The Finding of Freddie Perkins Page 4

  Why would she have pretended there was no key, but had the key and put it out for a chest whose contents she honestly didn’t know about? It was all very strange. The more he considered it, the more he thought Granny P genuinely had been as excited as him – that maybe she hadn’t known about the key. But how was that possible?

  Someone had put the key on the table.

  Freddie didn’t understand how it was possible, but he was definitely starting to have some doubts about whether Granny P had been involved. He decided that he would ‘find’ the diaries again. But he felt the weight of something not very nice pressing down in his mind. Even then he would be lying to Granny P. And he didn’t feel quite so angry any more.

  He tried to tell himself that it would be just the same for Granny P if he ‘found’ them now, after their tea break. But of course he knew it wasn’t.

  6

  On the table

  When the three of them went back up, Freddie got out the attic key. He had been a bit nervous that he’d produce the wrong one and get found out, so he’d been reciting to himself left is chest, right is attic all the way up the stairs to be sure he didn’t get flustered and forget.

  It was Granny P that spotted them first.

  The diaries were on the table – neatly stacked in the middle.

  Freddie was genuinely dumbfounded.

  He had hidden them in the far gable, quite far back and well out of sight; he had been the last person in the attic; and he had the only key. Even if there was a duplicate which Granny P had not let on about, Freddie had been with her and Dad the whole time since they had come down from the attic.

  The diaries were not there when they left. No one had been back up. And they were there now.

  Granny P was ecstatic about the new find. And so was Dad.

  ‘Freddie, come here, this is really something,’ said Dad.

  ‘To think,’ said Granny P, ‘we were so fixated on that silly chest that we missed what you were sorting through – and that you’d found these with the newspapers. Freddie – you’ve found something truly special! I’m so sorry we didn’t notice straight away. Didn’t you realise what they were?’

  By now Freddie was so confused that he had a genuine look of bewilderment about him – he had no need to pretend anything. He was truly baffled. Search as he might through every possibility, he simply couldn’t find any rational explanation for how those diaries had ended up on the table.

  ‘But they weren’t here. There was nothing on the table before.’

  ‘Oh, Freddie,’ said Dad, ruffling his hair, ‘you must have been away with the fairies when you were looking at those newspapers, and totally missed the diaries sitting under them.’

  ‘I didn’t miss them. They weren’t here,’ repeated Freddie, and then quietly again to himself. ‘I know they weren’t here.’

  ‘Oh come on, Freddie, they didn’t just appear out of nowhere. We’re not falling for that one. Nice try.’

  Freddie wanted to protest, but he knew there was no point. He couldn’t explain it, and even if he tried he’d have to admit his part in finding and hiding the diaries. It would just have to be another thing between them that he let go.

  * * *

  Well, of course, once the diaries were discovered, especially because Dad was at home, the attic was abandoned for the day and they all sat round the dining room table poring over them together.

  And so Freddie did find out the answers to his questions. The diaries belonged to Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Walter Seymour McCormack. They were more than 150 years old, which in itself was quite astonishing. They detailed W.S. McCormack’s explorations in Egypt, and talked about the people, the land, and the artefacts that he had discovered.

  It was incredible, thought Freddie. His great-great-great-grandfather had been like an ancient Indiana Jones!

  But, fascinated as he was, Freddie was distracted. He couldn’t fully enter into the excitement that Granny P and Dad felt, and that he would have felt, had not the diaries appeared on the table after he had hidden them somewhere else.

  It niggled and niggled at him until he could bear it no more.

  Whilst Dad and Granny P continued to decipher and read the first of the diaries, Freddie slunk away from the table. He decided to go back up to the attic. Just to see. Would there be anything else on the table?

  This time Freddie felt nervous opening the door by himself. But he took a deep breath, turned the key and found the light switch without even using the torch.

  There was nothing untoward. Nothing on the table. Nothing different to how they’d left it. He felt relieved mostly, but also a tiny bit disappointed. But why would there be anything? It wasn’t like he had actually been expecting something to appear out of nowhere… had he?

  Freddie backed away from the table, and feeling a little silly, and still more confused, edged his way out on to the landing, closing the door of the attic behind him.

  He locked the door and went back downstairs.

  * * *

  At the end of the day, after reading the diaries all the way through until late into the evening, Dad, Granny P and Freddie agreed they needed to be kept somewhere really safe. They decided the attic would be the best place – that way they could be kept locked away, and out of the light which might be damaging to them.

  In fact, Granny P said, the ideal storage place for them would be in the empty chest.

  So they all climbed up again, to put the diaries away safely until they could speak to the curator at the local museum.

  When they opened the door and went in again, it was Freddie’s dad who spotted it.

  ‘Look!’ he said, pointing to the table in surprise.

  On it was a beautiful necklace. Even in the half-light of the attic, it was sparkling brightly as the swinging bulbs cast their slightly shimmering light over it. It was gold, with a number of large green stones surrounded by clusters of what Freddie thought must be diamonds.

