Edie and the Box of Flits Read online

  For my mother, who listened to my earliest efforts at storytelling with extraordinary patience (often as I jumped up and down on her bed), and who gave me and my brothers a love of books.

  Contents

  Half Title

  Title Page

  Dedication

  This train is about to depart. Please stand clear of the closing doors.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Copyright

  This train is about to depart. Please stand clear of the closing doors.

  T

  he screeches and squawks of a dozen birds bounced off the walls of the tunnel. Just out of reach of their sharp, nipping beaks, the family hurtled along in a ragged line, trying to escape.

  ‘Faster,’ said the oldest boy at the front, his head no bigger than a matchstick and his wings whirring like a tiny windmill in a storm.

  Up ahead the tunnel divided into two.

  ‘Take the left turn,’ shouted his sister from just behind him. They shot to the left and disappeared round a bend. Within seconds the screeches began to fade. It was clear that their pursuers had gone the other way.

  ‘Let’s stop,’ gasped the youngest. ‘Just for a minute.’ They landed on an electricity junction box just beside the train tracks. The youngest did a quick head count.

  ‘Where’s Flum?’ he said, his voice suddenly panicky. Only minutes before she had been there flying behind them.

  ‘FL-UU-M?’ he called back into the tunnel.

  There was silence. Flum had disappeared.

  Chapter One

  Kensal Green to Elephant and Castle

  Found: three umbrellas, one scarf, an electric guitar (purple), a pair of boots and one wooden box (locked)

  I

  t was rush hour. The train rattled and hummed as it made its way through a tunnel deep in the ground under London. The air smelt of old chips and damp raincoats, and passengers sat facing each other on their way home from work, school or a trip to the shops.

  Edie Winter stared at a boy sitting directly across the carriage from her.

  The boy had red hair like her own, only his was gelled up into tufted spikes and hers hung down her back in two thick plaits. A school tie was stuffed into his jacket pocket and his legs were criss-crossed in front of him like oversized scissors. His thumb was skating back and forth across the screen of his phone as the stations of the London Underground slipped past the windows behind him.

  Edie could tell he’d been in secondary school for a couple of years just by the easy way he’d stuffed his tie in his pocket. There were lots of boys like him at her new school; Year Nine boys with gel in their hair whom the girls in her year talked about. She looked down at her own school uniform. The jacket was still so big that only the tips of her fingers peeped out of the sleeves and the corners of her shirt dug into her neck. Dad, who was sitting next to her, had insisted on looping her school tie into a tight V at the collar.

  ‘Even a storm couldn’t dislodge that knot,’ he’d said, patting her on the head.

  I might as well have ‘New Year Seven’ stamped on my forehead, Edie thought.

  At least it was half-term. A whole week without having to wear a tie or walk aimlessly around the playground watching Naz and Linny talk loudly with their new circle of friends.

  The brakes screeched as the train arrived at Marylebone Station. The carriage doors opened, letting out a breath of warm fuggy air, and the boy snatched up his rucksack and bounced off.

  Edie could see that he did this all the time. The London Underground didn’t faze him. He knew his way around the maze of stations and tracks that snaked right across the city.

  So did she.

  Dad had taught her the names of every line and every station on the whole network. His job at the London Transport Lost Property Office meant that the Tube trains were almost a second home to her. She could even spell ‘Piccadilly’ without pausing for breath. She wondered if the boy could do that. ‘“Picc-a-dilly”. Two “c”s, one “d” and two “l”s!’ she chanted to herself as the doors snapped shut behind him.

  Then the boy’s face appeared at the window of the train. He pressed himself up against it, trying to look down at the row of seats he had just left.

  That was when Edie noticed the box.

  It was placed squarely on the seat just beside where the boy had been sitting. It was a wooden box about the size of a large shoebox with a lid, and next to it was a carrier bag marked Jumble with a pair of old wellingtons inside. He must have forgotten them, but it was too late. The train began to move forward, gathering speed, and the boy’s face disappeared, left behind on the empty platform.

  The train rattled on past five more stations as they headed south towards the end of the line where an abandoned electric guitar and several umbrellas were waiting to be picked up. Edie liked these journeys with her dad collecting odd items that had been dropped or forgotten in the rush of London life and reuniting them with their owners.

  The box and the boots sat there ignored by all the other passengers who were bent over their phones or reading the free newspapers that were left in piles by every station entrance. Eventually, as the train passed Lambeth North, Edie nudged her dad in the ribs.

  ‘I think someone’s left that box on the seat. There was a boy. A teenager. He got off a while ago.’

  Dad looked up from his paper and stared at the seat opposite. The train slowed down and pulled into Elephant and Castle and the carriage began to empty.

  ‘How long has it been sitting there?’

  ‘Nine stations,’ said Edie. ‘I counted them.’

