“Good idea,” Oz said. “I keep forgetting.”
“Turn left at Libanus Street,” Soph said.
“This isn't the way to the market,” Oz thought.
“Libanus Street has four restaurants, two convenience stores, and a tavern called The Golden Lion. It is exactly the type of street we should be searching,” Soph replied.
Oz turned the corner into the street, and as if on cue, something happened to his vision. At least a dozen bright spots flared in the ghostly street image. “What are those?”
Oz thought to Soph.
Soph answered him immediately. “Hotspots.I am scanning for both magnetised threads and specific copper-zinc-nickel alloys. We have five possible targets. Please investigate.”
“Think we've got something,” Oz said out loud. He walked along to where the first bright spot glowed and ended up next to a very smelly and overflowing bin. The target appeared to be the remains of a half-eaten kebab balled up in greasy wrapping paper at the foot of the bin. A battalion of flies took off as Oz nudged the messy lump with his foot.
“There, that's the first target,” he said.
“Ugh,” Ellie said looking away. “I'm sorry, I'm not touching that.”
“Nor me,” Ruff said, mirroring Ellie's look of disgust.
“Oh, come on,” Oz said and nudged the wrapping once more with his foot, a move that caused it to roll over and spill out the crusty remnant of a bit of pita bread and bits of congealing, spit-roasted lamb.
He looked up at Ellie and Ruff. Both their faces wore the same you-must-be-joking expression. Grimacing, Oz knelt and picked up a discarded lollipop stick gingerly, between gloved fingers. He used it to tease open the rest of the kebab wrapper. The smell of stale grease was disgusting, but Oz kept on poking. He was about to ask Soph if she was positive about this when a familiar-looking image of a blue hat appeared amidst the scrunched layers. Oz continued probing and unwrapping and two minutes later stood up, waving a slightly soggy but intact five-pound note triumphantly.
“Wowee,” Ellie said, her eyes satellite dishes of amazement.
“But how?” Ruff said, frowning.
“Someone wasn't too careful with their change, obviously,” Oz said.
“Butâ¦I meanâ¦that's just⦔ Ellie spluttered.
“Impossible, yeah, I know,” Oz said airily. “But don't forget, this is Soph we're talking about here.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a rumpled plastic bag and a couple of pairs of thin plastic disposable gloves he'd found in his mum's mud-room cupboard; his dad had used the same sort for examining historical artefacts. He held out the gloves to Ellie and Ruff. “These are for you, and the bag's for the money. We can stuff it all in here and wash it later.”
He didn't have to ask them twice this time; they snatched the gloves from him eagerly.
“Where next?” Ruff said, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet and looking around at likely piles of refuse. Ten yards further on, Oz pointed to a pile of dead leaves, which Ellie gingerly peeled apart to reveal a pound coin nestling in the dirt. Shooting Ruff a look of mingled distaste and satisfaction, she carefully retrieved the coin and dropped it into the bag. By the time they got to the market, they were £15 better off, but as they stood on the edge of the bustling rows of stalls, Oz was suddenly dazzled by dozens of bright spots in his vision. He was getting better at looking through the lights at the piles of flotsam or empty cans or swept-up debris that harboured the treasure. Even in the rubbish-strewn corner of the car park they were now standing in, four possible targets were glowing.
“Right,” Oz said. “Ruff, see that manky old copy of last week's
Daily Express
?” He pointed towards a chain-link fence.
“Got it,” Ruff said, hurrying over. When he turned back, he looked disappointed. “Fifty pence.”
“It all adds up, Ruff,” Ellie said, but there was no denying her smug tone. She'd already found one fiver outside the Golden Lion.
To anyone glancing over at them, it looked like they were doing their bit for Keep Britain Tidy. In fact, Oz had brought a black plastic bag for any rubbish they did pick up, so as not to arouse suspicion. As they moved into the market proper, the trio avoided the main drag and kept to the fringes where discarded veg, half-ripped cardboard boxes, and other market debris sat in windswept heaps.
They hit the jackpot with a ripped twenty-pound note stuck to the bottom of an old boot by a bit of chewing gum, and a tenner folded up into a one-inch square inside a china pig with a slit in the top. That it had once been someone's moneybox, there was no doubt, though to whom it had once belonged was anyone's guess, given that it was covered by decaying cabbage leaves at the bottom of a rusting wheelbarrow.
