Next morning I called over for Kate. ‘Come inside,’ she said. ‘Zoe’s making a cake.’

‘What’s the occasion?’ I asked.

‘There isn’t one. Zoe just likes making cakes.’

She looked around her and then whispered. ‘Zoe makes the most amazing cakes ever, but I can’t let Martha hear me saying that. She might be jealous.’

‘But Martha makes great cakes too. Her chocolate buns are almost famous.’

‘I know,’ whispered Kate. ‘Martha’s cakes are delicious, but Zoe’s are a step beyond that. They’re totally delicious, and they look amazing too. Zoe’s cakes look like they belong in a really fancy bakery in Paris or somewhere.’

By then we were in the kitchen. Zoe poured us each a big glass of home-made lemonade and then went back to decorating her cake. She rolled out some pale green icing and then used a cutter to make heaps of tiny green leaf shapes. She used little dabs of icing to stick these onto the top of a perfectly smooth round cake.

‘That is totally amazing, Zoe,’ I said. ‘Kate’s right, you’re a genius cake-maker.’

‘Thanks,’ said Zoe. ‘But enough about cakes, already. Kate told me what happened yesterday. I think that has to be the saddest story I’ve ever heard.’

‘It’s definitely the saddest story I’ve ever heard,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about poor Daisy. How could so many bad things happen to one person? It just doesn’t seem fair.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ asked Zoe.

‘Do?’ I asked. ‘What can we do? We can’t change the fact that Daisy’s dad went to jail, or the fact that her mother was sent to hospital just because she was sad. We can’t change the fact that both her parents died. And anyway, maybe none of it matters. For all we know, Daisy could be dead by now too.’

‘Put that stuff aside for a moment,’ said Zoe. ‘Do you believe that Daisy’s dad was innocent?’

‘Kate asked me the exact same thing yesterday,’ I said. ‘Are you two part of a big anti-Mr Lavelle conspiracy?’

Kate and Zoe grinned at each other. ‘We just want to know the truth,’ said Kate.

‘The truth is always good,’ said Zoe, giving her a big, soppy smile.

It was totally cute seeing Kate and Zoe get on so well, but I just rolled my eyes and pretended to be grossed-out.

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking about that very question, and I remembered something I read the other day.’

I pulled Daisy’s diary from my pocket. I flicked through the pages until I found the one I wanted.

‘Daisy wrote this months before the whole affair of the chalice happened,’ I said, as I began to read aloud.

I closed the diary. ‘Does that sound like a man who would steal anything?’ I asked.

Zoe and Kate shook their heads. ‘Definitely not,’ they said together.

‘But it was all so long ago,’ said Kate. ‘Even if Mr Lavelle was wrongly convicted, what can we do about it now?’

‘It’s never too late to make a wrong right,’ said Zoe.

‘Cool saying,’ I said. ‘Did you just make that up?’

Zoe laughed. ‘Not exactly. My Grandma embroidered it on a sampler and hung it on her kitchen wall. She quoted it to me about five times every day.’

Kate jumped up. ‘Come on, Eva,’ she said. ‘What are you waiting for? We’ve got a wrong to right – and I think I know exactly where to start.’

Gerry the friendly policeman remembered us from when we’d saved Jeremy from being destroyed. He brought us into the waiting room of the police station, and told us to sit down.

‘Hello, girls,’ he said when we were all settled. ‘What brings you here? Are you trying to save more trees? That was mighty work you did against that developer guy.’

Kate giggled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re not here about a tree this time. It’s something different altogether.’

‘So tell me more,’ said Gerry.

‘We need to talk to you about a crime,’ I said. ‘It happened very near here – in Newtown.’

Gerry reached for a notebook, and fluttered through the pages until he found a blank one. Then he took a pencil from the top pocket of his uniform.

‘Take your time and give me all the details,’ he said. ‘What was the nature of the crime?’

‘A very valuable silver chalice was stolen,’ said Kate.

Gerry wrote something down. ‘And when exactly did this happen?’

‘In 1947,’ I said. ‘In September.’

Gerry put down the pencil and looked at us over his glasses.

‘Is this some kind of joke you girls are playing?’ he asked. ‘I presume you know that wasting police time is a crime.’

I rushed to explain. ‘We know it was ages and ages ago, but we think the wrong person was blamed.’

‘And that man went to jail, and his family broke up,’ said Kate.

Gerry put away his notebook and pencil, and sat back on his chair. He listened patiently while Kate and I told the sad story of the Lavelle family.

