by John Marsden
Friday, Feb 14, 9.20 am
Well, I got a Valentine’s Card all right. Cindy gave it to me, but she wouldn’t say who it was from. All the girls were giggling and everything, so they must know. It was a hand-made card with a picture of a guy and a girl holding hands and a poem that said:
This is your special Valentine
To say I hope that you’ll be mine.
It’s a piece of testimony
That says I really like you Tony.
Pretty good poem! There’s not many words that rhyme with Tony. Kate’s smart enough to write a poem that good, but the trouble is, whoever she is, Kate or anyone, it’s getting a bit serious. And I don’t like all the other girls getting involved. Now they know about it, they’ll be worse than a referee with a whistle. They’ll never let up.
I still hope it’s Bianca though. I do like her. She’s not just pretty, she’s got a good personality too. She only puts her hand up in class to answer a question occasionally, but she’s always right. She’s more serious than most girls. She listens to you with her head on one side, looking straight at you all the time that you’re talking, as though she’s really interested in what you’re saying. She lives in Melton Street, and her father publishes those car magazines and her mother’s a lecturer in jazz. Pretty unusual jobs. They lived in Canada for a year when Bianca was young, then they lived in South Kendry for five years, then they moved here. I know she still misses her friends in South Kendry a lot.
12.00 noon
I just remembered to ask Mrs Hazell what ‘Brstr’ means, from the phone book the other day. She said it’s probably short for barrister, and when I said ‘What’s a barrister?’ she said ‘It’s a special type of lawyer who appears in court for you’. If that’s right, it means Mr Edwards has got a lawyer who represents people in court, so I guess that’s another piece of evidence.
7.45 pm
Phil’s here and he’s playing with my computer while I write in this. He’s got this mad idea. Honestly, wherever Phil is, there’s action, but I didn’t know he was going to spring this one. What he wants is for both of us to sneak out tonight and have a look at the Edwards’ place. This doesn’t seem like a very smart move, to me. In fact, it could be a serious mistake. Last week Mrs Hazell got us to write a story called ‘The Biggest Disaster I Ever Caused’. Maybe I should have asked for extra time to write it. I’ve got a feeling that by tomorrow I’ll be able to do a whole new version.
What I wrote about last week was how when I was little Mum bought a new dress that was really expensive and we went to a Christmas party at her work, and halfway through the party I needed a tissue, so I was pulling on her dress trying to get her attention to ask her for the tissue, but she wouldn’t take any notice of me, so after a while I gave up and blew my nose on her dress.
That was quite a big disaster.
Anyway, it wouldn’t be hard to get out tonight, ’cos Mum’s working a night shift to get more money, and Dad always goes to bed early when Mum’s doing that. Then, if he’s not feeling lazy, he gets up early and makes her a good breakfast when she gets home.
Saturday, Feb 15, 12 noon
Well, we went. I don’t know how I let myself get talked into these things. We waited till 10.30. Dad looked in on us once, then he went to bed about 9.30 and turned his light off pretty soon after that. Jodie had gone at about nine o’clock, but through her door you could hear that tinny noise that a Walkman makes when someone’s got it turned up loud. That went on till about ten o’clock. I don’t know where she gets her batteries from.
We were going to wait till midnight, but we got sick of waiting after a while, and also we were afraid we’d fall asleep. Well, to be honest, Phil was. I didn’t think it’d be such a bad idea if we did. But I didn’t say so. We got up and got dressed—we’d kept our jeans and socks on, so we only had to put on shirts and shoes. It was getting quite cool, so I got out jumpers, dark jumpers, for both of us. Then we squeezed the door open, inch by inch. I was so nervous. We got it half open, then Phil burped. It was such a loud one. It sort of echoed down the corridor. We both got the giggles then, so we had to shut the door fast and race back to bed and stuff pillows in our mouths.
That took about five minutes, then we tried again. This time we had more success. We tiptoed down the corridor, but every step we took sounded like an earthquake. I couldn’t believe how much noise Phil was making. I thought maybe he wasn’t even trying, but when I looked at him I could see that he was. Then Phil put his finger to his lips, and I realised that to him I must be sounding just as loud. I was amazed. I thought I was being like the Phantom, Ghost Who Walks.