  ‘We’d better take it with us then,’ said Dad. The last collection of the day was waiting for them upstairs in the ticket office. After that, all they had to do was take everything back to the office in Baker Street.

  ‘Can I carry it?’ asked Edie.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Dad.

  He stood up and hooked the ‘jumble’ bag with the boots over his arm. Stuffed into his pocket was a red scarf he had found draped on a bench at Kensal Green.

  Edie picked up the box and wrapped her arms round it. The box was lighter than she had expected. It was old and a little dusty and it smelt of earth, but the wood felt smooth under her fingers as if many hands had opened
and closed the lid.

  ‘Come along then,’ said Dad, walking briskly along the platform.

  *

  When they reached the Lost Property Office back in Baker Street Benedict was waiting at the reception desk. He was nineteen and new to the team. His hair flopped over his eyes and he wore skinny black jeans and T-shirts with slogans on. Today his T-shirt read: Always Be Yourself Unless You Can Be a Unicorn.

  He jumped up as Edie and Dad came through the door.

  ‘Ta-dah!’ he said as if giving them a welcome fanfare.

  ‘Just a few more items to register, Benedict,’ said Dad, handing over his trawl of missing things.

  Edie clung to the box. ‘Dad, can I please just look inside?’

  She rattled the lid, but it was stuck fast. Locked.

  ‘No time, Edie. Benedict will sort it out and pass on the information to Vera.’

  ‘I can help,’ said Edie, ‘I know what to do.’

  ‘No, Edie. It’s late and we have to get home,’ said Dad. ‘Maybe that boy will remember that he’s left it on the train and come here to pick it up.’

  Benedict had already begun to write out a label in big loopy writing: One wooden box. Locked (no key). Found on carriage seat Bakerloo Line . . .

  ‘Come on, Edie. It’s rush hour, remember,’ said Dad, walking towards the door.

  Edie wasn’t listening. As she’d handed the box over to Benedict she could have sworn she felt something fluttering inside.

  Chapter Two

  Finsbury Park to Baker Street

  Found: forty-nine umbrellas, three raincoats and a set of false teeth

  T

  wo whole days had passed since Edie had spotted the box, but now at last it was Monday.

  Half-term Monday and no school. Dad had agreed to let her help out in the Lost Property Office.

  ‘The first job is to label all these items,’ he said, taking her up to the first floor where there was a spare table.

  The weekend rain had produced a pile of almost fifty abandoned umbrellas. Edie was restless and her feet were itchy from sitting at the table all morning. She drummed them up and down on the floor and jabbed another sticky barcode label on a damp umbrella. Water dripped from the gutters outside the window.

  Edie was waiting for Benedict to come in for his shift. All she wanted to do was find out what had happened to the box. Had someone come to pick it up? Had she really felt something flutter?

  ‘Ughh!’ Edie said. She rubbed at the glue on her fingers.

  The phone rang on the other side of the room and Dad answered it. ‘Yup . . . right . . . Oh dear . . . that’s nasty.’ He put the phone down. ‘Poor Benedict has tripped up and hurt his wrist. He won’t be in until later.’

  Edie turned back to the pile of umbrellas. She felt cross and impatient. Why today of all days was Benedict going to be late?

  As she waited for him, thoughts about her new school crowded into her head. It was her first term and already she hated it. A bluebottle buzzed furiously at the window beside her, zigzagging back and forth as it tried to find its way out. Edie watched it as it whirred and fizzed. A small scribble of bad temper.

  Edie had the same buzzing feeling inside as if she too wanted to escape. She stood up to open the window, gently flapping her hand at the fly until it caught a gust of air and zoomed away. She noticed a small bird sitting on the windowsill next to her. It was watching her carefully. With its sharp orange beak and bottle-green feathers it wasn’t like any of the soft-feathered and timid blackbirds or nuthatches Edie had seen in the garden at home. This bird was bold and determined. It was small and shaped like an arrowhead and its feathers were smooth and shiny.

  Edie held out her finger, inviting it to step up, but the bird looked at it suspiciously and didn’t move. She studied it, noticing that its beak seemed very long for its head and it had a tiny jagged edge that curved upwards. It almost appeared to be smiling, or was it sneering? For a moment it reminded Edie of a baby crocodile.

  She turned to shut the window, but not before the bird had darted through it and onto the desk. In less than a second it had snatched a silver spoon from an empty cup and shot up the narrow staircase behind her.

  Chapter Three

  Baker Street

  T

  he staircase led up to the office of Vera Creech. It was little more than a cupboard with a small window, and next to it, right at the top of the stairs, there was a door that led out to a fire escape. Edie checked the door in case the bird had slipped through it but it was firmly shut.

  Vera was sitting at her desk in front of a large computer screen. She sat very upright and her fingers pecked away at the keyboard. Her job was to keep track of all the items of lost property that arrived at Baker Street and mark them up as ‘found’ if someone claimed them back. She did all this by means of a large spreadsheet on the office computer system that everyone called Sherlock. Today she was tapping in the details of an abandoned set of false teeth.

