The Thorn Island Adventure

  For Mum and our long holiday

  Eight-year-old Josh lay with his red notebook on a low wall, spying on the village shop. So far one person had gone in and come out again holding a pint of milk. He wasn’t on to any mysteries yet, but it was only nine o’clock.

  He had high hopes – after all, every time they came to stay with their grandparents at Cliff topper Farm something happened. Something much more exciting than any of the things that happened at home.

  Above him two seagulls circled. In the distance a trawler chugged through Drake’s Bay, more seagulls following. Sunlight sparkled on the water and warmed his back. Rigging slapped gently against the yacht masts. It all sounded summery, relaxed, happy. For a moment he forgot that he was looking for excitement, and just enjoyed the warmth and the freedom.

  Bella, his grandparents’ dog, stretched herself next to him on the hot stones and stared out to sea. “Feels good, doesn’t it, Bella,” he said, sliding his fingers into the curls of her coat. Bella groaned in agreement.

  He heard the screech of a bike and turned to see his cousin Chloe arrive. She shook her hair out from her bike helmet and breathed in the fresh sea breeze. “Grandma said the Plaice and Ships’s got a new owner – have you seen anyone yet?”

  Josh shuffled around ninety degrees so that he got a good view of the café to his right.

  Not that there was anything to see. Eight chairs and two tables.

  An ice-cream sign flapping in the breeze.

  Then, as he watched, a man came out of the door, wiped a dirty cloth over one of the tables and went back inside.

  Josh pulled his notebook from his shorts and wrote: Not very clean but no visible signs of criminal behaviour.

  “Of course I’m sure!” someone bellowed. “It’s not a mistake!”

  Chloe scrambled on to the wall to see better.

  “Where’s it coming from?” Josh asked.

  Chloe pointed towards the quay steps by the harbour master’s office where a tall man in faded denims – Jake, a local fisherman – looked red and angry.

  “It was there one minute and gone the next! Someone saw it! They must have done!”

  Beside him the harbour master shook his head and said something Josh couldn’t hear.

  “But it’s brand new…”

  A family, crabbing on the quay, edged away, moving their buckets and lines out of Jake’s way.

  “C’mon,” said Josh, striding across the tarmac. He heard Chloe jump down from the wall behind him. The closer they got, the more he could hear and it was clear that Jake had lost something important.

  “It has to have been stolen,” he said. “It just has to have been.”

  “Here, Jake, I’ll get the shortwave radio going. Call the police,” said the harbour master. “Where’s it gone from?”

  Jake pointed towards the lighthouse cliff, and stomped into the office with the harbour master.

  The cousins paused at the top of the quay steps, staring in the direction Jake had pointed in. There was sea, and cliff, and seagulls. No boat. No thieves. It all looked picture-postcard calm.

  Seconds later, Jake’s voice rang out from the office. “Two minutes!” he said. “Two flippin’ minutes parked up on the shingle round in Brandy Cove and it only goes and disappears. I only got back here because of a tourist in a rowing boat… Yes – an hour ago!”

  Chloe and Josh stood just outside the harbour master’s office, listening. It was a large shed with peeling green paint and more things inside than could possibly fit. Jake was sitting at the paperstrewn desk talking into an ancient telephone receiver. Mobile phones were unreliable in Drake’s Bay. In fact, they didn’t really work anywhere on the Dragon Peninsula, so the harbour master’s office acted like an emergency call box.

  “Yes – I was in the cave mending the lobster pots; turned round and it had gone!” Jake rubbed his face. He’d changed from boiling red to disturbingly white.

  “It’s cream, with a blue cabin. It’s called the Mermaid. And it’s brand new,” he said, his voice wobbling. “Can’t fish without it. It’s my livelihood.”

  “Stolen?” asked Josh, but nobody listened.

  The harbour master brushed past Josh to fill his kettle from the outside tap.

  “Tomorrow!” said Jake. “It’ll be halfway to nowhere by then. How come there’s no police today?” Jake went quiet and then let out a sigh. “Oh – yes, I can see that might be more important. OK, tomorrow it is then.”

