Looking for Emily Read online

  Emily draped her pastry over the pie dish, pushing it down into the corners.

  “The boat almost capsized more than once, and Grandpa John inhaled litres and litres of seawater.”

  “His chest was never the same again.”

  “Never the same again. But he was a master sailor. He kept his little boat steady and hauled the man to safety. He was near death when Grandpa John reached him, but he was brought in and sat by the fire, and little by little he started to recover. And it was then that he told Grandpa John his secret.”

  Caitlyn paused dramatically, pouring the stewed apples into Emily’s pie crust. She leaned in close and, despite having heard the story a hundred times, Emily’s heart quickened.

  “The stranger was a pirate,” whispered Caitlyn. “He had spent many years sailing to all corners of the world, boarding ships and stealing treasure where he could. But his close brush with death, and Grandpa John’s brave actions, had taught him a lesson. He was going to change his ways. And to thank Grandpa John, the pirate gave him a gift.”

  Caitlyn trimmed the edges of Emily’s pastry lid with a sharp knife.

  “A diamond,” she said. “As big as a man’s fist. He had stolen it from a queen, who had stolen it from someone else. It was worth millions. And now it belonged to Grandpa John.”

  Emily started to carve leaf shapes in the remaining scraps of pastry. “But…”

  “But there was a problem. Great-Great-Grandpa John’s eldest son was no good.”

  “He was a scoundrel!”

  “A rascal!”

  “The baddest of bad apples!”

  “That’s right. So Grandpa John hid the diamond somewhere very secret, away from his greedy, no-good son. And there it waits to this day, for someone sharp of brain and pure of heart to find it.”

  Emily sighed, pressing her pastry leaves on to the top of her pie. “I wish I had a diamond as big as a man’s fist.”

  “Me too.”

  “Except wishes don’t come true.”

  A tear slid from the end of her nose, dropping on to the floury counter. Caitlyn drew her close, burying her nose in Emily’s hair. Then she pulled back, brushing her sister’s tears away with her fingertips.

  “We’re going to be OK. There are other kinds of treasure.”

  Four

  Monday morning arrived and Lily found herself in a panic about the non-completion of Ms Hanan’s “homework”. The museum had distracted her, occupying her thoughts throughout the weekend, but now the sight of school made it unavoidable.

  She edged her way into the playground, trying to make eye contact with someone and then immediately dropping her gaze when she succeeded. Coward. She took herself off to one side for a stern talking-to. It was one word. Five seconds of her life. It didn’t mean she had to be friends with the person. She could just say it, listen to whatever their boring response was and then go and tell Ms Hanan that she had tried but that she had been right to avoid her classmates all along. She steeled herself and went back into the playground.

  Why did adults always feel as though they had to be helpful? They almost always made everything worse. She inwardly cursed Ms Hanan and looked around the playground. She had no idea how to just march up and insert herself into a conversation. As it turned out, she didn’t have to.

  “Hello.”

  Lily jerked her head up and found herself gazing into a pair of very large, very green eyes. A girl had appeared in front of her, smiling as though she’d known her all her life.

  “H-hello,” she said, blinking at the girl, half believing that she’d conjured her out of thin air.

  The girl stuck out her hand. “I’m Sam. I think I live next door to you.”

  “Oh. Hi.”

  Lily had never shaken anyone’s hand before. It felt pleasingly grown-up. Sam stuffed her hand back into the pocket of her tartan coat. She leaned against the wall and looked at Lily expectantly.

  “What?”

  “You not going to tell me your name?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I’m Lily.”

  Lily nibbled at her thumbnail. She had been sure that the occupants of Edge would be just as small and dull as the town itself. But this girl looked interesting, patterned patches sewn into the knees of her trousers, hair swinging to her waist, a deep dimple in one corner of her mouth. She looked like… Lily shook the thought from her head before her stupid brain could finish it. The bell rang, signalling the start of the school day. Sam peeled herself reluctantly off the wall.

