Chapter Twenty One

Chapters 1-20 here.

Esmeralda led Nicky and Bracken through a warren of marble corridors, each more ornate than the last.

One had life-sized marble peacocks stalking around the skirting boards, their tails containing what looked very much like a collection of precious stones – emeralds, rubies, sapphires and suchlike. Another was decorated with an intricately carved frieze of scenes from medieval times. The next was home to a safari, which involved a lot of taxidermy and made Bracken feel like she shouldn’t have stopped her monthly donation to the RSPCA, even though she couldn’t really afford it at the moment.

“Well,” Nicky said to Bracken under his breath, “at least it’s not ostentatious or anything.”

She sniggered.

Esmeralda looked back at them sharply over her shoulder.

They met her gaze with the patented steady McCracken glare.

“Here we are,” she said tightly, stopping at an enormous mahogany door. There was a gold plaque on it with her name carved in.

She gestured for them to sit down in two plush red velvet bucket chairs, and busied herself at a nearby counter making a pot of tea.

Bracken engaged herself in listing adjectives that would describe the room. She found that sometimes listing things helped to calm her down in times of stress.

‘Elegant,’ she started. ‘Fancy, glamorous – ostentatious – ’ she nodded her thanks to Nicky but he wasn’t paying attention – ‘expensive, powerful, intimidating, excessive, ambitious, stylish, coordinated, cultured…’

“Is rooibos tea OK?” Esmeralda was asking.

“No idea,” said Bracken, “I only drink water.”

“That’s fine with me,” Nicky interjected, his eyes fixed on the window. There were thick drapes drawn, but he got the distinct impression that it was dark outside. The clock in the room was notable only for its absence, so he couldn’t say what time it was.

‘Flashy,’ Bracken continued inwardly, ‘decadent, grandiose, materialistic, luxuriant, ludicrous, sophisticated…’

“Here you go,” Esmeralda interrupted, putting a glass of water in front of Bracken and a cup of tea before Nicky.

“Now,” she said, “I expect you’re wondering what the shit is going on.”

“Not really,” Nicky replied, “it all seems pretty straightforward to me. The whole thing’s a dream, JR isn’t really dead, we’ll wake up and hear him taking a shower.”

As someone who feared and hated popular culture references, however outdated, Esmeralda decided to pointedly ignore this outburst.

“I suppose I ought to begin at the beginning,” she said, removing her white lab coat to reveal the jumpsuit underneath.

“Hold on,” Nicky exclaimed in slow motion, “you’re wearing the same uniform as Bert.”

“So?”

“So that means you’re not the one in charge of this place.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, the big cheese wears that ridiculous cape and the carnival mask.”

Esmeralda snorted unattractively.

“If you say so, Nicholas.”

“What, so you’re in charge really, but you let Cloaky McMysterious take all the credit? They get to bask in the fear of the inmates whilst you –”

He paused, unsure of the best way to continue, then finished lamely, “do whatever it is that you do.”

“And why would I want to bask in people’s fear when I’ve got science to be getting on with,” she asked patronizingly. The question was barely even rhetorical.

“Why would you kidnap people and lock them up if you didn’t want to bask in people’s fear?” Bracken countered, satisfied with her mental list of adjectives and thusly much more calm.

“I told you already,” Esmeralda replied smoothly, “when I tell people what I need them for, they refuse to come.”

“Alright,” Bracken sighed in feigned boredom (for in actuality she was quite interested in the answer to the question she was about to pose), “what is it you do here that you can’t tell people about because they run away screaming?”

Esmeralda paused for dramatic effect, like Chris Tarrant on Millionaire or Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link or Noel Edmonds on Deal or No Deal or any other TV presenter you care to name whose job consists of pausing to create a feeling of tension. Dermot O’Leary does it on X Factor, Davina McCall used to do it on Big Brother – you know the sort of thing I’m talking about, right? Good. That’s what Esmeralda did, but because this is a book not a film I had to fill in the space somehow. She’s ready to spill the beans right about now though, I think.

“Brain experiments,” she announced.

“Come again?”

“I experiment on people’s brains. Memory is mostly what I’m interested in. I did a course in hypnotherapy and it sort of snowballed from there really. Fascinating stuff.”

“Riiiight,” Bracken said slowly, as denoted by my use of italics and more than one ‘i’. “OK hen. Can we go now?”

“No,” Esmeralda replied sanguinely, “you can’t. I’ve barely begun expounding my complex theories on the science of the brain. And you are to be one of my most interesting case studies, once I reinstate your real memories. I wonder if you’ll both be able to remember the lives you have currently? I wonder if you’ll miss them? How exciting!”

“Bloody hell,” Bracken commented. “Alright then, start at the beginning. What’s hypnotherapy?”

Esmeralda clapped her tiny hands together in childish glee.

“OK,” she said, “hypnotherapy is when you are hypnotized and then whilst you’re in a dream like state, you can find the answers to your problems. Like one time, I treated this lady who had a terrible rash, but it wasn’t an allergic reaction or anything like that, it was a manifestation of some deep inner turmoil she had been suffering subconsciously about the death of her grandson.”

“So what did you actually do?”

“I put her into a trance and we were able to talk things through, and access parts of her mind that were normally buried deep down as she went about her daily routine. Once she knew what the problem was she was able to deal with it head on, I put her in touch with a counselor, and she was fine.”

“And where do the brain experiments come in?”

“Ah,” Esmeralda grinned with relish, “that is indeed the question.”

“Pretty much,” Bracken agreed, “so how about you answer it while we’re young.”

“Keep your hair on,” she retorted, amused. “You said you weren’t even interested two minutes ago.”

“Oh get on with it,” Nicky reiterated.

“Fine,” she blustered, taking a sip of rooibos and making a face that implied she felt somehow refreshed, “I will.”

“I had returned from the first leg of my travels in the wilds of South America, which is where I learned the art of hypnotherapy in the first place. I was taught by a wise old witch doctor with very pointy fingers. Always pointing at things he was.”

She paused a moment for them to laugh. They disappointed her.

“Anyway, I wanted to practice a bit. So when I met up with my dear boyfriend, Al, I decided to see what I could do with it. At first he was quite skeptical about the whole thing, which wasn’t great, as your mind needs to be open to the technique for it to work. Then on Shrove Tuesday I accidentally hit him over the head with a frying pan whilst tossing blueberry pancakes, and it must have shoogled the cortexes of his brain a little bit because from then on he was very superstitious and, most importantly, totally open to the concept of hypnosis.”

“This sounds like a case of domestic abuse,” Nicky whispered to Bracken out of the side of his mouth.

“Nothing was ever proven,” Esmeralda snapped.

The McCrackens raised their eyebrows in unison.

