by Ailsa Wild
For Lily Rose and Niamh – you’ve been helping me think about stories since you were tiny.
– Ailsa
For John. Thanks for trusting me.
– Ben
Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
About the author and illustrator
Copyright Page
I’m lying on my tummy with my eye jammed against the telescope so I can see into the building opposite. The office straight across from our bedroom belongs to Boring Lady. She’s typing away as usual. Her face has no feelings on it.
But something is very wrong – she doesn’t usually work in the middle of the night.
‘What are you doing?’ Vee grumbles in the bunk above me. It squeaks as she rolls over and my eye shifts against the telescope. We have a triple bunk-bed and I’m in the middle. It’s awesome for bunk-bed tricks and the worst when you want to do night-time spying.
‘Our bonus sister is being crazy as usual,’ Jessie says from beneath me.
When I first moved in here, Dad said I should think of Jessie and Vee as a bonus. I thought he was just trying to make me feel better about moving in. But it turns out it’s true: the twins mostly are a bonus. So we never say ‘stepsister’ anymore. Bonus sisters forever.
‘I’m not being crazy,’ I say. ‘I’m watching Boring Lady.’
‘But Squishy,’ Jessie says. Everyone calls me Squishy, even my teachers. I’m Squishy Taylor – like the gangster Squizzy Taylor, only better. ‘Squishy, it’s the middle of the night. Boring Lady isn’t working.’
‘But that’s the thing,’ I say. ‘She is working.’
‘No way!’
Vee does her Rolling-Spin-Drop manoeuvre from the top bunk so she’s lying beside me.
The telescope is ginormous and sits on a tripod. It’s an old one from Alice, my bonus mum. Her university didn’t want it anymore, so she gave it to Jessie. Jessie checks the stars and her astronomy app every night.
Vee has nudged me aside to look through the telescope. ‘No way!’ she says again, but this time she’s not saying it because she doesn’t believe me.
‘Guys!’ Jessie says. ‘Go back to sleep. It’s …’ I can hear her rolling over to check. ‘It’s two fifty-seven in the morning.’
Vee doesn’t move and her voice sounds kind of mushed from her cheek being pressed against the telescope. ‘Boring Lady’s just typing. Like she always is. Except it’s two fifty-seven in the morning.’
‘This is so weird,’ I say. I love weird stuff. I wish there was more weird stuff in my life.
‘This is so cool,’ Vee says.
‘Go back to bed,’ Jessie says.
For twins, Jessie and Vee are pretty much opposites.
‘I’ll tell Mum,’ Jessie threatens.
As if.
There’s no way Jessie’s going to wake up Alice. Not with Baby teething like he has been this week.
But Vee pushes away from the telescope. She drops down into Jessie’s bed, gives her a growling tickly squeeze and then does the Return-Leap-Roll. It’s a special jump we invented to get from the bottom bunk, up on the desk, across the top of the wardrobe and back onto the top bunk. It’s pretty much a ninja move.
‘Goodnight,’ Vee says.
I push my curls out of the way to check the telescope again, but Boring Lady has finally packed up and left. Her office light is off.
I wonder if we should stop calling her Boring Lady now that she’s done something kind of interesting.
I’m nearly asleep when I hear a knocking, bumping kind of sound on the other side of the wall. This is also weird. Mr Hinkenbushel, who lives in the apartment next door, is supposed to be away for work for the next month.
In the morning, I wake up to the smell of smoke and the sound of screams. I do a Drop-to-Running descent (always the quickest way out of my bunk) and am in the kitchen pretty much before I’m awake.
The smoke is from Dad burning crepes and the screams are from Baby, who is unusually angry this morning.
‘Here,’ Dad says and thrusts the flipper towards me. Then he picks up Baby from his rug. Baby stops crying.
I loosen the edge of the crepe and then flip it. I’m an expert crepe-flipper.
‘Thanks, Squish,’ Dad says.
It’s not until later, when we’re sitting around the table having breakfast, that I remember the noises next door. I get the yucky feeling in my chest that I always get when I think about Mr Hinkenbushel.
