The Thorn Island Adventure

by Fleur Hitchcock

  “Supper time,” came a shout from the house. “Pizza!”

  Ava barely slept. She spent the night thinking it through. It was all utterly stupid. Josh was stupid for suggesting it, and the other two were stupid for going along with him. Chloe was right. They didn’t know who they were rescuing, if indeed they were rescuing anybody. It might be the missing child from Charlie’s Cheerful Chews, but then again it might not be. And if it was, why would anyone hide a kidnapped person in full sight of thousands of tourists? Well, almost full sight. Full sight with the right angle and a pair of binoculars. And the police might have been and rescued them, or the police might have been and found there was no one to rescue.

  She sat up on her bed, clasping her arms round her knees.

  But, on the other hand, being stroppy was starting to get wearing. She hated not getting on with Chloe and Aiden. She hated feeling like the killjoy. She wanted to have adventures. Proper ones. Just not stupid ones.

  “And anyway, how are we going to get the stupid ladder down to the boat?” She said it out loud, and immediately clamped her hand over her mouth.

  “Are you awake?” asked Chloe from the darkness.

  “Sorry, yes,” said Ava.

  “We could use the pram.”

  “The pram?”

  “The one Josh was sitting in yesterday before all the spiders ran out.”

  Ava got out of bed and pulled back the curtains. The sky was full of stars. They lit the countryside outside their window. The bales they’d been sitting on earlier showed as black monoliths against a much paler field. She looked towards the old barn. Its doors were open, but the inside was dark. The pram must be just inside the entrance.

  She sighed. “I suppose it might work. Especially now we’ve got a folding ladder.”

  “It probably would. I mean it definitely would,” said Chloe. “Can you see the tower from there?” she asked.

  Ava opened the window wide and craned out. “No – but I can see the lighthouse, and the light flashing across the trees.” She gazed down into the farmyard’s dark shadows. “It’s a shame the police didn’t come.”

  “I suppose we could call them from here. Ask them if they’ve done anything,” said Chloe.

  Ava watched as the distant woods lit up every minute and the light scudded over the bay, and she came to a decision. “I’ll go and call them now.”

  “Really?”

  But Ava didn’t wait to answer; she pulled on her slippers and slipped out of the bedroom door. The stairs creaked, but not too much, and she tiptoed through to the kitchen before switching on any lights. Bella snored under the table.

  Picking up the phone, she dialled the emergency number. “Emergency services, which service do you require, Ambulance, Fire, Police or Coastguard?”

  Her heart loud in her ears, Ava asked for police and waited while the line clicked.

  Bella woke up, wandered over and began to lick her face. “Police?” said the voice on the other end. “Can I establish your location?”

  Ava gave the farm’s address, and then began to explain what they had seen. The more she explained, the less convincing she realised she sounded. The person on the other end asked some questions, Ava answered them and then there was a pause. Eventually the voice on the other end said, “Thank you very much for your call – we will endeavour to make a routine visit within the next twenty-four hours.”

  And the phone went dead.

  Ava stared at the receiver and put it back in the cradle.

  “Any luck?” asked Chloe, who was waiting on the landing, her arms clamped round her knees.

  Ava shook her head and both of them sneaked back to their beds.

  “I don’t think they believed me,” Ava said, playing the phone call back over in her head. “So we’re back to investigating ourselves.”

  “Ava,” said Chloe quietly. “I might have been wrong – I mean, suppose we rush over tomorrow with our ladder and we find that they’re storing costumes up there or something, and there’s no one who needs rescuing? Or even that the police have been and rescued them this evening. I don’t want to be an idiot.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Ava, sniffing the night smells of damp stubble and dewy farmyard that drifted up to the window and coming to a decision. “Whatever happens it’s an adventure – and we might find Jake’s boat. You never know.”

  “Thanks,” said Chloe, pulling the duvet up over her shoulder. “Thanks.” And she snuggled back down to sleep.

  When Grandma finally clanged the old ship’s bell for breakfast the girls were already dressed, already in possession of the pram and very hungry.

