The Arrowhead Moor Adventure

by Fleur Hitchcock

  They stood side by side, staring into the darkness as Aiden ran back along the line of the fence.

  “There’s no way out down there; we’re going to have to rescue him,” said Chloe.

  “How?” said Josh.

  “I don’t know. Let’s run towards him. We’ll think of something on the way.”

  Aiden was running out of breath. All that time in the bog had tired him out and now, racing up and down the field in the dark, his legs felt like lead. But the man’s breathing behind him kept him moving. Somewhere in this field was a stile, and on the other side a large ploughed field. The plough lines would be hard to run across, but he was hoping they’d be harder for the large man behind him. He swung back to his left – where was that stile?

  Clang!

  Something crashed over to the right. In the dark it was difficult to see but it looked as if a load of large black things were flowing towards him.

  Cows?

  “Go – on!” he heard Josh cry and then thundering hooves.

  It was cows. Brilliant.

  Aiden raced up towards the gateway, dodging the cattle, and heard the yelp behind him of the man not dodging the cattle.

  In the moonlit darkness it was hard to avoid the confusion, but he knew that if he kept to the left of the gateway, there was a pedestrian gate, and he’d be able to get through.

  All around him the cows milled, thundering chaotically back and forth across the turf, bellowing and stamping. Wet noses lunged towards him and more than once he was flicked by a flying tail, and all the while his feet slipped on the wet grass.

  “Here,” he heard Chloe hiss. She was holding the side gate open and he threw himself through and followed her and Josh to the top of the field, where they scrambled over a collapsed piece of wall and stopped in the lane.

  Aiden leaned over, resting his hands on his knees while he gulped in breath. “Phew,” he said. “Thanks. That was close.”

  Below they could hear cows mooing and the man shouting and the other man shouting too. They sounded a long way away. A safe distance.

  “Will those cows get out?” he asked.

  “No,” said Chloe. “We checked that the gates were closed.”

  Aiden breathed deeply, filling his lungs with the cowy night air. He surveyed the fields. “But where’s Ava?”

  Ava was crouching in the back of a warm shed at Sunny Grange House, three hundred metres down the path from the clifftop cottages. She had heard the shouting, she had heard the running, but she stayed put because she didn’t trust her legs to run as fast as they needed to. Searching that cottage had been so terrifying that her knees seemed to have given up. Even clambering over the small fence into this garden and running to the shed had been a trial, so she’d decided she’d wait until it all went silent before she set off again. Besides there was the strangest sound coming from next door.

  Sort of sheepy.

  Baaing and shuffling, and that smell – like old woolly jumpers.

  All of which was odd when you considered that she was hiding next door to an ornamental greenhouse in a garden that was open to the public three days a week.

  Ava straightened her legs and shook the muscles of her thighs to stop them twitching.

  Baaaaa!

  Tiptoeing through the shed, Ava peered through the little window at the back that looked out into the conservatory. The old-woolly-jumpers smell became more intense and the rustle of animals moving around in the moonlight became more obvious.

  She smiled to herself. “Oh my god, sheep – there you are!” she said. “All snug in the conservatory.”

  The sheep just shuffled and chewed and tore at the hay that had been left for them.

  And then she remembered. The house was closed until May. Someone was supposed to be painting the greenhouses, not hiding sheep in them. Clever. They probably knew that no one would check it over the weekend.

  Ava clicked her phone on. Midnight. All the running around had stopped. The only sounds came from the sheep.

  Straightening herself up, she opened the door of the shed and stepped out into the velvety blackness.

  At breakfast the scrambled eggs and hot buttered toast disappeared at double speed, washed down with apple juice. Ava was there. She looked a little baggy-eyed but otherwise fine, and Josh wondered if she’d managed to get the diamonds. Last night, Chloe had made Ava noises in the bathroom and dropped wet towels all over the landing. They’d pretended that Ava had already gone to bed with a headache. But the truth was no one had seen her.

