Freja lay in bed, flat on her back, and waited.
All across Rome, hundreds of church bells chimed midnight. The last cars and three-wheeled trucks zoomed by in the street below. Two cats started a yowling competition on a nearby rooftop. Finnegan yawned, stretched across the bed and the girl and fell asleep.
When all had been quiet for some time, Freja squeezed out from beneath the hound, grabbed her scissors from her pencil case and crept from the room. She pressed her ear against Tobias’ bedroom door and listened. All she could hear was a snoring sound, not so very different from the noise Finnegan was making in her own room.
Turning the handle, she pushed open the door and slipped inside. She tiptoed to the edge of the bed and stared down at the sleeping writer. His quilt and sheets lay in a tangled mess at his feet. His winter pyjamas, patched and frayed, were pushed up to his knees and elbows. And across his body, his pillow and the mattress was a scattering of books, journals and small scraps of paper. His pencil, of course, was still tucked behind his ear.
A breeze blew in through the open window, and something dangled back and forth from the bed lamp.
‘The key,’ whispered Freja. She relaxed a little; she would not be needing the scissors after all. ‘Too easy.’
Smiling, Freja unhooked the twine from the lamp, slipped it around her neck and crept back to her own room.
There, she closed the shutters, placed her pillow against the crack at the bottom of the door and turned on the light. Crawling beneath the bed, she dragged out her satchel. From the satchel she took her cherry-red beanie and from the cherry-red beanie she took the battered little treasure chest.
Her breath caught.
This was a very important moment. She, Freja Peachtree, was about to release the secrets belonging to Clementine Peachtree and Tobias Appleby.
‘All will be revealed,’ she whispered. She smiled because the words sounded important. A little pompous even.
She carried the treasure chest from the bed to the dressing table — an archbishop bearing a crown towards a new queen. She took the key from around her neck and listened for some kind of fanfare.
‘Boof!’ said Finnegan. He sneezed, whimpered and started to snore again. It would have to do.
She pushed the key into the lock, turned it and opened the lid.
‘It worked! It worked!’ She clapped her hands, allowed herself a quiet, little squeal of delight, then delved into the secrets.
‘Puffin poop!’
Freja peered into the treasure chest for the third time, squinting, frowning. Each and every object looked so terribly, terribly normal. Boring. Pathetic even.
Of course, these were not necessarily treasures. ‘Secrets’, Clementine had called them.
‘Clementine,’ whispered Freja. ‘Clementine would tell me to look carefully. To look again. To search for new things no-one else would notice. To make up my own mind about what I’m seeing.’
Slowly and methodically, Freja pulled out each object, examined it and laid it on the dressing table. There was a tiny white seashell, an acorn grey with age, a smooth, round pebble, a small brown feather, another stone shaped roughly like a heart and a pressed flower. The flower had crumbled and lost most of its petals to the bottom of the treasure chest. Freja wondered if these were Clementine’s secrets, dreams of a future spent amongst the beauty of nature.
Next, she pulled out the stub of a candle, a mint chocolate (the wrapper faded but still completely intact), a crystal like one might see on a chandelier and a short lock of hair that had been kept together by tying it into a knot.
Freja held the lock of hair in the palm of her hand and peered at it. ‘Oh! There are two lots of hair,’ she whispered. ‘One golden and straight, the other brown and curly. Clementine’s and Tobias’ hair! But why is it knotted together?’ She rubbed it softly against her cheek, then sat it next to the chocolate.
The crystal caught her eye once more. Holding it up to the ceiling, she turned it around and around in her fingertips. The light danced, sparkled and shattered into a thousand miniature rainbows. ‘Beautiful,’ she sighed.
Next, she took out a piece of paper, yellowed and covered with the large, crooked writing of a small child. Freja unfolded it and began to read:
Hero Boy and Reskew Girl
A really trew story by Grape Smith
PREPEAR TO BE ASTONISHED AND AMAZED UNTIL YOUR EYEBALLS POP OUT AND EXPLODE
Once up on a time there was a bewtifool girl. Her name was Anne.