  The scrambled eggs were bright yellow, the toast was thick and plentiful, and a bowl of Grandpa’s marmalade sat in the centre of the table looking delicious. Aiden and Josh stumbled down the stairs in their pyjamas. Aiden stared at the girls, already dressed and shovelling in eggs. “Where’ve you…” he began, tilting his head and frowning at Ava’s big smile, but Chloe held a finger over her lips and he dropped the question.

  Chloe pointed at the phone, mimed dialling, and then pointed at Ava.

  Aiden mimed a helmet.

  Chloe nodded.

  Aiden pointed at the ground, meaning Are the police coming here?

  Chloe shook her head and put on a sad face, but then smiled and pointed at Ava and mimed a ladder.

  Aiden wondered if that meant that Ava had come round to the idea of the rescue. From the way she was sitting and smiling and talking it looked as if she had.

  Spreading butter on another piece of toast, Aiden ran through the operation in his head. They hadn’t really worked out the details.

  There was the ladder, the boat, landing…

  …and then there was the small matter of how to get someone out of the tower, assuming that they were being guarded. It struck him that it was all very well lugging the ladder down to the boat and taking it across to the island, but how on earth were they going to get whoever it was out of the tower without anyone noticing? They’d need a diversion. A good one.

  “Tea, anyone?” asked Grandma.

  “Or apple juice?” said Aiden, standing up. He poured big glasses of Grandpa’s cloudy apple juice for everyone. “Have you got any ketchup, Grandma?” Aiden asked, checking one of the cupboards over the kettle. “Please.”

  “Here,” said Grandma, reaching into a cupboard above the dishwasher and handing him a mostly empty bottle of ketchup.

  “Thank you,” said Aiden, squeezing the tiniest penny on to the side of his plate and gently slipping the bottle down by his leg and holding it between his feet.

  Josh did a caterpillar thing with his eyebrows and Aiden gave him a nudge.

  “Blue skies,” said Chloe, filling the silence.

  “Yes,” said Ava, springing up and pulling the kitchen curtains right back to let in the sunlight.

  “So what are you all going to do today?” asked Grandpa, slathering marmalade on a piece of toast and biting off the corner.

  “If we can take the Black Diamond again, we’re going to go on searching for Jake’s boat on the island,” said Aiden. “It’s got to be there somewhere. Maybe it’s on the other side.”

  “Definitely,” agreed Chloe.

  “Yeah,” said Josh, “And we’re going to find it and we’re going to find out who’s in the—”

  “Tea shop on the island this year,” finished Ava, sliding back to her chair and delivering a seriously hard kick under the table.

  “Ow!” he said, scowling.

  Grandpa stared from each cousin to the next and then smiled. “Jolly good, jolly good. Well, whatever it is you’re doing, keep safe. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do – you know, that sort of thing.” He ran his finger through a stray blob of marmalade on his plate. “Hmmm.” He glanced at Aiden and Ava. “Keep inshore. Don’t want to call out the air-sea rescue.” He laughed, although his eyes stayed serious. “Your grandmother and I are going over the moor later on to pick up f ive new hens, so I�
��ve made you sandwiches and you can always pop home if you’re hungry.” He started tidying plates into the dishwasher.

  Chairs scraped as they rose from the table. Aiden slipped the ketchup bottle up under his T-shirt and tried to help Grandpa clear the debris of eggy plates and toast crumbs.

  “Go on,” said Grandma, “we’ll do that. Off you go now, enjoy yourselves.”

  While Chloe and Aiden strapped the ladder on to the pram with two crab lines and a kite string, Ava told them about ringing the police, and Aiden explained his plan. Josh tried to persuade a woodlouse to curl up.

  “Yay! Aiden,” said Ava, examining the knots holding the ladder down. “That’s brilliant – if it works. So,” she said, “you’ll cross with me in the boat, and Chloe and Josh will take the ferry?”

  “They’ll have to,” said Aiden. “They need the bikes for a quick getaway – and there’s no way we can take bikes over on the Black Diamond.” He pulled open the bike-shed door and disappeared inside.

