ON WEDNESDAY, ARCHIE’S class had another new teacher. This one was called Miss Henley, and she was young and very beautiful.
But although she was young and beautiful, you could tell Miss Henley was not a happy person. There was a deep sadness in her eyes that came out in the way she spoke, and in the way she taught her class.
In art, for instance, she asked them to draw a picture of what it might be like to be the only person left alive after a nuclear war. In maths, she set them problems like, ‘If there are fifty people in your street and ninety percent of them die of bird-flu, how many will be left?’ And for their literacy homework, Miss Henley said she wanted everyone to write about how it felt to lose someone they loved.
‘Maybe you’ve had a pet that died,’ she said, ‘or a grandparent who passed away, or a best friend who moved to another country so that you never saw them again . . .’ She paused to lend a hankie to two girls who were already crying. ‘We’ve all had experiences like this,’ she continued. ‘I myself once lost someone I loved very much and . . . I want you to describe how unhappy that sort of thing can make you feel.’
Archie was not looking forward to this homework. It was all right for Cyd – she could write about her father who was away in the army and whom she hadn’t seen for months – but he couldn’t think of anything to write about himself.
‘I can’t remember losing anyone,’ he said, as he and Cyd collected their coats and bags at the end of school.
‘Seriously?’ Cyd was understandably surprised. ‘I’d have thought, with all the odd things happening to you, that you lost someone almost every week.’
‘No one I really cared about,’ said Archie. His face furrowed in thought. ‘I had a pet ant once that—’
But he never got to say what happened to the ant, because at that moment Cyd discovered she’d forgotten her reading book and they had to go back up to the classroom to get it.
The classroom was empty when they got there but, as Cyd collected her book, they heard a strange noise coming from the stockroom cupboard. When they went to see what it was, they found Miss Henley inside, sitting on a pile of dictionaries, gazing at a photograph and crying quietly.
‘Miss Henley?’ said Archie. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Oh yes! Yes, I’m fine!’ Miss Henley blew her nose on a tissue and smiled at him through her tears. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just . . .’ She put the photo back in her bag. ‘Is there something you need?’
‘I forgot my reading book,’ said Cyd. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
Miss Henley repeated that she was, and the two children turned to leave. Unfortunately the stockroom door had swung shut behind them when they went in and when Archie tried to open it, the handle came off in his hand.
‘I suppose this is one of the “odd” things that are always happening to you,’ said Miss Henley. ‘Mr Gunn warned me about that this morning. Well, let’s see what we can do!’
There are several ways you can try to get out of a small room when the handle has come off the door and in the next half-hour, Archie, Cyd and Miss Henley tried all of them. They tried fitting the handle back on the door. They tried shouting and screaming for help. Miss Henley even tried bashing the door down with a fire extinguisher, but nothing worked.
‘I’m afraid we’ll just have to wait,’ she said, sitting back down on her pile of dictionaries. ‘Someone will come and rescue us eventually.’
‘You think so?’ asked Archie.
‘I’m sure of it!’ said Miss Henley, confidently. ‘Tomorrow morning, when the other children get here—’
‘Tomorrow morning!’ interrupted Cyd. ‘You mean we could be stuck here all night?’
‘It’s not that bad,’ said Miss Henley. ‘We’ll manage.’ She gestured to the shelves around her. ‘At least we’ve got plenty to read, so we can—’
There was a plink sound and the bulb in the ceiling went out, plunging the room into darkness.
‘Don’t panic!’ said Miss Henley. ‘I’ve got a box of matches in my bag!’
A moment later there was a scratching sound and Miss Henley’s face appeared above a small yellow flame.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I seem to remember seeing some candles in here . . .’
Archie climbed up onto a shelf to get down the box of candles, which were left over from a project Miss Jensen had been doing on steam power. Just as he reached them, however, the match Miss Henley was holding burned down to the point where it was singeing her fingers and she dropped it.
It fell, still alight, into her handbag which, as well as being full of paper tissues, contained a leaking bottle of nail varnish.
Nail varnish, in case you didn’t know, is highly inflammable.
There was a whoompf noise as Miss Henley’s bag burst into flames, and a brief moment of panic while Miss Henley tried to stamp out the fire with her feet and Archie tried to beat it out with his coat, before Cyd picked up the fire extinguisher and sprayed the bag with foam.
Some minutes later, by the light of a candle, they were able to review the situation. There were black marks on the wall, Archie’s coat was badly scorched, and there was a puddle of foam on the floor, but the only real damage seemed to be to Miss Henley’s bag, most of which had been burned away.
‘Phew!’ said Archie. ‘That was a close one!’
Miss Henley did not answer. Instead, she reached into the sodden remains of her bag and took out the burned corner that was all that was left of a photograph. She began crying again, and it was almost a minute before she had recovered enough to wipe the tears from her face with a piece of kitchen towel Cyd found for her.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the teacher. ‘But it was the only photo I had of him, you see.’