“So I discovered I could make him do things,” she said, “using little triggers. For example, if I clap my hands in a certain way, he will ask me to dance. There doesn’t need to be any music, and it doesn’t matter where in the world we are, he’ll go into a trance and he’ll dance and he’ll dance, until I signal him to stop.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer that he actually wanted to dance with you?” Bracken asked sourly. “Rather than having to force him? Maybe if you didn’t spend all your time gallivanting off to South America and then learning unnatural ways to control his mind, he’d ask you to dance all by himself.”

“Maybe he would,” Esmeralda said lightly, “but it was an interesting experiment. And very successful, which got me to thinking.”

“Oh God,” Nicky said, “there’s more.”

“Tons,” she told him sweetly.

“See, there were times that Al remembered the dancing, and there were times he did not. It depended on the depth of the trance. So I thought, if I could engineer a particularly deep state of hypnosis – perhaps with a little bit of chemical help – imagine what I could get him to do. Because if he was delving that far down, when he woke up he would never remember. Of course I wouldn’t dream of using it for evil… but it’d be interesting just to find out how far I could take it.”

“I have to admit though, I was getting a little bored of Al by that point. We had a few arguments about this and that, and then when he announced that his family was destitute… well, that was a bit of a deal breaker for me at the time. I had some pretty old-fashioned values instilled by my father and I was hoping that when we got married I would be able to use his money to fund my research. But he was essentially saying I would have to pay my way! It sounds silly now that I know how easy it is to fund one’s own secret research but at the time I was frightened that I’d never have my own lab, or access to illegal chemicals, or very clever minions to help me out.”

“Is Al from a wealthy background, then?” Bracken asked.

“Oh yes,” Esmeralda said, “they’re practically blue blooded.”

“I thought everyone’s blood was blue,” Nicky said.

“Well yes, in the completely literal sense,” Esmeralda concurred, rolling her eyes. “But I meant that he was from aristocratic stock so high up that he was nearly royal. Unfortunately his dear papa ballsed that up.”

“How?”

“I don’t entirely know,” she admitted, “I was so angry that I didn’t really listen to the full explanation.”

“Anyway, off I went to Peru to continue my work, leaving a broken hearted Aloysius behind. He still hasn’t forgiven me, poor thing.”

“You should have stuck by him,” Bracken pointed out.

“Well yes, I probably should. But I was young and impetuous, and the brains of Peru were waiting.

So, I went to Peru and set up a small hypnotherapy clinic in the back of a farmer’s cottage. I professed to help people give up smoking and the like, which was true, but I was also experimenting with getting people into deeper and deeper trances.

It was three or four months before I was confident enough to conduct my first replacement. I didn’t want to rush it.”

“Replacement? Of what?”

“Memory, of course.

I chose a young woman to be my first subject. A few years previously she had given birth to a stillborn baby, but she had not been allowed the time to grieve and so she was suffering some psychosomatic after effects. I was able to convince her that the baby was alive and well, and placed into her arms an orphan of the right age. She believed then, and still does now, that he is her son.”

“That,” said Nicky, “is an ethical minefield.”

“Pfft.”

“Did the lassie remember you after?” Bracken asked, her mind cogs turning inexorably towards a horrible conclusion.

“No,” Esmeralda said, “she didn’t. I felt it best that she be able to start afresh.”

“Esmeralda,” Bracken said, “did you do the same thing to me?”

“I used the same technique, yes.”

“Did I have a baby who died?”

“No.”

“So why did you do it then?”

The phone rang.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Esmeralda promised.

Chapter Twenty

Links to 1-19 here.

The bag lady that was actually a bit of a Galadriel rip off had given Al some quite useful advice. One of the first things she had told him was on no account should he trust messages brought to him by animals, because that was a cutesie thing that bad guys did to try and lure you away from the true path. So when he was accosted by the carrier pigeon sent by Tim and Adric to warn him about the presence of Dennis and his interest in the amulet, he followed her advice and smothered it with a pillow of lichen.

He was by this point walking through a wooded area to the south of the city, in search of an old well that doubled up as a means of transportation to the mystical island where the amulet was hidden.

The trees were very old here and the wind whistled through the whorls of their gnarled branches as though singing a sad and wistful song of times gone by. Perhaps it was remembering warm golden harvests, when it blew crops around to the annoyance of the farmer, who hated getting barley in his eye… Or perhaps it was remembering beautiful frozen winters, blue in hue, where it breezed across icy lakes and ruffled the bonnets of rosy cheek skaters…

But we could sit here and speculate as to what the wind was feeling nostalgic over all day and never reach a conclusion. Such is the way that many long winters evenings fly by in my house. Yet it matters little what we say, for the wind is far too private to ever clear up the mystery of why he is sad. He just is, that’s all.

So Al was walking through some ancient woods, and listening to the wind, and thinking of Bracken and Esmeralda and wondering how he could love two women that were so very different. And then he thought that perhaps in the old days, not as old as the ones the wind was pining for but more towards the start of his acquaintance with Esmeralda, that maybe the two women hadn’t been so very different then. When he first knew her Esmeralda had been ambitious, yes, but a lot less bloody minded about her pursuit of all things science, and a lot more fun and inclined to do things socially. It was the first time she came back from her travels that he had noticed she was more conservative, deeply focused on her work, and quite boring to be around.

He was musing on these memories when he came across a clearing, which contained a lot of flowers and small rabbits, and also the well for which he had been searching.

“Score,” he said out loud, scattering bunnies in all directions as they registered his presence for the first time, “that was much easier than I anticipated.”

Al walked towards the well, exercising caution. If finding it had been this easy, there must be some other catch involved.

As he walked, he felt very much as though he was being watched. This was a feeling he had been experiencing ever since finishing his chips and going for a turn with the bag lady who wasn’t a bag lady. It was almost as though four tiny lasers – or two small wee little pairs of beady eyes – were boring through his jacket and into his back. It made him feel nervous, but there again he was already pretty nervous about the whole finding a cursed magical amulet and keeping it out of the hands of evil. So it all kind of evened itself.

As it happened, he was being followed, still by those two beaky goblins from before, the ones who work for someone bad and mean. Sometimes you are justified in your crazy, hysterical paranoia, and you are genuinely being followed by a couple of mythical beings who would quite like to kill you and eat your toes. With your shoes still on. Goblins are kind of weird. By human standards, at least.

Al hadn’t worked out who was following him, which was down to sheer luck for the goblins because they hadn’t been doing a great job of keeping hidden. They’d left tracks, talked a bit too loudly, shouted ‘Scubbers!’ at Al and then ducked behind a rock which was not actually large enough to obscure them effectively... The only thing that kept him from discovering them was his own fear that the follower might be something big and scary that he wouldn’t be able to deal with. Prolonging the inevitable was one of Aloysius’s trademarks.