Astonishingly, at the very same time there was a plane but powerfool boy called Grape. This was real lucky for Anne because she was in trubble.
‘Help! Help!’ she cried. ‘I am in trubble. Dubble trubble some mite say.’
Grape was in trubble too. But as we alreddy no, he was very powerfool. His trubble was that
The story ended. Both sides of the paper were full.
‘Grape Smith,’ mused Freja. ‘What a weird name. Maybe he was a friend of Tobias’ and Clementine’s . . . And who’s Anne? Someone real or someone pretend?’ She felt a rush of excitement. This might be a proper secret — at last! After all, the story did say that it was ‘really trew’. Then again, it might just be a scrap of paper that got messed up with Clementine’s and Tobias’ secrets. It might have nothing at all to do with their lives. Things like that did happen.
Freja read through the half-story again, then set it aside. She looked down into the treasure chest. All that was left was a small piece of card. Tucking her fingernails carefully under the edge, she pulled it out.
‘Oh!’ Her hand flew to her chest. It was a strip of three tiny black-and-white photos, the sort one took in a booth at a fair. Two children, a girl and boy, sat with their heads pressed together, their eyes twinkling. In the first photo, they were smiling, all teeth and gaps where the tooth fairy had been. In the second photo, they were screwing up their faces and poking out their tongues. And in the last photo, they were laughing, their mouths wide, their eyes turned towards each other.
A tear slipped down Freja’s cheek. For the photos were, of course, of Tobias and Clementine.
‘This is a big, fat secret,’ whispered Freja. ‘Tobias and Clementine have known each other since they were children . . . Maybe forever . . . Maybe they’re brother and sister!’ Her breath caught. ‘And that would make Tobias my uncle, no matter how many times he says he isn’t!’
Secrets and lies. Lies and secrets. Tobias was so very good with both. But why would he and Clementine keep such a wonderful thing a secret?
‘Perhaps,’ said Freja, ‘there is a complicated and mysterious reason why Tobias cannot tell me the truth. It happens in stories, so why not in real life?’
She smiled. The idea made her heart swell and her spirits soar. ‘I am Tobias Appleby’s secret niece. Tobias Appleby is my secret uncle. One day the world will know, but for now it has to remain a big, fat secret.’
Pressing the photo to her lips, she kissed girl Clementine and boy Tobias.
And then, although she knew it was wrong, she slipped the photo between the pages of her scrapbook.
One by one, Freja placed the other items back in the little treasure chest until all that remained was the crystal. She held it up to the light once more and watched the rainbows dance inside. Bigger rainbows danced across the ceiling and the walls.
‘Magic,’ she sighed. ‘Like the crystal chandeliers in the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli.’ She smiled. ‘Like the diamonds that were stolen and carried away through the tunnel between the bank and the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere.’
Freja moved the crystal towards the treasure chest and stopped. ‘Two Santa Marias!’ She clasped the crystal in her hand until it bit into her flesh. ‘There are two churches called Santa Maria and Vivi didn’t say which one was connected to the bank by a tunnel. I thought . . . I presumed it was Santa Maria in Trastevere because it was the church I had just drawn on my map. It was the church we had zoomed past on Tobias’ motorcycle just the day before . . . But perhaps . . .’ Her voice dropped to a mere hush. ‘Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the church that was connected to the bank by a tunnel is actually the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli . . . The church where Nonna Rosa and I went to pray . . . The church with all the crystal chandeliers . . . The church where one crystal chandelier shines brighter than all the rest . . .’
She opened her shaking hand and stared at the crystal. ‘Tobias,’ she whispered, then raised her voice to a shout. ‘Tobias!’
Tossing the crystal into the treasure chest, she ran from her bedroom, yelling at the top of her lungs, ‘Tobby! Tobby! Tobby! We have to go to church!’