The Key to Finding Jack by Ewa Jozefkowicz (i can read books TXT) 📗

Outside Jack’s room, she breathed in deeply, shut her eyes and opened the door. She gasped.

‘I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about this before,’ I said. ‘It’s Jack’s tree. Keira and I have been trying to figure out where he could be. This is everything that we’ve managed to find out so far. Each branch represents a different person we spoke to who gave us a new clue. To begin with, we mostly discovered things we never knew, or that I never knew about Jack – but maybe you did? Like how he helped people without expecting anything in return. Or how much he loved music, especially guitar, or how he wanted to be a teacher, and how much he cared about Grandma. Do you know that she has a new boyfriend because of Jack? He’s called Mr Percy and she looks happier than I’ve ever seen her. I think we saw one side of Jack – the side that was easy to see. We all knew the Jack who played practical jokes on people and got into trouble. We refused to see anything else.’

Mum stared at the wall, amazed. She knelt down and touched the polaroid of Jack’s face.

‘You went to speak to all these people about him?’ she asked. ‘But who are they? I mean, apart from Grandma? How did you find them?’

I told her everything, starting from when I found the flamingo box with the key and the initials and ending with the map that we’d looked at with Simon a few hours before. I talked and talked and talked, carefully training my gaze on the tree. I couldn’t bear to see Mum’s reaction.

When I finished, Mum and Dad were sitting on Jack’s bed, looking at me.

‘I walked in as you began the story about Sutty and the ghost,’ Dad said quietly. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

The tiny drummer in my head stood poised with his sticks.

‘Come and sit here,’ Mum said, patting the space between them, and they both hugged me tight.

‘You’ve found out an incredible amount,’ Dad said. ‘And for what it’s worth, I think that you’re right about him going to a school.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. Most of the things that you’ve mentioned I didn’t know,’ he said, and I could hear the sadness in his voice. ‘But Jack always talked about how much he loved teaching that little boy to read. Do you remember when he was researching different methods to try and build up his confidence?’

‘We thought it was a school project, didn’t we? But he was doing it because he loved it. I told him at the time that he’d make a really good teacher,’ Mum said.

‘And I stopped you straight away, and said that law offers so many more benefits than teaching. I made it sound like teaching wasn’t a worthwhile career. I put so much pressure on Jack that he hid his true ambitions from me, and now I’m being hard on you too, Flick. I’m sorry about what I said earlier.’

I held him close. ‘You’re a wonderful dad. It’s not your fault that Jack’s missing. And you love being a barrister – you thought that Jack might love it too.’

‘Where is this key then?’ Mum asked.

I took off the chain from around my neck and showed it to her. It seemed smaller somehow than the last time I’d seen it.

‘This is what it came in and the note is still there,’ I said, showing her the flamingo box.

Mum opened it carefully. She brought the tiny piece of paper up close to her eyes and spent a strangely long time inspecting it. She had a funny look on her face and the corner of her lip twitched. ‘You did a lot of good detective work, but maybe you didn’t see what was right in front of you…?’

And it was only then that it hit me who S.F. was.

‘Sergeant Flick,’ I whispered.

Next to me Dad smiled.

‘Obviously. Who else would it be?’

Fifteen

I couldn’t get to sleep for hours that night. Two very different feelings whizzed round and round my head like loud, circling helicopters. One of them was anger. I was furious with myself for being so careless with the only clue that Jack had left me. What kind of a detective sergeant was I, if I had forgotten my own childhood nickname? But the other feeling was happiness. I couldn’t remember when I’d last felt this happy and relieved. Over the past week, I’d felt I’d lost Jack entirely, as if I didn’t know anything about him any more. Yet it turned out that he’d left me his most prized possession.

I eventually drifted into a restless sleep. A huge pile of keys appeared before me, of different shapes, colours and sizes. Some seemed old and were covered in layers of rust, others were brand new and glistening, as if they’d just been cut. There were thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of keys in the pile and the more I stared at them, the more they multiplied before my eyes. I was desperately running my hands through them, trying to find Jack’s tiny key, but it was hopeless. It would take me months, maybe even years, to sort through all the keys, and even then I might never find it.

I sank to my knees and was about to give in when the pile before me began to shake. It shook and shook, the tremors becoming so bad that keys were thrown in all directions, hitting me on my head and chest and legs.

‘Stop!’ I screamed. I covered my face with my hands.

As quickly as it had started, the shaking stopped and I heard a familiar voice.

I opened my eyes to see Jack emerging from the pile, like a diver resurfacing from deep waters.

‘Come on, Sergeant Flick,’ he said laughing. ‘How did you not realise that the key was meant for you? You’re the only