Mainly it was pound and fifty-pence coins that they unearthed, and they unearthed an awful lot. After scouring the edge of the market, Soph took them back through the old town towards the new shopping centre until finally, two and a half hours after starting out, they stood outside Ballista's, rosy-cheeked and triumphant. Oz stuffed the half-full black rubbish bag in a convenient bin and held up their spoils.
“How much do you reckon?” Ruff asked.
Oz heard the answer immediately. “Soph says a hundred and forty-eight quid.”
“Yessss!” Ruff raised a fist.
“So I'd say a hundred for Ruff and twenty-four for each for us,” Ellie said.
“How about twenty each for us and ninety for Ruff and use the rest for a slap-up lunch?” Oz suggested.
“Deal.I'm starving,” Ruff said, and pushed open the door to Ballista's.
Oz turned to Ellie and whispered, “He seems pretty much back to normal, then?”
“Yes,” Ellie said, “worse luck.”
After a lunch of hot paninis, lattes with extra cream, and one of Ballista's mega-double-chocolate chip cookies each, they caught the bus back to Penwurt to find a note on the kitchen table for Oz, from his mum.
“Gone to decorating centre with Rowena. Back later. Chicken and broccoli dijonnaise for supper.”
“Mmmmm. C and B dijonnaise,” Ruff said dreamily.
“We've only just finished lunch,” Ellie said with a shake of her head.
“So? We'll be starving by suppertime,” Ruff argued.
They went straight to the library so they could do some studying for Monday's final science test on magnetism and electric motors. Oz had some cards made up ready for magnetism snap, but it soon became obvious that Ruff was clueless.
“Well, I haven't done any revision, have I?” he protested after flunking every question Ellie threw at him. “What was the point? I mean, up until yesterday, I wasn't going on the buzzard school trip, so it didn't matter what I got.”
“You're hopeless, Ruff Adams. I wish I had half your free time. You ought to come to my house and try and find a quiet corner to work in,” Ellie barked.
“Who rattled your cage?” Ruff said.
Oz sighed. “Okay, okay. Soph will sublimsert you tonight. Why don't you go and play some Death Planet Hub with S and S? I'm sure they'll be over the moon to see you back.”
“Result,” Ruff said, and disappeared down the turnpike stairs to Oz's bedroom.
“How come he always gets away with it?” Ellie asked. Oz noticed that there were pink spots on both of her cheeks.
“Charmed life, that one,” Oz said, but he was smiling as he said it.
They tested each other and played several rounds of snap until they each got full marks on the quiz sheets. Finally, Oz packed the cards away while Ellie watched him, a pensive, preoccupied look on her face.
“I've been thinking,” she said eventually. “There's nothing stopping us doing a treasure hunt with Soph every now and again, is there?”
“Don't see why not,” Oz said. “I mean it's not like we're stealing, is it? That money's been well and truly lost.”
“And even if we took it to a police station, they'd never find who it belonged to, would they?”
“Exactly,” Oz agreed.
Ellie's pained expression persisted despite Oz's enthusiasm. “Still feels sort of wrong somehow, though,” she said.
Oz nodded. He'd been amazed at how easy it was to pick up that much money with such little effort, but he knew just what Ellie meant. It didn't seem quite right somehow.
Suddenly, Ellie sat up, her eyes alight. “I know. We can give some of it to charity. Say a half?”
“I'd say a quarter,” Oz said with a shrug.
“We can rotate the charities we support, too. That way, I can actually tell my mum that we're collecting for charity on weekends. That'll get her off my back.”
“Is she hassling you, then?”
“Yeah. You know, chores and stuff. Especially lately.”