The well was quite pretty. It was made of pearly coloured stone and had tendrils of sweet pea growing up the side, which were in bloom even at this time of year. This is what singled it out as a magical well, as opposed to ordinary water producing one, or the type that you would put a Japanese ghost in for safekeeping.

Al reached the side and peered down into the darkness. He couldn’t see the bottom, which suggested it ran comparatively deep. There again it was nighttime, and he hadn’t thought to bring a torch. Mainly on account of the fact that he didn’t own one, and never had. His father had pronounced them a waste of batteries after a particularly farcical camping trip with the lads when Al was a baby, and refused to have them in the house from then on. It had proved embarrassing when he was going through his Duke of Edinburgh camping expeditions, but beyond that Al hadn’t really missed the presence of torches in his life. His mother had felt the strain quite badly, but we don’t have time to go into that here. Suffice to say she was quite highly strung in certain very specific ways.

He ran his fingers over the smooth stone of the well. It was warm to the touch, and almost felt as though it were alive. It was sort of pleasant but at the same time really rather creepy, Al decided.

He felt around each brick, looking for the secret one that the bag lady had informed him would start the teleportation equipment inside the well. Sods law dictated that he went almost all the way around the thing feeling every single stone before he located the on button two to the left of where he had begun. However, he did not allow himself to be irritated by this. He merely pushed it in, and waited.

At first it seemed as though nothing was going to happen at all.

“She’s tricked me,” he thought in dismay, “she’s bollocking well taken me for a ride!”

But then the ground began to shake and clouds of golden steam erupted from the well, enveloping Al in a sea of fragrant vapours. When the mist cleared, he was not just outside of Edinburgh anymore.

Our hero glanced around at his new surroundings, feeling slightly queasy from the journey but avoiding the temptation to fall to the ground curled into the fetal position crying for his mother. This was no mean feat, as every fibre of his being was suggesting that this was the only sensible course of action to be taken at this point in time.

He was standing in a bright patch of sunlight which turned out, when he looked up, to be the joint effort of three different suns. In the distance to his right he could make out a vibrant blue body of water, to his left there was a forest of trees as big as redwood trees, and behind him lay a range of majestic purpley-green mountains. It was all quite breathtakingly beautiful, and for a few moments Al forgot to breathe as a subconscious mark of respect.

“Nice, isn’t it,” remarked a passing snail.

“Lovely,” Al agreed, remembering how to operate his breathing apparatus again just in the nick of time.

“Here to find that famous missing amulet, are you?”

“No,” Al lied unconvincingly, “I’m visiting a friend.”

“Nobody has lived here for thousands of years,” the snail replied in neutral tones.

“They’re thinking of moving here,” Al said, “and they should be here by now to scope out the place. So I said I’d come along after work and offer my help.”

“Nobody’s come through yet,” the snail told him. “I’d have seen. There’s only one way on and off the island, the way you just came. And I am the guard.”

“You’ve been here all day then?”

“All day every day for the past seven hundred and twenty two years,” the snail announced, puffing out his chest with pride.

“Well that’s annoying,” Al said, “she might have texted to let me know she was going to be late.”

“She, eh,” the snail said wisely. “Well what more can you expect from a girl? Their heads are full of flim flam and fiddle dee dees. She’s probably been curling her ribbons and forgotten to keep track of the time.”

“Isn’t that a bit sexist?” Al asked, amused in spite of himself.

“You’re not in a politically correct bedtime story here, mate,” the snail replied crossly. “I can be as misogynistic as I like. I have my rights.”

“Anyway,” Al said in an attempt to move the conversation forward a little, “if she turns up could you tell her which way I went?”

“You haven’t gone anywhere.”

“No, but I’m about to.”

“But you haven’t though.”

“But I will.”

“What if she turned up right now?”

“Well she hasn’t, and I genuinely don’t think she will,” he replied.

They waited.

Nobody appeared.

“Bye then,” Al said cheerily, heading in the direction of the majestic looking mountains.

“Wouldn’t go that way if I were you,” the snail called after him, but his voice got lost on the wind and Al didn’t hear the warning.

“S’really dangerous,” the snail said, more to himself than anyone else.

“What’s really dangerous?” Asked one of the goblins, appearing in a puff of perfumed smoke as Al had just done.

“Are we talking proper hardcore danger, or just mild discomfort?” Asked the other, appearing in similar style.

The snail looked like it was about to explain when the first goblin picked it up and ate its head, passing the rest to his colleague.

“Who do you think was speaking?” he enquired through the rubbery mouthful.

“Dunno,” his colleague replied unhelpfully.

‘Ow,’ thought the snail, who remained alive for almost three full gruesome minutes after being cut in twain.

The goblins sniffed the air, located Al’s smell (which happened to be Old Spice, somewhat preemptively for a man in his early twenties), and set off in pursuit.

Somewhere far away, their boss switched from watching the CCTV footage to using the magic pool you can see stuff in and that.

Chapter Nineteen

As ever, links to parts 1-18 in chronological order here.

“Isn’t it a lovely evening,” Tim breathed breathily.

“Yes,” Adric agreed, “I wish we could go for some kind of moonlit stroll.”

“Well,” Tim said, “why don’t we?”

“I don’t think I can walk,” Adric said, “on account of all the stitches and blood loss and such like. That’s why they’re keeping me in for a day or two, anyway. Something about me needing to rest up.”

Tim smiled wickedly.

“Hold on.”

He left the room with a swoosh, and returned a few moments later pushing a wheelchair, much better than the one Bracken abandoned earlier on.

“Easy now,” he said, lifting Adric out of the bed and into the chair.

“Tim, you’re so impulsive,” Adric giggled coquettishly as his partner wrapped blankets around him to keep out the cool November air.

“That’s what you love about me, surely?” Tim said, grabbing the handles of the chair and whirling it to face the door.

“One of the things,” Adric smiled, snuggling down into the covers. He was still in quite a lot of pain, but a mixture of morphine and adrenaline made it mostly bearable.

“I’ll have you back before you know it,” Tim promised, “or more importantly before the staff notice and ban me from visiting you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Cheeky,” he chided, “we said we’d never mention that again.”

“You said we’d never mention it again,” Adric pointed out, “I never agreed to any such thing.”

They were talking in low voices as they wheeled silently the way Al had led Tim a mere two hours ago, but as they emerged from a fire exit and out into the drizzle they relaxed enough to talk normally.

“The woodland path?” Tim asked softly.

“You don’t think it’s too wet? If the ground’s gotten boggy the wheels will sink and we’ll never get out again.”

“We can always turn back if the terrain looks like a no go,” Tim wheedled. “And if all else fails I’ll carry you back myself.”

“You couldn’t.”

“Try me,” he said, pushing the chair towards the entrance of the woodland path, conveniently situated adjacent to the hospital.