We were moving so slowly, but as we got closer to the kitchen we sped up a bit. I was just waiting every moment for Dad to throw open his door and yell ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ It seemed impossible that anyone could sleep through all the creaks of the floorboards and the shuffle of our jeans and the thumps of our shoes on the carpet. I tried not lifting my feet as high with each step and that seemed to help. It would have been better if we’d carried our shoes and put them on when we got to the back door, but it was too late to think of that.
Finally though we were on the lino of the kitchen and we could relax a bit. I got a key while Phil worked the door open. The night air rushed in, all cool on our hot faces. I thought ‘Funny, I was nearly asleep a while ago’. The only thing that would have sent me to sleep right then would have been someone dropping a sledgehammer on my head.
We shut the door behind us, as quietly as we could, but even the click of the lock sounded like a whip crack across the yard. Phil started to move off. ‘Wait a sec,’ I whispered. I was scared someone would have heard the door, but there was still no movement. ‘Come on,’ Phil said. We went down the yard and through the gate. I looked back at the house, but it was dark and silent. I closed the gate and followed Phil along the street, then ran a few steps and caught him up. We started talking in whispers, then we gradually realised we could use normal voices again. It felt strange for a minute but it was a relief after all that hush-hush stuff. ‘How exactly are we going to do this?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It looked pretty hard to get in at the back.’ ‘Well we can’t do much at the front, because there’s a street light there. Anyway I know how to open that back gate. When Paul was living there I used to go round all the time.’ We walked slowly past their front fence, staring in. There was a light on, but it was in the middle of the house somewhere. ‘Keep walking,’ Phil suddenly muttered. ‘There’s some blokes in a car over there.’ We sped up and went down to the corner and turned left into Penleigh Street. ‘What was that all about?’ I asked. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘it was strange. There was a parked car opposite the house, and a couple of blokes in it, watching us.’ ‘Really? What did they look like?’ ‘Well, that was the other funny thing. It was like they were deliberately sitting down low in the car—you could only see their heads. But they were definitely watching us.’ ‘Yikes. We have to come back this way too. Halliday Lane’s a dead end. But maybe they’ll be gone by then.’
We walked as quietly as we could down Halliday Lane, but our feet were crunching on the gravel quite a bit. At the corner of the Edwards’ fence we stopped. It was so dark there and we couldn’t find any cracks to look through. ‘There’s not much action,’ Phil whispered. ‘What do you think we should do?’ I asked. ‘I think we should go in,’ he answered, which is just what I thought he’d say and just what I hoped he wouldn’t. He asked: ‘Didn’t you say there was a way of getting in?’ ‘Yeah, along here.’ We tiptoed to the other end of the fence, where there was a narrow door. Phil felt around it. ‘It’s locked,’ he said, in disappointment. ‘It’s more than locked. There’s a padlock the size of a pineapple on it.’ I should have said ‘Oh well, that’s it then. Let’s go home.’ But I’ve always been too honest. It’s a big problem of mine. ‘It just looks locked,’ I said. ‘You can lift it off its hinge at the other side. It’s really easy. Here, get out o
f the way, I’ll show you.’ I groped around for the little gap that Paul Choo had shown me. I found it and got my hand in, then lifted the door with that hand, using my other hand to balance it. I felt it come free. Phil sounded like he’d stopped breathing and I think I had too. I kept lifting and moved the door back and sideways, till there was a gap that I thought we could just about squeeze through. Then I just leant the door back against the fence, resting it there quietly, as I turned to Phil. ‘Well, this is it,’ I whispered. Unfortunately all my mucking around with the door meant that I was still in front of Phil, so I had to go first. Bummer bummer. I took one nervous step with my right foot through the fenceline, then one with the left, and there I was, in the Edwards’ back yard.
Phil was coming through behind and crowding on top of me, so I had to keep going. I took another step, crunched on some little metal thing, a toy maybe that was half buried in the lawn, and felt it fold up under my foot. But I took about three more steps, not sure how far to go towards the house, or where we should stop to sum up the situation. Then suddenly the decision was made for us. My heart just about jumped up and hit my clavicle (that’s my collarbone I think; we did it in Science). If there’d been a hole in my shoulder my heart would have leapt right out and flopped onto the ground. See, what happened was that, with no noise at all, not even a whisper, this white light came on and flooded the whole back lawn; a light so strong I’m amazed that it didn’t burn the grass. Yikes it was strong, stronger than daylight. And a moment later the noise began: sirens and bells, bells and sirens, it was like an air raid had started and every fire-engine and ambulance for 200 k’s was on its way.