“Money's such a pain, isn't it,” Oz said, with feeling. It was more a statement than a question. It had almost caused a permanent rift between him and Ruff and was a constant cause of headaches for his mum, who spent a lot of time trying to save as much of it as she could, only to have her efforts thwarted more often than not. Their “invisible roofers” were a case in point. She'd scoured the classified ads and the web, only to eventually find them through a posted-up advert in Mr Virdi's greengrocery on Tricolour Street. The builders had sized up the job cheerfully and offered a very cheap quote, which had delighted Mrs Chambers, but two months later, there was no sign of them turning up. Meanwhile, the chimney was still leaking. “And I suppose Macy having a job doesn't exactly help, does it?” He'd meant it as just a statement of fact, a vague attempt of support for Ellie. After all, she'd said as much herself. So, when he saw Ellie's head shoot up and her eyes start brimming over, Oz felt the blood drain from his face.
“What's wrong?” he asked. “Is it Macy? Is she all right?”
“How would I know?” Ellie said tremulously. “She's still away on her course, isn't she?”
“Is she?”
“Yes.” she spat out the word and it was like a missile hitting a dam wall. To Oz's utter amazement, all the words in Ellie's head began pouring out in a single stream. “And I've had the bedroom all to myself for over a week and when I wake up in the morning Macy isn't there fussing with her hair and asking me if she looks good in this or that and I've been looking forward to it because in a year or two that's how it's going to be and it isn't anything like I thought it would be.” Ellie sniffed and fumbled for a handkerchief while Oz looked on in dumb horror. “Oh it's great having all that room, and I can spread all my stuff out on her bed but I didn't know that she read to Rhiannon every night or that she helped do her hair,” Ellie paused to look up, realisation making her slow down to a canter, “And of course Rhiannon didn't want me, oh no, she wanted Macy and”âshe sniffed againâ “how was I supposed to know that I'd actually miss her?”
Ellie buried her head in her hands and sniffed miserably. There were five kids in the Messenger family; Tristan was nineteen and away at university, then came Macy, then Ellie, then Leon, and little Rhiannon, who was just nine.
“Is that what's been the matter?” Oz said after a while. “With you, I mean.”
Ellie nodded. When she looked up, her face was streaked with tears. “I don't understand it. Tristan's been away at Uni for almost two years, and I hardly miss him at all. And Macy's a total pain, always borrowing my stuff and never putting anything back, and her half of the room's a total sty. And look at me.” She shook her head. “I'm the blue belt in taekwondo. I'm the one that's good at football and athletics. I'm the one that picks up the laundry from our bedroom floor. Why would Macy going away do this to me?”
“Just happens,” said a voice from the stairwell. Oz looked up to see Ruff standing there looking very sheepish. “Came up to get your new password,” he said, eyebrows raised apologetically. He turned to Ellie. “When Gazzer went away to Uni, I kept waiting to hear him start playing Slipknot chords on the guitar or see him sprawled all over the settee with the remote doing a flick-through of fifty channels and never stopping on one for more than five seconds. Hated him doing both those things, but still missed them when he wasn't there.”
“So, you've been feeling like this for the last week?” Oz asked.
Ellie nodded slowly.
“You could have told us,” Ruff said.
Ellie sent Ruff a scalding glance. “Really?With you playing the misunderstood teenager to the max?”
Ruff flinched. “Better ring for an ambulance, Oz. I think Ellie just chopped my legs from under me.”
Despite herself, a twitch of a smile wavered at the corners of her mouth.
“So, okay, I am a buzzard gonk. I admit it,” Ruff said.
“A total buzzard gonk,” Ellie said. She twisted the corner of her handkerchief into a unicorn's horn for a few seconds before looking up at Ruff again. “Is that true? What you just said about Gazzer?”
“Yeah. Still can't believe I miss the git.”
Ellie nodded. “Stupid, isn't it? But it sort of makes me feel a bit better.”
Ruff looked at Oz and made a sort of jerking movement with his head. Smiling, Oz got up and went over to Ellie.
“You too,” he said to Ruff. “She doesn't bite.”
Ruff walked over to join them, and the boys sat either side of Ellie holding out a hand each for her to take.
“Thanks for listening,” Ellie said.
They sat in the sort of comfortable silence only really good friends ever experience, when all that needs to be said has been said and quiet is all that's called for.
After about half a minute, Ruff whispered, “So what is your new password?”
Ellie let go of his hand and hit him in the chest, but it was just a playful thump.
“You're hopeless,” she said, but she was laughing quietly as she spoke.
“Totally,” Oz agreed, grinning.