The rustlings in the trees as owls ate voles and snails built their winter nests formed a sort of forest choir as the two men ambled along the path. Tim was careful not to bash the wheelchair against any of the numerous tree roots that reared up out of the path like long woody fingers, and Adric was careful not to say anything about the fact that the morphine was wearing off and some of the stitches in his back seemed to have burst.

“So you think he’ll manage to find the amulet,” Adric said conversationally, to distract himself from the pain as much as anything else.

“I hope so,” Tim replied darkly, “its one of the most dangerous pieces of jewellery in history. The person who owns that thing can do all manner of crazy voodoo.”

“The power of the voodoo!”

“Who do?”

“You do!”

“Do what?”

“Remind me of the babe…”

They smiled at a shared memory of watching Labyrinth at four in the morning, each realizing at the same time that the other knew it off by heart as well. That had been the evening of their first kiss.

“What sort of thing though,” Adric wondered aloud, his thoughts returning to the amulet.

“It can bring the dead back to life,” Tim began, dodging a low hanging branch. “You can distill a very special sort of poison using it – I’m not sure of the exact details. It’s also part of a spell to erase people’s memories.”

“Can it be used the other way? To bring memories back?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Tim said, surprised. “Maybe. I wonder whether anybody’s ever thought to try. The only records about it detail the evil deeds wrought using it, surprisingly enough. Media always want to report the bad stuff.”

A raven croaked, and the men looked up. There was a small child sitting in a tree above their heads. It looked androgynous because it was wearing dungarees and had longish hair, and it glowed ethereally.

“Hello, Dennis,” Tim greeted the figure. “How’s it going?”

“That’s Dennis?” Adric asked incredulously.

“Problem, pal?” Dennis queried.

“No, not at all, just…” Adric paused and looked round at Tim, who shot him a warning glare. “I was expecting someone taller,” Adric finished weakly.

“Aye well, maybe I woulda been taller, one day,” Dennis said, “if someone hadn’t killed me when I was still a kid.”

“Dennis, I don’t know how many times I have to apologise for this,” Tim said, “I didn’t know you were a kid, I thought you were a gobline.”

“Oh and that makes it alright, does it?”

“The goblins in that quest had given me nothing but grief. They nicked my stuff, they called me names, one chewed off one of my fingers-” he held up a stump where the index finger on his left hand should have been – “they were working for, like, the most evil warlock in the Northern Hemisphere – ”

“Alright, alright,” Dennis replied, “you’ve made your point. Mistaken identity.”

“I’ve struggled with that mistake my entire life,” Tim said, his voice thick with regret.

“It’s true,” Adric backed him up, “he has night terrors and everything.”

Tim nodded vigorously.

“If I could make it right then you know I would,” he added.

“So you say,” Dennis drawled, “but if that’s the case why have you stopped working on the amulet prophecy?”

“What?”

“The amulet of H’garard,” Dennis said. “Shiny blue thing with scary black tentacles in? Made by the thing that invented the kraken? Said to contain the power to bring people back to life?”

“Well yeah,” Tim said, “but only so they can wreak horrible pain and destruction on the world. Haven’t you read up on that thing? It’s all there on Wikipedia… it could bring you back to life, but only in the body you died in, which would remain in exactly the rotten state it’s got into since you were killed. You’d never grow older – in essence you would be a gross, decomposing zombie. And you wouldn’t have your own mind either, all you’d be able to remember is the instructions of whoever brought you back.”

“That’s no kind of life for a little girl,” Adric said helpfully, pulling the blankets closer round his shoulders. It was nippy out here in the November evening drizzle.

“I honestly think it’s better being an angry ghost,” Tim said.

“Well you would think that,” Dennis said angrily, “you’re alive.”

“Come on though.”

“Whatever Tim. If I come across that amulet before your new pal does, I’m using it.”

Dennis then vanished in a shower of sparks, singing the wing of the raven as he went.

‘Krark,” the raven commented grumpily, clumsily flitting away.

“Should I text Al to warn him?” Adric asked.

“Well,” Tim said, “its kind of poor form in this genre for a warning to reach the hero in time for him to do something about it… but there again, he’s a novice, and he has a lot to contend with. Go on.”

“Damn,” Adric said, “my battery’s dead.”

“We’ll send a carrier pigeon,” Tim said, summoning one with a click of his fingers. “Shall we go back now? It’s getting a bit nippy.”

“I don’t mind, Adric said nonchalantly. “It’s bracing.”

“You’re such a liar,” Tim smiled, “I can feel you shivering.”

“Yeah OK, I would quite like to go back,” he admitted. “But this has been nice.”

“One of our shorter dates,” Tim remarked ruefully, pushing the chair back in the direction of the hospital. “But at least you got to meet Dennis at last.”

“Yeah, your dream boy. You think he’ll find the amulet before Al does?”

“Doesn’t matter really, does it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, he’s a ghost. They can’t pick things up, can they. Not corporeal enough.”

“Oh yeah.”

“I think Al’s got more to fear from the clan of the cape.”

“The what now?”

“The clan of the cape. I battled them before, a few quests ago. Remember?”

“Could you give me any more information?”

“They’re a very old family, and they have various nefarious plans for world domination. They were founded by some doctor from the olden days and he got his whole family involved. Passed down the evil over generations, as you do.”

“Not ringing any bells,” Adric said apologetically.

“They used to disguise themselves with capes made out of various animal pelts, hence the name, clan of the cape.”

“That makes sense… But I still don’t remember.”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter. The current head of the clan is a bit of an enigma. We assume that he’s a descendant of the original guy, because it was very much a family operation. But beyond that we’re in the dark really.”

“Is he not on facebook or linkedin or anything?”

“Not that I could find. But of course we don’t know his name, so it’s a bit difficult to type him into a search engine.”

“Oh yeah, I guess.”

“There’s loads of stuff for clan of the cape though. Some of its quite racy.”

“Goodness.”

They were greeted at the door by an irate woman in a nurse’s outfit.

“Where have you pair been?”

“Just went for a little walk,” Tim said, “the patient needed some air.”

“You are so banned from visiting,” she said angrily. “This hospital does not need another law suit on its hands.”

“Don’t worry,” he whispered to Adric, “I’m a master of disguise. They can’t keep me out.”

“I feel sick,” Adric said, trying not to follow through by throwing up.

He failed.

“You, piss away off,” the nurse said, pointing at Tim. “You, back to bed before you catch your death.”

She took hold of the chair.

Tim blew him a kiss and headed off into the night, as was his wont.

“And now,” said the woman in the nurse’s outfit, “it’s time to take you home.”

She jabbed a syringe into Adric’s side, and he squeaked in surprise before sinking quickly into unconsciousness.

