by Angie Bates
“What for?” I said in a grumpy voice.
“Roz says Blythburgh Church has a very special roof,” Mum explained. She was using her patient playgroup leader’s voice.
“Have we got to see it now?” I moaned.
“We don’t mind, honestly,” said Rosie hastily.
I felt a bit guilty then. I mean, we’d been doing our thing practically all day. It was only fair Mum should do hers.
The church at Blythburgh is almost surrounded by flat green marshes. You can see its tower for miles.
“It’s OK, you guys can stay in the car,” I said nobly. “I’ll go in with Mum.”
Kenny frowned. “This is the church with the Civil War bullet holes, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Then I’m coming too,” she grinned.
It turned out everyone wanted to see the bullet holes.
“Wow,” Fliss breathed as we came up to the door.
It was quite impressive. I don’t think I’ve ever seen real live bullet holes before. And this huge church door was like, riddled with them.
“So what do you think?” said Mum, as we stood peering at these ancient battle scars.
Frankie instantly went into chat show mode. “It’s SO hard to imagine all that senseless violence. I mean, when we’re in the middle of this peaceful countryside, with bees buzzing, birds cheeping, butterflies fluttering—”
“Yeah, yeah, we get the picture, Spaceman,” muttered Kenny.
Inside, the church was really hushed and smelled very faintly of hymn books. We trailed around after Mum, not sure what we were meant to be looking at.
Suddenly Mum hissed, “Look up!” And we did.
And the roof was filled with angels!
Not real ones, stoopid! Carved ones, made of painted wood. They weren’t much like the modern idea of angels, admittedly. Their wings were up round their ears and they had these like, comical wooden perms!
Mum let us climb up some terrifyingly steep stone stairs so we could explore the priest’s room. The stairs were so narrow, you banged your elbows on the walls. But about halfway up, Kenny found a little peephole into the church.
“Hey, this is groovy! I can see your mum!” she giggled.
Of course we all had to take turns to hang out of it, waving wildly at my mum, until she hissed at us to come down again.
Then she dragged us over to look at yet another door with scorch marks. Only guess what! These weren’t made by bullets. According to local legend, they were made by the Devil himself!
Apparently, one Sunday he’d tried to storm into the church in the middle of the service. But the churchgoers were praying so hard, he couldn’t get past their like, holy force-field. So he was left outside, scrabbling at the door, and you can still see his huge fingerprints…
Yeah, right, as Kenny said!
But I’ll admit those blackened fingerprint things were a bit spooky. And I think we managed to convince Mum we were genuinely into it all, because she was humming as we drove back to my uncle and aunt’s house. I think she felt really chuffed that she’d finally got us to do something educational!
As soon as we got back, we sped off to the stables to shower and change. But as we started up the stairs to our hayloft bedroom, Kenny groaned. “Oh, no! Corkscrew!”
Frankie whacked herself on the head. “Duh!”
“We are such idiots,” I wailed.
“This adventure is totally doomed,” said Rosie despairingly.
“It never even got off the ground,” I pointed out.
“This is terrible. We’re going home tomorrow,” said Frankie.
“Thanks, Frankie, just what we needed,” said Kenny in a sarcastic voice. “More pressure.”
We went into a slump right there on the stairs.
Then Kenny said, “I’ve had enough of this. Let’s smash the stupid thing now!”
Fliss looked puzzled. “I thought you said the noise—”
“No-one will hear,” said Kenny impatiently. “The grown-ups are over in the meadow, getting the barbecue going.”
I felt a surge of excitement. “You’re right! Let’s do it!”
We all moved at exactly the same moment, and ended up having a really undignified tussle on the stairs.
Frankie won (surprise surprise!) and went charging up to the top. The rest of us were all still trying to get up the stairs at once.
“I DO hope it’s a hidden treasure message, not a kidnap one!” Rosie was saying breathlessly.
“Yeah, a kidnap would be WAY too exciting,” Fliss said solemnly.
“If it’s a kidnap one, the victim probably snuffed it yonks ago,” said Kenny.
