Unexpected Twist Read online

  “Come back!” suddenly cried Sikes aloud. “Back! Back!”

  Scared by the sudden breaking of the dead stillness of the place, and by a loud cry which followed it, Oliver let his lantern fall, and knew not whether to advance or fly.

  The cry was repeated – a light appeared – a vision of two terrified half-dressed men at the top of the stairs swam before his eyes – a flash – a loud noise – a smoke – a crash somewhere, but where he knew not – and he staggered back.

  Sikes had disappeared for an instant; but he was up again, and had him by the collar before the smoke had cleared away. He fired his own pistol after the men, who were already retreating; and dragged the boy up.

  “Clasp your arm tighter,” said Sikes, as he drew him through the window. “Give me a shawl here. They’ve hit him. Quick! How the boy bleeds!”

  Then came the loud ringing of a bell, mingled with the noise of firearms, and the shouts of men, and the sensation of being carried over uneven ground at a rapid pace. And then, the noises grew confused in the distance; and a cold deadly feeling crept over the boy’s heart; and he saw or heard no more.

  Chapter 15

  “I’ve got to see her,” Shona said to Zeynep. “Of course. Of course, dear,” Zeynep said, “but the Fenster is two bus rides from here. You can’t go on your own, and you don’t know which ward she’s in. They won’t just let you wander round the hospital looking for her.”

  Shona had been ready to dash off, but what Zeynep said had slowed her to a standstill. She slumped down at an empty table, still with a couple of plates with a few chips and splashes of ketchup on them. After all that running and worrying, she felt her arms and legs suddenly go slow and heavy.

  “I’ll bring you a hot milk, and we’ll work out how you can get down there. Just stay put, dear.”

  Shona did “stay put”. She couldn’t have done anything else for the time being. Far off, she heard a police siren. Or was it an ambulance? Or a fire engine? And then another. A feeble sun shone on the window as if it was struggling to get into the caff, but gave up at the door. Zeynep was ferrying kebabs, chips and sausages.

  The door opened, and in stepped the “Specials” woman, still bulked up with her swollen pockets and high-vis jacket. She caught sight of Shona and sat down opposite her at the table.

  “I’m Ashley,” she said.

  Shona didn’t say anything.

  “Did you know that boy they were roughing up?”

  Shona didn’t say anything.

  Zeynep came over. “I think…” she began, with an edge in her voice.

  “I’m not questioning her,” Ashley said. “I know her. Shona, isn’t it? I’m just having a chat.”

  She is questioning me, Shona thought. Zeynep moved off to collect a chicken-and-chips from the counter.

  “Tell you what. I’m breaking every rule in the book here. But listen. You know Gazz and Tino, don’t you? Your number’s on Gazz’s phone. Look, I’ve said too much already, but we think you know Pops. Somewhere down the line, you’re going to have to tell us what you know. I know your situation, Shona.”

  These were words Shona had heard before: “your situation”. She knew exactly what they meant: no Mum, Dad feeble. And now she could add “Nan ill” to the list of the “situation”. And all this stuff about phones, and Tino and Gazz and Pops. It was all the “situation”. And Ashley knew all this? Well, she was always hanging around, just as Nan had said.

  Shona heard herself breathing fast. It was hopeless. And she was helpless. She couldn’t even get herself to see Nan. And of course Dad couldn’t help either.

  She started crying.

  “Hey, c’mon,” Ashley said in a tough-but-kind way.

  Zeynep came over. She had been “earwigging” as Nan would have said, listening in to what Ashley and Shona were saying. “Her nan’s in the Fenster,” Zeynep said and opened her eyes wide.

  Ashley got the message. “You mean she’s been taken in?”

  Zeynep nodded.

  “OK, OK, I’m off duty at five. I’ll run you there.”

  Shona couldn’t believe it. Was it really that easy? One moment Nan seemed to be a hundred miles away, and now she was just “over there”, “nearby”, a “few minutes in the car”.

  Zeynep went back to the counter and brought back a cheese sandwich. “I found this,” she said, winking at Ashley and handing it to Shona.

  Shona looked up at Zeynep, though Zeynep was swimming through Shona’s watery eyes. All the same Shona smiled gratefully at her.

  Ashley got up. “I’ll be back,” she said and as she moved off, she added, “Yolanda Cavani is one of the good guys, you know.”

  And she was off.

  Miss Cavani? She knew Miss Cavani? Why not? Shona’d seen Ashley in the tunnel that time. And that didn’t mean that was the only place she visited!

  The car bobbed through the traffic, while Adele sang to them through the speakers.

  “I love her,” Ashley said. “She is so real. This one, listen to this one. People will be singing that for the next fifty years, believe me. The thing is, she knows what she’s singing about. It’s not made up, you get me?”

  Shona nodded and listened in. It meant she didn’t have to listen to her own thoughts.

  “Your nan was on Gazz’s phone as well,” Ashley said quietly but just loud enough to pull Shona in.