“Who are you,” he slurred as his eyelids closed.

But he never heard the answer.

Chapter Seventeen

Links to parts 1-16 available here.

"Bert," Nicky whispered fiercely, "wait a sec!"

But the old guy was long gone. Probably away to find that guard with the kind voice.

Nicky through the sheet off him and sat up in the darkness. It was so black in there he felt as though someone has carpeted his retinas. Which in this bloody place, he thought, was not completely outside the realms of possibility.

"fucksake," he said out loud.

"Nicky?" came a voice from surprisingly close by.

"Bracken?" he recognised it, whirling round to try and locate her. "what are you doing here?"

"Hell if I know. Esmeralda had some heavies kidnap me from outside the library and now here I am, strapped to some kind of victorian hospital trolley in a room where it's perpetually night time."

"I was kidnapped too," Nicky said, "on my way home from poker. So have you been here all that time an Aw?"

"no," she told him guiltily, "I've not. Just got here really. I think. I don't have much concept of time in here. Nicky, is the wean with you?"

"No," he replied, "is he not with Nige's mum?"

She drew in a shaky breath. He thought she might be crying, or trying not to.

"Nut," she started, "he went missing the same time as you. I've been so worried about you both, and I keep phoning the police but they just take the piss it feels like. And I've asked around and tried to think of the places you guys might go together but you've never been there.. It never even crossed my mind that you might not be together!"

She burst into tears - not pretty girly ones but the trembling, wracking sobs of someone who thinks themselves completely and utterly defeated.

Nicky moved towards the sound, arm stretched out in front of him, intending to give her a hug.

He banged his hip on something hard, which turned out to be a handle of the trolley she was on.

"Did you say there were straps?" he asked, gingerly feeling for them.

"yeah," she sniffled, "go and get the head one first? It's too tight and it's hurting me."

He fumbled around to find it, accidentally poking her in the eye and pulling her hair before his fingers hit upon the cold metal of the buckle. He undid it, and then moved on to the ones binding her wrists.

Bracken shook her head from side to side in relief. She'd never take the right to stretch her neck for granted again, she vowed.

"Are you not wearing any shoes?" Nicky asked as he got to the straps around her ankles.

"That cow took em off me when I was unconscious. Seemingly she thought I might have a knife in there."

"Aw, like a wee skein dhu," he chuckled.

"Well she's not from round here," Bracken said.

"I was wanting to ask you about that," he said, suddenly serious. "who is this woman? How do you ken her? Why does she hate us?!"

"Well," she said, "it's sort of a long story..."

"Oh, dinnae bother then."

"Har Har. You need to know the enemy."

"I have heard that's preferable, in some states."

“Her name is Esmeralda Francesca MacGregor Di Saatchi Von Rollo,” Bracken started. “She used to go out with the new guy that works at the library, Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe.

“Those might actually be the stupidest names I have ever heard,” Nicky interrupted.

“Shut it, bawjaws” she snapped, “I’m trying tae fill you in.”

“You’re right,” he said, contrite, “I apologise. You aren’t the one who named them, after all.”

“No,” she nodded, not that he could see her as they were still in the pitch dark, “I didn’t. Why would you even say that? Weirdo.”

“Anyway, that’s basically all I know. She turned up the night Al’s mother died, and tried to convince me that the two of them were still together – which I don’t think they are-“

“Ooooh, Al now is it,” Nicky trilled, “darling Al, with his ridiculous name and his job in the library.”

“Yeah, you need to work on your insults a bit more Nick.”

He lowered his eyes in agreement. Not that she could see that as they were still in that room that was really really dark. But had she been able to see, she might not necessarily have recognized the eye-lowering thing as an admission of wrongness. It’s not the conventional sign in this day and age.

“She drives everywhere,” Bracken said, “she thought I’d keep weapons about me because she’s a racist…. And that’s about it. Oh, well she’s nuts of course. Seems perfectly nice till she drugs and kidnaps you.”

“That’s it?” Nicky asked, sounding askanced. “That’s your long story?”

“It sounded longer in my head,” she admitted, embarrassed. “Oh, wait, there was something else.”

“What was it? Another bit of her name that you missed out of the list?”

“No, don’t be facetious.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“She gave me a lift to work, even though she probably knew it was an in service day,” Bracken started, “but there was more… Before we got out of the car, she’d started to tell me something. She’d been asking me loads of annoying questions based on her blinkered social views of what it means to be a single parent, and then she admitted that there was a reason why she’d been doing it…”

“Then what happened?”

“The weather.”

“What?”

“There was a big clap of thunder that drowned her out and I couldn’t hear what she was saying, and we ran inside to avoid the rain taking out one of our eyes.”

“Rain can’t take people’s eyes out,” he snorted derisively.

“Yes it can,” Bracken said defensively, “from a certain angle. It was on a repeat of 999 Life Savers.”

“So why didn’t you ask her about it when you got into the library? Was she sucking face with Al?”

“No,” Bracken fumed, “she was not. As it goes Nige was trying it on with him at that point. But I forgot all about Esmeralda’s cryptic nonsense because Adric told us that the library is being closed and probably knocked down so that they can search for Mayan gold underneath.”

“You what?”

“One of the kids was digging outside and found some Mayan gold. They had it checked out by experts, it was definitely real.”

“Shut up,” Nicky squeaked incredulously, “what would it be doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Bracken told him, “that’s exactly what I said as well. Adric seemed to think pirates brought it-“

“But that’s absurd. Pirates never actually buried treasure, that was a myth put about by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“I know,” she said wearily, “I said that as well.”

“OK, sorry.”

They were quiet for a moment. The blackness seemed to swirl around them, a bit like treacle, only less likely to drown a man. Or woman. Or otter. Can otters drown? Yes. But it’s pretty rare, because they’re generally quite good with water.

“Right,” Nicky said briskly, “enough of this otter chat. Let’s escape.”

“How can we,” Bracken said, “its pitch black and I’d imagine that if we ever find the door it’ll be locked.”

“Why would they bother? It’s not like you were getting out of those straps any time soon. And the last person in here was Bert, who was rescuing me.”

“Who the hell is Bert and why was he rescuing you?”

“The two of those questions seem quite closely linked, as it goes,” he mused. “Bert is an old geezer who claims that he is my real dad, and that he wanted to make up for lot time. He sort of hinted at some kind of dark past, but didn’t really go into it in any detail. I think he was trying to keep a sense of mystery for later on in the text.’

“What?”

“I think he might genuinely be my dad but. Steve and I were never very alike.”

“Whereas you and this Bert character are like two peas in a pod,” she posited sarcastically. “You know literally nothing about him.”

“True,” Nicky agreed, “but what I do know is that he got me out of that weird smelling little cell, and he would have got me out of the building if your pal Esmeralda hadn’t turned up and given him the willies.”