  ‘Well, how beautiful, and how valuable this must be,’ said Granny P. ‘We must take it into Campbell and Sons as soon as we can. But where did it come from? Freddie, did you find this too?’

  ‘No,’ said Freddie. ‘It wasn’t here when we came down with the diaries. The table was empty.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Freddie’s dad. ‘I smell a rat. First the diaries, and then the necklace. Freddie, are you playing a game with us?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Freddie. ‘If anyone’s playing games, it’s not me. I didn’t put the necklace there. It wasn’t there when we left.’

  ‘Well, no, sure, not when we left. But I heard you come back up, didn’t I? You must have put it on the table then. Very good, Freddie! A great find, and a clever joke too to try and make us think it had just appeared.’

  ‘I’m not playing any jokes,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Now, Freddie,’ said his dad, ‘I let it go earlier with the diaries, but this kind of thing isn’t funny. I understand you’re just trying to have a bit of fun, and cheer us all up, but these are valuable objects and they’re not yours. You should be treating your grandmother’s belongings with much more care. Playing around with things this precious is irresponsible and I don’t want to have to tell you about it again.’

  ‘I’m not playing around with anything!’ protested Freddie, doubly annoyed by the accusation and his dad talking as if he were a little kid. And he went to bed without even saying goodnight.

  7

  Out of the attic and into the house

  Freddie felt confused, isolated and cross. Why didn’t Dad believe him? Who was playing tricks? And if no one was, how on earth did the diaries and the necklace get on to the table when no one had put them there?

  Even the excitement of the diaries couldn’t distract him from his persistent, worried wondering. What was going on at Willow Beck?

  By eleven o’clock that night the whole house was quiet. But Freddie’s thoughts were so loud they kept him awake.

  Scary though it was, he resol
ved he must go up to the attic again. Now. Tonight. On his own.

  Maybe there would be more clues this time. Maybe something else would be on the table. Dad and Granny P were both in bed, and no one had been up since the necklace was found, so if anything had changed this time, he’d know for sure that something weird was going on.

  It was surprisingly cold for a July night and so Freddie pulled on a thick jumper and some socks and then quietly opened his bedroom door to creep first past Dad’s door, then Granny P’s, then up the stairs, and up again, and up and round and round – until he finally reached the attic.

  Slowly, and as quietly as he could, Freddie turned the big old key in the stiff old lock until the door opened. And as he gently switched on the light he saw a sudden movement as something leapt off the table and behind the boxes underneath it. Perhaps a tail…

  Freddie started. It was all he could do not to scream.

  He wasn’t frightened of mice – and he was pretty sure that was all it was. But even so, late at night, in the dark, and alone in the attic, it was a bit more than he’d bargained for.

  He ran back down the stairs, two at a time where he could manage it, terrified he would wake everyone, but petrified by his now heightened awareness of all things crawly and night-like.

  He bolted back to his room, dived under the duvet, and lay tense and breathless until he gradually realised that no one else had woken up, that he was after all quite safe, and that it was probably only a mouse he had seen – or imagined.

  It was then that he remembered that he hadn’t shut the attic door. And that the key was still in the lock from when he opened it. His stomach turned over. He didn’t want his dad to know he’d been up there, and jump to conclusions about what he was doing there alone and at night. He pulled back the covers to get up and go back, but it was no good, he had spooked himself good and proper and could not face it. There was nothing for it. He would simply have to get up before the others and sneak up and put everything right.

  * * *

  But when Freddie woke up the next morning – with a start – it was to realise that the sound that had woken him was Granny P clanging things around downstairs. When he looked at his clock he realised he had overslept to such a degree that she might already have been up to the attic.

  His heart sank.

  And then he saw it.

  Poking out from behind the clock, where he’d be sure to see it, was the attic key.

  It wasn’t possible. But there it was.

  Before he could even begin to think about what another strange appearance meant, there was a knock at the door and Granny P followed it with a tray of tea and crumpets, and a beaming face. She was humming something to herself, and soon explained why.

  ‘Freddie, the most wonderful thing has happened. And I thought we simply must have crumpets in bed to celebrate.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘This morning I found my wedding ring. I lost it when I was cleaning a few weeks ago and I was devastated. But this morning I found it, sitting right behind my alarm clock. How I didn’t see it before I don’t know. But I’m just thrilled to have found it again.’

  Freddie looked at the attic key, just visible behind his own clock, and thought to himself that it sounded rather more like the ring had found Granny P than that Granny P had found the ring. But that was ridiculous, so he told himself to stop being so silly.

  ‘That’s great, Granny P,’ he said, biting into a crumpet, and then licking the extra splurges of honey from his fingers, ‘that’s really great.’

  * * *

  When Granny P and Freddie went up to the attic after breakfast they found it locked as usual, and Freddie rubbed his eyes, wondering if he had, after all, dreamed getting up, opening it, and leaving the key behind.

  But he knew deep down that he hadn’t dreamed it at all.

  And there were other signs that things had happened during the night. There were no new treasures on the table, but there were some small pieces – looking almost as if they had been a bit chewed – of the yellow scrap paper that he had thrown away during yesterday morning’s sort. And though he was aware that he might be imagining it, he was pretty much convinced that several things were in slightly different places to where they had been at the end of yesterday afternoon.