Phil and I, we didn’t need to hold a meeting of LFT to decide what to do. Once we’d unfrozen ourselves, which took a second or two, we turned and went for the gap in the fence where we’d lifted out the door. The trouble was that we arrived there at the same time so there was a bit of a delay while we tried to squeeze through together. It was a narrow opening but somehow we managed it—we sort of popped out onto the footpath, losing our balance and sprawling across the road. But then we were up, up and away, belting down Halliday Lane, the sirens and bells going as loudly in our heads as they were in the yard of the house. We turned right into Penleigh Street, still sprinting like mad, and raced to the corner of Rooke Street. ‘What’ll we do?’ I asked Phil, panting like a rhinoceros with asthma. ‘We’ve got to get back to your place quick,’ he said, ‘in case they come looking for us. Just walk naturally.’ We started down Rooke Street, on the opposite side to the Edwards’ house. The house was all lit up, and we could see shadows of people moving. My heart was thudding away. Had we caused all this? Then I realised something else. We’d forgotten about the car with the two men, opposite the house. Now we were nearly level with it. If we hadn’t been so busy looking at the house we would have noticed it before, because now the front doors of the car were open, like the wings of a bird, and the inside light was on. But at least there was no one in it any more. Phil grabbed my arm, so tight it hurt, and nodded at the car’s front seat as we hurried past. Sitting on each seat was a policeman’s cap. ‘Yikes,’ I breathed. ‘Those blokes were cops.’ It was an unmarked police car.
A minute and a bit later we were inside our back yard. It was unfair really—being home again you’d think you’d be able to relax, but with us the pressure was still on ’cos Dad could have come erupting out of the house at any moment, spitting lava and steam and noxious gases. The house was as dark as ever but I could hear the sirens bellowing away at the Edwards’ place. At the end of each blast you sort of got ready for the next one, but then suddenly, as we stood, there was silence. It was a shock because I was expecting that next blast. To hear nothing took some getting used to. You could feel the air again, all sweet and cool, and see the stars. Somehow I thought the worst was over. I turned to Phil. ‘Let’s get inside,’ I whispered.
When we were finally safe in bed we didn’t talk for quite a while. At last Phil spoke. ‘What do you think’s going on?’ he said. ‘I don’t know. All those sirens. The Choos didn’t have those. There must be a big security system there now.’ ‘Yeah, and the cops.’ ‘Yeah, do you reckon they were there to guard them or to spy on them?’ ‘I don’t know. Maybe Mr Edwards is a Mafia boss and he’s going to testify against the rest of the Mafia, so the cops are protecting him.’ ‘Yeah, or maybe he’s a spy who’s defective or whatever you call it.’ ‘Yeah or maybe he’s a drug runner and the cops were about to swoop on him and we’ve wrecked the whole thing.’
I think I went to sleep pretty soon after that, although I’d thought I’d be too fired up for that. But this morning everything was so normal, I kept kidding myself that maybe none of it really happened. It did though, I know that, and all I hope now is that no one comes looking for Phil and me. They won’t find Phil because he went home about 10.30, and I’m keeping pretty close to the house. I haven’t dared put my nose out into the street yet. I talked Jodie into going and getting the papers for Mum and Dad.
Sunday, Feb 16, 7.10 pm
It’s been a quiet weekend, but there’s that feeling of something hanging in the air, something waiting to break. I’m so nervous about seeing Mike at the bus stop tomorrow.
Luke came over this afternoon to get his Textas back, so I told him about all the action, of course. He thought we were mad but he was really annoyed we hadn’t included him. I don’t know though, Luke’s kind of nervous. I don’t think he would have wanted to do it if he had been there. Come to think of it, I hadn’t been all that keen myself.
Luke said maybe it’s Mrs Edwards who the police are so interested in. We’ve been thinking all along it’d be Mr Edwards but maybe it’s her. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the baby, Adrienne.