  Catching her attention, Josh raised an eyebrow, but she ignored him and filled her glass with more juice. “Ava?” he asked.

  This time she raised her index finger and pointed out towards the garden. “Garden,” she mouthed.

  “Another one of these, anyone?” said Grandpa, turning from the stove, a hash brown delicately balanced on his fish slice.

  Josh held his plate forward, hopeful that the hash brown would land with him, but Chloe got it.

  He tried not to look disappointed, but Grandpa must have seen it. “There’ll be another one along in a moment, Josh.”

  Josh beamed.

  “You’re all very quiet this morning,” said Grandma, coming in with Bella.

  Grandpa tossed more potato into the frying pan and pointed it at Aiden. “I expect he’s tired after falling in that bog.”

  Aiden nodded. The rest of them just ate.

  “Anyway,” said Grandma, hanging up her coat, “it’s a beautiful day. Proper spring at last.”

  “Marvellous,” said Grandpa, cracking two eggs into a bowl and gazing out of the window at the bright sunlit meadow stretching down to the sea. “What are those cows doing in the ploughed field?”

  Grandma laughed. “Yes – bit of a rumpus going on about Mr Dempsey’s cows. Apparently they opened a gate in the night and got into the bottom field.”

  Josh looked up at Chloe and watched her turn from white to red.

  “How did that happen?” asked Aiden with an expression of innocence that Josh could only admire.

  “I’ve no idea,” said Grandma, smiling. “Oh, and I found this –” she held up Josh’s red sweatshirt – “just in the entrance to Mr Dempsey’s field. Is it yours, dear?” she asked, handing it to him.

  This time Josh felt the blush race all the way up his back, over the top of his head and down to his chin.

  On their own, after breakfast, Chloe sat on Ava’s bed and watched in amazement as Ava took a sock from under the bed and shook out a cascade of diamonds. “Wow!” Chloe stood up, open-mouthed. “You found them!”

  She ran her finger over the diamonds. In the morning sunshine they shone like gold. Their sharp sides reflected every scrap of the light in the room.

  “And this one,” said Ava, shaking the sock one more time.

  A stone the size of a large hen’s egg bounced on the coverlet. Flat on the front but cut many times on the sides, the stone was as clear as the sea around Gull Rock. Chloe bent over it, looking through it to see the bedspread pattern kaleidoscoped a million times. “I…” she began.

  Ava smiled. “Yup.”

  “That’s brilliant – does Aiden know?” asked Chloe.

  Ava shook her head. Everyone had been fast asleep when she’d come back last night. It had been a slow journey home, creeping through hedges and farmyards, past sleeping dogs and cats. When she’d reached home Grandma and Grandpa had been snoozing in front of the telly and Ava had sneaked in past the open sitting-room door to slip up the staircase to bed.

  She ran her fingers over the diamonds. She hadn’t seen their real beauty until now. “I only found them when the man came up the stairs.”

  “What?” asked Chloe, lifting the largest diamond and holding it up to the sunlight.

  “When I heard him I had to go into the bathroom to hide. There wasn’t anywhere except under the basin, so I squidged myself into this tiny space and held the bath mat in front of me.”

  Chloe raised one eyebro
w. “They were hidden in the bath mat?”

  “No!” Ava laughed. “They were hidden at the back underneath the basin. When I looked up there was this little bundle taped to the bottom of the pipe. I pulled it off and…” She pointed to the diamonds twinkling on the bed.

  “Wow,” said Chloe. “Wow.”

  In the garden the sun shone and the little yellow celandine flowers glowed after yesterday’s showers. Grandma’s tulips were thinking about opening their blooms and thousands of green spikes were forcing their way through the red soil of the flower beds. It felt like a different season after yesterday’s rain.

  Chloe and Ava carried the diamonds out to the den and arranged them along the pallet. They looked incredible in the sunlight. Like stars.

  “Wow!” said Aiden. “Just wow.” He began to count them. “And you’re sure they didn’t see you come back here?” he asked Ava.