  Chloe turned at the sound of bicycles. It was Ava, Josh’s older sister, and their cousin, Aiden.

  “Boat shed,” called Aiden, tilting his head, and Chloe, Josh and Bella charged across the harbour, Josh bursting with the news.

  “Guess what?” shouted Josh, running. “It’s gone – vanished! Can we try to find it with the Black Diamond, sis?” said Josh. “Please?”

  “Find what with the Black Diamond?” asked Ava, leaning her bike against a small timbered building.

  “It’s cream and blue,” said Josh. “It’s disappeared and the police can’t come until tomorrow.”

  “I nearly got killed by a man in a van,” said Ava. “In case you’re interested.”

  “She did,” said Aiden.

  “So if we took the Black Diamond,” continued Josh, “we could get to the bay and have a look for clues and maybe find it before they even come.”

  “Couldn’t we just mess about on the boat and eat sandwiches?” suggested Chloe quietly.

  Ava shook her head. “Seriously, Josh? What are you even talking about?”

  A moment later, Ava unlocked the back door of the boat shed where Grandpa Edward’s precious boat, the Black Diamond, was moored.

  “So this white van nearly knocked us off the road. I thought he was going to hit Ava,” said Aiden, gesticulating with the sandwich bag so enthusiastically that he nearly sent Josh into the water. “He was going really fast. And then he stopped and asked us the way to the lighthouse. Like he’d never nearly killed us.”

  “I ended up in the hedge,” said Ava, checking the weal on her calf from the bramble thorns. “Awesome dog, though.”

  “Beautiful Dalmatian,” agreed Aiden. “Oh, Mrs Murphy – hello.”

  “Morning dears, taking the Black Diamond out?” asked a smiley lady with very sparkly spectacles. She stuck her head round the door of the shed and into the middle of the conversation. “Your grandparents are very trusting. You’re only ten, aren’t you, Ava?”

  “Twelve,” corrected Ada.

  “And I’m eleven,” said Aiden.

  “And I’m nine,” said Chloe, reassembling the sandwiches.

  “And I’m—” started Josh.

  “Yes, yes, well, while you’re out there,” interrupted Mrs Murphy, “see if you can find Jake Marley’s boat.” She tapped the side of her nose, as if she knew something they didn’t.

  “Oh yes, we saw Jake. He was really mad. He said ‘I was in the cave mending the lobster pots; turned round and it had gone’,” said Josh, reading from his notebook.

  “We’re off to look for it,” said Aiden.

  Mrs Murphy’s disappointment was almost invisible, but she shuffled slightly as if to make herself bigger and sniffed. “Well, you know all about it then.” She glanced down at the newspaper in her bag. “But,” she said, her eyes brightening, “do you know about the Charlie’s Cheerful Chews thing?” She gazed gleefully at their blank faces.

  “What’s that?” asked Chloe.

  “Oh – well!” Mrs Murphy settled her bottom against the doorframe as if she was there for a long chat. “So, you’ve all heard of Charlie’s Cheerful Chews?”

  Aiden nodded. “Seen the adverts, yeah.”

  “Well, Charlie Consta
ntinides of Charlie’s Cheerful Chews, you know, the dog treats, has a son, a little chap, George, only six…” Mrs Murphy searched the air for inspiration. “Anyway, he’s been kidnapped – and they’ve asked for an enormous ransom.” She pulled a very grave face and waited for their reaction.

  “Where’s he been taken from?” asked Ava.

  “When?” asked Josh.

  “How?” asked Aiden.

  Mrs Murphy kept up the serious face. “Oh, it’s quite awful – I don’t know anything really. Almost nothing. No more than he lives in Little Chaffering. You know, that ridiculous great house about ten miles inland. Frightfully rich, you know. And that his poor parents are desperate. Anyway –” she flashed a smile – “I’m off to have my hair done. Bye.” With that she waddled away from the boat shed, making her way uphill towards the tiny high street.

  Ava took the tiller of the Black Diamond and pushed away from the jetty. The boat slid into the calm waters of the harbour. For Ava, sailing the boat was probably the best thing in the entire world and when, last year, Grandpa had declared her a good enough sailor to captain the dinghy alone, Ava had done handstands across the kitchen, she was so happy. Now she felt the wind pick up. It caught her braids and whipped the mainsail, and she knew they’d be able to get along the coast quite comfortably.