Monday, Feb 17, 10 am
OK, I survived the meeting with Mike at the bus stop. But only just. That kid, there’s something about the way he looks at you, cold, like he’s a cop himself. We just talked normally for a minute or two, then he started slipping in these sly questions, about what I did at the weekend, what time I go to bed, whether this was a peaceful neighbourhood at nights, whether anything strange happened over the weekend. I don’t know if he suspected me or not; but he got to the point where he had to either stop or accuse me outright. So he stopped. But that look was still in his eyes.
And I survived Mrs Hazell getting mad at me five minutes after school started. All I’d done was stick a bit of chalk in the blackboard duster, so it drew lines across the blackboard instead of cleaning it. I thought it was pretty funny actually.
And I survived getting another romantic letter, which said ‘Dear Tony, I thought about you all weekend and I’ve got your name written on my mirror at home. I want to know more about you. Write me a letter, please. There’s a book at the end of the green shelf that no one ever borrows. It’s called Out of Time. You can leave it in that. See you! Even with my eyes shut!’
But what I didn’t survive was the way all the girls kept going on about it, saying things like ‘We know who likes you Tony’; ‘We know who it is’; until the boys started getting in on it too. It’s so aggravating. So I finally had to tell Phil and Luke the whole story. They reckon it’d be Cindy, but I don’t think so. All I know is, it’s gone far enough and I want it to stop. Those girls are at me again now. Rack off!
6.55 pm
We had an interesting time in the Library this afternoon. We were doing our projects on other countries, which we’ve nearly finished, thank goodness. I was reading Luke an article about Luxembourg, by this bloke who’d been there. He said the Royal Palace is in an ordinary street in the main city, and only one sentry guards it. And this bloke said he’d been standing there one day taking photos of the Palace, and the baker’s boy rode up on his bicycle and leant the bike against the sentry box and disappeared into the Palace with a bag of bread. So the security wasn’t all that good.
So anyway, Luke listened to all that, and he said ‘You know, maybe that’s why they’re guarding the Edwards
’. I said ‘How do you mean?’ and he said ‘Well, remember when we first found out they had a silent phone number and I said that you have those when you’re famous?’ ‘Yeah, I remember.’ ‘Well maybe Mr or Mrs Edwards is really famous, and they just get guarded and have all that security to stop their fans giving them a hard time.’ I thought about all this and said ‘But you wouldn’t live in a house like that if you were famous. And my dad said Mr Edwards is an accountant and Mrs Edwards doesn’t work.’ Luke wasn’t convinced though. He said there was a book where you could look up people who were famous, so we went and searched through the Reference section. When we couldn’t find anything there we asked Ms Cranston, the librarian. She said there were a few books like that, and she showed us one about writers, then she asked us what the person we wanted was famous for. We said we didn’t know, and she gave us a look like ‘What are you wasting my time for?’ I said ‘What about accountants? Is there a book for them if they’re famous?’ And she laughed a lot and said ‘There’ll be a book of famous librarians before there’ll be a book of famous accountants’. We were a bit disappointed, but when she saw we were fair dinkum she said ‘Well, I suppose there’s always Who’s Who’. ‘Who’s who? What’s that?’ I asked. ‘It covers people who are famous in business, as well as other things like politics and the arts.’ ‘Do you have one of those?’ ‘Well, I might have somewhere, but it’d be an old one.’ She went into her office and rummaged around and came out a few minutes later with a big red book that she was wiping with a cloth. ‘There you go; I didn’t even know I had that,’ she said. ‘But it’s six years old, so it’ll be a bit out of date.’ ‘That’s OK,’ we said. ‘Better than nothing.’ We took it to a table, feeling quite excited and nervous, and turned to ‘E’. The first name we saw was Edgell, like the cans of food. ‘They must be the people who own the company,’ Luke said. We turned to ‘E-D-W’. There were lots of Edwards. ‘What was his first name?’ I asked Luke. ‘Something strange starting with Z,’ he answered. ‘There shouldn’t be too many of those.’ We kept looking. And suddenly there it was! EDWARDS, Zacchaeus. He really was in there! I got a major shock. Someone famous, and living in our street! We read the entry for him but there were so many abbreviations that it was hard to understand it all. I copied it out anyway, and this is it:
