“James, my dad, was born here. His grandfather set up a printing business over eighty years ago, and he bought the house with the money he made. When he died, everything was passed down to the firstborn child, my granddad, and then he passed it on to his own child.”

“Your dad?” I said.

“Yes. Dad had a sister named Charlotte who was younger than him.”

I quickly interrupted. “And it’s her treasure hunt you’re trying to solve?”

Kitty nodded. “Yes. As Dad was the eldest, he was destined to run the business after Granddad stopped working. He was next in line to inherit the house and the grounds. His whole future was mapped out for him; he’d be running the business and he’d be living here. Then after him it would all be passed on to his first child, and so on.”

I snorted.

“That all sounds a bit Victorian or something,” I said. “What if he didn’t want to run a business? Or have children, for that matter? Say he wanted to run off and teach surfing or be a musician or something?”

Kitty scowled at me again. “He wouldn’t have had a choice; it was just the family tradition.”

“And did your dad’s sister mind? Knowing that her brother was going to be handed everything while she’d have to go out into the world on her own?”

Kitty edged along the log a little. “I don’t think she would have minded. She was really little, though, when it happened.”

“When what happened?” I asked, but Kitty ignored me and carried on with her story.

“One of their favorite things to do was put on plays. They only really had each other, remember. James would write the script and they’d both dress up and act it out for the rest of the family in the library.”

“The library? You’ve got a library?!”

Kitty nodded and looked a bit embarrassed. “Yep. We don’t really use that part of the house much anymore though. The east wing gets a little … chilly.”

I opened my mouth to say something about her having a “wing,” but I was getting the idea. Kitty’s house wasn’t just big—it was a stately home. The kind of place I would have visited on a school trip with a gift shop and a tearoom and immaculate lawns that we weren’t allowed to run around on. I guess the fact I couldn’t even see it from where we were should have given me some idea of the size of the grounds.

“Even though they grew up in an amazing house with acres of land it can be quite lonely living here, but Dad and Charlotte were the best of friends. Charlotte had asthma from an early age, and the doctors said living in a dusty old house didn’t help, so they played outside as much as they could. She used to catch lots of colds and chest infections, but Dad always looked out for her and made sure she didn’t overdo it.”

She stopped for a moment. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

I shook my head. It was just me and Mum. Thinking of her, my stomach lurched. It had been nice to forget about everything for a while.

“I don’t have any either,” she said, gazing back down at the ground.

That must have meant that Kitty was next in line to inherit the house and the business. I wondered how she felt about that.

“It sounds like your dad and Charlotte were both happy living here. So, what happened?”

Kitty took a deep breath. She looked so cold. Then she stood up and did a funny little jog on the spot. “Come on. I’ll take you to where it happened.”

“Take me to where what happened?”

I stayed on the log while she jumped up and down and beat her arms around herself.

“I’ll tell you when we get there. Come on.”

I stared back at her, thinking what to do: Did I really want to get involved in this family’s past? Shouldn’t I just go back to the cottage and lie low, like Mum had told me to?

Kitty stopped flapping her arms. “We’ll only be ten minutes. And it’s worth seeing, I promise you.”

The thought of going back to the empty cottage made my stomach churn. “Okay. But we’ve got to be quick.”

Kitty grinned and I stood up and followed her deeper into the woods.

As we walked, Kitty continued her story:

“When Dad was ten and Charlotte was six there was a party in the house. A magnificent New Year’s Eve ball. There was a real band that played music for dancing in the main hall, and there were people dressed up in circus outfits taking trays of drinks and food to the guests. They even had a magician doing card tricks and a troop of fire-eaters on the lawn! The women dressed up in posh gowns and tiaras and the men wore bow ties and there were lights strung up in the trees. The whole place was sparkling!”

Kitty smiled as she thought about it. It was as if she had been there herself.

“Charlotte wore a beautiful ivory dress with shimmering sequins, and James—my dad—had his very own suit and waistcoat. Everyone fussed over them when they saw them. They were the only children there.”

“Did you see pictures?” I said.

Kitty nodded. “They hired a photographer. It looked magical.”

She sighed to herself.

“Everything was going well, but halfway through the evening Dad and Charlotte got bored of all the adults talking and decided to play hide-and-seek. They took turns hiding, but Dad got told off by the cook for going in the kitchen, so they decided to move outside.”

Kitty made a little ball with her hands and paused for a moment to blow on her bright red fingers before tucking them deep into her armpits. We came out of the woods into the open, but it didn’t get much lighter. I looked for the sun and saw it was really low down. Another half an hour and it would disappear below the horizon altogether.

“Can you tell the story a bit quicker, Kitty? It’s going to be dark soon.”

Kitty walked toward a tall hedge. “So, everyone was in their ball gowns, drinking champagne and dancing, and Charlotte and Dad sneaked out onto the patio,” she continued as we walked beside the hedged wall. “A few guests were outside getting some air, and they said hello to them.”

“But if it was New Year’s Eve, wasn’t it cold?” I said.

“It was freezing! There was even snow on the ground, but Charlotte said they’d have one last game of hide-and-seek and then they’d go back inside to play. She used to boss him around a bit, really, but James, I mean, my dad, always did whatever she said. She told him to count to fifty, and when he shut his eyes she ran here. To the maze.”

“Maze?”

I remembered seeing a tall hedge when I had been here with Mum and Dad. It had towered over us, and Mum had run her hand along the thick green leaves.

Kitty stopped and pointed to an overgrown gap in the hedge. It must have been an entrance once upon a time, neatly clipped with an archway over the top. There was a little sign next to it that was covered in frost.

“As you can see, it’s really overgrown now. It hasn’t been used for years.”

I could see it all in my head: Charlotte running across the white lawns in her posh dress. Kitty’s dad as a boy standing on the patio covering his eyes as he counted. I shivered.

“The maze was always out of bounds for them, so I don’t know why she did it—why she decided that coming here was a good thing to do. It would have been the last place James would have looked, because he knew they weren’t allowed there.”

I frowned at her. “How do you know all of this?”

Kitty hesitated for a moment. “My dad told me about it, one New Year’s Eve. He never mentioned it again.”

I wasn’t sure how much he’d told her or how much Kitty was making up as she went along, but either way, she was pretty impressive as a storyteller. I wanted to know what happened next, but she stayed silent for so long I didn’t think she was going to tell me, and then she suddenly ducked into the maze. The branches shuddered and closed behind her. It was as if they’d swallowed her up.

“Kitty? Kitty, don’t mess around,” I called through the entrance. There was no reply. I pushed a few branches out of the way and peered inside. The maze was so overgrown there was barely any room to get through. I edged forward a pace.

“Kitty? Where are you?”

I stopped to listen, to see if I could hear her rustling about, but there was nothing.

“Kitty! Don’t mess around, okay?”

A hand suddenly appeared through the greenery. I gasped, and then Kitty’s face appeared, her eyes glistening white in the gloom.

“Don’t ever, ever do that again, okay?” I shouted with my hand at my chest. My heart was doing that mad fluttering again. I’d thought it was Gary. I’d thought he’d found me.

“I’m sorry. I was joking, that’s all. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I glared at her. “Well, you did. Okay? Feel better now?”

She looked quite upset. “I’m really sorry.”

I stuffed my hands into my pockets.

“So … what happened then?” I asked, scuffing my foot on the ground. “What happened to Charlotte?”

I looked down the dark corridor, but it was so thick with branches I couldn’t see much.

Kitty’s eyes widened as she got back to her story. This time she spoke in whispers.

“James counted to fifty and then he called out, into the cold night air, ‘Coming, ready or not!’ He searched all their usual places, the rose beds, the topiary garden, behind all of the statues, but she was nowhere to be seen. It was nearly midnight and all of the guests piled out onto the patio, ready to count down to the start of the new year.”

I was shivering so much my teeth chattered together. This story was chilling me to the bone, but I wanted to know what happened next. What happened to Charlotte.

“The crowd was chanting: ‘Eight! Seven! Six! Five!’ James ran around the adults, trying to find his mum and dad, but there were so many people he couldn’t spot them. He tried to get the grown-ups’ attention, tugging on their arms and their sleeves. ‘Charlotte’s missing! I can’t find her! You’ve got to help!’ he shouted at them, but he couldn’t make them listen. ‘Four! Three! Two! One! Happy New Year!’ Everyone began singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and hugging and kissing one another, but eventually a man saw that James was crying. James told him that he didn’t know where his sister was and word quickly spread around. Everyone stopped celebrating and began to search.”

She shook her head and lowered her eyes.

“Someone found her in the middle of the maze.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s so sad.”

Kitty nodded. “She must have gotten lost. The doctors said that the cold weather and panic brought on an asthma attack. And … she … she died.”

“How terrible,” I said. “Your dad must have felt awful.”

Kitty nodded. She pointed toward the thick branches. “Do you want to go and see if we can find where they found her?”

I shook my head. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Kitty’s story had made me feel a bit ill.

“I’d better be getting back. My parents will be worried,” I said, and I pushed my way back out into the open, Kitty following. I was so cold I couldn’t feel my feet, and I tried to wiggle my toes as I walked but they hurt.

“This treasure hunt you’re trying to solve,” I said. “I’m guessing James and Charlotte never solved it … because she died?”

She nodded.

“They were planning to, but then the accident happened and it was all forgotten about. I really want to solve it now. Especially as it was for Charlotte. I often wonder what treasure William would have left for her. It would be a nice thing to do in her memory, don’t you think?”

We were quiet for a moment, and I thought about everything she’d said. It was a relief to put my problems out of my mind for a bit.

We got back to the woods, and I stopped and turned to face her.

“Kitty? You know the riddle you’re trying to solve? It’s a yew tree. The next clue is hidden near a yew tree.”

She gasped. “Wh-What?”

The delighted shock on her face made me smile. “It says it in the riddle: ‘I’m a thousand years old, yet still strong as lead.’ Yew trees can live for thousands of years, and their wood is really strong. And you know it’s a tree from the description about the roots, but the biggest clue is in the line: ‘I’m symbolic of life, yet watch over the dead.’ Yews are seen as symbols of everlasting life because they stay green all year-round, and they can often be found in churchyards, so that’s why he’s put that about ‘watching over the dead.’ I read it in a book. All you need to do is find an ancient-looking tree that is still green and is planted in a churchyard.”

Kitty’s mouth was dangling open. The silence made me feel a bit awkward.

“Thank you! Do you know how long I’ve been trying to solve this clue? Ages and ages! And then you come along and solve it straight away! You’re amazing.”

I smiled and my cheeks went a bit warm. Kitty was quite sweet when she wanted to be. “Are there any churches nearby?”

Kitty gathered her things together and threw her satchel over a shoulder. “There’s no need to even go out of the grounds. I know exactly where he means, and I’m going over there right now. You coming?”

She stood there with her shovel in one hand. It felt good to feel wanted. And being called amazing—that was pretty cool too. I took a look at the sky blinking through the waving tops of the trees. It was going to get dark really, really soon.

“Okay, but we’ve got to be quick,” I said.