  Beside her Chloe sat very still, wearing a life jacket and looking a little green.

  “You’ll get over it,” smiled Ava.

  “I know – it’s just I always feel a bit sick on the boat.” Chloe turned towards the wind, and Ava noticed that her younger cousin was gripping the side and that her knuckles had turned white.

  Josh sat on the bow, whooping and trailing a crab weight in the water. “I can see right into the sea!” he shouted. “Billions of fish.”

  “If you fall in, I’m not rescuing you,” shouted his sister. Bella joined in, barking at Josh until he sat back in the boat. “See,” laughed Ava. “Bella agrees.”

  Just inside the bow, Aiden had one of Grandpa’s coastal maps unfolded on his lap and barely seemed to notice that they had set sail.

  She didn’t actually need him to find the beach on the map; she knew which one they were heading for. It was small, and if she pulled up the centreboard that stuck through the bottom of the dinghy, they should be able to get quite close to shore. Especially now that the tide was in. After all, Jake had managed to get his boat on to the beach and it must have been much bigger and heavier than the Black Diamond, which was large for a dinghy but didn’t have a proper cabin.

  Steering her way round a flotilla of sea kayaks she headed out of the harbour into the open bay. “Ready about!” she shouted.

  “Lee ho!” replied Chloe as she ducked under the boom and sat on the high side of the boat, helping to balance it, her hair catching in the wind and looking very nearly like a proper sailor.

  Ava pulled in the rope controlling the mainsail, feeling it strain against her fingers as it swept the Black Diamond across the bay, the prow bounding over the surface of the water. The feeling was like nothing else in the world – better than running, better than cycling. Even better than swimming.

  “Round to the right,” shouted Aiden.

  “Starboard, you idiot,” shouted Josh.

  “He knows,” said Ava. “It’s just that he doesn’t have to show that he knows – unlike some people.”

  Ignoring her, Josh dangled his hand over the side of the boat, tipping the Black Diamond the wrong way.

  “Hey,” the other three shouted, and he sat back up, but not before Bella went and sat by him, resting her head on his knee. Like a guard.

  Upright, the Black Diamond cut through the water, and they struck out to sea towards Thorn Island, which lay like a green jewel in the middle of Drake’s Bay. Ava swung the boat round when they could clearly see the faces of the tourists disembarking from the little ferry, and tacked back inland across the football pitch of open water between the island and the shore. From out here Brandy Cove was easy to identify. It had tall yellow cliffs behind it, the lighthouse at the top and the dark holes of caves below. Ava held the tiller steady and let the boat race as fast as she would go.

  Looking up from the map, Aiden took a pair of binoculars from the forward locker and studied the cliffs and the lighthouse in search of the man or the Dalmatian. He could just make out the caves at Brandy Cove, but nothing more. He put down the binoculars and stared into the deep blue water rushing past the boat.

  Somehow he felt the stolen boat and the rude man in the van with the dog had to be connected. But he couldn’t see how.

  It was just that the van had been on its way to the lighthouse, which was at the top of the cliff, and the boat had been at the bottom.

  He shook his head and gazed across the waves, and soon his mind turned to swimming. The water was so clear. So tempting.

  Ava guided the Black Diamond straight towards the shore, the boat slowing as the wind dropped, and they slid to a gentle halt a metre from where the shingle rose from the water. There were no boats in the cove. No people. It was utterly deserted.

  “How deep do you reckon it is?” asked Aiden.

  “I’ll find out,” said Chloe, lowering her bare feet into the water. The sea stopped just below her shorts. “Cold!” she giggled, glad to be on solid ground.

  “Pull us in, please, Chloe,” said Ava.

  Chloe waded round to the front of the boat and tugged on the painter. The Black Diamond obediently floated on to the beach until her bow rested on the shingle. Josh leaped off, splashing everyone but managing to stay quite dry. Ava followed, while Aiden stayed on the boat, peering at the map. Bella stood on the bow watching and then sprang straight on to the pebbles and into the nearest cave of which there were six: five small and one huge, all of them very dark and probably very interesting if you were a dog.

