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  The swivel chair squeaked again. I wished I was somewhere else, somewhere noisy and cheerful, like a café or a schoolyard at playtime.

  “Except,” Hal said, and he sounded as if this had only just occurred to him for the first time, “except his shoes. I remember his shoes. Very shiny. Like polished chestnuts.” His voice got quieter. “I’d forgotten that.” The last sentence was as if he was talking to himself.

  I shuffled on my chair. Shoes, kites, death. I didn’t really want to be listening to this stuff.

  The guard waited for a bit longer, but Hal didn’t say any more. I could hear a clock ticking. I looked over my shoulder and saw a big one on the wall overhead. Every time the second hand moved, the clock gave a tick.

  After a while the guard said, “I went to China on my holidays last year.”

  Oh no! I thought. Another weirdo. What is it about me that I keep meeting weirdos? I must have a kind face. That’s probably it. I must look like the sort of person it’s OK for weirdos to dump on with their weirdnesses.

  Anyway, I must have coughed or giggled or something, because the guard looked at me, but she didn’t seem to see me. It was as if she was thinking about something else, something that wasn’t there.

  She fished in her pocket and took out a scrunchy and started to make a ponytail of her hair. It was thick and shiny; it made a lovely ponytail. I wish I had straight hair.

  “My dad came too, can you believe it?” the guard said, swinging her ponytail. “I hadn’t been on holidays with my dad since I was your age, and that’s a long time ago. But he was so lonely after my mam died, I thought it’d be nice for him to get away, and you can’t get much farther away than China, can you?”

  “Right,” I said. Loony, I thought.

  “I have great photos. Only they’re at home. Of us flying kites, I mean. Sorry, I should have explained that first. That’s what reminded me, Hal, when you mentioned …”

  “Oh?” I said. “Oh, I see.” Well, it did make a tiny bit of sense, I suppose, once she explained she’d been flying kites with her dad.

  “It’s a thing called the Festival of Pure Brightness,” she said. “He loved the kites.”

  “Nice,” I said, in a false, bright voice. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Sometimes “nice” is the best you can do. This was the weirdest conversation I’d had in a very long time.

  “Yeah, nice,” said Hal. And they gave each other shy little goofy smiles. “The Festival of Pure Brightness. Sounds … er, bright.”

  Yeah, right, Hal, I thought. Sounds bright. Sounds pure. Sounds Chinese. Sounds as if we should be getting along home now.

  She didn’t ask any more questions about the business at the hospital, which was dead-on of her, because Hal really hadn’t explained.

  “I dunno, I dunno,” she said after a while, standing up and bustling about a bit. “What are we going to do with ye at all?” She crushed the two Coke cans and gathered up the sticky cups.

  “What about Mr. Denham?” I asked. “Can you get them to let him go, now you have the whole story, like?”

  “Oh, no,” said the guard, standing at the door with her hands full of the cups and cans.

  Blinkin’ marvelous, I thought. Now what? I took a quick peek at Hal, and he looked close to tears.

  “Because he wasn’t arrested at all,” the guard went on. “I checked the first time you were in, and nobody was arrested at the hospital this morning.”

  “But there was a squad car!” I said.

  “There was. We’d got a message from the hospital that they needed something urgently for a patient. It was coming on the train from Dublin. Some sort of plasma, I think. We sent the squad car to the railway station to get it, and then we zoomed it up to the hospital as fast as we could.”

  “Plasma!” I yelped. “It was just … oh!”

  Hal gave a huge grin. “So, he hasn’t been arrested?”

  “No, I told you, no one was arrested. Why on earth did you think he might have been arrested?”

  “I dunno,” Hal and I said in unison.

  We looked a bit foolish. At least Hal did, and I am sure I looked no different. Foolish, but hugely relieved. Now that we knew Alec Denham hadn’t been arrested, it seemed ridiculous that we’d ever thought he might be.

  The guard shook her head. “Ye watch too much telly,” she said.

  Maybe she’s right. We’d put two and two together and got about a hundred and five. Whew!