‘Mr Hinkenbushel came home early!’ I announce.
‘Oh no,’ Vee says.
Mr Hinkenbushel hates us and we kind of hate him right back. One rainy day when we were riding our scooters down the corridor, he called us ‘idiot kids’ and his face went all red and he spat by accident from the yelling. Another time he even shouted at Alice. We were so mad at him – that’s when we declared vengeance on him.
‘How do you know he’s back?’ Jessie asks.
Vee looks up from tipping about a litre of maple syrup on her crepe.
I tell everyone about the noises in the night, but I can tell they don’t really believe me.
‘He said he wouldn’t be back until next month,’ Alice says. As though that settles it.
‘We’ll have to re-start the HRC,’ I whisper to Vee, but Dad hears me and glares. ‘Jokes!’ I say, throwing my hands in the air.
HRC stands for Hinkenbushel Revenge Club. The club was my idea. It was the first really fun thing I did with Vee and Jessie after I moved in (apart from harbouring a runaway in our basement, which kind of happened at the same time). Jessie built the HRC website. We even made a revenge declaration video, which got twenty-five hits on YouTube. We started the club when Mr Hinkenbushel shouted at Alice, so she should have been grateful. But she wasn’t. Our first revenge act massively backfired and Alice and Dad were both pretty mad about it.
It’s probably lucky they never found out about the website.
And now Mr Hinkenbushel is back, which sucks. It’s so boring to have to be quiet every time you leave the house.
‘All right, you lot,’ Dad says. ‘This is your half-hour call.’
It’s Saturday. That means Alice is taking me and Vee to rock-climbing while Jessie does violin, and Dad and Baby clean the house.
Rock-climbing is my new favourite thing. Mum sent me climbing clothes from Geneva after I told her I was doing it: three-quarter-length galaxy-print leggings and a silver sports top. I like the top because it has a cross-back that makes my shoulders look strong.
I scramble my curls into a fat, high ponytail to keep them out of my eyes. When I’m done, I lean against the window, looking out at Boring Lady’s desk. I can tell there’s no-one there, even without the telescope. I wonder what she was doing last night. Maybe it wasn’t so strange after all. Maybe Boring Lady always types at 2.57 in the morning – it’s just that I’m not normally looking?
Jessie is lying on her bunk with the iPad, reading the news. That’s one of the weirdly grown-up things Jessie does.
‘Pyjamas,’ she says, as I’m about to leave them in a puddle on the floor. For ten years, I had my own bedroom when I lived with my mum. I used to leave my pyjamas wherever I wanted and Mum would just laugh at me. I could have moved to Geneva when Mum got her job there with the UN. Instead I moved in with Dad and Baby and our bonus family. Mostly a good choice
– until Jessie starts telling me what to do.
I lean over Jessie to shove my pyjamas under my doona. She taps the iPad and a lazy, posh, English-sounding man says, ‘It’s absurd to suggest these diamond smugglers are operating in Melbourne. All one has to do is look at a map!’
Diamond smugglers? Cool. I’m almost tempted to look at whatever Jessie is listening to.
But then Alice yells from the kitchen, ‘Climbers! Time to leave!’
I follow her and Vee out into the corridor. They’re both wearing cross-back tops too. Alice’s is grey and Vee’s is hot pink. Their shiny black ponytails swing in time as they walk.
On the way past I see that Mr Hinkenbushel’s door is slightly open. This is a bit weird – his door is usually double-locked – so I can’t help glancing in. It’s really messy inside. I wonder if he got home and just tipped his suitcase all over the floor.
I stand still for a moment. Unless he’s been burgled? There’s a bright page from a magazine lying half out the door. It doesn’t look like the kind of thing Mr Hinkenbushel would have, so I lean down to pick it up.
‘Alice …?’ I call, wanting to tell her about the mess. But they’re straining to hold the lift open with their hands, because the ‘stay open’ button is broken.
I laugh and bolt for the lift.