  They looked around for clues. But there was no sign of Jake’s boat. No sign of it ever having been there. No sign of it having been dragged out to sea.

  Chloe looked up at the cliffs. “Well, it didn’t go up there,” she said.

  “And it didn’t go in here,” said Josh, staggering out of the nearest cave, his fingers pinching his nose and making exaggerated sick gestures. “Urgh. Stinks. Bella – how can you stand it?”

  “What of ?” asked Ava.

  “Crab bottoms,” said Josh, stumbling over to stand at the bottom of the cliff. “Hey – what about that path? Could have gone up there.”

  “Get real, Josh, you couldn’t take a boat up a path,” said Ava, stomping away towards the Black Diamond.

  “Why not?” said Josh.

  Ava ignored him.

  Chloe was checking out the other caves. The high tide had left plastic and wood on the rocky walls of the first one and the remains of something dead and feathered on the floor. “Yuck!” she said.

  She tried the next cave, which was empty but for nets, and the next, the largest, which had some coiled rope, but there was no brand-new fishing boat hidden inside. “Nothing,” she said to the dripping walls.

  She came out to find Ava clambering back on the boat, and Josh trying to climb up a vertical cliff face.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Checking that the boat isn’t up here,” he said.

  Chloe shook her head and lifted her leg over the side of the boat. “Your turn to do the pushing.”

  “You’re all boring,” said Josh, giving the boat a shove and then leaping into the stern.

  “Josh, it is absolutely obvious that you couldn’t drag an enormous great boat up a cliff. I mean you couldn’t. Chloe’s right,” said Ava again, swinging the Black Diamond back out to face Thorn Island. “It’s got to be somewhere along the coast.”

  “Yeah, but no one saw it. Perhaps they’ve got some brilliant machine that would haul it up on to the cliff and then vanish it.” Josh stood up, banging his head on the boom and rocking the boat from side to side.

  “Er, yes,” said Aiden. “Back to reali
ty: the boat could easily be hidden in any of these fingery bits along the island,” he said, pointing at the map.

  “Yup,” said Ava. “Exactly.”

  Josh mouthed something and looked purposefully into the sea as they sped back over towards the island.

  Ava brought the Black Diamond close to the shore, and they glided past, peering into tiny bays and round wooded islets.

  The sun grew warm and then hot on their backs, and still they combed the coast. Ava pulled out a tube of sun cream, offering it to the others and coating her arms with the white gloop and rubbing it in until it disappeared and her arms were shiny brown. She squeezed some on Josh who squealed and wriggled and tried to wash it off, but instead it left oily rainbows on the sea.

  Aiden handed out the picnic.

  Chloe leaned against the funny old cushions that smelled of creosote and weedkiller and ate her sandwich. Her head rested in the bow so that she looked up at the sky.

  Egg. Egg and cress. Grandpa hadn’t forgotten that she was a vegetarian. She took a big bite and sat up to stop herself choking. Past the sail she had a clear view of one of the follies built in the grounds of Thorn House. The sun was on it, picking out the ivy that crept up the tower. It looked so romantic. Chloe daydreamed while she munched and stared. A Rapunzel tower. Definitely in need of a maiden with really long hair probably knitting straw and waiting to be rescued. And then something caught her eye, up at the tiny pointed window at the top of the tower. A white face with a round screaming mouth shouting at her through the glass.

  She dropped her sandwich into the water.

  “I did see someone,” said Chloe, pushing her bike over the piles of nets on the quay. “I’m absolutely sure of it.”

  “I think it was a reflection,” said Aiden.

  “Or a ghost? Whoooo!” said Josh, taking his hands off the handlebars and waving his arms over his head.

  “Josh,” warned Ava.

  “Well, it is haunted, isn’t it?” Josh replied. “I mean, don’t the ghosts wander up and down? You know, scaring people and whoooooing. Like in The Pirates of the Caribbean?”

  Ava’s mouth twitched. “Sorry, but there was nothing the second time we passed.”