Cathy perched on a set of old parallel bars behind the bicycle shed, feeling miserably neglected by her best friend. Barbara had practically ignored her ever since Gillian Ogden had been transferred from 1C to 1B a fortnight ago. This morning in Cookery they’d paired off at one work-table, palming Cathy casually on to Marjorie Powell, who’d made her take the measuring jug with the indecipherable markings. Her scones had come out looking like buttons. Normally that wouldn’t have bothered her in the slightest, but Gillian and Barbara’s combined effort had produced scones that practically floated off the baking tray. The afternoon was turning out badly, too, because she’d worn sandshoes to school, even though it wasn’t a sports afternoon. Her proper school shoes, stuffed full of newspapers, were drying out at home, having been temporarily lost overboard while she was fooling about with her home-made canoe in the river. A teacher supervising the tuckshop queue had noticed and given her a hundred lines. There’d been a time when Barbara Sylvester would have cheerfully done half those lines for her, but now she was too busy fawning over that Gillian!
‘It was an ice-cream cake with blue candles and my name in little blue rosebuds,’ Gillian was saying. ‘And if we’d been hanging round together then, Barb, I’d have invited you instead of that stuck-up Jeanette Everett and her crowd. But you can definitely come to my next birthday party…’
Cathy cleared her throat loudly, but Gillian didn’t even turn around. She was showing Barbara the wonderful watch with its gold safety-chain she’d got for her birthday.
‘Everyone gets watches when they turn twelve,’ Cathy said aggressively. ‘I could have picked a watch, too, but I didn’t even want one. I’m getting something a whole lot more exciting. As it so happens I’m having a birthday party tomorrow.’
‘But your birthday was last week, wasn’t it?’ Barbara said.
‘So what? No rule says you have to have the party on the exact same day. Anyhow, I put it off because the weather was so bad.’
‘You never even mentioned you were having a party,’ Barbara said. ‘You didn’t last year—come to think of it, you’ve never ever had one before.’
‘This time’s different. I don’t reckon the years before you turn twelve amount to all that much, so it’s better to save up and have one big glittery party in one go.’
‘I had balloons dusted all over with glitter,’ Gillian said. ‘Blue and white to match the cake decorations.’
Cathy glared at her, wishing that people who owned magnificent gold watches with safety-chains and stole other people’s best friends had never shown a sudden aptitude and been moved up to 1B. ‘Balloons are babyish,’ she said. ‘You might as well play games like Drop the Hanky. I’m planning to…to hire the ferry tomorrow and hold my birthday party out in the middle of the river! I bet no one’s ever thought of doing that before.’
Gillian and Barbara finally gave her their full attention and Cathy, satisfied, rolled backwards on the parallel bar to dangle by her knees.
‘If the party’s on tomorrow, how come you haven’t handed out any invitations yet?’ Barbara asked.
‘I sent them out by post,’ Cathy lied, for nothing at all was happening tomorrow. Her birthday, partyless, had come and gone the previous Saturday, accompanied by disappointing presents—a pocket dictionary from Grace, a card from Heather and Vivienne with a promise of chocolate that hadn’t eventuated yet, a much-less-than-expected postal note sent by her godmother, and a silly poodle brooch from Isobel with a safety-pin clasp instead of a proper one. Her official birthday present, the raincoat on lay-by at Osborne’s, must languish there until Mum was less woefully short of money. In fact, it had been very much like all her other birthdays, not even remotely in the same category as ice-cream cakes decorated with blue rosebuds and glittery balloons.
‘Can Gillian and me come?’ Barbara asked.
‘You’ll just have to wait and see if the postie brings you anything in the mail,’ Cathy said archly, confident of being able to think of some plausible reason on Monday to explain why no invitations had arrived.
She certainly had plenty of time for thinking next day being alone with nothing much to do. Heather was away on a Guide hike, and Vivienne, miserably recovering from yet another bout of tonsillitis, had been taken by Mum as a treat to visit Aunt Cessie over the river. Dad was renovating some piece of old junk out in the shed. He, too, had time on his hands, for the racetrack caretaker job he’d applied for had gone to someone else. When she offered to help with whatever he was doing in the shed, he told her ungratefully to expect a thick ear if she came out there bothering him. He’d been irritable and troubled lately, which was probably why, Cathy decided shrewdly, Mum had chosen to go out for the day.
