And now we must return to Brown Street, where all the houses stood shadowed in the deepest dark of night.
Only one house, the tallest and narrowest on the street, showed any sign of activity. It might almost have been mistaken for a lighthouse, for while most of its windows were dark, the topmost window was brilliantly lit. It was as if someone was at work in there. But there was no one at work. There was no one in the room at all, and the only movement came from the deep red curtains that caught the moonlight as they drifted in and out of the window with each gentle breath of wind.
What happened next happened fast, and you would have seen it only if you had been watching extremely carefully. A thin strand of silvery thread slipped silently over the sill of the open window and pooled on the honey-colored floorboards. Swiftly, the thread gathered itself up and spun itself into a ball. As more and more thread slithered into the room, the ball grew larger. At first it was the size of a golf ball. Then it was the size of a tennis ball, and finally—when the ball was almost as big as a grapefruit—the very end of the thread snaked over the sill. It was attached, quite firmly, to the hand of a slender, dark-haired woman, who glided in through the window and touched her feet down quietly on the floor.
Who was she? Why, it was none other than Serendipity Smith, the most famous writer in the world. Of course, she didn’t look at all like Serendipity Smith. Her brown eyes were not framed by the most elaborate Lucilla La More spectacles. She wore comfortable black clothes, not a gorgeously tailored velvet coat lined with paisley silk. Her feet were clad in sensible black sneakers, not knee-high boots of the finest plum-colored leather. But still, as you know, it was Serendipity Smith.
Serendipity stretched and sighed and yawned, rubbing her fists into her tired eyes. Pulling a pencil from behind her ear, she used its tip to scratch an almost unreachable itch on her back, then she turned her gaze to the ball of silvery thread, which lay, quivering slightly, at her feet. She scooped it up and placed it on her desk beside her typewriter, then settled down at her chair.
From the pile of paper on the right-hand side of her desk, Serendipity took the top sheet and slid it into the typewriter. It was the same piece of paper to which Tuesday had tried to stick The End only a few hours before. Slowly, Serendipity began. Click, clack, went the keys of her typewriter. Click, clickety, clack. She gathered speed, the look upon her face changing with each new scene she described on the page. Sometimes she smiled, and sometimes she scowled, sometimes she looked positively frightened, and for a while there, it looked as if she might cry.
When she had filled each page, Serendipity inserted a fresh sheet into her typewriter. And then another and another. As the words appeared on the page, Serendipity thought back over the events of her long, long day. Had it truly been just that morning that Vivienne and Mothwood had fought their final battle? Page after page were filled as these two archenemies fought to the end. Mothwood had executed one final cruel trick, but his plan had backfired and he had tumbled to his death.
“Mothwood, my old foe,” Serendipity whispered.
Serendipity had thought, and indeed hoped, that perhaps the fifth and final book in the Vivienne Small series would not end with Mothwood’s death. She had wanted to believe that even after all his evil deeds, maybe, just maybe, he was capable of something noble—heroic, even—that would redeem him. In the end, however, despite her best attempts to save him, Mothwood had proved himself a villain to the very core.
“Good-bye, Mothwood,” Serendipity said, as the words on her page told the story of his final moments. “I shall miss you, vile as you have always been.”
She threaded one last page, on which she wrote the scene where Vivienne Small returned safely to her secret tree house in the Peppermint Forest, under cover of darkness. Finally, she came to the very last sentence: Vivienne lay down in her hammock to sleep, although her right ear, the one with the pointed tip, remained tuned—as ever—to the call of adventure.
Serendipity sighed. It was, she hoped, an ending that her readers would find satisfying. She rubbed her stiff neck and looked out the window into the darkness of the night. It was very, very late. It was so late that it was actually quite early. In just an hour or so, the sky would lighten and birds would sing their morning songs. But she had done it. She had finished. She had finally written the last sentence of the last Vivienne Small book ever.
She checked her watch. It was Saturday morning, and today was the first day of Tuesday’s summer holidays. Eight whole weeks stretched out before them, weeks when Serendipity didn’t have to write, or think about writing, or wear purple boots and long coats and pretend to live in an apartment on the top floor of the most famous hotel in the city. In a few hours she would rouse Tuesday from her bed. And then, at breakfast, Serendipity and Denis would surprise Tuesday with the news that tomorrow they would all be going to a tiny, ramshackle shack on the most remote island in the whole Pacific Ocean, where they could snorkel and sail every day. There would be just Serendipity and Denis and Tuesday and Baxterr. No book signings, no television appearances, no radio interviews, no literary festivals. Just reading and dreaming and snorkeling and sailing and playing Clue and Scrabble and cards.
Wearily, Serendipity reached for the silver case containing The End. Flipping open the tiny box, she was surprised to see that the words were not, as they usually were, laid out in their tidy, curling script. Instead they were all scrunched up and unreadable, as if they’d been blown about in the wind.