  “Well, I’ll see you later!”

  Lily opened her mouth to reply but Sam was already gone, dark hair streaming behind her as she bounced down the corridor. She shrugged and started towards her first class.

  At the end of the day, she found Sam sitting on the school wall, kicking her heels against the brick. When she saw Lily she waved frantically.

  “Hello! I was waiting for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve been eating lunch on your own with a teacher and that sucks, so I thought we could walk home together. And because my friend Jay who normally walks with me is home with the flu, so if we don’t walk together it’s going to be you on your own with me walking on my own about two metres behind you. Which is creepy.”

  “OK.”

  “You don’t talk very much, do you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s OK, I talk far too much. We’ll make a great pair. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be the new girl. I’ve lived here my whole life. Is it scary moving to a new place? Do you like Edge?”

  Lily scrunched up her nose. “I’ve never been anywhere less scary in my whole life. Things have to actually happen for something to be scary.”

  “Hey! This is my home town, you know.”

  “It’s still boring.”

  “Give it a chance. It might surprise you.”

  “So people keep telling me.”

  “Do your parents like it?”

  “It’s just my mum and me. I think she likes it. She used to love living in the city and then she just … didn’t any more. So we came here.”

  “A house of girls! I’m so jealous. I’ve got two dads and two twin brothers and no girls at all. Even our dog is a boy. I always wanted a sister.”

  “Me too. I was always jealous of people with loads of siblings.”

  “You wouldn’t think that if you met my brothers. They’re the worst.”

  Lily kicked a pebble down the road. “I bet they’re not.”

  “No, you’re probably right. They’re not the worst. They’re just boys, you know? I kept begging my dads to get me a sister but that’s not how it works apparently.”

  Lily didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Shall we be sisters then?” said Sam.

  “What?”

  “You and me. Shall we be sisters?”

  Lily laughed. “You don’t even know me.”

  “True. But I like you anyway. Even though you’re kind of quiet and weird.”

  “Hey!”

  Sam grinned and gave Lily a gentle push. “I’m only kidding. Sort of. You are a bit quiet and weird. But in a mysterious way. So how about it? Sisters!”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  They passed Sam’s house, with its yellow gate and neat window boxes and honeysuckle climbing around the front door. Lily thought it was twee when she first moved in. Now it seemed kind of cute. Sam followed Lily straight past her house and into Lily’s garden, still talking. Hearing the commotion, Lily’s mum came out wearing … was that an apron?

  “Hello, hello. I thought that was you. And this must be Emily!”

  Lily panicked. But Sam just smiled and shook her head.

  “Oh no, not me. I’m Sam. I live next door.”

  “Oh! I met your parents earlier, Sam. I was expecting another boy.”

  Sam shrugged. “I get that a lot. I suspect they thought I was a boy until it was too late to return me.”

  Lily’s mum l
aughed. “You’re the photographer, is that right?”

  “That’s me.”

  “What do you take your photographs of?”

  “Anything that catches my eye, really. Interesting things I see around town, mostly.”

  “Well, maybe you can get Lily interested in the town. Nothing I say seems to work.”

  Lily groaned.

  “Are you in Lily and Emily’s class too?”

  “I am. Well, some of them.”

  Lily cleared her throat pointedly. Her mum turned slightly pink.

  “Why don’t I go and get you girls something to drink? Do you like lemonade, Sam?”

  “I love lemonade, thank you so much, Ms Hargan.”

  Sam’s smile stayed fixed as Lily’s mum disappeared inside the house. The second the door closed behind her, Sam whipped her head round to face Lily. Lily wrapped her arms round herself.

  “What?”

  “Like I said, I’ve lived here all my life. And even if I hadn’t, I’d still know the names of every girl in our school year. So who is Emily?”

  Five

  Lily’s insistence that she didn’t know who Emily was only made Sam more curious, and eventually, sensing that resisting was pointless, she told Sam that she’d show her.