She lazed about on the front steps, trying to think of something interesting to do. There was always Isobel’s house, but Isobel drove everyone mad with hideous renditions of ‘Lady of Spain’ ever since taking up the accordion. She could go up the road to the O’Keefes’, and run races with them, but they weren’t very good sports. When they lost they’d bash you up, and if they won they tended to jump about triumphantly and yell, ‘Yah—who’s an old puffed-out granny at running, then?’ There was always the river, but that was depressing now that her lovely galvanised-iron canoe was somewhere in the middle filling up with silt. All the back-breaking hours spent hammering that sheet of iron into shape and plugging the holes and cracks…she’d never have the heart to make another one! And the excursions she’d planned—upriver as far as the little island and all the way down again to the ferry-crossing! She could have paddled past the Sylvesters’ backyard and not even offered Barbara a ride now she’d deserted her best friend and taken up with Gillian Ogden instead. The unspeakable treachery of that snake in the grass Barbara Sylvester…
…who was strolling down the hospital hill this very minute dressed to the nines, accompanied by Gillian Ogden carrying a package wrapped unmistakably in birthday present paper! Cathy looked away and counted slowly to fifty, concentrating on a knee patch in the old pedal-pushers she’d inherited from Heather. She hoped that the other thing was just a mirage, like the heat haze that shimmered above road surfaces in summer, but when she finished counting, they were both walking in through the front gate.
‘Hi, Cathy—happy birthday!’ Barbara said. ‘Those invitations you posted didn’t come in this morning’s mail, but we knew you’d be really disappointed if we didn’t turn up. Gosh, I hope we aren’t too early…you haven’t even had time to get changed yet!’
Cathy remembered with horror that as well as the awful old pedal-pushers, she’d grabbed a checked shirt straight off the clothesline without bothering to iron it. ‘It’s…it’s sensible to wear old clothes when you’re getting everything ready for a party,’ she said quickly.
‘You did mean I was invited, too, didn’t you?’ Gillian asked. ‘Barbie said I would be, even though I only just moved into 1B. She was so positive about it we went downtown and bought this birthday present together—here, it’s from the two of us.’
Cathy removed the wrapping and stared blankly at the Girl’s Crystal Annual within. At any other time she would have been delighted, but now had no room in her mind except for embarrassment. Barbara and Gillian, she knew, were exchanging covert glances, obviously wondering why she wasn’t asking them in.
‘Er…parties usually start at three, don’t they?’ Barbara asked uncomfortably. ‘Haven’t any of the others turned up yet? Oooh, Cathy, supposing they didn’t get their invitations in the post, either! The same thing happened to my sister Belle once—she got asked to this engagement party and didn’t even know it was on because the card went missing in the mail!’
‘I know—maybe they think we’re all supposed to meet at the ferry!’ Gillian said brightly.
‘Ferry?’ Cathy echoed.
‘Well, if you mentioned in the invitation about having afternoon tea there, they might think that. Oh, I’m really looking forward to that part, I’ve never actually ever been on a boat before. And your special birthday present you’re getting, can we…’
‘Wait…wait here, I’ll be back in a minute!’ Cathy babbled. She spun around the side of the house, dashed across the paddock and flung herself, wailing, at Dad.
‘Told you not to come pestering me when I’m in the middle of working,’ he said, pushing her bad-temperedly out of the shed. ‘What’s all the blubbing about, anyhow? If you went for a sixer off that roof again, it’s your own fault shinning up there in the first place.’
‘I never! Oh, Dad…’
‘Be a man, there’s a good girl, you know I can’t stand tears! I never bloody know how to deal with sooking…can’t you save it up for when your mum gets home?’
Cathy shook her head desperately. ‘You’d be blubbing, too, if something as awful as this happened to you! I sort of…let on to these girls at school I was having a birthday party and now they’ve turned up on our doorstep! There’s only half a date-loaf left in the kitchen and no proper milk, only a tin of condensed, so I can’t even offer them afternoon tea! And that’s not all of it, either, I said…said I’d be hiring the ferry and holding my party out in the middle of the river!’