  Granny P and Freddie made good progress that day, finding a few more collections that Granny P said Freddie should keep, and a few things she said might be valuable. Perhaps the best find was a music box made from burnished walnut. Granny P said that should definitely be out for them all to enjoy, like the rocking horse they had found on the first afternoon.

  They worked so hard, and Freddie was so tired, that it was well into the evening, after supper, before he noticed that a few things had changed around the house whilst they had been in the attic. In fact it was Granny P who spotted the first one.

  ‘Oh look, Freddie, look, my photo of Reg – your Grandpa – on the day we first met. It fell down behind that big bureau a few months ago and neither Mrs Quinn nor I was strong enough to move it out so that we could get the photo back. I don’t remember mentioning it to your father, but I must have done. What a kind thing to do for me to shift that heavy piece of oak. Oh, I do so love to look at that photo and just remember…’

  Then Freddie spotted two more in quick succession. Exactly at eye level from his favourite chair in the sitting room, on the third from bottom shelf of the big bookcase in the corner, was his MP3 player, which he’d mislaid last week… upstairs.

  And the hat trick was literally that. His dad’s baseball cap, which he’d been moaning about losing, was on one of the coat stand’s hooks in the hall.

  Once Freddie started looking for changes, he found them everywhere. A set of three small glass animal ornaments had become four, a number of the smaller items of furniture had moved slightly to the left or right, and a five-pound note was sitting, bold as brass, in the spare change dish in the hall.

  * * *

  When Dad got home around eight-thirty, he stepped through the door, and noticed his hat straightaway.

  ‘Oh, brilliant! Who found my cap? Where was it?’

  When there was no response, Dad came into the sitting room, where Freddie and Granny P were relaxing companionably, chatting over the day’s amazing finds between sips of marshmallow-laden, piping hot cocoa.

  ‘Hi, rascal,’ he said, ruffling Freddie’s hair and then crossing the room to kiss Granny P on the cheek. ‘Where did you find my hat?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Oh, was it you, Ma? Where was it?’

  Granny P looked up, ‘I don’t know, Stephen. I didn’t find it. Freddie, are you sure you didn’t find it somewhere, and then just forget?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I have no idea where it came from.’

  ‘Now, Freddie,’ said Dad, warningly. ‘I hope you’re not starting to play games again, are you?’

  ‘No!’ said Freddie angrily. ‘I’ve already told you both. I don’t know where it was and I didn’t find it. Why does nobody ever believe me? Why are you being so stupid?’

  ‘Freddie!’ snapped his dad. ‘How dare you speak to your grandmother and me like that!’

  Freddie felt crushed by the injustice of it all. He didn’t know what was going on at Willow Beck, but he knew one thing. He wasn’t behind it. He tried to hold his anger in, but he couldn’t. It was bursting out in a rush.

  ‘I hate you! Why do you never listen to what I say? Why don’t you ever believe me?’ he shouted, and with one final whimper, ‘Mum would have believed me.’

  At that point he caught Granny P’s eye, and he felt ashamed. He knew he wasn’t being fair on Dad. But Dad wasn’t being fair on him either.

  Again he went up to bed without saying goodnight. Only this time, he was sent. And as he climbed the stairs, feeling painfully alone, he heard his dad say, ‘I’m so sorry, Ma. I guess I should have expected that he would play up. He misses her so much. I thought you were gettin
g through to him, but I think he’s just withdrawing even more with all this hiding and pretending. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Give him time Stephen. Give him time,’ said Granny P, softly.

  Freddie tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He did miss his mum. And all the time since the world began wouldn’t change that. But he hadn’t been hiding and finding things. Why would he want to do that?

  After all, it would never bring back what was really lost.

  8

  The silence moves in again

  Freddie’s door slammed behind him with a crash in perfect synchronisation with his dive on to the bed. But all the noise in the world couldn’t have drowned out the shouting in his head.

  It’s so unfair! It’s all just so unfair!

  And then suddenly out of nowhere, the rushing noise in his ears was back, and the tightness in his chest, and the rising tears that never quite made it but stuck halfway up his throat and made him feel like he was choking.

  And there was a new feeling too – an anger so big he felt like it must belong to someone else – a huge angry giant perhaps. No wonder it felt like he couldn’t contain it in his boy’s body. He hated all these feelings, and the fact that he seemed powerless against them, but most of all he hated that no one else seemed to have them.

  In fact, he hated everyone and everything.

  * * *

  After a few minutes, when the giant’s anger seemed to reduce slightly and it was easier to breathe, Freddie was able to sit up.

  He looked around him desperately for comfort. Was there anyone or anything that would understand how lost and lonely he felt?

  Freddie reached for the genie teapot and held its solid, spiky realness close to his chest, wrapping his arms as tightly round it as possible – not even caring about the pointy silver thistles and the golden eagle’s sharp little beak. He knew it was stupid but he screwed his eyes up and wished that she would come back.