‘Bet I can climb the Gargoyle’s Escape,’ Vee says as we push through the big glass doors into Rockers, the rock-climbing gym. Vee always says that, but she still can’t do it.
‘Bet you can’t,’ I say.
‘Bet you can’t,’ Vee says back.
Alice is the only one of us who’s ever climbed the Gargoyle’s Escape. It’s the hardest section of the wall.
Rockers has a huge glass wall, so you can look out at the city if your fingers are gripping tight enough. I’ve only been climbing for a couple of weeks, but I’m almost as good as Vee already. When it’s my turn, I climb fast. Sometimes when I’m climbing, I have to be really strategic, and plan where to go next. But sometimes, like today, the holds seem to just appear without me thinking about it. It’s like my fingers and arms are working without my brain noticing. The other cool thing about rock-climbing is it makes you better at monkey bars and bunk-bed acrobatics.
We take it in turns to climb or belay (holding the safety rope for the other person) till our arm muscles ache.
Alice gives us smoothie money and sends us to catch the tram home alone while she goes on to work.
We always race for the shower, so when we get back Vee shoves past me into the kitchen, trying to beat me there. But there’s a policeman sitting at the table. Vee stops and I bump into her back. Dad is frowning at the policeman.
‘Whoa there, little ladies!’ says the policeman, like he’s talking to some kind of pony. He chuckles as though we are adorable and stupid.
I stare at him.
‘Veronica, Sita,’ Dad says, ‘this is Constable Graham.’ Dad only calls me Sita when something is important. It makes me a bit scared.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
‘Nothing, nothing,’ Constable Graham says, resting his hands comfortably on his stomach. ‘There’s some kind of problem next door, so I’m talking to all the neighbours.’
I think of the noises in Mr Hinkenbushel’s apartment last night, and remember the mess I saw this morning.
‘Did Mr Hinkenbushel get burgled?’ I ask. I nearly add, ‘Serves him right,’ and I think Dad hears my thoughts. He glares at me.
‘We-ell,’ the policeman says. ‘I wouldn’t say burgled, exactly. Not exactly. Ms Kuot across the corridor called us because she saw the mess. We tracked down Mr Hinkenbushel on the phone this morning. He’s still away and we located his list of valuables. None of them are missing. So it’s looking like a break-and-enter. Vandalism.’
Vee and I stare at each other. A crime on our very own floor. This is cooler than a lady typing at night.
‘You two princesses haven’t seen anything suspicious, have you?’ the policeman asks. ‘Anyone hanging around here who might have done it? Some bigger boys maybe?’
Princesses! Bigger boys! I want to choke.
‘Squishy – I mean, Sita – heard a noise last night,’ Vee says.
So I tell him about the noise and how I know it was after 2.57 because of Jessie checking the time. He nods and notes it on his iPad. Jessie arrives in the middle of it, with her violin slung over her shoulder. She agrees about when she checked the time.
‘Good. Good to know.’ The policeman stands up and smiles at me like my prep teacher used to. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Sita.’ Then he chuckles. ‘Or should I say, Squishy?’
He’s laughing at me. It doesn’t feel very nice.
He shakes Dad’s hand and then does a stupid little wave at us kids, like we’re two-year-olds.
Dad closes the door with a solid click and turns back. His face is very, very serious. ‘OK, you lot. If this has anything to do with that ridiculous club of yours, tell me now.’
The Hinkenbushel Revenge Club. We wish we broke into his apartment!
‘Of course not,’ Jessie says. ‘That was only a game.’
‘We quit exactly when you told us to,’ Vee adds.
‘It really wasn’t us, Dad,’ I say.
He looks us in the eyes, one by one. ‘If you own up now, it’s much better than being caught later.’
We all look right back at him. He seems satisfied.
Then Baby wakes up and starts crying and Jessie goes to put her violin away. Vee beats me to the shower. I stand in the kitchen, thinking.
I remember the piece of paper I picked up from Mr Hinkenbushel’s doorway and dig around in my bag to pull it out. I unfold it and spread it on the table.
It’s a catalogue for very expensive diamond rings.
