. “And it’s out of date.”

I stop to examine the car too. There’s no one in it, just a fur coat, a grey jacket, and thrown carelessly on to the dashboard, a tube of red lipstick. There’s a leaflet for the zoo lying on the seat.

It’s got a picture of the penguins on it. They look happy, but then the photograph doesn’t show their tiny concrete pool.

“What do you think about the penguins?”

“In the zoo?”

“I mean – it’s wrong, yes? Keeping them like that?”

“Yes – it’s definitely not right. It’s cruel, but there’s nothing we can do about it. I mean, I suppose we could give our pocket money to the zoo and write to the World Wildlife Fund or something.”

I suck on a mint humbug. Disgusting. “We could
do something bigger than that, something really positive. I’m sure there’s a way to change things for the penguins.”

Ellie pops a bubblegum in her mouth.

“S’pose so. What’ve you got in mind?”