“IT’S ALL MY FAULT!” Vi puts her head in her hands. We’re sitting in Seegol’s steamy diner, which is surprisingly busy. The clatter of knives and forks and the murmur of locals drowns out the sound of Violet’s despair, which is probably just as well.
“If I hadn’t been meddling in all this, Eels would never have found that page!”
Seegol arrives at that moment. “But what is this? Tears at lunchtime? This is not good.”
I’ve already scattered the contents of my coat pockets across the table. I think about doing the speech again, but Seegol knows the drill by now.
“It’s been a tricky morning,” I tell him. “Could we have something to cheer us up for this?”
And I slide over a small silver and cut-glass cigarette lighter that has been in the Lost-and-Foundery since before the First World War. No one will be coming for it now.
“For this you can have the works,” declares Seegol, and he pats Vi on the shoulder before heading off to his kitchen island to drop fish in the fryer.
“You mustn’t beat yourself up, Vi,” I say, leaning forward so only she can hear. “There’s still no guarantee Eels will succeed. According to the stories, people have been trying to take the malamander’s egg since for ever, and no one has managed it yet. Even Captain Kraken, who had a small army to fight for him, couldn’t keep it for long. The malamander will kill Sebastian Eels, and it’ll be his own stupid fault.”
Violet’s face reappears from inside her hair. “And its weakness?”
I open my mouth to speak, but then close it again. I had been going to say that Eels would have to be a crack shot to hit a precise opening in the malamander’s armour, but then I remember the targets in his house, the bullseyes riddled with holes.
“And what about my parents?” Violet continues. “I came here to find them, but instead all I’ve done is ruin everything. Maybe it’s time I accept they are nowhere to be found. Maybe it’s time I accept they were probably killed by the malamander too.”
“Vi…”
“We both know it’s possible!” Violet cries. “It’s certainly more likely than them just strolling into this diner, alive and well, after all these years.”
We fall silent.
Then we both look over to the door, because, well, in Eerie-on-Sea you never quite know.
But no one comes in.
“This isn’t a story, Violet,” I say gently, though I hate saying it. “There isn’t always a happy ending in real life. Maybe we just have to learn to accept that.”
“Even in a town where a two-hundred-year-old sailor can materialize out of a tap and a cat can talk?”
“Not even then,” I reply, relieved to see the fish and chips arrive.
“Anyway,” I say, after a long pause during which many chips are eaten (mostly by me). “I’m the real ninny here. To think that I had your dad’s manuscript in my Lost-and-Foundery all that time, in his luggage, and I never realized what I had!”
“You weren’t to know, Herbie.”
“Eels must have worked out where it would be,” I say. “And I bet it was old Mollusc who helped him get it.”
“Perhaps, but it was you who kept it safe till then.”
I pull a face. I still feel a complete dunderbrain.
“That’s your job, Herbie,” says Vi, with passion. “And you’re brilliant at it. Keeping lost things safe, detecting clues, finding rightful owners. You’re amazing, Herbie Lemon. And I’m so glad I met you.”
I chomp another chip and beam.
Well, I suppose I am quite amazing.
“But now, finally, I know what my job is,” Vi goes on, touching the angry scabs on her cheek. “I may not know how to find my parents, but I do know how to fix the mess I’ve made. I have to stop Sebastian Eels from getting the malamander’s egg. I have to face the monster myself.”
A wave chooses that moment to hit the pier, sending the salt and pepper shakers rattling across the table.
It’s some time later, and lunch is finished. We’re standing outside on the pier, keeping a little warmth from the diner snug inside our big coats as we look over the heaving sea.
The pier shudders again, creaking in the wind that billows and buffets around us. We’re standing right at the end of it, on the shrivelled wooden planks beyond the old theatre. The theatre only ever opens for a month or two in the summer, and, looking up at it now, I’m surprised it even does that. It seems like one well-aimed super wave would sweep it into the sea for ever.
“So you’re sure about this?” I ask Violet, pointing towards the rising sea. “You’re sure about that?”
Ahead, the dark, green-smeared iron hull of the battleship Leviathan is about to vanish beneath the surging waves. Only the two great chimneys – corroded almost to the point of collapse – and one gun turret are still visible as the tide climbs to claim them again.
“The malamander hibernates,” Vi tells me. “I saw that in my dad’s manuscript, though it was probably my mum who worked it out. It sleeps for most of the year, somewhere far out in the ocean, the whole summer long. But then, when winter hits, it comes near the town to hunt, and to lay its egg on midwinter night.”
“In the wreck?” I say, and Violet nods.
“My dad must have come out here to watch it. My mum, too. When the tide was low enough.”
“As it will be later tonight…” I say.
“And then, when its mate doesn’t come, the poor thing devours its own egg, and swims away alone, to wait another year.”
“Poor thing?”
Violet shrugs. “The malamander has lost its mate. I’ve lost my parents. It’s funny to have something in common with a monster, but I do.” Then, after a pause, “And I wonder if you do too, Herbie.”
“Me?”
“Well, I can’t help noticing,” says Violet, turning to me, “that you don’t seem to have any parents either.”
I pick a large flake of rust off the pier railing, and pretend to find it interesting. I’m a castaway with no memory, washed up on a strange shore in a crate of lemons and adopted by a whole town. But Violet is wrong. She was lost, yes, but I was found. It isn’t the same thing at all.
“Herbie?”
“I’ll tell you my story one day, Vi,” I say, flicking the rust flake into the sea. “I promise. But first, we have work to do.”
“We?”
“Of course, we. You don’t think I’m going to let you finish the adventure without me, do you?”
“But, Herbie, it’ll be extremely dangerous…”
“All the more reason for me to come with you,” I say, setting my cap straight and standing tall. “You handed yourself in at my Lost-and-Foundery, Violet Parma, and I’m not letting you get lost again. I took on your case, and I’m going to see it through.”
The wind ruins the moment by pushing my cap back down over my face, but Violet doesn’t seem to notice. She throws her arms around me in a huge hug. Then she looks a bit embarrassed, and tries to hide it by punching me on the arm. So I try to pretend it doesn’t hurt, until the soppy moment has passed.
“We need to get back to the Lost-and-Foundery and kit up,” I say when it has. “There’s loads of stuff there we can use.”
“Thanks, Herbie.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I say. “Thank me when we’re toasting crumpets tomorrow morning, laughing at stupid old Sebastian Eels and how we stopped him in his tracks.”
And so we set off back along the pier, towards the lights of the Grand Nautilus Hotel.