  That Saturday, Sam knocked on Lily’s door. It was eight in the morning. Lily did not appreciate it one bit, but Sam smoothed things over by producing two enormous pain au chocolat from her coat pockets. Lily bit into hers, still warm from the oven, and chocolate oozed thickly into her mouth. It was delicious.

  It was one of those autumn days where the sun barely drags itself above the horizon, skimming the rooftops of the town and stretching the shadows as thin and sharp as needles. Winding her way back through the streets with Sam, Lily wasn’t sure she’d be able to find the door to the museum again. In fact, she started to wonder if she’d made it all up somehow. The whole thing was bizarre. It made more sense for it not to be there.

  And yet, as the two rounded a corner, there it was. A green door in a white house, sitting inconspicuously between two other identical houses. Lily wondered how on earth she’d spotted it in the first place. In fact, Sam barged straight past at first, chattering away, and it took her a few steps to notice that Lily was no longer beside her. She looked from Lily to the door and back again.

  “This is it? All that mystery just to show me someone’s house?”

  “It’s not a house,” said Lily, pushing the door open. “I don’t really know what it is.”

  Sam’s eyes lit up as the spiral staircase came into view. She turned a thrilled smile on Lily and squeezed her hand excitedly, before taking the stairs two at a time. There were a few moments of silence and then the sound of the bell floated down to Lily. She bit her lip to stop a spreading grin and followed Sam up. Sam was standing by the door, tracing the name of the museum with her fingertips.

  “What is this place?”

  “I have no idea. But come and see. You’re not going to believe it.”

  Lily passed Sam and pushed the door to the first room open. The hush of the museum and the quiet heaviness of the air stole the breath from her lungs again.

  “Wow.”

  Sam’s voice dropped to a whisper. She drew close to the wall, her nose stopping inches from the glass covering the apple pie recipe. Her eyes travelled the length of the room.

  “I think it takes up two houses. At least,” said Lily.

  “It’s amazing. What’s in the next room?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t even looked at everything in this room yet. You haven’t been here before then?”

  “No way. I didn’t even know this existed. How did you find it?”

  “I don’t really know. I just sort of … did.”

  “What made you lie to your mum? About Emily?”

  “I don’t really know that either. It felt like the kind of thing a grown-up might not understand.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Me neither.”

  “But I love it.”

  “Me too.”

  Lily leaned in close to an exhibit, trying to hide the smile on her face. They had a secret. Despite her best efforts, that felt good. There seemed to be no pattern to the exhibits, other than that they were all small, they were all unremarkable and they had all belonged to Emily. Well, more or less. Lily giggled at the label in front of her.

  A lipstick, stolen from Caitlyn.

  Another, a little further down read:

  A pencil, loaned by Tony Ross.

  Sam was bent over, examining a delicate pressed flower. It was paper-thin, the colour almost washed away by time and sunlight. Her fingerprints stood out against the dirt on the glass.

  “I know these flowers,” murmured Sam. “They grow in the cracks in the rocks. She must have been from around here.”

  “Yeah, thanks, genius. I’d guessed that.”

  Sam nudged Lily in the ribs affectionately, not taking her eyes off the flower. Her face split into a beaming grin. “It’s a mystery. A real, full-blown mystery like in the movies.”

  “I know. What is all this stuff doing here?”

  “I have no idea. Believe me, if anyone from Edge had done anything interesting enough to deserve a museum, I’d know about it. The only really interesting people we had were pirates, and they’ve got a museum of their own already.”

  “I don’t think she was a pirate. That’s not the feeling I’m getting. Everything here is so…”

  “Ordinary,” finished Sam. “But why would an ordinary girl have a museum?”

  Lily made for the door on the other side of the room. “Come on, let’s go and see what’s downstairs.”

