Jack would be gone for a whole ten months. He wouldn’t be with us when we went to the fireworks for my birthday in November. He wouldn’t bring me huge sticks of marshmallows like he did every year and tell me the names of all the weird and wonderful flashes in the sky. I could never tell which were real and which he’d made up on the spot.
He’d also miss Christmas. Grandma Sylvie would come round, as she did every year, and complain about her aches and pains, and without Jack, there would be nobody to distract her by suggesting a card game, or giving us all some really complicated puzzles to solve.
I tried not to think about it too much, because it made a painful ball, which I couldn’t swallow, form in my throat.
So as I sat there, looking up at the skylight, I tried to think about everything other than Jack leaving, which was easier said than done. I told myself that I would remember this evening as ‘The Night of the Treasure Chest’ because otherwise it would have to be ‘The Night Before Jack Left’.
I kept replaying the short birthday greetings film that Jack had sent me from Brazil. It was strange seeing him there on the beach, when Mum and I were in the middle of our Christmas shopping. We went to Uncle Michael’s for New Year’s Eve dinner and when I lit my sparkler, I made a couple of important resolutions. The first was that I would finally complete at least one of the stories that were swarming in my head, inspired by Jack’s riddles. The second was that I would persuade Dad to pay for us all to visit Jack.
On the wall calendar that he’d made for me, I kept counting down the days that he’d been away and fortunately, time was passing quite quickly. The new term started and we were set an exciting writing project in English. Otherwise, life carried on as normal. There were no signs that everything was about to change. Even the flashing lights of the 10.15 p.m. to New York still sped reliably past Jack’s skylight night after night. But then, halfway through January, the boy who used to lie watching them was somewhere on the other side of the world, caught in what the lipsticked newsreader on TV said was ‘one of the worst natural disasters in living history’.
Two
It was a Thursday afternoon in the middle of English class. We’d been reading Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking, and Mrs Emmett had set us the best possible assignment – to write our own detective story. My discussions with Jack had given me so many great ideas. I’d even jotted some down in a special book of ‘riddle tales’ which I kept under my bed. I promised myself that one day I would type them up on Mum’s laptop – I just hadn’t found the time to do it yet. Now, after only half an hour, I’d managed to fill more than three pages.
Keira was sitting next to me, twisting one of her braids round and round her finger and biting her tongue in concentration. I glanced at her exercise book and saw that she’d written a short paragraph which had more words crossed out than left in.
‘Oi, stop copying,’ she whispered, winking at me. Keira and I had been friends since nursery and we were good at completely different things. I love English, history and geography – anything that involves a story, while Keira is great at maths and science, and likes things that have a definite answer. Being friends means we can help each other with stuff the other person isn’t so good at.
‘I can’t think of a story to save my life,’ she whispered to me now. ‘D’you think anyone will notice if I adapt one of the episodes of Crime Fighters that I watched with Mum the other week? It’s on a weird channel. Probably not that many people would have seen it.’
‘Go for it,’ I told her.
‘Everyone busy with their work?’ said Mrs Emmett, raising her eyebrow at us. ‘I see that some of you have lost your concentration. Before we finish for the day, it might be helpful to hear your opening paragraphs. I want to feel that dramatic tension and the slow revealing of clues that Arthur Conan Doyle is so good at. Does anyone want to volunteer?’
Her question was met with silence.
‘All right, I will,’ said a low voice with an American accent from the back of the class.
‘Thank you, Duncan. Come to the front.’
‘Do I have to? I can read sitting down.’
‘You’ll be able to project your voice better facing the class.’
Duncan seemed to take ages getting to the whiteboard. His best friends and sidekicks, Max and Elliot, slapped him on the back for good luck.
As always, everything about him looked immaculate. His shoes were clean, his trousers barely had a crease, and his shirt was tucked in. Even though I couldn’t see his exercise book from here, I sensed that he probably had super-neat handwriting.
‘His dad’s a famous author. He’s won some important awards,’ Keira had told me when Duncan had joined our year. ‘Mum’s read all of his books. And Duncan’s brother is amazing at tennis. He’s only in sixth form and he’s already won a couple of junior tournaments.’
Duncan certainly acted as though he had his own part to play in his family’s fame. He walked through the school corridors with his head held high, like a celebrity on the red carpet, and he barely spoke to anyone except his two best friends. It was as if the rest of us weren’t worth his attention.
Today, he didn’t even