‘Only photo of who?’ asked Cyd.
‘My fiancé.’ Miss Henley let out a long sigh. ‘Gary. We met on holiday eight months ago, fell in love, and we were going to get married as soon as we got back to England. But I had to fly back the day before him, so I gave him my address and phone number. He said he would call me as soon as he was home and’ – Miss Henley gave a little sob – ‘he never did.’
‘Why not?’ asked Cyd.
‘I don’t know!’ Miss Henley lifted her arms in despair. ‘Perhaps he didn’t really love me. Perhaps he forgot. Perhaps . . . perhaps he’s dead!’
The tears were running down her face again.
‘Maybe,’ said Cyd thoughtfully, ‘we could send a message.’
‘But I don’t know where he lives!’ said Miss Henley.
‘She can’t send him a message if she doesn’t know where he lives,’ said Archie.
‘I was thinking of a message asking someone to come and rescue us,’ said Cyd. She pointed to an air vent in the wall up near the ceiling. ‘If we take the cover off that vent, write a message on a piece of paper, fold it up as a paper dart and throw it through the hole in the wall, whoever finds it can come and rescue us!’
‘You think someone would find it?’ said Miss Henley, doubtfully.
‘They might not find one message,’ said Cyd, ‘but look at all the paper we’ve got!’ She gestured to the piles of paper stacked on the shelves around the stockroom. ‘We can send out hundreds. Someone’s bound to notice eventually.’
‘That is brilliant!’ said Archie. ‘Come on then, let’s do it!’
Miss Henley wrote out the message in big letters on a piece of paper. It said:
We are stuck in the stockroom on the first floor of Tetley Junior School. Please tell the Head Teacher or the police and come and rescue us.
Cyd folded it up as a paper dart and passed it to Archie who had successfully taken off the cover of the air vent, revealing a round hole. He took the dart and launched it into the world.
Miss Henley had already written the same message on another piece of paper when, even before Cyd had finished folding it and Archie could throw it out, they heard footsteps running down the corridor and into the classroom. A moment later the door had opened and two men were standing in the doorway gazing at them. One of them was Mr Gunn, the Head Teacher.
‘I don’t believe it!’ he said, staring at the foam on the floor, the broken vent and the burned handbag. ‘What happened?’
‘The door handle came off,’ Archie explained, ‘and we were trapped.’
‘I’m glad you found the note,’ said Cyd, pointing to the piece of paper the Head Teacher was holding. ‘We thought we might have to stay here all night.’
‘Well, I didn’t find it,’ said Mr Gunn. ‘He did.’ He pointed to the young man standing beside him, wearing a postman’s uniform. ‘He was walking down the road just outside the school when your dart landed at his feet. He brought it in to me and . . .’ He paused, looking anxiously at Miss Henley. ‘Are you all right?’
Miss Henley did not answer, and Archie could see why the Head Teacher was concerned. She had not moved or spoken since the door to the stockroom had opened. All she had done was stare, open-mouthed, at the man in the postman’s uniform.
‘Gary?’ she said, her voice no more than a whisper. ‘Is that you?’
‘Penny!’ The young man knelt down and took Miss Henley’s hands in his own. ‘I don’t believe it! Penny! Have I really found you at last?’
‘You . . . you’ve been looking for me?’ asked Miss Henley.
‘I have done nothing but search for you for the last eight months!’ said the man, and in a great sweeping motion he took Miss Henley into his arms and kissed her.
‘Please!’ said Mr Gunn. ‘Please! Not in front of the children!’
An hour later, as they were walking home, Archie and Cyd could still hardly believe what had happened. They had listened, entranced, to Gary’s story of how, eight months before, on the day he was meant to fly back to England, he had been injured while trying to rescue a kitten from the hotel balcony.
‘I was in hospital for three days,’ he said, sitting in Mr Gunn’s office with Miss Henley beside him. ‘But when they gave me my clothes back, the address and phone number you had given me was gone, and the only part of it I could remember was the name of the town. So I moved here, got a job as a postman and hoped that one day I’d see you in the street, or find your name on a letter.’ He held Miss Henley’s hands tightly in his own as he spoke. ‘And now I’ve found you again, I shall never let you go!’
‘It’s like something you read about in story books, isn’t it?’ said Cyd, as they walked up the road to her house. ‘The two of them are going to live happily ever after, and it’s all thanks to you, Archie! I think you should feel really pleased!’
And Archie did feel quite pleased – at least he did until he got home and his mother saw him.
‘What have you done to your coat?’ she demanded, pointing to the scorch marks caused by the fire in the stockroom. ‘And what are all those stains round the bottom of your trousers?’
‘Honestly!’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it, Archie!’