  She shook her head. “One hundred per cent sure. I was really careful. And guess what? I found the sheep.”

  “What? In the middle of the night?” asked her brother, picking up the Well of Beauty and holding it up to the light. The sunbeam broke into a thousand pieces and danced across the tree bark and the new green apple leaves.

  “Where are they?” asked Aiden, climbing up on the pallet and looking down over the fields towards the clifftop cottages, where the men were stamping about, apparently searching the grass.

  “In the conservatory at Sunny Grange House. I hid there.”

  Aiden nodded. “Clever place to hide them! So we can tell the police about that too.”

  “But we’re still twelve diamonds short of a necklace,” said Josh. The other three stared at him. “What? Well, we are, aren’t we? I mean, we’ve sort of rescued it, but not completely.”

  “He’s right,” said Aiden. “We’ve half solved it. We could solve the whole thing. But at the moment we have no idea where we need to go.”

  The others looked at Chloe expectantly while she gazed anxiously into space. After a stupid number of minutes waiting for her to remember, Josh started picking splinters of wood from the crate, then Ava reached out and picked some blossom and mentioned Japan, and Chloe suddenly went red, then white, and started talking fast.

  “Oh! I think maybe I’ve remembered it. When the woman was talking about the ‘rest’. She said – oh, what did she say? She said something about the meeting. She said eleven… I was hiding under these daisies, and they were dripping down my back.” Chloe stared towards the sea, trawling her memory.

  Ava nodded. “And…”

  “I had the path under my knees. She was on the phone to someone – probably Forty Grand.” Chloe took the blossom from Ava and peeled the bud apart, laying the white petals against the bark of the apple tree. “Oh dear, I wish I could remember better, but it’s definitely something Japanese.”

  “Did she mention a place?” Josh butted in. “Or are you trying to remember something you never heard?”

  “Shh,” said Ava. “Let her think.”

  Chloe puffed out her cheeks and blew the air out through her mouth.

  Rather like a horse, Josh thought.

  “I don’t think she said exactly where, but she said something about a Japanese temple, or water garden, and –” Chloe reached forward as if she could grab the words – “an icehouse. She mentioned an icehouse.”

  “Morehamstone,” said Aiden, turning back towards the house. “It’s got to be Morehamstone. I’ll just check.”

  Josh hung upside down from the apple tree, crossing his feet and staring at the sky through the network of blossom and buds. He couldn’t believe Chloe had forgotten that. Personally, he thought, he would cycle up to Morehamstone and see if the woman turned up. Then he’d catch them all at once. But he was the youngest. What did he know?

  Aiden returned with Bella at his side. He’d spoken to Grandpa, who’d confirmed that Morehamstone was the right house. He’d also made them a picnic that was now in Aiden’s backpack.

  Ava looked across the fields to see if the men were still there. Their car certainly was. That was when Chloe mentioned the second thing that Josh couldn’t believe she’d forgotten.

  “Oh! And look…” She held out a set of car keys.

  “Who do they belong to?” asked Aiden.

  Chloe pointed down towards the clifftop cottages, where the front door was open and the two men were still searching the garden.

  They decided that Ava would ring the police. Then they’d get the police to arrest the men and then go over to Morehamstone and arrest the woman. Meanwhile Chloe and Aiden would get themselves there and delay the woman until the police arrived.

  “What happens if the police don’t believe us?” asked Josh.

  “Or if we can’t get them up there in time?” said Chloe.

  Aiden glanced at Chloe. “I don’t know.” He swallowed. “But I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

  There was no rain and only the faintest breeze as Aiden and Chloe set off. Early butterflies played in the hedges. The verges bounced with greenery and the sun heated up the air. Chloe began to sweat soon after they started, but Aiden appeared heatproof. Lush green ferns lurked in the cool shadows every time they passed through any woodland and Chloe longed to stop and pour water over the back of her neck, but they kept going.

