Finding Grace(46)

When Olivia’s dad had finished reading the customary two chapters of Harry Potter she was allowed before sleep, he kissed her forehead and said, like always, ‘Night night, don’t let the bed bugs bite.’

Olivia lay still, squeezing her eyelids shut. When she heard her father’s slippered feet pad downstairs, she counted… ten, eleven, twelve… then rolled silently from her bed, lying down on the carpeted floor.

She stretched her arm straight and extended her small fingers as far as they would go under the bed until she touched the small pink rucksack that Grace had pushed as close as possible to the wall.

‘Promise you won’t tell a single person it’s there?’ Grace had said when they got home from their trip to Alton Towers.

‘I promise,’ Olivia pledged solemnly. ‘But why aren’t you taking your rucksack home?’

‘Mum will want to unpack it and I don’t want her to see I I’ve been writing in my diary.’ Grace shrugged. ‘And Livvy?’

Olivia looked up from setting up a game on her computer.

‘Promise you won’t look in the bag either?’

‘OK.’

‘I mean it. Say you promise.’

‘I promise!’ Olivia sighed dramatically. ‘I don’t want to read your diary anyway, Grace. I know all your secrets already, don’t I?’

‘Hmm.’ Grace nodded. ‘I’ve fastened the rucksack up in a special way, anyway. I’ll be able to tell right away if someone’s been meddling with it. Oh, and the diary is locked and I have the key at home.’

Grace had started to annoy Olivia now. This wasn’t the way best friends were supposed to act with each other.

‘How long do I have to keep it under my bed for, anyway?’ Olivia asked, suddenly worrying what she’d say if her mum found it.

‘Just until tomorrow night after school,’ Grace said easily. ‘If I come over to yours to play Fortnite for a bit, I can get it back then.’

‘OK, but I don’t know why you can’t take it with you when you go home later,’ Olivia grumbled, turning on the game.

Grace sat down next to her and picked up her controller.

‘I’ll tell you soon, I promise,’ she said cryptically. ‘I think everybody will know about it soon.’

It was nearly ten o’clock in the evening now, and Grace still hadn’t turned up at home.

Grace’s parents had visited tonight, and her mum, Lucie – who was always really nice to Olivia when she went over there for tea – had looked so sad and ill that Olivia almost told her about the rucksack under the bed so she’d know Grace had a secret.

But her mum would’ve been furious with Olivia for not telling her and Dad when they’d asked her if there was anything she could tell them about what Grace might have said or done.

Her own parents were weirdly trying to act normally in an attempt to make Olivia think nothing was wrong. Their voices sounded brighter than usual, and when she’d asked for a second helping of Ben & Jerry’s after their pizza tea, her mother dished it out, no question. And that never happened.

Whenever they thought Olivia wasn’t paying attention, her mum and dad put their heads together, whispering. And she’d heard her dad on the phone in his office with the door shut.

Olivia had tiptoed outside the room and stood there with her ear pressed to the door.

‘We say nothing, do you hear me? Nobody needs to know; it’ll just make everything ten times worse,’ she’d heard her father say. ‘But just so you know, if anything goes wrong, this is entirely all your fault.’

Nobody needs to know what, exactly? And what might go wrong that’s someone else’s fault? Olivia wondered, but she didn’t hang around, just in case her mum caught her eavesdropping.

Besides, the whispering seemed to have turned into proper fighting. They kept going into the kitchen and closing the door. They thought she couldn’t hear, thought they were keeping their voices low. But Olivia discovered that if she hung around in the hallway a while, their voices soon grew louder, like they’d forgotten she was in the house at all.

‘What is wrong with you?’ she’d heard her mum half shout just before Grace’s parents arrived tonight. ‘How could you even think of doing something like that?’

There had been a sharp slapping noise and Olivia guessed her mum had hit her hand angrily down on the worktop in temper, or something like that.

Olivia glanced at her bedroom window. Her dad had forgotten to pull the curtains closed and the night sky was black as ink. She wondered if Grace was scared, wherever she was.

It had only been a few hours; perhaps Grace would come back soon. She turned away from the window so the panicky feeling would stop, and instead of thinking scary thoughts, she dragged the rucksack towards her and looked quizzically at the fastenings.

Grace said she’d done it up in a special secure way, but as far as Olivia could see, they looked like the regular plastic clips that you found on any rucksack. Impulsively, she reached for them and flicked them open with ease. Then she opened the top flap of the bag and peered inside.

She saw a dog-eared copy of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a large spotted handkerchief and a crumpled T-shirt. She reached in and moved the items aside. Underneath them lay a small pink diary decorated with a floral print.