  The two girls followed the gold arrow at the far end of the room, painfully conscious of their footsteps echoing on the old staircase. It was even darker down here and as they approached the bottom of the stairs, they gasped in unison. Light spilled from an assortment of bulbs, as soft and yellow as candlelight. They were strung at different heights throughout the room, interspersed with hanging droplets of mirrored glass, which caught the light and spun it in the air. At the end of the room, just visible in the dancing light, was another arrow.

  “I can’t decide if it’s wonderful or if it’s creepy.”

  “Me neither.”

  Goosebumps rose on Lily’s arms. She rubbed them away and walked towards the exhibits. Small everyday items, painstakingly labelled, just like on the floor above. She stopped in front of a copy of James and the Giant Peach, fuzzy with dust. Below, a label.

  Emily’s favourite.

  Lily reached towards it. Sam slapped her fingers away.

  “Were you raised in a barn? You can’t touch things in a museum!”

  “I’ll be careful. I just want to look.”

  “Why?”

  “A book can tell you a lot about a person.”

  Sam folded her arms but stepped out of Lily’s way. Lily took the book in her hands and gently brushed the dust from the cover. It had clearly been well loved. The cover was barely hanging on, and as she turned it in her hands Lily noticed that whoever had been reading it hadn’t finished. The edge of a bookmark was just visible above the pages.

  She gingerly edged it out, careful to keep a finger holding the place where it had been. Just in case Emily ever wanted to come back to it. Her face flashed with triumph. She waved the bookmark at Sam.

  “Look! I told you!”

  The bookmark was a small piece of card, with a gold star and the name “Emily McCrae” printed on it.

  “Now we’ve got a full name to go on.”

  Sam took it from her, a slow smile dawning on her face.

  “Even better. It’s a clue. I know what this is. And I know exactly where we have to go.”

  “Where?”

  Sam slipped the bookmark back into the book and returned it carefully to its place. She pulled an identical card from her own pocket. “To the place where all the mysteries live.”

  S
ix

  The Edge library was bigger than seemed reasonable for such a small town, which was, in Lily’s view, the perfect size for a library. Sam handed her card to Lily.

  “That bookmark is her library card, see? Just like mine. Ms Bright gives you the gold sticker when you’ve borrowed a hundred books.”

  “So what do we do? Ask the librarian?”

  “I don’t think so. Ms Bright’s only been here for a few years. There hasn’t been anyone called McCrae in Edge the whole time I’ve lived here. Whoever Emily was, I don’t think she’s been into the library for a long time.”

  “So what then?”

  “The library has all the town records. Births, deaths, marriages, adoptions, newspapers, everything. So—”

  “So we use them to find out when the McCraes did live here.”

  They crossed under the enormous archway and Lily smiled. She was always amazed at how all libraries felt familiar. The stone walls, which had been gathering the sun’s heat all morning, now released it with a sigh. The air was filled with the smell of paper. Slices of sunlight streamed through the high windows, illuminating the spaces between the bookshelves. There was a desk but no librarian, just a pile of books teetering haphazardly towards the ceiling.

  “Ms Bright?” called Sam. “Ms Bright, it’s Sam.”

  The voice that answered sounded like it was coming from miles away. “Hello, Sam! Sorry, I’m buried under a pile of books. Do you need me?”

  “No, I think we’re OK. I just want to have a look at the records again. Can I go ahead?”

  “Sure you can. Just make sure you’re gentle with them; they’re very old.”

  “I will.”

  “If you’re not sure whether to touch something, don’t. Come and fetch me.”

  “I will.”

  “OK, sweetheart, go ahead.”

  “Thanks, Ms Bright,” called Sam. “Are you OK? Do you need rescuing from the books?”

  “No, they seem friendly. I’ll shout if I get into any real trouble.”

  Sam chuckled. “She’s a little eccentric,” she whispered.

  “All librarians are eccentric,” came the voice, making the girls jump. “It’s part of our charm.”