  “Yippee!” said Josh. “I love the ferry.”

  “Josh,” barked Ava. “Behave – you’re going to have to do what Chloe says. It’s important.”

  “I will,” said Josh, taking his bike from Aiden. He clambered on to the saddle and cycled in a tight circle, only slightly bumping into his sister. “I always do what I’m told.”

  “And I’m Beyoncé,” sighed Ava, leaning down to lash the homemade ladder trolley to the back of her bike. Ava stepped over the crossbar and pedalled across the yard. The bike wobbled a little but the pram stayed fairly steady.

  They set off in a sedate convoy, but within seconds Josh had lost patience and hurtled off ahead down the hill.

  Chloe held back for a moment and then let go of the brakes, allowing her bike to follow Josh’s and almost catch it before she lost her nerve on the bend and had to slow down. The bike’s brakes juddered and she put her foot down to help a steep swing, pushing off from the bank and scaring herself by shooting down through the high hedges and whizzing past the sleepy bees to catch up with her cousin. She nearly caught him at the entrance of the village, her front wheel practically touching his rear wheel.

  “Ha!” Josh laughed, turning his head and just missing a cat as it scuttled across the road. “Last one there buys the ice creams!” He swung to the right, dropping down a flight of steps, and this time Chloe plummeted down behind him, her teeth crashing against each other and her bike helmet slipping down over one eye until they bounced out into a square of fishy cobbles. Josh slammed on his brakes, and Chloe just missed him and a small child carrying an ice cream. Taking the scarily narrow route round a pile of nets, she passed him at the last second to stop behind the net-hanging shed, panting and spluttering.

  “So you’re buying the ice creams?” she said, giggling as she tried to get her breath back, her arms draped over the handlebars. “Mine’s a strawberry split.”

  “Hello there,” said a voice behind her.

  Chloe couldn’t help herself, she jumped. It was Mr Bobble Hat from the café.

  “Didn’t mean to make you jump,” he said. “Just wanted to tell you that the police came last night and went over to the island.”

  Josh stopped and turned. “Really? When?”

  The man shook his head. “I’ve no idea – I was cleaning up. Let me think.” He gazed up at a small white cloud as if it might tell him. “Must have been f ive o’clock at least. Could have been six. Long shadows, though.”

  “Do you know if they found anything?” asked Chloe.

  The man shook his head. “No idea, I’m afraid. But they definitely went to look.” He smiled. “Bye now, back to work.”

  Chloe and Josh stared as the man went back to the café and took up his place behind the hatch.

  Josh raised his eyebrow.

  The man waved.

  “What do you think?” said Josh quietly.

  “I don’t know what to think,” replied Chloe.

  They both stared at the ferry queue, which was steadily growing.

  “Well, I think we should do it anyway,” said Josh. “I mean, for all we know they didn’t look in the right place. And it must have been at least eight o’clock when we went out to look from the field – there was definitely someone there then.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Josh, pulling out his notebook and checking. “Yes. I am sure. Says here it was eight fourteen when we went back to the farmhouse. I’m going to stick to the plan. See you in a minute.” He pushed his bike out into the open to join the end of the ferry queue.

  A man with a Dalmatian dog joined the queue behind him.

  Dalmatian. Where had she heard that before?

  Chloe waited in the shade, watching the harbour fill with visitors. She just wasn’t sure. Perhaps they should abandon it. She watched as a bus rattled down the hill and stopped next to the Plaice and Ships. Mr Bobble Hat served people ice creams, and she noticed how badly he put the gloop into the cones. Like someone not used to doing it. Several families filled the square, buying tickets and taking photos. Pearl was getting people into kayaks from the harbour steps. Jake was heaving lobster pots into a pile behind the pub.

  A family stood in front of Josh and the woman ruffled Josh’s hair. He swiped at her hand but still managed to look charming. Chloe knew he hated the ruffling thing. But somehow people found it irresistible.