“Oh yeah,” said everyone.
“Erm, Lyndz! Where did we leave that bottle again?” Frankie yelled.
“On the chest of drawers, you bozo!” I yelled back.
We finally managed to free ourselves and erupted into the hayloft, shrieking with laughter. Which is when we realised that Frankie was the only person who wasn’t laughing.
“So come on, where is it?” demanded Kenny.
Frankie pointed silently at the chest of drawers.
It was completely empty.
The bottle had gone!
The Sleepover Club has its share of ups and downs as you know, but this was an all-time low.
I don’t know about you, but bottles with mysterious messages in them don’t tend to wash up at my feet on a regular basis.
We’d blown our golden opportunity, and we felt like total idiots.
But there’s one great thing about my mates. They have this ability to totally bounce up again like, well, things that bounce back!
And that’s exactly what happened.
“OK,” said Kenny briskly. “Let’s all go on a bottle hunt.”
We stared at her.
“Well, we’re acting like the stoopid thing just disappeared off the face of the earth, when it’s probably just been tidied away somewhere.”
Frankie’s face lit up. “Oh, Kenny, you star!” she breathed. “That’s it!”
“Huh?” said everyone.
“Look around, you guys!” she said excitedly. “When we went out this morning, our room was a tip. Now it’s all spick and span. Carrie, or whatever she’s called, obviously came in to tidy up.”
I was shocked. “You think Carrie stole it?”
“Duh,” said Frankie. “Didn’t you hear what your aunt said? ‘Carrie’s a treasure, even if she is a bit of an eco-warrior’; hint hint!”
“Yikes!” Fliss squeaked. “Carrie’s recycled our bottle!”
I covered my face. “Oh, this is so unfair! It’s probably all mashed up by now. It’s no use. Modern kids are just not cut out for adventures. We should stick to watching TV and shopping!”
“Hey, I thought I was meant to be the Sleepover Club drama queen,” Frankie teased. “Isn’t it possible that Carrie simply thought it was an empty bottle, and being a good little eco-warrior, immediately put it to one side for recycling later? In a recycling bin?”
Fliss went into peals of girly laughter. “You sound just like a detective!”
I felt a spark of hope. “Recycling bin? Here, at Willow Cottage?”
We stared at each other.
Then we all made a mad dash to the main cottage, hurtling straight through the kitchen and out into the utility area.
There in a row were three big plastic bins, neatly labelled in black felt pen. One for waste paper. One for veggy peelings. And one for glass…
I clasped my hands together. “Please, please, please,” I whispered.
Kenny lifted the lid with a flourish. And right on top was our precious bottle, winking in the afternoon sunlight, totally unharmed.
Everyone sagged with relief.
“Come here you little beauty. Mwa!” I gave the bottle a smacking kiss.
“Now nab a corkscrew, quick!” hissed Kenny.
We hunted around the kitchen.
“It’s hanging on th
e thingy,” said Rosie. “With all the kitchen doodahs, oh you know!”
She meant the utensils rack, believe it or not! We all fell about laughing. But unfortunately, at that moment we heard footsteps.
Kenny hastily spirited the corkscrew into her jeans pocket, and I hid the bottle behind my back.
“There you are,” said Mum. “I’ve been looking all over.” Her eyes narrowed. “You haven’t changed your clothes. What have you girls been doing all this time?”
“Erm,” I said desperately. “Well, actually…”
To my amazement Frankie came to my rescue. “Oh, Mrs Collins, it was awful,” she babbled. “We thought we heard the ghost.”
Suddenly I was inspired. “Yeah, we heard funny snuffling noises. I heard them this morning too. It has to be the ghost!”
Well it wasn’t a total lie!
“It scared me to death, Mrs Collins,” said Frankie earnestly. “I just don’t feel comfortable taking my clothes off, knowing there’s a ghost, you know, peeking.”
I could see Kenny biting her lip, desperately trying not to laugh.