  “But what happened to him?” I asked, when we’d stopped huffing and blowing with relief. “I mean, is he still lost in that hospital or what?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. He probably drove on home.”

  “But we never saw him coming out,” I said. “We waited for ages, didn’t we, Hal?”

  “I suppose he must have driven on through then,” the guard said.

  “How do you mean, ‘on through’?”

  “On through and out the back gate,” she explained.

  The back gate! Hal and I stared at each other. His mouth hung open. So did mine. Why hadn’t we thought of that? It was so simple.

  “That road … ,” I said, but then I clamped my mouth shut, to stop my chin hanging like the bucket of a road-digger.

  Hal nodded. “With the trees,” he mumbled.

  “We never wondered where it went,” I said with a groan. “We just looked to see if the van was parked on it.”

  “We are thick,” said Hal.

  “As a brick,” I said.

  “As two bricks,” said Hal.

  “As a whole houseful of bricks,” I said.

  “Ah, not really,” said the guard. “It’s hardly ever used, because it comes out onto a very bad boreen, all potholes. People don’t even know it’s there, half the time. But if you follow that little gravelly road, you end up at the back gate.”

  I don’t know why the security man didn’t say anything about the back gate, but he hadn’t been all that helpful anyway. Maybe it just didn’t occur to him any more than it did to us.

  “So you mean,” I said to the guard, “while we’ve been sitting here telling you the whole story, he’s at home watching the races?”

  “I suppose so,” said the guard cheerily. “If that’s how he normally spends his Saturdays.”

  How could we have been so stupid!

  “And we’ve been through all this for nothing?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” said the guard. “I’d say you had some explaining to do.”

  “Sorry, guard,” I said, and I gave Hal a little kick on the ankle. Not really a kick, more a nudge with the side of my foot.

  “Yeah, sorry, guard,” he said.

  She smiled and then she pushed open the door with her hip and disappeared for a moment.

  When she came back, she said, “Now, will I send you home in a squad car or what?”

  “No!” I squawked.

  Bad enough to be thick, stupid, idiotic nincompoops of fools, but we didn’t have to look like criminals on top of all that. Can you imagine if we arrived home in a squad car! My mother would murder me. She was going to murder me anyway, but if I came home under Garda escort, she’d really mean it.

  “Yes!” said Hal at the same time.

  Boys are like that. They’d jump at the chance of being zoomed around in a squad car, no matter how it embarrassed their families.

  The guard laughed. “Which is it to be?”

  “Please, Olivia,” said Hal. “Oh, come on! A squad car!”

  “But we have bikes,” I said. I was never so glad that I had a bike.

  “Did you leave them outside?” asked the guard, looking out of the window. “Only there’s no sign of them out there. Surely to goodness they wouldn’t steal two bikes from outside the Garda station!”

  “No,” I said. “We left them at the square. Beside the poet statue.”

  “That’d be Kavanagh,” she said.

  “Oh, is that who it is?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s
my favorite. We did his poems at school. He’s famous.”

  “I suppose you have to be famous to get a statue,” I said.

  “And dead,” said Hal.

  “I suppose so,” said the guard. “It’s a way of honoring a dead person, isn’t it. I mean, you can’t give them a present, can you?”

  “Hmm,” said Hal.

  I couldn’t believe we were having this discussion about dead people and statues when we were going to be driven home in a squad car and be grounded for life probably.

  “Anyway, look, what about this for a compromise? I’ll give you a lift in the squad car as far as the square to pick up your bikes. It’s only a few hundred yards, but children who spend their Saturdays wasting Garda time deserve no better. That’s an offense, you know.”

  I knew she wasn’t really threatening us. Just sort of reminding us, I suppose, that you can’t go around creating havoc for the guards, even if Something Awful did happen to you.

  I found out about Kavanagh afterward, by the way, because I like poems, even if I’m not that interested in statues. He has a great one about canals and far-flung towns. This’d be a far-flung town, I suppose. Maybe that’s why we have a statue of him.