‘Serves you right, telling big fat whoppers like that!’ Dad scolded, handing her a scrap of painty rag to dab her eyes with. ‘Though, mind you, you could always rig up that old army tent in the paddock and let on it’s a marquee. And make some damper with a few candles stuck in the top…’
‘It’s not funny!’ Cathy cried indignantly. ‘I’ll never hear the end of it from that Barbara Sylvester—she’ll blab it around to everyone else at school! Oh, what am I going to do? They’re out there on the front path right now, whispering to each other…’
‘You can still bung on a party, no worries,’ Dad said. ‘If the tucker’s not flash, the entertainment can make up for it. Let’s see now…’ He licked a stub of carpenter’s pencil and wrote something on the back of a receipt from the Hay and Corn Store, elbowing Cathy smartly out of the way when she tried to pry. Then he tore the paper into three sections, put them in an old envelope and headed for the front yard. Cathy followed dismally, not convinced that anything jotted on three slips of paper could remedy the situation. And Dad, she thought with sudden embarrassment, didn’t look as respectable as Mr Sylvester or Gillian Ogden’s father. For a start, there were his clothes—worn corduroy breeches, leather leggings, and the terrible old sweater Mum kept putting in the rag bag and he kept fishing out. There was his limp, too, and although he’d got that from being in the Light Horse Brigade, which was undoubtedly glamorous, his rolling walk looked a bit odd. It didn’t help, either, that he always tried to disguise the limp by charging bravely about like a troop of cavalry. It unnerved people, that rushing walk, specially when accompanied by a stare from piercing blue eyes under shaggy eyebrows.
‘G’day there, young ladies,’ Dad said affably to Gillian and Barbara. ‘It’s not just anyone who’s been invited along today, so count yourselves lucky. Specially as there’s going to be a treasure hunt.’
‘Oh…that sounds fun, Mr Melling,’ Barbara said politely.
Dad looked at her and she wilted, edging uneasily closer to Gillian Ogden.
‘Who said anything about fun?’ he demanded. ‘I can tell you one thing straight off—you should’ve worn sensible duds like young Cathy here, not those frippery articles all over tucks and ribbons. Now, I’ve put the treasure hunt instructions in this envelope, all numbered in the right order, one, two, three.’
‘Only three?’ Gillian said. ‘With treasure hunts you usually have lots. At my birthday party we hid dozens of little notes all over the house saying things like, “Look under the lace runner on the dressing-table”…’
‘You want to play a pappy cubby-house game like that, you should have brought along a bib and rattle,’ Dad said crushingly. ‘Lace runners on dressing-tables, my eye! This one’s different, and maybe you’ll come through it all right—or then again maybe you won’t. You’ll find out soon enough. Get yourselves down to Slidemaster Street and open that first bit of paper—right in front of the police station, but don’t expect me to come down there and bail any of you out if…never mind. Danger—that’s what’s needed in a treasure hunt!’
‘Danger?’
‘Fellers with guts will come through it all right. Doesn’t matter about the lily-livers, they won’t be any loss—and what are you all hanging around here for with your gobs hanging open? Get cracking!’
Conversation on the way to Slidemaster Street tended to be rather stilted. Cathy felt too humiliated to say much, and Gillian and Barbara kept glancing at one another as though they wished now they hadn’t come to her outlandish party. When they reached the police station she unfolded the first slip of paper with a sense of doom, and after reading the message written there, knew that her instincts had been right.
‘What’s it say?’ Barbara asked curiously.
‘Steal…steal a…’
‘Steal something?’
‘Um…steal a nail off the roof of the police station lock-up, actually,’ Cathy muttered, red-faced.
There was a short, splintery silence.
‘Treasure hunt instructions usually just lead from one place to another, then you find a nice little prize at the end,’ Barbara said coldly. ‘A chocolate frog or a pretty hair-ribbon, things like that.’
‘Sergeant Jobey’s inside the police station,’ Gillian said. ‘He’s so scary, like a sheriff out of a Wild West film, that’s why the crime rate’s so low in this town. I don’t suppose…I don’t suppose he’d actually just give us a roofing nail if we went in there and asked…’
‘He’d give us a boot up the backside,’ Cathy said. ‘The only way we could get that roofing nail is to nip down the side alley and climb over the fence.’
‘We can’t possibly!’ Barbara said, scandalised. ‘I don’t mean to criticise your father, Cathy, but it’s a very strange thing to expect birthday guests to do.’
‘Well, we don’t really have to play this game, you know. We could just…just go downtown and look in the shop windows instead,’ Cathy said quickly, but to her surprise, Barbara and Gillian had edged away into the side alley. Cathy hesitated and went after them.