“Given him the willies? Where are you, an Enid Blyton book?”

“Point is, I reckon he’ll come back.”

“Assuming Esmeralda doesn’t strap him to a trolley and lock him in a dark room somewhere for mucking about with her fiendish plan. Whatever that may be.”

“Nah, he works for her,” Nicky said, “she trusts him. That was how he was able to get me out.”

“He works for her?” Bracken was incredulous, “then what exactly is it about him that you think we can trust? You utter muppet! This is probably all part of her grand design!”

“Jeez Bracken, she’s not Kevin McCloud.”

“I’ve told you before about making jokes about programming on channel four.”

“Sorry.”

Bracken crossed her arms dejectedly. What she wouldn’t give for a wee cuddle from the wean right now, with his sticky face and perpetually paint covered fingers.

“Oh my Christ,” Nicky said, as though reading her mind, “the wean!”

“What about him?”

“He must be here too!”

“What? Why?”

“You said yourself he’s nowhere to be found on the outside… And I’ve just remembered, the guard that Bert ran into said there were three McCrackens here!”

Nicky slapped his forehead, as people do on telly but less often in real life.

“I can’t believe I didn’t work it out then – I guess I was thinking about trying not to make any noise that would give us away. Three McCrackens though – you, me, and the wean!”

Bracken got to her feet.

“We are getting out of here,” she decided, stepping off the trolley and lurching forwards into the darkness.

“Ow,” she added, falling over. She had severe pins and needles and couldn’t feel either of her feet. Those straps had been tighter than she’d realized.

“Bracken, are you OK?”

He moved towards where he thought the sound of her crash to the floor had come.

Finding her hands, he pulled her to her feet.

“Ow ow ow,” she squeaked, hopping from foot to foot as the blood began to return.

“Lean on me,” he said, putting an arm around her waist, “and lets do this thing together.”

She let him support her weight, and together they inched slowly forwards, arms outstretched, in search of a door.

Amazingly, unbelievably luckily, the first thing that Nicky’s fingers alighted on was a door handle. Holding his breath, he gently pressed it down, and the door swung open.

“I can’t believe it wasn’t locked,” Bracken whispered mildly, blinking as the dazzling white light of the lavish marble corridor hit her corneas.

“There was no need,” Esmeralda said coldly, appearing out of the shadows and making them both jump, “you were supposed to be secured.”

Bracken sighed.

“Better do the introductions then hey. Nicky McCracken, this is Esmeralda Francesca MacGregor Di Saatchi Von Rollo. Esmeralda, this is my cousin, Nicky McCracken.”

“Oh, I know Nicky already,” Esmeralda said, the ghost of a smile playing around her lips and getting a bit confused into thinking that maybe it was a sneer.

“What,” Nicky said, genuinely confused, “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“Oh but you have,” Esmeralda said enigmatically, making a mental note to stop beginning so many of her sentences with ‘oh’.

“Sorry hen, not ringing a bell. You must have one of those forgettable faces.”

Esmeralda’s nostrils flared in irritation.

“It’s about time both of you heard a few home truths,” she said. “I think you should come with me.”

“Where’s my son?” Bracken demanded, on the verge of tears. “What have you done with my wee boy?”

Esmeralda regarded her with arctic cool.

“That little boy,” she said deliberately, enunciating every syllable like a crisp footprint in snow, “is not your son.”

Chapter Ten

Uncle Nicky awoke, as he had done every day for the past two weeks, in an uncomfortable bed in a small, windowless room with blue walls. It smelled of antiseptic and fear, with a hint of llamas.

Groaning loudly, he pulled himself into sitting position and gently rubbed the back of his head. The welt that had been there since poker night was almost completely healed. Nicky wondered whether it would leave an interesting scar that he could make up exciting tales of derring do about to impress ladies. Then he remembered that if he ever got out of this place, the real story of how he got it would be quite an interesting tale to tell, even without adding embellishments involving ninjas or sharks.

He stood up quickly, because he knew that if he didn’t move fast he wouldn’t get up at all, and then there'd be trouble. He waited for the head rush to subside before pulling his neatly pressed uniform off its brass hook. He put it on with a grimace, breathing in to suck in his tummy. It was too small, and he was glad nobody could see him wearing it.

"You put me in mind of a bag of porridge," his captor had said when he first put the thing on. "but it'll have to do for now. We haven't got anymore after-"

He or she stopped short. Nicky had no idea of the gender, nationality, or even favourite TV show of his host. Said host was always covered head to toe in a cloak of crushed mink, and when appearing in public he or she wore a series of masks, each more elaborate than the last. As to the voice, it was always disguised using some sort of voice box disguiser thingy, like they use on X-Factor but better.

There was a knock at the door. It would be one of the guards, Nicky knew - they always came round to ensure he was awake, although he wasn’t really sure why. They never let him out of his tiny blue room.

"McCracken, Nicholas," a gruff voice said from the other side of the door.

"Present," Nicky replied.

"Present, what?" the voice asked with a hint of annoyance.

"Present, sir," Nicky corrected, inwardly cursing his poor memory, lack of coordination and hairy back.

"That's better," the guard said, although he still sounded pretty annoyed.

Nicky waited till he heard the footsteps clicking away down the corridor before allowing himself to exhale.

The guards weren't as frightening as their leader in all that freaky carnival gear, but they were still pretty intimidating. There again, they probably had to be. Their hob, after all, was to prevent him - and maybe many others - from leaving some kind of under the radar prison organisation. Nicky was 99% sure he hadn't done anything that would get him this kind of treatment at the hands of official UK authorities, so this lot had to be something else.

Something altogether more sinister. Ergo, it made sense to employ big frightening bastards than namby pamby liberals who believe in free higher education and eating organic food.

As a general rule, a guard would do this preliminary visit, then leave Nicky to his own devices until around lunch time, when he would be given the first of two daily meals. He tended to use the time to imagine ingenious escape plans, but so far none of them had been very plausible.

It was difficult, he felt, when there was so little in the way of tech available – no paperclips for lock picking, nothing to use as a weapon, no possibilities for disguise other than ‘ghost’ (and even then we’re talking ghost as in ‘sheet over your head like a kid at Hallowe’en). Even if there had been materials to aid him in a MacGyver style break out, he had no idea what lay beyond the confines of the blue room. On the only occasion he had been allowed to leave, they had drugged him first and laid him on a trolley with a cover over his face.

Today, for the sake of advancing the plot and of course giving Nicky something a bit different to do, the usual routine was interrupted by a second knock on the door, hours before meal one was due to be delivered on its plastic tray.

“Er,” Nicky said, “come in?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said an old gentleman, bounding into the room with the endless vitality of someone who subsists entirely on a diet of tea and werther’s originals.

