href="#ulink_588ff5b8-9cd1-5c1c-b02c-1094f1d5920f">Chapter Two
Aidan Cain got off the train at Melton and joined the queue for taxis. While the queue shuffled slowly forward, Aidan fetched out the old battered wallet that Gran had given him just before she died, and cautiously opened it. By some miracle, the wallet had contained enough money for Aidan’s half fare from London, plus a bacon sandwich and a chocolate bar. Now, the only things inside it were the two cash receipts for this food, a small one for the chocolate and a larger one for the sandwich. Gran had brought Aidan up not to cheat people, but the situation was desperate.
Still shuffling, Aidan took off his glasses and shut the wallet. Holding the glasses in his mouth by one sidepiece, he opened the wallet again and looked searchingly inside. Yes. The two flimsy receipts now looked exactly like a twenty-pound note and a ten-pound note. Aidan stared in at them for a moment with bare eyes, hoping this would fix them, and then put his glasses on again. To his relief, the two receipts still looked like money.
“I — I need to get to Melstone,” he said to the taxi driver when his turn came. “Er — Melstone House in Melstone.”
The taxi driver was not anxious to drive ten miles into the country for the sake of a kid. He looked over Aidan’s dusty brown hair, his grubby sweatshirt, his shabby jeans and his worn trainers, his pale worried face and his cheap glasses. “That’s twenty miles,” he said. “It’ll cost you.”
“How much?” Aidan asked. The thought of walking twenty miles was daunting, but he supposed he could ask the way. But how would he know the house when he got there? Ask again probably. It would take all day. Enough time for the pursuit to catch up with him.
The driver tipped his face sideways, calculating a sum it was unlikely that this kid would have. “Thirty quid?” he suggested. “You got that?”
“Yes,” Aidan said. In the greatest relief, he got into the taxi with his fingers crossed where the driver could not see them. The driver sighed irritably and set off.
It was quite a way. The taxi groaned and graunched through the town for so long that Aidan had to give up holding his breath for fear that the pursuit might stop it, but he only breathed easily when the taxi began making a smoother noise on a road between fields and woodlands. Aidan stared out at hedges laced with cow parsley and supposed he ought to be admiring the countryside. He had seldom been this far out of London. But he was too nervous to see it properly. He kept his fingers crossed and his eyes mostly on the meter. The meter had just clicked to £17.60 when they came to a village, a long winding place, where the road was lined with old houses and new houses, gardens and telegraph poles. Downhill they went, past a pub and a village green beyond it, with a duck pond and big trees, then uphill again past a squat little church surrounded by more trees. Finally, they turned down a side lane with a mossy surface and stopped with a croak outside a big pair of iron gates, overarched by a massive copper beech tree. The meter now read £18.40.
“Here we are,” the driver said, over the panting of the taxi. “Melstone House. Thirty quid, please.”
Aidan was now so nervous that his teeth were chattering. “The meter says — says eighteen pounds — pounds forty,” he managed to say.
“Out-of-town surcharge,” the driver said unblushingly.
I think he’s cheating me, Aidan thought as he climbed out of the taxi. It made him feel a little better about handing over the two cash receipts, but not much. He simply hoped they wouldn’t change back too quickly.
“Don’t give tips, eh?” the driver said as he took the apparent money.
“It — it’s against my religion,” Aidan said. His nervousness made his eyes blur, so that he had to lean forward to read the words ‘Melstone House’ deeply carved into one of the stone gateposts. So that’s all right! he thought as the taxi drove noisily away on down the lane. He pushed open one of the iron gates with a clang and a lot of rusty grating and slipped inside on to a driveway beyond. He was so nervous now that he was shaking.
It all seemed terribly overgrown beyond the gate, but when Aidan turned the corner beyond the bushes he came out into bright sunlight, where the grassy curve of driveway led up to an old, old sagging stone house. A nice house, Aidan thought. It had a sort of smile to its lopsided windows and there was a big oak tree towering behind it. He saw a battered but newish car parked outside the front door, which was promising. It looked as if old Mr Brandon must be at home then.
Aidan went under the creepers round the front door and banged with the knocker.
When nothing happened, he found the bell push buried among the creepers and pushed it. It went pongle-pongle somewhere inside. Almost at once, the door was thrown open by a thin lady with an imposing blonde hairstyle and a crisp blue overall.
“All right, all right, I was coming!” this lady said. “As if I haven’t enough to do— Who are you? I made sure you was going to be our Shaun!”
Aidan felt he ought to apologise for not being our Shaun, but he was not sure how to. “My — my name’s Aidan Cain,” he said. “Er — could I speak to Mr Jocelyn Brandon, please?”
“That’s Professor Hope these days,” the lady told him rather triumphantly. “He’s the grandson. Old Mr Brandon died nearly a year ago.” She didn’t add, “And now go away!” but Aidan could see that was what she meant.
He felt a horrible sick emptiness and a double shame. Shame that he had not known Mr Brandon had died, and further shame that he was now bothering an even more total stranger. Beyond that he had the feeling he had run into a wall. There was literally nowhere else he could go. He asked desperately, “Could I have a word with Professor Hope then?” It was all he could think of to do.
“I suppose you could,” Mrs Stock admitted. “But I warn you, he’s got his head in that computall and probably won’t hear a word you say. I’ve been trying to talk to him all morning. Come on in then. This way.”
She led Aidan down a dark stone hallway. She had a most peculiar bouncing walk, Aidan thought, with her legs wide apart, as if she were trying to walk on either side of a low wall or something. Her feet slapped the flagstones as she turned a corner and threw open a low black door. “Someone to see you,” she announced. “What was your name? Alan Cray? Here he is then,” she added to Aidan, and went slapping away.
“It’s Aidan Cain,” Aidan said, blinking in the great blaze of light inside the heaped and crowded study.
The man sitting at the computer beside one of the big windows turned and blinked back at him. He wore glasses too. Maybe all professors did. For the rest, his hair was a tangle of white and blond, and his clothes were as old and grubby as Aidan’s. His face struck Aidan as a bit mild and sheeplike. He seemed a lot older than someone’s grandson had any right to be. Aidan’s heart sank even further. He could not see this person being any help at all.
Andrew Hope was puzzled by Aidan. He knew very few boys and Aidan was not one of them. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
At least he has a nice voice, Aidan thought. He took a deep breath and tried to stop shaking. “I know you don’t know me,” he began. “But my gran — she brought me up — said — She — she died last week, you see—”
Then, to his horror, he burst into tears. He couldn’t believe it. He had been so brave and restrained up to now. He had not cried once, not even that awful night when he had found Gran dead in her bed.