‘Some of those roofing nails look a bit loose,’ Gillian said, climbing the fence to examine the lock-up, which was a small brick shed with a barred window. ‘They’d most likely come out with one tug—that’s if anyone was silly enough to even…’
‘I guess I could zip over and get one.’
‘Cathy Melling, don’t you dare, you’ll get us all arrested!’ Barbara cried behind them. ‘And you’ve got your best dress on, Gillian, what will your mum say if you…’
‘If you don’t pipe down, you’ll have Sergeant Jobey out here,’ Cathy hissed. ‘Shut up and let me concentrate. It shouldn’t be all that hard getting one of those nails, and I wouldn’t have to climb right down, either. You could just about reach over from the top of the fence…’
‘It’s very rude to grab the first turn at your own birthday party. I don’t see why I can’t have a go,’ Gillian said unexpectedly, and pushed Cathy aside. She stepped over the nettle-filled gap and braced one foot on the window ledge, but as she began to prise at the nearest nail, someone suddenly reached out and grabbed her ankle.
‘Give us a cuppa tea, love, and tell old Roy I’m his best mate and never meant to punch him…’ a voice croaked from behind the little barred window.
‘Oh help!’ Gillian squeaked. ‘Quick, someone—poke the creepy old thing off with a stick!’
There was no stick handy, but Cathy said in her best threatening voice, ‘Let go her foot! If the Sergeant comes out he’ll think you’re trying to escape—and you’ll be stuck in there another night!’
The skinny claw and white stubble of whiskers vanished from the window, and Gillian scrambled back across the gap and down into the alley.
‘Not even dropping the roofing nail—that’s what I call brave!’ Barbara said admiringly.
‘I was brave, wasn’t I? Oooh, it was so horrible, that hand shooting out and grabbing my ankle—I nearly died!’
‘And I nearly died when his voice came croaking out the window—I was thinking he could be a murderer!’
‘Every other birthday party I’ve been to we played proper games like Pin-the-Tail and Sardines,’ Gillian said, shuddering. ‘I don’t know what my mum’s going to say when she finds out I’ve had an awful old murderer’s hand all scaly like an emu’s clutching my ankle!’
‘It wasn’t a murderer, it was only poor old Mr Wetherell from Conifer Crossing,’ Cathy said. ‘He comes into town once a week to get drunk and pick fights with people and Sergeant Jobey puts him in the lock-up to sleep it off. Look, Gillian, maybe you’d better chuck that dirty old nail away before you get rust all over your good dress…’
‘Throw it away?’ Gillian demanded incredulously. ‘After all I went through to get it? I’ve never ever pinched anything from a police station lock-up before, and after we’ve shown it to your dad to prove we got it, I’m going to keep it for a souvenir…What’s it say on the next bit of paper, Cathy?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care! Listen, we don’t really have to do any of the other things. We could…well, go down to the park and see if there’s anyone else we know there,’ Cathy said, but Gillian had already snatched the next slip of paper and was reading it aloud.
‘ “Scoot round to Tavistell Street and swipe a peg from the nuns’ clothesline”?’ Barbara repeated, shocked. ‘I certainly don’t think we should be doing any such thing!’
‘Neither do I,’ Cathy said swiftly, thinking of school on Monday and how Barbara would blab to everyone that Cathy Melling’s birthday party consisted of a disgraceful game all over town stealing items from the police station and the Convent. ‘If you don’t want to go to the park, how about a nice walk down by the river instead? Honest, we really don’t have to chase about collecting all these stupid…’
‘The Convent’s not all that far away,’ Gillian said. ‘We could just sort of stroll around the back and—you know, have a bit of a look over the fence…’
‘They haven’t got a back fence you can look over, it’s too tall,’ Barbara said. ‘It’s made like that on purpose so people won’t find out what goes on behind it.’
‘Well, that’s why I’d kind of like to see inside,’ Gillian admitted, and Cathy eyed her in secret amazement, for that sleek, well-brushed head looked as though it would never contain such thoughts. The Convent fence, however, when they reached it, was not only too high to see over, but was topped with sharp little arrow spikes that cancelled any attempts at climbing.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Barbara said. ‘I read somewhere you can’t ever quit once you become a nun, even if you don’t like it. Once they’ve got you in their clutches you never see the light of day ever again!’