“Who are you?” Nicky asked, not really expecting an answer. Or at least, not a truthful one.

“My name is Bert,” said the old man, “but that’s not important right now.”

Nicky shrugged.

“If you say so. Bit hard for me to judge, mate.”

Bert looked around the room.

“Minimalist,” he observed.

“Yeah well, I just hate clutter, y’know,” Nicky told him sarcastically.

“I’m the very opposite,” Bert told him conversationally, perching on the end of the bed and swinging his legs too and fro. The rubber soles of his shoes kept scuffing against the floor, creating a high pitched squeaking noise. It was deeply irritating.

“Gonnae no dae that,” Nicky said sharply.

Bert stopped, surveying him thoughtfully.

“So,” he said eventually, “what are you doing in this place?”

Nicky frowned.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “waiting for death?”

“My my, what a pessimistic world view you have.”

“Well excuse me for being kidnapped on my way home from poker and not being told anything that’s going on,” Nicky responded with a petulant pout, “I’ll make a note in my diary that I must try harder when people ask me stupid questions.”

“You were kidnapped,” Bert said interestedly, “that’s interesting. Who by?”

“How should I know?” Nick was incredulous, and slightly angry. “You? Your boss? Who do you actually work for, Bert? Do you even know?”

“Well, how much can any of us ever really know of anything, in truth,” said Bert, attempting to appear sage like. He was more oregano, in truth. A little herb joke for you, there. Just to see who’s still paying attention.

Nicky tutted, and leaned back against the wall without saying any more.

“Tell me about your relationship with your muzzer,” Bert said in a slightly strange accent.

“My what?”

“Your mother. Apologies, I go a bit European sometimes. I’ve been trying to curb it by watching lots of American movies.”

“Why do you want tae ken aboot maw,” Nicky asked, suspiciously. “Do you know her?”

“As a matter of fact,” Bert said, “ I think I do. I have reason to believe that I am your long lost father.”

“I find that pretty unlikely,” said Nicky, “given I grew up knowing my dad. He used to take me every weekend to do fun stuff whilst mum painted her nails and acted like a strumpet. That’s my words, not his.”

“That was only the man you thought to be your father,” Bert said, “but you see, he was sort of right about the strumpet thing. She and I were planning to run away together, but when she fell pregnant with you she called it all off. I wasn’t ready to have children, not at the tender age of forty-two and three quarters. But she didn’t want to lose her chance to be a mother. She tried to convince – Steve, was it? – that you were his. I think he believed her, mostly.”

“Say for the sake of argument that I believed you,” Nicky said, “although I categorically do not – why are you here now?”

“To rescue you,” said Bert, “and to set things right.”

“I don’t care about the absentee father thing,” Nicky said, “ Steve was a great dad. One time he took me bowling. And another time, he let me stay up past my bedtime to watch the football.”

“I don’t mean that, Nicholas. I’ve made some professional faux-pas’s over the past few years and they’ve led to some pretty dire consequences. The establishment of this facility, for one.”

“What even is this place?” Nicky asked.

“I can’t go into that right now,” Bert replied darkly. “But it’s bad to the bone.”

“And what is it that you do that led to the establishment of an organization that kidnaps innocent people as they’re on their way home from poker?”

“That’s the least of what they’ve done,” Bert told him, sidestepping the question so smoothly that Nicky barely even noticed.

“Such as,” he prompted the older man gently.

“It’s too much,” Bert asserted, “we have to get you out of here. I’ll explain everything later.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“I am a doctor,” Bert began, “I have official access to most of the building. We will put you on a trolley and I will transport you to the exit, where a horse and carriage are waiting to whisk us to freedom. If anybody questions me I will dazzle them with my official looking ID and rapier wits.”

“Hm,” Nicky ruminated, “seems a bit thin to me.”

“Trust me,” Bert said with the misplaced confidence of a man who thinks he is always right despite a frightening catalogue of evidence to the contrary, “it’ll be fine.”

Chapter Nine

"Like, for repairs?" Bracken asked hopefully.

"No," Adric yelled sadly, twirling one of his bow ties. "One of the local kids was burying a cat out in the garden - don't ask - and he found a big wedge of Mayan gold. At first we thought it was a hoax by some of the older boys – ” he gestured towards a row of computers where a line of older teenage boys sat in silence checking their social networking sites and hatching plots.

“– they need to get jobs like – but the council was interested enough by the prospect of money to get some professor down here to check it out... The kid was pretty annoyed, as it turns out it's real, authentic and very very old."

"Mayan gold, though," Bracken said, incredulous and slow. "As in the ancient civilisation in south America?"

"That's the one." Adric confirmed squeakily, putting up some shelves as he did so.

"But how did it get here? Under a library in Edinburgh? It doesn't make any sense."

"Oh Bracken," Adric said paternally, placing an assortment of library related knick knacks on the aforementioned shelves, "you said it yourself. The Mayans were an ancient civilisation. This building has only been here since the mid seventies. I know that seems ages to a young snip of a girl like you, with your flighty fancies and frippery doodads. But it's really not that long in the grand scheme of things. You'll start to see that as you get older."

"No," she said patiently, "I mean physically how did this gold get from South America to Scotland? Who went to all the trouble of removing what was probably a cursed treasure - they usually are, at any rate - sailing back here, and burying it in the Scottish countryside, never for them to lay eyes on again?"

"I would have thought that was pretty obvious," Adric said, "it must have been pirates. They love nicking shiny stuff and burying it."

"That's a myth propagated by Treasure Island," Bracken informed him wearily, "you might just as well say a dragon did it."

"Don't be silly," Adric said dismissively, "you don't get dragons this far north. They hail from Wales. Must’ve been pirates. With big hats, and peg legs, and hooks for eyes. No, wait. Hands. That’s right, isn’t it? Like in Peter Piper. I mean Pan."

"So what will happen to your jobs then," Esmerelda asked, when the flow of nonsense seemed to have come to a natural end, "what with the economic climate how it is? The Edinburgh Evening News says the council are firing people at a rate of lots."

"Knots," Aloysius corrected automatically.

"What?"

"The phrase is at a rate of knots," he said, "it's a seafaring term."

“I know,” Esmeralda pouted, irritated at her amateurish mistake, “I was just making a joke. God, Al. Way to make me sound like an idiot.”

"We'll probably be offered the chance to go to different branches," Adric explained, blissfully unaware of the tension in the room. Bracken noticed it though, and a flicker of hope twangled in her tummy like a rowdy gerbil.

"Or if we refuse, a minuscule pay out. I'll probably go to another branch, myself. Maybe in the Maldives, haha. Only kidding. The council doesn’t run any libraries in the Maldives. Not any that are legal and above board, at least."