  Taking a deep breath, she wandered forward to join him in the queue. She tried to look like someone enjoying the sun. She closed her eyes and let the morning sunlight play on her eyelids. The world was bright red for a moment before she heard the rattle and squeak of Ava’s bike.

  The pram was still attached. And the ladder was still attached to the pram, but Ava was sweating and breathing hard. Aiden followed with Bella in the bike basket, his brakes squealing. A few people turned to stare, watching as Ava struggled with the pram bike convoy through a gap in the nets that was too small. No sooner had Ava rammed the bike through the nets than the pram hooked itself on to a stack of lobster pots and Ava stopped.

  Bella leaped from the basket and began to bark at the lobster pots. People in the queue pointed and laughed.

  Aiden leaned his bike against the heap of nets so that he could help Ava but the bike rolled backwards, subsiding in a spinning heap.

  “Look at them,” said a small child.

  “It’s rude to stare,” said his mother.

  Chloe turned away. Behind them the man with the Dalmatian was also staring at Ava and Aiden, and trying to get a signal on his phone.

  “It won’t work,” she said. “There’s no signal here; no signal anywhere around here.”

  He glared at her. “I don’t need your help, little girl.”

  “Sorry,” Chloe said, feeling a blush rise from her chest to smother her face.

  The man turned his back, then glared across at Ava and Aiden struggling with the bikes. The dog sniffed at Chloe’s hand, but the man yanked on the lead, pulling it away until it let out a little whimper.

  He had a heavy face, lumpy and oddly sunburned. He wasn’t local and he didn’t look like a tourist. And he wasn’t very nice to animals.

  Her heart began to beat faster. She searched the rest of the harbour. Was anyone else interested in Ava and Aiden?

  There was the man who’d been cleaning the outboard motor for a start; he was just leaning and staring, unsmiling.

  She gripped the handlebars of her bike a little tighter and swallowed.

  In the stern of the boat Aiden felt himself blush. He hated drawing attention to himself, and all that stuff with the pram wasn’t quite how he’d imagined it. He’d thought they would just slip on board the Black Diamond unnoticed and now they’d managed to attract the attention of the entire harbour and, to make it worse, there were seagulls circling over the boat and Bella wouldn’t stop barking. And the ladder didn’t really fit. It was squashing his toes and he knew that when Ava wanted the boat to change direction it was going to get difficult.

>   It was all getting very complicated.

  Aiden watched Josh and Chloe get on the ferry. They were soon surrounded by a large group of cyclists. Then some families boarded and a few single people. One of them with a Dalmatian.

  “Oh no,” he said.

  “What?” asked Ava, looking up.

  “There’s a Dalmatian getting on the ferry. I can’t see if it’s with the same man.”

  She crouched alongside Aiden and followed the direction of his pointing finger.

  Aiden glanced down at his phone. He could warn Chloe but there was no signal. Of course there was no signal.

  “But he might have nothing to do with it. He might just be a bad driver,” she said, untying the painter rope. “And he doesn’t know who Chloe and Josh are, right?”

  Letting out a long sigh, Aiden muttered, “I hope you’re right.”

  He watched as Chloe pushed through the crowds on the open deck of the ferry to stand by the rails at the side and saw her raise her hand in a tiny wave. He lifted one hand in reply.

  “Right,” said Ava, stepping over the oar and clambering past the ladder to the tiller. “We’re off.”

  Aiden buckled his life jacket and settled on the bench. Early this morning this had seemed a really good idea. Sail to the island, take the ladder, climb the tower, free the prisoner or not free the prisoner, depending on whether or not they existed. Take them away, if they did. Easy.

  But now…

  He shuffled his feet under the edge of the ladder, watching the ferry as it sped towards the island. A small column of smoke trailed from the exhaust stack and the distant hubbub of chattering tourists floated over the water. He could no longer see Chloe, just a patchwork of colours and whirling seagulls as they followed the boat.

  A slight breeze filled the sail and the dinghy slipped silently forward from the quay. Aiden looked around. There was hardly anyone to see them leave. Almost everyone had caught the ferry. There was only a tabby cat basking in the sun by the bins.