  The garden didn’t open until ten, so they had plenty of time and the ride was easier because they could hug the coast until they reached the garden. Morehamstone was a white house that faced out to sea in a creek filled with tree ferns and palms and secret dripping springs. There was an entrance down at the bottom by Moreham Beach but they pushed their bikes up the steep hill to the proper entrance and arrived at five to ten.

  In the car park an elderly couple drank coffee from a thermos flask and a man in a green sweatshirt trimmed a hedge.

  “Phew,” said Chloe.

  “Yup,” said Aiden, peeling two iced buns from each other and stuffing most of one into his mouth while handing the other to Chloe.

  They drank water, put their bikes in the bike rack, and waited for someone to start selling entry tickets from the booth.

  Bees buzzed.

  A distant cockerel crowed.

  Chloe felt extremely anxious.

  Somewhere nearby a bell struck ten and, as if summoned, a stream of cars flooded into the car park. Aiden swapped his bike helmet for a cap with a long peak and put on a pair of large sunglasses. Chloe pulled on a flowery sunhat that she’d found in a drawer at the farm, which smelled only slightly of mothballs. Finishing the look, she balanced a pair of reflective green sunglasses on her nose. She looked, she thought, quite unlike herself, and hoped it would make her braver.

  Glancing around, she couldn’t see the red open-top car and wondered if she’d guessed right. They might not be meeting here at all. There were probably lots of places with Japanese gardens and icehouses. Although she couldn’t think of any.

  At the gate the woman gave them both tickets and a map. “And you can have a couple of these if you like,” she said, beaming and handing them two rings made of bent willow.

  “Er?” said Chloe, staring at the small circles and wondering quite what they were.

  “You can make a crown! Pick greenery up and thread it through. Bring it back here for a photograph. We’ve had some very inventive entries.”

  “Oh,” said Chloe, threading her arm through the rings and peering at a wall of photographs of children wearing lopsided leaf-hats.

  “And don’t forget the lambing in the top field. They’re ever so sweet.” The woman pinched her lips together as if to convey sweetness, but it looked as if she’d swallowed a lemon.

  “Thank you,” said Aiden, and they headed over the small lawn towards the entrance to the garden.

  “Here,” said Chloe. “Your crown.”

  “Thanks,” said Aiden. “These’ll give us a reason to crash about in the bushes.”

  “Hmm,” said Chloe. “I suppose it’s a sort of disguise.” She scoope
d some ivy from a gardener’s barrow and threaded it through the ring. It looked like a green jellyfish. A green forest jellyfish.

  “C’mon, let’s get down to the ponds and find a hiding place.” Aiden stepped up the pace until they were almost running. They headed down the gravel path towards a series of streams that joined together to run down to the sea. A few families came in behind them and small children raced past them towards the tree ferns and the magical dells that surrounded them.

  Checking that there was no sign of the woman or the two men, they stopped by the first of several ornamental ponds. Huge orange fish circled under cherry trees covered in blossom. From time to time the fish would break through the reflections of trees to gulp at insects on the surface.

  It was all very still. Birds sang in the trees. The families had gone down towards the sea. It seemed like a setting waiting for something to happen.

  “Here,” said Chloe, skirting the water until she came to a huge clump of what looked like giant prickly rhubarb.

  They crept into the gap between the vast leaves, finding themselves in a dry cavern of greenery. It felt like a secret place, somewhere that no one had ever found before.

  “Just do as I say,” hissed Ava.

  “Why should I?” said Josh.

  “Oh my god. Because I say so, and because you’re the youngest and I’m the oldest and…” She glared at him. “Because if you don’t, I’ll do something both of us might—”

  Josh’s lip jutted out. He was going to protest. Ava just knew it. “But they won’t believe you. Grandma didn’t believe me.”

  “All I want you to do is keep Grandma and Grandpa talking in the kitchen while I make a phone call.” Ava seriously regretted keeping Josh with her. She should have thought of a reason for sending him with the others.

  Josh, on the other hand, was ready to push Ava into a ditch and ride to find a police officer without her. “OK,” said Josh. “I will, but you so owe me.”