When we were finished, Gerry shook his head. ‘That’s tragic,’ he said. ‘A tragic affair altogether. But I’m afraid I don’t understand why you’re telling me. All that happened many years ago, long before I was even born.’

‘We thought maybe you’d have the files here in the police station,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could show them to us. Maybe Kate and I could look at the evidence. Maybe we could ……’

I stopped talking when I realised that what I was saying sounded kind of stupid. This wasn’t a glitzy American TV detective show. Kate and I weren’t going to be able to access shiny labs with microscopes and fancy computer programmes that could check for ancient fingerprints. We were just kids and we were way, way out of our depth.

Gerry was kind enough not to laugh.

‘I’m sorry, girls,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much storage space here. Files from 1947 would have been sent to Head Office many years ago. And even if I had the files here with me, I couldn’t just hand them out to anyone who showed up here with a sad story. There are confidentiality issues here, and I have to follow the rules.’

‘We understand,’ I said, as Kate and I stood up. ‘We shouldn’t have bothered you.’

I felt small and stupid as Gerry shook our hands and showed us to the door.

‘That was a rubbish idea of mine,’ said Kate as soon as the policeman had gone back inside.

I shrugged. ‘It seemed OK at the time,’ I said. ‘And it’s not like I had any better ideas anyway.’

‘So now what?’

‘Maybe we should face up to the fact that there’s nothing we can do. Maybe Daisy’s story ends right here.’

Just then the door of the police station opened again.

‘I’ve had an idea that might help you,’ said Gerry. ‘The big library in town keeps copies of all the local newspapers. Back in the forties they used to have very comprehensive court reports. Maybe you could find something to help you there.’

I felt like hugging him, but figured there was probably a law against it!

So Kate and I just thanked him and then we raced off to get our bikes for the cycle in to town.

The woman in the library was really nice and helpful. She told Kate and me to sit at a big wide table, and before long she was back with a stack of dusty old newspapers.

‘Here you go,’ she said, putting them on the table in front of us. ‘Everything you need should be here.’

‘Thanks so much,’ I said.

The librarian smiled. ‘The fact that you knew exactly which dates you wanted made my job very easy. Court reports are usually on the second last page. Now, I’ll leave you to it. Just give me a call if you need anything else.’

It didn’t take us long to find the report of Daisy’s father’s court case. Seeing it in black and white newsprint made it seem even more real than before. I thought of all the people in Seacove reading it, and believing it, and slowly beginning to hate Mr Lavelle and his family.

Kate and I leaned closer to the page, to read the small fuzzy text. The report was short, and to the point.

‘OMG,’ whispered Kate when we’d both finished reading. ‘There was a witness to the crime! This George Eades person says he saw Jean-Marc Lavelle leaving the church in Newtown with the chalice under his arm!’

‘I don’t believe that. George Eades had to be lying.’

Kate looked at the report again. ‘That’s what Jean-Marc said in court. Jean-Marc said he wasn’t anywhere near the church at the time.’

‘That’s just weird. If two people stand up in court, and say completely opposite things, why would everyone believe one and not the other?’

‘Remember what Martha said about people back then being suspicious of foreigners? Remember the war was just over, and people were kind of mixed up. Maybe it was too easy for them to believe that the foreigner, the man from France, had to be the liar.’

‘So everyone automatically trusted the local guy?’

Kate nodded. ‘I guess so.’

‘But that’s so unfair!’

Kate nodded again. ‘I agree.’

For a minute I felt really, really angry. How cruel was it for everyone to judge Jean-Marc because of the way he looked and the way he spoke? Didn’t anyone ever stop to consider his feelings?

But then Kate looked up at me, and I remembered what she was like when I first met her. Back then I decided I didn’t like her just because she had messy hair and didn’t wear cool clothes.

‘What?’ she asked.

I realised I was staring at her. ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said quickly. ‘I was just thinking that sometimes people can’t help being prejudiced. What’s important now is that we try to make things right again.’

‘But how?’

‘Er, I’m not sure yet. Just give me a bit of time, and I’ll think of something.’

We tidied up the newspapers and took them back to the desk.

‘You girls don’t look very happy,’ the librarian said. ‘Weren’t you able to find what you were looking for?’

‘Yes and no,’ I said. ‘We found something, but it’s not what we’d hoped for.’

‘Thanks anyway,’ said Kate, and then the two of us went back to her place to try to come up with a plan.