  Dad’s card sat on her desk with the words Being Lost and Found is the Stuff of Life across the front. Edie knew it was Dad’s motto and he’d given the card to Vera as a welcome gesture when she’d joined his team a few weeks before. Edie thought Vera was a bit strange. She wasn’t cold exactly, but she rarely smiled and didn’t seem to like talking very much.

  Edie stood at the doorway looking up at the ceiling. ‘Did you see a bird come up here?’

  Vera stopped tapping and looked up. She had odd lopsided hair that on one side was cut short and tucked behind her ear and, on the other, fanned outwards like a pleated skirt. Running through it was a streak of blue.

  ‘Up the stairs?’ said Vera crisply. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  Edie edged her way into the room, trying to stop staring at Vera’s hair.

  She knew that Vera liked birds. A net of nuts hung from her open window and a large crow sometimes perched on the sill waiting for Vera to feed it crumbs. It wasn’t there today.

  Vera started tapping at the keyboard again, filling in the details of the guitar that Dad had picked up from Elephant and Castle. An eyeglass hung round her neck like a monocle. It looked old-fashioned as if it was something that Sherlock Holmes might have used to study a crime scene.

  ‘A bird came in while I was working and stole a spoon,’ said Edie.

  ‘Oh?’ said Vera. ‘Well, I haven’t seen it up here.’

  ‘It was very odd-looking,’ Edie went on. ‘It had green feathers.’ She nodded at the net of nuts. ‘It might have been hungry.’ She looked outside and could have sworn she saw a flash of green in the plane tree beyond. ‘Did it fly out of your window?’

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?’ Vera said a little impatiently.

  Edie peeped behind the door, but there was nothing there and she began to doubt whether she had, in fact, seen the bird at all. Perhaps she had fallen asleep for a moment and it had slipped into her mind at the edge of waking and dreaming? She decided to plunge in with the other question that was on her mind.

  ‘Has anyone come in yet to claim a wooden box? It was found on the Bakerloo Line.’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ said Vera.

  ‘Well . . . I do. It was me who found it on Friday afternoon with Dad . . . I mean, Mr Winter.’

  Vera paused and clicked something on her keyboard.

  ‘It was just . . . I think there was something alive inside it,’ Edie said and then immediately regretted it.

  Vera looked up sharply. ‘I see.’

  She returned to her screen and seconds later she said, ‘No. As yet unclaimed.’

  Chapter Four

  Baker Street

  Found: five mobile phones, a mountain of odd gloves and a rabbit-shaped alarm clock

  ‘D

  ad? Can I go and look in the Storeroom at the End?’

  Edie had joined Dad downstairs in the basement. The day’s haul of lost property sacks had already slipped down the blue post chutes that ran from the ground floor to the
basement like a helter-skelter. They were now lined up on the trolley beside him ready for sorting. On the wall above the trolley a poster shouted in large red letters: We Return What You’ve Lost.

  ‘All right, but don’t spend hours in there,’ he said.

  Edie loved the storeroom at the end of the corridor on the ground floor. It was the last of three storerooms and it was where all the oddball, one-off things were shelved. If, as Vera said, the box hadn’t been claimed by anyone, it was sure to be there.

  ‘Stack all the items marked Unclaimed in a pile,’ Dad went on. ‘Time they went to the charity shop. Load of old tat, most of it. Can you find a place on the shelf for this?’ He handed her a rabbit-shaped alarm clock that had just arrived.

  ‘I love all the old tat,’ said Edie. ‘Do you remember that cape, Dad?’

  When Edie was still at primary school, a sequinned cape had been handed in to the Lost Property Office. It was made out of a luminous fabric that glowed in the dark.

  ‘I do. It was found on the Victoria Line,’ said Dad. ‘It was a bit spooky, that cape.’

  He had let Edie keep it as after three months no one had claimed it and she had worn it in bed for a week. As she lay in the dark wrapped in its luminous green glow she imagined herself running through the tunnels of the Victoria Line with the cape fanned out behind her like a moon creature’s wings. When she showed how it shone in the dark to her two best friends from school, Naz and Linny, they were amazed.

  As Edie walked down the corridor to the storeroom she tried once again to push away thoughts about her new secondary school. Right from the first week Naz and Linny seemed different and they had laughed at her new uniform. They’d talked in horrible scratchy whispers about her baggy jumper and oversized school shoes. They’d never made fun of her before, but now that they were in Year Seven it seemed to matter what you looked like.

  ‘Why are you still so-o small?’ Naz had said one lunchtime. She was already almost a head taller than Edie.

  ‘Did you think getting big shoes would make you grow?’ said Linny in a strange sing-song voice. She leant over to Naz to show her a Snapchat picture of a ring of girls laughing and making faces.