  You wouldn’t believe how ordinary a squad car is on the inside. The backseat had one of those stretchy covers with a fluffy brown surface on it that people put in their cars—I don’t know why, it’s pretty horrible. It also had one of those dangling Christmas-tree things that smell like the stuff people squirt in the toilet to make it smell like not-toilet.

  Our guard sat in the driver’s seat, and the bike guard, the one who’d been on the computer, got into the front passenger seat. Hal didn’t like that, but he couldn’t argue. It was their car.

  “Will you put on the siren?” he asked, after we’d put on our seat belts.

  Our guard laughed, but she was a good sport and she did it.

  “Oh yes!” said Hal, and we sped off in the direction of the Market Square, whee-hoo, whee-hoo, whee-hoo. It was kind of cool, I have to admit.

  “Good-bye, so,” said our guard, when we’d climbed out of the squad car. “And next time,” she added with a grin, “try to get the name of the person you are inquiring about, right. It is much less suspicious.”

  “I don’t think there’ll be a next time,” I said.

  I mean, let’s face it. How often does someone you know get arrested at the hospital? Nearly arrested, even?

  She shook both our hands through the window of the squad car and said, “My name is Sonya O’Rourke. If ye’re ever in trouble again, just ask for me, OK?”

  “Thanks, Sonya,” said Hal.

  I gave him a dig in the ribs. “Thanks, Guard O’Rourke,” I said.

  “Here,” she said, and she took out a notebook and wrote something down in it with her pencil. Then she tore out the page, folded it over twice, and shoved it out the car window at Hal.

  “Um, thanks,” said Hal again, looking at the folded note.

  We waved them good-bye, and she put on the siren again, just for the fun of it.

  “Is that her phone number?” I asked Hal, nodding toward the piece of paper. “She must like you.”

  Hal blushed. He scrunched up the piece of paper and stuck it in his pocket.

  I really was not looking forward to facing my parents after being out practically all day without permission. They don’t like that kind of thing in my family. They get very cranky about it, in fact.

  Chapter 12

  Larry phoned from Paris in the morning. After the murder and mayhem there’d been in our house the previous day when I’d got home, I’d nearly forgotten about my Romanesque brother.

  “Hey, Larry!” I warbled. “How’s it going? How’s Paris? Is it fabulous? Do you get croissants for breakfast? Are you having a great time with the lads? I bet you’re having wild parties in your hostel, are you? I wish I was in secondary—”

  “Great, Liv, it’s cool. Look, can I speak to Mum or Dad, please? Urgently?”

  “They’ve gone to church,” I said. “It’s Sunday here. I’m cooking their breakfast, as a peace offering.”

  “It’s Sunday here, too. We’ve been to Notre Dame,” he said. “Gothic,” he added, before I told him. “How come you’re at home by yourself? Have they finally caved in to your demands to be recognized as a freethinker?”

  Wow! My brother the comedian! It must’ve been the Parisian air. But of course I didn’t give him the satisfaction of laughing at his little witticism.

  “I’m not,” I said. “It’s just that I’m grounded. Strict house arrest.”

  “House arrest! That doesn’t include …”

  “I know, I know,” I sighed. “Let’s not go there, Larry.”

  My parents had been furious when I said that I couldn’t go to church because that would break the terms of my house arrest, but they hadn’t had time to have it out with me, so they’d gone off muttering, “You haven’t heard the last of this, young lady.” “Young lady” is always a bad omen, I find.

  “Why?” asked Larry. “Why are you under house arrest, as you call it?”

  “Because of yesterday and getting Alec—you know, Mr. Denham, Hal’s sort-of-stepdad—well, we almost got him arrested, me and Hal. And you.”

  “Arrested! Olivia, what happened?”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad. We only thought he’d been arrested, but really …”

  Larry interrupted. “Look, I’ve just realized, this phone call is costing a bomb. You can tell me all this when I get home. So just listen, will you? I’ve got myself into … well, I wouldn’t say trouble, exactly, but …”

  Larry in trouble. That was a new concept. I was intrigued.