  But Shona said nothing. For a moment she felt like a bit of chicken on one of Zeynep’s skewers: well and truly caught. And yet … yet … had she, Shona, done anything wrong? It felt like she had, and yet she hadn’t, had she? She had a phone. Was that against the law? Well, she supposed, it can’t actually be a “free” phone, can it? It must have been nicked. And I’ve got it. And … I’ll have to give it back.

  She could just see the way Ashley might say, “And can I see your phone, Shona dear?” and it would slip out of sight into one of Ashley’s swollen pockets.

  A woman in a huge, high black car hooted behind them.

  “Tractor coming through!” Ashley called out.

  Shona looked puzzled.

  “It’s what I call them,” Ashley laughed. “We’re jam-packed here, waiting for the lights to change, and there’s always some hoity-toity driver trying to shove their way through, like we’re sheep in the way on a farm track. You ever been to the country, Shona?”

  “Yes,” Shona said, “on a school trip. We stayed on a farm and had to clean up the manure and a man came and told us a story. It’s his farm, I think.”

  “Hmm…” Ashley said, “what was the story about?”

  “A giant iron man,” Shona said. She remembered it well. That stay at the farm was the best time she ever had at primary school. Even cleaning up the manure!

  “And if you could go on holiday anywhere in the world, where would you go?” Ashley asked her.

  Little Shona Walker, sitting on a saucer…

  That day on the beach she was crying! And the woman who brought her an ice cream came into her mind.

  “A beach,” Shona said.

  “But where?” Ashley asked her again.

  And for some reason she didn’t even know herself, she said, “New York.”

  Ashley flicked the car indicator.

  “New York? Is there a beach in New York?”

  Shona felt silly and ignorant and said nothing. She didn’t know if there was a beach in New York or not. She didn’t know anything about New York, apart from what she had seen on TV. And yet there she was saying that the beach she wanted to go to should be there? Where did that come from? she wondered.

  Eventually Ashley swerved into a car park, jumped out, slamming the doors, and then hurried across the car park to the Fenster.

  Shona hung back at reception while Ashley talked with the woman. Their voices went quieter and without saying anything, Ashley guided Shona over to the lift.

  The way their voices went quiet had put a chill down Shona’s back. It was the kind of quiet-voice sound that means bad news, Sh
ona knew. You don’t have to ask, you just pick it up from the air.

  The lift was huge and empty, big enough to carry a car, but it was only them in it. They didn’t say anything and Ashley kept her eyes away from Shona. On the fourth floor, again, she guided Shona out and down a corridor. Another corridor. Always corridors. Going on and on and on.

  They turned into Galsworthy Ward and Ashley went over to one of the nurses. More quiet talking. Very quiet talking and then all three of them walked past some beds with bottles and machines all around them, till they stopped by one just the same, bottles and machines. In it lay Nan, small, grey and still.

  The nurse called out, “Your granddaughter is here to see you, Mrs Venner. Your granddaughter. Shona!”

  Everyone knows my name, Shona thought, and the nurse walked away.

  Nan’s eyes opened no more than a hair’s breadth. Just enough to see Shona. And just enough to see Ashley. The eyelids closed again. It’s like she’s shrunk, poor thing, Shona thought.

  Then from out of the smallness came a tiny whisper. Shona couldn’t catch what Nan said.

  “I can’t hear you, Nan,” she said and leant in closer.

  “Stay out of it,” Nan whispered. “Stay out of it. It’s not worth it.”

  The effort to say it made her tired; her mouth closed and there was no more movement.

  Shona and Ashley sat by the bed, doing nothing.

  Nan whispered, “Lorraine knew it.”

  And again, her mouth closed and there was no more movement.

  This time, Ashley stepped forward, looked closely and then stepped further forward and pulled a cord.

  The nurse came as fast as she could without actually running, and stepped up to the bedside. She put two fingers on Nan’s neck, and glanced at Ashley, and with no more than the slightest nod indicated to her that she should take Shona away.

  Very, very gently, Ashley put her arm across Shona’s shoulder and moved her away, out of the room and on to some chairs at the edge of the ward.

  They sat down without saying anything.

  “Best that way,” Ashley said.

  Shona looked at the floor. Is that it? What’s “best” about it?

  They sat for some more in quiet.

  “A year ago, I was there when my dad went,” Ashley said, and as she spoke her voice trembled. “He was Irish. The last thing he said to me was, ‘Big eejit!’ It’s what he called himself. You never forget the last things they say.”

  Shona stared at the floor. She could just see herself in the shine of the surface. A shadowy blur.

  What was it that Lorraine knew?

  CLASS X10 READING COMPREHENSION

  Did you think Oliver had died? No, Class X10, he hadn’t. He had been left behind by the robbers and taken in by the woman living in the very house they had been trying to force Oliver to help them rob! Can you imagine that, helping someone like that, who had just very nearly robbed you?

  Well, the woman living there – Rose Maylie was her name – came to believe Oliver’s story, and she grew very fond of him as he recovered.

  Meanwhile, Nancy worked out where Oliver was staying, but instead of telling Fagin and Sikes, she kept the information to herself, out of pity for poor Oliver who finally had a chance to avoid a life of poverty and crime.