“That’s very odd,” Serendipity said.
But, being too tired to give it any further thought, she simply lifted out the silvery thread and was about to place the words down at the bottom of her page, when she stopped.
“No, not yet,” she whispered. “Best to sleep on it.”
For Serendipity knew what all writers know: that once The End has been set down at the bottom of a page, that’s it. It’s over. The story is absolutely, quite definitely finished. Serendipity told herself that she would return to her writing room later in the morning, after breakfast, and check over the manuscript one last time. And then, if she was happy, she could add The End. Yes, she decided, The End could wait until then. It was time to sleep.
Serendipity pulled the window closed, latching it securely. The ruby beads hanging from the lamp on the table tinkled as she switched it off. She flicked off the main light too, wondering vaguely who had left it on and suspecting that Denis must have done this to welcome her home. The door clicked closed behind her, and she padded quietly down the stairs.
But before she went to bed, there was something she had to do.
And perhaps you know what it is. Or perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you don’t actually know that long after you have drifted off to sleep, your mother or father or someone else who loves you will invariably tiptoe into your room. They will pull your covers up over your shoulders if it’s cold, or fold them at the bottom of your bed if it’s hot. They will turn your light down, or off, and pick up that pair of shoes you’ve left lying in the middle of the floor. And do you know what they do next? For the briefest moment, they will watch you sleeping. They might stroke your cheek, or kiss your head, or whisper a good dream into your ear. Or perhaps they just stand there and think how lovely you are, and blow you a kiss, and leave you to your sleep.
Like most mothers, Serendipity loved to look in on her daughter before she went to bed herself. And so, tired as she was after her long, long day, she had a gentle smile on her face as she tiptoed down the stairs to Tuesday’s bedroom. As usual, Tuesday had gone to sleep with her light on and her bedroom door ajar, so there was light spilling out of the room onto Serendipity’s feet as she carefully pushed open the door. But what Serendipity saw was not at all what she expected to see.
In Tuesday’s bed, there was no Tuesday. Instead, facedown, half under the covers, in his dressing gown, and with his slippers still on, was Denis. Serendipity stared at him. Frowning, she slipped across the room and shook him. Denis’s eyes flew open.
“What’s happened?” Serendipity asked. “Where’s Tuesday?”
“Back already?” Denis said, coming slowly to his senses. “How did it go? Did she find you all right?”
“Did who find me?”
“Well, Tuesday.”
“Tuesday?” asked Serendipity, startled. “Why on earth would Tuesday—”
“She went to find you,” said Denis, bewildered, his hair mussed, his hand searching about for his glasses on the bedside table.
“Find me? How could she possibly find me?” Serendipity said, starting to sound shrill. “Why isn’t she here with you?”
“Well, because, she went to find you,” Denis repeated, also starting to sound a little angry. He sat up, put on his glasses, and looked keenly at his wife.
“But that’s impossible,” said Serendipity, sitting down beside him. “You know that’s impossible.”
“Not if she started a story that would take her there,” said Denis.
“But she’s a child. Surely, she couldn’t—”
“But she did,” said Denis, a little more calmly. “Here, look.”
And he drew from his dressing-gown pocket the story Tuesday had begun on the typewriter. He unfolded the single page and handed it to Serendipity, who slowly took in the words.
“And Baxterr?” she asked, when she had finished.
“With her.”
“There was nothing … different about him?” Serendipity asked, frowning.
“Not at all.”
“Oh, my goodness,” said Serendipity. “She really did it.”
“The only problem is,” said Denis, “she’s gone looking for you there, and now you’re … here.”
They sat there together for a moment in silence, both staring at the sheet of paper.
Then Serendipity jumped up and said, “I have to go. I have to find her.”
Denis nodded. “I think that might be best.”
“If I go quickly, maybe I can catch her before she gets to the Library. Once the Librarian gets hold of her, well … then it’ll be too late for her to back out. She’ll have to go all the way to The End,” said Serendipity, starting for the door.
“All right,” said Denis, following her.
“I can’t believe you let her go,” Serendipity said as they quickly climbed the stairs. “Was there nothing you could do?”
“No,” said Denis. “She was in the air by the time I got there. Before I’d even crossed the room, she was out the window. Baxterr was in her arms, and she looked so entirely happy. They both did.”
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” said Serendipity. “The first time can be very tricky, you know. Anything could happen.”
“She’s a clever girl,” said Denis. “She’ll work it out.”
“I should have been back!” Serendipity said, her brow furrowed, her tone growing more anxious by the moment. “But I felt such an urgency to finish the book. I’d never experienced anything like it. I had this enormous surge of determination that I must finish today. I never imagined…”
Back in her writing room, Serendipity flung open the window and called hopefully, “Tuesday! Tuesday!”
The empty sky made no reply, although an early-morning jet passed high overhead with its wing lights blinking.