  “Larry, what have you done?”

  “Well, um, I’m what you might call up doo-doo creek, and there is a serious shortage of paddling equipment.”

  Larry is a bit like my mother that way. Tries too hard to be funny and ends up sounding pompous and ridiculous.

  “Larry,” I said in exasperation, “I thought you were in a hurry. Will you just say whatever it is and put me out of my misery?”

  “My passport has been stolen.”

  “Oh, Larry! You idiot.” I have to admit that I chortled. “You lost it, didn’t you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The thing is, it’s gone. The teacher said to ring home. We reported it to the French police, but they weren’t very interested.”

  I shuddered slightly at the mention of the police. I was beginning to feel we were having far too much contact with the law in this family lately.

  “So, what’s going to happen? Are you going to be stuck over there? Poor you, forced to live on petits pains au chocolat!”

  “I dunno,” said Larry. “Ask them to phone me when they get home, will you? It’s a bit nerve-wracking. Someone told me it’s a crime to go out in this country without your papers.”

  “What papers?”

  “ID,” said Larry. “Passport.”

  “Oh, Larry! Are you going to have to stay stuck inside all the time? Under hotel arrest?”

  “Well, no,” said Larry. “I’m going to risk it. Live dangerously, that’s my motto.”

  That is so not Larry’s motto! Paris must’ve been going to his head.

  When my parents came back, all set to pick up the row where we’d left off, I told them that Larry was living dangerously in Paris. They didn’t see the funny side of it. They got worked up into a right schemozzle about it, and they started ringing around all sorts of people, but because it was Sunday, there wasn’t very much they could do, except tell Larry to report it to the embassy in Paris first thing the next day.

  Luckily, all the flap and hoo-ha about Larry and his missing passport took the heat off me. Of course, they did still make me go to church later in the morning. Parents always win, don’t they? Not that I minded. We have a gospel choir. It’s cool.

  In the end, it turned out there was somebody in the embassy in Paris after all, even though it was Sunday—“sk
eleton staff,” they called it, spooksville!—and they said not to worry at all, they would be able to do something about Larry’s passport, and it turned out he got invited to dinner by the ambassador because he was a friend of someone who knew my dad. That is just so Larry. He gets into what should be serious trouble, and he ends up getting invited out to a swanky dinner. Things like that never happen to me. I get to drink Coke out of a teacup in a grimy Garda station. Hal too. Then I remembered suddenly all that stuff yesterday about Hal’s dad dying and everything. It made drinking Coke out of a teacup seem not so bad really.

  Now I come to think of it, it mightn’t have been the actual ambassador, but it was definitely one of the high-ups in the embassy

  “Now, if you are offered a glass of wine with your dinner, Larry,” my mother said earnestly into the phone, “you may take a small one, and add a lot of water to it, but otherwise, no, OK?”

  “How come Larry can drink all of a sudden?” I asked.

  “He’s in France. People have wine with their meals. That doesn’t count as ‘drinking.’”

  “He was in France yesterday, too, and it was absolutely no way.”

  “Then he was with a group of Irish schoolkids. Now he’s going to dinner with the Third Secretary.” (How many secretaries do these ambassador people need? I wondered.) “It’s different.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “He’s still fifteen.”

  I don’t know, parents have the weirdest attitudes to their own rules. It’s like house arrest not applying to going to church. When I grow up, I will be more consistent.

  Chapter 13

  Hal turned up in the afternoon, with his kite under his arm. My father opened the door. I was watching from the top of the stairs. I could see he was not pleased just by the way he stood there.

  “Hello, Mr. O’Donoghue,” said Hal. “Can Olivia come out?”

  “No!” barked my dad, but he jerked his head to indicate that Hal could come in to see me. Even prisons allow visitors, don’t they?

  “What’s going on?” Hal whispered as soon as we got into the dining room, which is the best place because the adults never go in there unless we have people around for dinner, which, of course, doesn’t happen on Sunday afternoons.