I have to say Mum didn’t look too convinced. But quite accidentally, Auntie Roz saved our bacon. My aunt came hurrying into the kitchen, looking for the salad servers or something. And galloping after her, with one ear stylishly inside out as usual, came gorgeous Gizmo.
He immediately began snuffling around his water bowl.
“That’s it!” Frankie shrieked. “That’s the noise. Oh, I feel so-o embarrassed!”
“Yeah, whew,” mumbled Kenny. “It was the puppy all the time.”
“Well, now that little mystery’s cleared up, we’ll go and get changed,” I said brightly.
“Good idea,” said Mum drily. She sounded deeply suspicious.
We just made it out of the kitchen before we collapsed in total hysterics.
“So are we going to open it now?” asked Rosie eagerly.
“I think we should do it tonight at our Sleepover feast,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Frankie. “We’ll do it in style.”
“My deah,” said Fliss in a posh voice. “We do everything in style!”
Uncle Phil had built a proper barbecue pit in the meadow at the back of the house. He and my aunt were like, barbecue experts (I suppose they ate barbecue all the time in Australia). But we still didn’t get to eat anything for ages. I think that’s an ancient barbecue law or something.
I lurve barbecues. Grown-ups keep handing you delicious savoury goodies as soon as they come off the grill, still sizzling and smelling of charcoal, which somehow makes it heaps more exciting than food which has been cooked indoors. It’s kind of like outlaw food!
Don’t worry, there were plenty of delicious veggie options for Frankie.
But she spent most of the evening madly rushing around, taking pictures with her camera. And we all obliged by striking mad poses among the wild flowers. Gizmo’s in most of them, because guess what! He’d recently started to follow me around, instead of Auntie Roz.
“You can be my faithful dog any time, Giz,” I whispered to him, as I tickled his tum.
The Sleepover Club is always up for a party as you know, and we all had a really enjoyable evening. But I think we were all terribly conscious of trying to save ourselves for our grand Sleepover feast.
After all, this one was a biggie. We kept exchanging excited glances. And I knew what my mates were thinking, because I was thinking the same thing. We were finally going to open the bottle. Tonight we’d know for sure what was in that message!
But it’s surprisingly hard to leave a barbecue when the charcoal is still glowing. It’s that Robin-Hood-camping-in-Sherwood-Forest thing. So we lingered in the meadow, chatting, until it was almost dark. But then the midges started biting and it grew seriously breezy, and suddenly Kenny faked this huge yawn.
“Blimey!” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I’m SO sleepy. Must be all the fresh air.”
This was our cue to yawn as well. “Me too,” I said. “Thanks for tonight, Uncle Phil and Auntie Roz. I’ve had a great time.”
We all gave Gizmo a last passionate cuddle, and Auntie Roz grabbed on to him to stop him following us as we went racing through the twilight.
I grabbed at a piece of honeysuckle as I flew past, and sniffed deeply. I think heaven must smell of honeysuckle, don’t you?
We got ready for bed so fast, it was exactly like one of those comical old movies. All of us rushed about, tripping over each other and bumping heads, totally keyed up!
Finally Mum came up to say goodnight. “Any idea what you’d like to do on your last morning?” she asked. “I thought we could go to that museum at Dunwich.”
“That kind of depends,” I said vaguely.
“Oh,” said Mum, sounding slightly miffed. “On what?”
Well, Mum, the fact is that by tomorrow, we just might be millionaires!
But I couldn’t exactly say that, so I just said, “Let’s see what the weather’s like.”
Mum switched off the light. “Sleep tight.”
We waited until Mum was safely inside the main cottage, then we all switched on our torches, giggling with excitement.
“This is going to be the most thrilling sleepover feast ever,” said Rosie happily.
“Come on guys,” I said. “We’re doing this properly.”
So we unwrapped all our sleepover goodies and piled them in a pretty blue bowl we’d borrowed from Auntie Roz when she wasn’t looking.
Want to know what we’d bought from the village shop?
Some of the goodies were slightly strange, actually!