‘That can’t be true, I’ve seen the nuns down at the shops on Saturday mornings a whole lot of times. And when Grace went away to the city there were two of them getting on the same train with suitcases. They even offered her a stick of barley sugar…’
‘Doesn’t prove anything,’ Barbara said darkly. ‘The ones on the train were probably trying to run away. And I bet they never got as far as the city, either—they would have been snatched off that train by force and brought back. Then they would have been walled up alive…Look! I told you so—there’s a gap where the bricks join up with the paling fence next door. Some poor little desperate nun’s obviously been out here late at night trying to escape, tearing the bricks out with her fingernails!’
‘But that’s always been like that,’ Cathy said. ‘That house next door started putting up a paling fence years ago and never finished the job. Lucky for us I suppose—we could squeeze through that gap, if we held our breath. You needn’t come, Barb, if you’d rather not.’
But Barbara Sylvester, inexplicably, was the first one through the gap and even led the way through a grove of fruit trees on the other side. Beyond the orchard were vegetable beds, a small lawn with a clothesline, garden sheds, and a trellis bearing grapevines. When they reached the vegetable beds, a black-gowned nun suddenly popped out from nowhere with a wheelbarrow. They ducked down behind a huge spreading clump of rhubarb and watched as she began to rake fallen leaves into a heap. While she worked she chatted to someone else out of sight behind the grape trellis. Cathy listened, her mind ablaze with images of people being forced from trains, but the conversation seemed disappointingly ordinary, of the type anyone might have.
‘…something’s got to be done soon about lopping back this tree, the spouting’s all choked up again…There I was, dough from the scones all over my hands and that wretched front doorbell kept ringing and ringing…The cupboard on the left, dear, and if it’s not there, look under the…Borax might get it out, or salt…’
There was a background of other sounds, but they were quite ordinary, too: someone playing piano scales and making mistakes, a mat being flapped from an upstairs window, the thud of balls from the tennis court around the far side of the Convent. Cathy felt quite cheated, but the other two obviously felt as though they were getting their money’s worth. Barbara’s whole face was an exclamation mark, her lower lip sucked fearfully in behind her top teeth, and Gillian looked just as scared. But the nun, to Cathy’s disappointment, did nothing more startling than dump the fallen leaves into the wheelbarrow and take it behind the trellis.
‘I heard a door open and shut, so she’s probably gone inside. If we want to get one of those pegs from the line, now’s our chance—but I’m not volunteering. I don’t see why we can’t get a peg from just anywhere and pretend it’s from the Convent. No one would even know the difference,’ Cathy said, for Barbara and Gillian’s jitteriness was infectious. The path to the clothesline somehow gave the illusion of seeming much longer than it actually was.
‘Nuns’ pegs probably have crosses or holy pictures carved on them to make them different,’ Barbara said. ‘And I just thought—maybe they’ve got concealed microphones hidden in this rhubarb patch and all over the garden, too!’
‘Why on earth would they?’
‘To make sure no one gets in here and tries to kidnap their relatives back, that’s why! Someone could be listening in to every single word we say, and I bet they’ll all come dashing out with a big net or something pretty soon. Just don’t expect me to go and get that peg, either!’
‘If I can climb the roof of a police lock-up and get grabbed by a murderer, I should think one of you could face up to a nun!’ Gillian said smugly. ‘They couldn’t even run very fast in all those long skirts.’
‘Are you by any chance hinting around that I’m a coward?’ Barbara snapped.
‘Well, I certainly didn’t notice you volunteering about the roofing nail! But you don’t have to worry—I’ll go and get that peg, then I’ll have two treasure hunt souvenirs…’
‘You greedy thing, Gillian Ogden!’ Barbara said angrily, and crept out from behind the rhubarb. She tiptoed across the lawn towards the clothesline, but a voice called sharply from behind the trellis, ‘You bold little article, coming in here to raid our grapes! Get out of there this minute, they’re all finished for the year, anyhow, so—shoo!’
Barbara swerved away wildly, but with great daring snatched a peg from the line as she fled. She pelted back through the orchard and caught up with Cathy and Gillian, who, having blatantly left her to her fate, were already squeezing through the gap in the fence. They ran all the way up Tavistell Street, which slumbered gently in the autumn sunlight, raced around into Curtain Street and fell in a disorganised heap behind the corner park bandstand.