  But then, when a mysterious man came to see Fagin asking about Oliver, she realized she had to do something.

  “Tell me why you wished to see me. I am the person you inquired for,” said Rose.

  The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner, the absence of any haughtiness or displeasure, took the other girl completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.

  “Oh, lady, lady!” she said, clasping her hands passionately before her face, “if there was more like you, there would be fewer like me – there would – there would!”

  “Sit down,” said Rose, earnestly.

  “Let me stand, lady,” said the girl, still weeping, “It is growing late. Is – is – that door shut?”

  “Yes,” said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer assistance in case she should require it. “Why?”

  “Because,” said the girl, “I am about to put my life and the lives of others in your hands. I am the girl who dragged little Oliver back to old Fagin’s on the night he went out from the house in Pentonville.”

  “You!” said Rose Maylie.

  “I, lady!” replied the girl. “I am the infamous creature you have heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from the first moment I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on London streets have known any better life, or kinder words than they have given me, so help me God! Do not mind shrinking openly from me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look at me, but I am well used to it. Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady, that you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunkenness, and – and – something worse than all – as I have been from my cradle. I may use the word, for the alley and the gutter were mine, as they will be my deathbed.”

  “I pity you!” said Rose, in a broken voice. “It wrings my heart to hear you!”

  “Heaven bless you for your goodness!” rejoined the girl. “If you knew what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I have stolen away from those who would surely murder me, if they knew I had been here, to tell you what I have overheard. Do you know a man named Monks?”

  “No,” said Rose.

  “He knows you,” replied the girl; “and knew you were here, for it was by hearing him tell the place that I found you out.”

  “I never heard the name,” said Rose.

  “Then he goes by some other amongst us,” rejoined the girl, “which I more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after Oliver was put into your house on the night of the robbery, I – suspecting this man – listened to a conversation held between him and Fagin in the dark. I found out, from what I heard, that Monks – the man I asked you about, you know—”

  “Yes,” said Rose, “I understand.”

  “—That Monks,” pursued the girl, “had seen him accidentally with two of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him directly to be the same child that he was watching for, though I couldn’t make out why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if Oliver was got back he should have a certain sum; and he was to have more for making him a thief, which this Monks wanted for some purpose of his own.”

  “For what purpose?” asked Rose.

  “He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the hope of finding out,” said the girl; “and there are not many people besides me that could have got out of their way in time to escape discovery. But I did; and I saw him no more till last night.”

  “And what occurred then?”

  “I’ll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went upstairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow would not betray me, again listened at the door. The first words I heard Monks say were these: ‘So the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin.’ They laughed, and talked of his success in doing this; and Monks, talking on about the boy, and getting very wild, said that though he had got the young devil’s money safely now, he’d rather have had it the other way; for, what a game it would have been to have brought down the boast of the father’s will, by driving him through every jail in town, and then hauling him up for some capital felony which Fagin could easily manage, after having made a good profit of him besides.”

  “What is all this!” said Rose.

  “The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips,” replied the girl. “Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but strange to yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the boy’s life without bringing his own neck in danger, he would; but, as he couldn’t, he’d be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in life; and if he too
k advantage of his birth and history, he might harm him yet. ‘In short, Fagin,’ he says, ‘you never laid such snares as I’ll contrive for my young brother, Oliver.’”

  “His brother!” exclaimed Rose.

  “Those were his words,” said Nancy, glancing uneasily round, as she had scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak. “And more. When he spoke of you, and said it seemed contrived by Heaven, or the devil, against him, that Oliver should come into your hands, he laughed, and said there was some comfort in that too, for how many thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds would you not give, if you had them, to know who your two-legged spaniel was.”

  “You do not mean,” said Rose, turning very pale, “to tell me that this was said in earnest?”

  “He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,” replied the girl, shaking her head. “He is an earnest man when his hatred is up. I know many who do worse things; but I’d rather listen to them all a dozen times, than to that Monks once. It is growing late, and I have to reach home without suspicion of having been on such an errand as this. I must get back quickly.”

  Chapter 16

  Miss Cavani staggered into the room with a large, flat board. She propped it up at the front, clapped her hands and smiled. The buzz of chat slowed and stopped.

  Shona sat quietly next to Désol’é. She had told Désol’é some of what had happened: the bits that she felt OK about telling her. Dad said that she could bring Désol’é to the funeral if she wanted to. She was beginning to think that she would like that … if she knew how to ask her.

  “On the other side of this board,” Miss Cavani said, “is a picture.”

  For some reason, that got Crayton and Rory glancing at each other and smirking. What world do we live in, where all you have to say is a word like “picture” and that gets them going? Shona thought.

  “I want you to look at it – say nothing, just look at it – and I want you to imagine that you are the person in the middle of that picture. You’ll know which person that is when I turn the board round. Please remember one thing, X10. There are one or two people in this school – perhaps you know them, perhaps you don’t – who have seen things like this in real life. It happens.”