It’s pizza for dinner so we are all helping. Vee is smearing tomato sauce over the bases, Jessie is neatly laying out mushrooms, salami and olives, and I’m grating cheese for the top (and eating pinches of it as I go). Alice is in charge of the oven and Dad is in charge of Baby.
The news is on. ‘Police are closing in on a diamond-smuggling operation, which sources say is operating somewhere in central Melbourne. Lord Smiggenbotham-Chancery has been helping with the investigation.’
Then a familiar lazy posh voice comes on. ‘These criminals will stop at nothing. The Australian Police should be very afraid.’
I think about our policeman and grin.
‘Do you think Constable Graham is “very afraid”?’ I ask, helping myself to more cheese. Vee slaps my hand with the sauce spoon and tomato splatters everywhere. We try not to giggle. Vee makes a tiny gesture, pointing to a spray of sauce on Alice’s shirt, and we both try even harder not to giggle.
The reporter’s voice comes back on. ‘Police are seeking forged documents that declare the diamonds to be legal.’
‘What makes diamonds legal or illegal?’ I ask.
‘Well, that’s a good question for your mother,’ Dad says. ‘Ask her next time you skype.’
‘OK.’ Mum is better at answering questions anyway.
‘Oh, damn!’ Alice says, and I think she’s found the splatter on her shirt. But it’s not that. ‘I forgot the mangos,’ Alice says.
Vee and I groan dramatically. We only get dessert on Saturday nights. It’s one of the dumb rules my bonus family brought in.
‘Maybe we could go down to the corner and get a tub of ice-cream?’ Jessie asks. That’s the thing about Jessie. She knows when to ask for things.
Alice hesitates and then sees all the pizzas, neatly lined up and ready to go into the oven. ‘All right,’ she says, and reaches for her wallet.
The three of us race out the door and head towards the lift. We bang straight into Mr Hinkenbushel.
‘Oi! Watch where you’re going, can’t you? Lousy kids.’ Mr Hinkenbushel has messy hair and his jacket is all crumpled. He’s scowling at us.
‘Sorry,’ we chorus and then run for the lift. As the lift door closes, I se
e Mr Hinkenbushel put his key into the lock and open his apartment door.
We stare at each other. He really is back!
We fight over whether to get chocolate or salted caramel, and Jessie wins because she’s carrying the money. When we get home, we tiptoe past Mr Hinkenbushel’s door, but we may as well not have bothered because he’s standing in the kitchen with Alice.
‘Yes, my plane arrived this afternoon,’ Mr Hinkenbushel is saying. ‘I thought I’d better come home and get the place sorted out.’
Alice and Dad are nodding with sympathetic faces.
I push his diamond catalogue deeper into my pocket as Jessie edges past with the ice-cream to get it to the freezer. The room smells like hot melted cheese and I remember how hungry I am.
When Mr Hinkenbushel leaves, scowling, Vee sticks out her tongue at his back. Dad gives her a warning look. I pull pieces of salami off my pizza and eat them thoughtfully.
‘Did Mr Hinkenbushel say he just got back?’ I ask.
Dad nods.
‘Like, just this second, on the plane?’ I need to get this right.
Dad nods again.
I see the image of Mr Hinkenbushel unlocking his apartment as we got into the lift. ‘But he didn’t have any luggage!’ I cry.
Dad and Alice don’t seem to care.
But I know what my mum looks like when she gets off a plane. She always has at least two bags, one of them a big suitcase on wheels. Mr Hinkenbushel was carrying nothing.
After dinner, I skype Mum on my bed.
‘Hi, my Squishy-sweet,’ she says. She’s in her office because it’s daytime in Geneva. She tries not to be busy at my bedtime. ‘What’s happening?’
‘The news says there are illegal diamonds in Melbourne. Why would they be illegal?’ I ask.
‘Well …’ she starts. One thing I love about my mum is that she takes my questions seriously. ‘There are two reasons. Firstly, because in some countries, diamond miners are paid very badly and work in terrible conditions. So other countries try to help the miners by making it illegal to buy those diamonds.’