We had pink and green flying saucer things with slightly stale sherbet in, a big bag of marshmallows which must have dated back to hippie days because they were in the weirdest colours, a bag of M&Ms, a packet of Eccles cakes. (I bought those. I thought it was just the kind of jolly stodge the Thingybobby kids would eat.) Also a bag of plain kettle chips and a jumbo box of Celebration chocolates, because they were on special offer!
I placed the bottle ceremonially on the ground beside our feast. “Right,” I said. “Who’s doing the honours?”
“You are, girlfriend,” grinned Frankie.
“No way!” I protested. “I never used a corkscrew in my life!”
“Now’s your chance!” said Kenny, and she calmly passed it over.
I plunged the screwy part of the corkscrew into the cork.
“Yikes,” I joked. “I feel like someone in the bomb disposal squad!”
I braced the bottle between my knees like I’d seen grown-ups do, and pulled hard. This is the dodgy part of the operation. If you get it wrong, the cork ends up inside the bottle, forever.
But if you get it right – POP!!
“Yess!” cheered everyone.
I stared at the cork, totally astonished. “It came out!”
“Erm, the message,” Frankie reminded me.
My mates crowded round, totally fizzing with excitement.
I felt like my hands had stage fright! I hooked a shaking finger into the neck of the bottle and fished out the piece of paper.
It dawned on me that I must be the first person to touch it for like, hundreds of years. Wow, I thought. This is so amazing! I cautiously unrolled the paper, and it made a dry crackling sound as if it was really old.
“Move your head, Kenny, I can’t see,” Rosie complained. “Is there a map on it, Lyndz?”
I felt a twinge of disappointment. “Uh-uh,” I said. “Poetry.”
Kenny was disgusted. “We went through all this hassle for poetry?”
“They often put treasure clues in poetry in olden days,” Frankie said calmly. “Read it out, Lyndz.”
I squinted at the strange loopy writing. “I’ll try,” I said doubtfully. “Erm, here goes.” And this is what it said:
“Well, that’s as clear as mud,” said Kenny crossly.
I was still peering at the message. “There’s some little numbers and letters at the bottom.”
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br /> Frankie sucked in her breath. “Of course!” she shrieked. “We are SO dense! Angels and devils. Duh!”
And PING! That little light-bulb went on inside my head, and I got it too. I started to grin. “Unbelievable! We were probably just inches away and didn’t even know!”
Fliss and Kenny both looked at us like we were talking Martian.
But Rosie was bubbling with excitement. “Come on, guys,” she coaxed. “Angels above you?”
“Oh, those angels,” said Kenny, instantly cheering up. “Oh wow!”
Fliss’s eyes widened. “You think the treasure’s in that church, don’t you!”
We all nodded.
“Those numbers are probably like, measurements,” said Frankie eagerly. “So we’ll know how many paces to take. They always did that with hidden treasure.”
“What do you think it actually is?” I said. “Gold and jewels, strings of valuable pearls and stuff?”
“Sometimes it’s like, a stash of ancient gold coins,” said Kenny.
“They dug up a Saxon king round here once,” I said. “Mum told me. He had his boat with him and all his valuables.”
“Oh, I do hope we don’t find a dead king,” Rosie shivered.
Fliss was looking doubtful. “This doesn’t really make sense, you know,” she said timidly. “I mean, why go to the bother of hiding valuable treasure, then put a message in a bottle telling a complete stranger where to find it?”
Frankie shrugged. “So? Smugglers are always hiding their loot in those old stories.”
I felt a shiver of excitement. “You think this note was written by smugglers?”
“Or bloodthirsty pirates, maybe?” said Kenny hopefully.
Frankie shook her head. “I don’t think pirates could usually write. I think they just signed their name with like, a mark or something.”
Rosie’s eyes were shining. “Maybe someone stole it and then it started preying on their mind, but they daren’t own up because they knew they’d be gruesomely put to death,” she suggested.
“You mean he put the clue in the bottle to ease his conscience?” I said. I thought this was an excellent theory.
Actually I started getting a bit carried away. “He could have been like a lord’s youngest son,” I said. “But he had to steal to pay his gambling debts.”