"Actually, I was wondering about volunteering in a Romanian orphanage," said Aloysius, to the evident surprise and chagrin of his alleged girlfriend.

Bracken noticed that their body language was very distant as well. Could it be that Esmeralda had lied to her that night at the hospital?

"Where did that come from, all of a sudden," Esmeralda was asking through gritted teeth.

"I just think that maybe it's time to do something different," he said, "something to help other people rather than worrying about myself all of the time."

Esmeralda looked genuinely blank. This was a concept that was alien to her. Because she was secretly mean.

"And anyway," he continued, shooting a sneaky look at Bracken under his lovely (in a butch way) eyelashes, "there's not really anything for me here."

"Ally-poos," came the tinkling voice of Nigella in full slap, "how can you say that? After last night?"

She emerged from the staff room brandishing two cups of tea, and gave one to Al with a lingering look.

"What happened last night?" asked Bracken and Esmeralda in unison.

"It's always the quiet ones," remarked Adric, pulling a custard cream out of his shirt pocket and munching cheerfully.

"Nothing happened last night," Aloysius said quickly. "I just walked her home, that's all."

Knowing how honest he was, Esmeralda was inclined to believe him.

Knowing what a fantasist Nige was, Bracken tended to agree. And yet there was something not quite right about his demeanour, or her snake eyed look of triumph.

"Well, that was pretty much the most boring revelation ever," Adric said, scanning through a bunch of graphic novels for comic book guy and stamping eight of them due back on the 41st of April 2026 before realising it had been tampered with.

"You know me," said comic book guy, "I'll have them back within the week anyway!". He laughed, implying that this had been a joke of some kind.

Adric, who had never seen comic book guy in his life, was confused.

He overcompensated by laughing uproariously and shouting, "yep, that sounds like you."

"Maybe it's not such a bad thing we have to close," he said sadly after comic book guy hooded up and dashed out into the rain, "I don't know the customers anymore anyway."

"You know me," Bracken pointed out.

"Yeah, but this is the first time you've been here in weeks. Where have you been? We've got a book in that you reserved, actually. That one about the woman who turns everything she touches into marine creatures."

"That the one with the moustachioed porpoise on the front?" Al asked, going to retrieve it.

"The very same."

"I don't have my card," she admitted regretfully, "sorry guys."

"That's alright," Al said, "we put your card number on the book when it comes in."

"Not just yours," Adric qualified, taking the book from him and typing her borrower number into the database. "It's standard procedure."

"Gosh," Esmeralda said sarcastically, "how fascinating. Nobody should live at this speed."

"Thanks," Bracken said quietly, examining the cover.

The moustachioed porpoise gazed back at her with the calm of the sea.

“Maroona Fusible was an ordinary, strikingly beautiful girl… Until the clock struck 12 on her eighteenth birthday,” began the blurb on the back in flowing silver calligraphy. “But then her family’s secret curse was unlocked, and strange things began to happen to the people she loved. Whenever she touched someone with whom she had a connection, they turned into citizens of the sea.”

“I think it’s meant to be some sort of strangled metaphor,” Bracken muttered, “wonder if it explains what for or whether I’ll have to try and work it out from context and the author’s background.”

“Well guys,” Nigella trilled, interrupting her train of though, “I’d better be going. People to do, places to see. Oh, what am I like.”

Bracken rolled her eyes.

“See you soon, Al,” Nige added sweetly, clopping away in her tallest pulling shoes.

“Break a leg,” Bracken wanted to shout after her, but she didn’t.

“I should go too actually,” she remembered, “the kids’ll be finishing soon.”

“No they won’t,” Adric asserted, “they’ve got an in-service day. Nobody in the school at all.”

“Oh,” Bracken said, “that’s why they’re all running about in here making a racket. I’m so used to them now I just tune them out, I thought it was quiet in here.”

“ADRIC,” shouted a chubby boy with mud all over his face, “WHEN AM AH GETTING MA GOLD BACK?”

“You’re not getting it,” Adric explained, evidently not for the first time. “It’s been taken away to go in a museum.”

“Should I not get a reward for finding it or suhin?” persisted the boy, picking his nose and wiping it disinterestedly on the counter.

“Well, in a perfect world maybe,” Adric admitted, “but nobody knew it was missing, so there isn’t really a reward going as such. You got your picture in the paper, though. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“NUT,” expostulated the boy, “ah’ve been in the paper like, about, a HUNDRED times. Like for ma golf and when we did that thing for Robbie Burns night and when my sister got married…”

“Ooooh,” Bracken said, recognizing the kid at last, “you’re Kelly’s wee brother aren’t you.”

“Aye,” he said.

“I was in school wi her.”

“Oh.”

Adric shrugged apologetically.

“Well can I book on the playstation 3?” Enquired the boy.

“That depends,” Adric responded, “have you got your library card?”

“Ew nut,” the boy shrieked, “that’s pure geeky!”

He saw the look on Adric’s face.

“Eh, I mean, I lost it.”

Adric folded his arms.

“Dog ate it.”

A shake of the head.

“Ma wee sister accidentally on purpose flushed it down the toilet.”

“Your wee sister, aye,” Bracken interjected doubtfully.

“Ma wee brother.”

“You don’t have a wee sister or a wee brother,” Adric and Bracken chorused. Such was the benefit of living in a tiny community where everyone knew everyone. Through very different channels, both of them knew that Dillon Mackay (for this was his name) was the youngest of nine children.

“Just find someone who does have a card and play with them,” another kid suggested from the sidelines.

“I think I might go,” Bracken concluded, having glanced outside and noticed that the rain had stopped; “now that I’ve realized they’re here I’m going to end up shouting at them. They’re wee toe rags when they’re in here.”

“What, are they mild mannered and delightful when they’re outside?”

“No. You know what I mean. Youse’re good wi them, but I couldnae stand it.”

“You’d be surprised,” Al disagreed, reappearing from a Super Mario Brothers tournament in which he had been pwned by an eight year old girl. She was now doing a victory dance on the craft table as some other kids cheered her on.

“Well,” Adric told her, “don’t be a stranger, OK? We’re all rooting for you and hoping things work out with Nicky and the wee one.”

Bracken was genuinely touched by this unexpected display of kindness. Because her aunt and Nige and Jeremy Kyle had been so vocally against her, she hadn’t thought that anyone was on her side.

“Thanks,” she nodded, the lump in her throat threatening to swell up to kitten size. “I’ll see you when I bring this back –” she waved the porpoise book – “if not before.”

“You take care,” he smiled.

“Will do.”

Which was ironic really, because as soon as she stepped outside, she was grabbed from behind, a gloved hand went over her mouth, and she was bundled into the back of a car by a man (or a female bodybuilder like on Louis Theroux) in a balaclava.

“What the-” was all she got out before everything went black.