‘I’ve never been so petrified in my whole life!’ Barbara gasped. ‘It was gruesome! There was one of them sitting behind the trellis knitting—making out she was just like normal people, the sly old thing! There she was with the sun glinting on her specs like…like she had eyes made out of lava! Oh, I never thought I’d get away, I thought I’d be dragged inside that place and they’d make me put on a long black dress and sleep in a cell! But look here, just look what I got—a real nun’s peg from the Convent garden!’
‘It’s just like everyone else’s pegs,’ Cathy said. ‘An ordinary old wooden one with no holy markings at all.’
‘You’re just jealous! Here’s Gillian with a nail from the police station and me nearly getting walled up alive with my peg—but you haven’t even got a single solitary thing on this treasure hunt yet!’
Cathy, vastly annoyed, ripped open the last piece of paper and read, ‘Fetch some kitchen lino out of the haunted house in River Road—watch out for banshees!’
‘That place!’ Gillian said. ‘You wouldn’t catch me going in there! It really is haunted—Marjorie Powell reckons she’s seen mysterious lights moving about behind the windows at night.’
‘It’s just an old house falling to bits because no one lives in it,’ Cathy said scornfully, getting up and brushing grass clippings from the seat of her pants. ‘And as if anyone would believe anything Marjorie Powell says! She’s the biggest liar in town. She told my sister she had a double-storey play-house in her backyard, and Viv went there on a message once, but there wasn’t anything like that at all!’
‘There’s lots of other people besides Marjorie who’ve seen those lights after dark. That house is so haunted! I bet you wouldn’t be game enough to go in there and get a piece of kitchen lino!’
‘Those lights are only beery old tramps with matches and cigarette butts. I’m certainly not scared of an old house. And for your information I’ll just march right in there and get a whole roll of lino if I feel like it! Naturally, I won’t expect you two to come in with me if you’re both so scared, you can just wait outside.’
Cathy swaggered confidently all the way down to River Road, but as they approached the old house by the river, her pace slackened. That house had been derelict for as long as she or anyone else could remember, every year settling deeper into the ground and shedding more of its fabric. Waiting on the footpath for the others to catch up, she noticed that the house stirred constantly in various ways. Grass rippled along the gutters, the entire tin roof vibrated gently, ancient ribbons of dried-up paint shivered in the breeze from the river.
‘I’m glad it’s you going inside that spooky old haunted house and not us!’ Gillian said. ‘There’s kids at school who even cross over so they won’t have to walk past it.’
‘It only looks haunted because everyone acts like it is. Everyone’s so stupid. I’ve been inside there heaps of times and nothing’s happened.’
‘You’ve been in there? All the way inside, no kidding?’
‘Well…I went up to the front door once and banged the knocker,’ Cathy conceded. ‘But that still counts, because I stayed right there on the veranda and knocked a whole lot of times. No ghosts came out—the only thing was an old bird’s-nest shook loose out of the fanlight and landed down my neck…’ She stopped, remembering suddenly a much smaller Cathy who’d leaped back, fallen off the veranda and then run all the way up the hill without stopping to draw breath. The composite parts of the house, she noticed apprehensively, didn’t just move, but were quite noisy about it, creaking and rasping and murmuring amongst themselves. ‘Actually, if you think about it, it probably isn’t all that safe inside with everything rotting away to bits,’ she added. ‘People could easily fall through the floorboards and break their leg. This treasure hunt’s kind of silly, really. How about we just go for a walk up to the blacksmith’s and watch…’
‘Some people seem to be backing out when it’s their turn,’ Barbara said. ‘Specially the ones full of big talk…’
‘You rotten liar, Barbara Sylvester! I am not trying to back out of anything!’
‘Well, hurry up and get that lino, then! It’s not very nice waiting around outside like this—anything could pop up behind one of those windows and stare out at us! Of course, if you’re too nervous, we can just go back to your place and look at what you got for your birthday…’
Cathy, glaring, marched proudly up the overgrown path to the front door and shoved it open. It stopped halfway, teetering drunkenly on one rusty hinge. She set one foot over the threshold into the shadows, then withdrew it. The house seemed even more restless inside, as though some variety of life was active there, a secretive life manifesting itself in furtive rustlings…She jumped as a long stalactite of cobweb swung out and brushed across her face.
‘What’s up, what was it?’ Gillian quavered from the gateway. ‘Did you…see something?’
‘Course not!’ Cathy said resolutely and threaded her way through fallen plaster and split floorboards to what had once been a kitchen. There was a green twilight in there, for vines had smothered the broken window, curling thin arms over the sill. Cathy glanced at the vines, remembering a Tarzan film she’d once seen about vegetation that possessed an evil intelligence of its own and strangled people. She remembered other things—Stewart Thurlow swearing he’d passed this house and heard a blood-curdling scream choked off in the middle; Isobel claiming a large black leathery thing had come streaking from a window and flapped right past her ear; that old story about the skeleton found under the kitchen floorboards with a knife blade wedged between its ribs…
Cathy knelt to prise a scrap of lino from the floor. It clung stubbornly to its jute backing, refusing to break. As she worked away at it, a huge spider suddenly scuttled from a crack in the floor, raced across her hand and vanished under a pile of rubbish. Cathy, who had a phobia about spiders, screamed and tumbled backwards, holding the snapped piece of lino. She scrambled up and raced outside, still yelling. Barbara and Gillian screamed, too, and bolted away up the hospital hill, not waiting for her.
‘Hang on a minute! There’s no ghosts coming after us, it was only this big spider…’ Cathy called, but they still didn’t stop, and went galloping over the crest of the hill and down the slope towards her house. Cathy sped after them, groaning, remembering that the worst was yet to come. Now they’d expect to be shown her marvellous secret birthday present which was supposed to be even better than a gold wristwatch! Her mind raced frantically over household items she could perhaps claim to be that present—Heather’s brass statuette she’d got at the Show, Mum’s big cedar chest, the plaster spaniel doorstop, the cow—maybe she could claim that Dad was setting her up with her very own dairy herd…And the present wasn’t her only worry, for Barbara and Gillian were also expecting afternoon tea served on the ferry!
‘Listen, wait a minute…there’s something I forgot to mention,’ she called desperately, but they’d already reached the side gate and were rushing over to Dad by the shed, waving their clothespeg and roofing nail. It was all his fault, Cathy thought morosely. He’d just made the whole thing worse than it was, and while she’d had to suffer all the humiliations of the afternoon, he’d been tinkering about peacefully in the shed…She shaded her eyes from the sun and peered at something propped on two kerosene drums, something sparkling with fresh paint.
‘Just as well you went out gallivanting all over town with your mates. Gave me a chance to finish this off without you here poking your nose in. All it needed was sandpaper and a lick of paint…’ Dad said as Cathy advanced slowly across the yard, staring at a little blue rowboat, so minute and endearing it looked like something out of The Wind in the Willows.
‘I found it cleaning out the shed when Aunt Ivy was here on the rampage. Must have been in there donkey’s years by the look of things, slung up on the rafters under a load of old bags and rubbish,’ Dad explained. ‘You can be boss of it seeing you’re so nuts about the river. Takes all kinds, I suppose—never fancied the navy much myself, cavalry’s better.’
Cathy couldn’t say anything. She put out a tender hand and traced the boat’s name painted on the side in dashing letters.
‘Oh, Cathy—your own little boat named after you!’ Gillian said. ‘You never even told us you were getting a ducky little rowboat for your birthday! Was that what you really meant by having afternoon tea on a ferry?’
‘Try sitting in this ferry just yet and you’ll end up with blue paint all over your breeches,’ Dad said. ‘Come back another day when it’s dry and she might take you out fishing—she’s pretty good at slinging a line.’
‘Can you make up another treasure hunt for us then?’ Barbara asked. ‘That was the best one I’ve ever been on in my whole life!’
‘Why can’t we have another one right now?’ Gillian said. ‘Go on, Mr Melling!’
‘Clear out,’ Dad said. ‘You can all just flap off now and give a bloke some peace. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, next to sooking, it’s a mob of gabby little earbashing sheilas all over lace and frills and ribbons! Go on, bloody clear out the lot of you and find something else to do!’
‘Don’t mind him,’ Cathy said. ‘Let’s go inside and have something to eat. There’s beaut date-slice and tea—made specially with condensed milk seeing it’s my birthday.’
‘You lucky thing!’ Barbara and Gillian said jealously. ‘We never get condensed milk at home!’