Fiona Harper Read online

  Treasure hunt marshals were standing waiting with a specially marked Secret London soapbox on an area of concrete at the corner of the park—Speakers’ Corner, so-called because of the oddballs and fringe groups that collected here on Sundays to exercise their civil right to air their views, however extraordinary.

  And, although it was only Thursday, a crowd had gathered. She suspected that some of the people standing there were connected with the treasure hunt, the rest had heard the updates on the radio and had turned up to be nosy. The challenge was for each of them to get up and speak for three minutes on a subject of their choice. Three minutes! She almost wished there’d been a crane and a length of elastic instead.

  Even worse, they had to make it convincing. If her speech wasn’t coherent, she would just have to try again until she got it right. She shot a panicky look at Josh, but he was busy sliding his backpack off and dumping it on the floor. She’d been here before and the onlookers gathered with only one purpose—to heckle mercilessly. They were going to eat her alive!

  Josh didn’t even hesitate. He jumped on to the box, put his fingers in his mouth and produced an ear-splitting whistle. Half the crowd stopped to listen, the other half hurled insults and carried on talking.

  ‘Many people wait for their turn here at Speakers’ Corner so they can get up on their soapboxes—’he indicated the crate beneath his feet ‘—literally, and tell you what they believe in. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to ask you what you believe in.’

  ‘Free beer!’ someone yelled from the back. The crowd let out a collective noise, half-chuckle, half-cheer. He had their attention now. Josh looked straight at the joker.

  ‘And what exactly are you doing to get free beer?’

  The man shrugged and looked away.

  ‘My point exactly,’ Josh said, making eye contact with as many of the crowd as he could. Fern experienced a little shiver of electricity as he looked in her direction. ‘We are all very good at moaning about what’s wrong with the world, but supremely bad at doing anything about it, and I’m challenging you to buck the trend and get involved.’

  He went on to tell the assembled bunch of loiterers, tourists and office workers on their lunch breaks how taking part in a charity expedition would not only give the organisation of their choice much-needed funds, but it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience that would pop them out of their safe little bubbles and give them a greater appreciation of other cultures.

  She’d been unfair to him when she’d told him off for taking stupid risks. Yes, the stunt with the fruit had been a little daft, but she shouldn’t have issued such blanket disapproval for his way of doing things. Listening to him, it all fell into place.

  Josh was, by nature, an energetic, go-getting, thrill-seeking kind of guy. But he wasn’t the harum-scarum teenager she remembered any more. He’d managed to focus his natural energy—both his greatest strength and his greatest flaw—and do something positive and amazing with it. Suddenly she understood that without this side of his personality, he wouldn’t be the wonderful individual he was. He wouldn’t be Josh.

  She looked round the crowd. He was doing brilliantly. Many of them were nodding as he spoke and he drew the remaining couple of hecklers into the discussion, neutralising their disruptive influence. And his competence just tied the knots in her stomach into double bows. She was going to have to get up and follow him.

  The seconds were ticking away. What was she going to say? What did she believe in passionately? At this precise moment, she had no idea.

  Next to Josh she just seemed boring. Okay, in her job she helped people, in a roundabout kind of way, making sure they were safe, but at the end of the day she closed the office door and went home without another thought. It was a job, not a passion. That thought was still whirling round her head as somebody nudged her. The soapbox was empty. It was her turn.

  She placed one foot on it, testing its stability. It wobbled. She looked up at Josh and he smiled and nodded her on. Using her arms for balance, she climbed on top of it. The crowd seemed to have quadrupled in size. And they were all looking at her, waiting for her to wow them. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

  Her heart set up a loud booming beat inside her chest. People began to shuffle, making disgruntled noises. And then everything became startlingly clear. There was one cause in this life that she was truly passionate about: eradicating the awful disease that had taken her brother’s life before he’d had a chance to go out into the world and live it. And if Ryan had had the chance to be standing where she was now, he would have stood up straight and spoken from the heart. She lengthened her spine and took a deep breath.

  ‘How many of you have lost a loved one to cancer?’ she asked. A few people nodded; even more raised their hands. Those who were unaffected were in the minority. So she told them about Ryan, about his wasted life. About a cruel disease that seemed to pick its victims at random and suck the life out of them. A couple of times she had to stop and cough away the tears clogging her throat. No one heckled.

  She told them about how terrified she’d been doing the bungee jump yesterday, but that she’d done it to raise money to fund new research. She urged them that, if they didn’t have a cause they felt strongly about to get involved in, to pick this one. Finally, just as she was running out of words, one of the marshals nodded and she breathed a sigh of relief and stepped down off the box.

  Josh instantly wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight. ‘You were great. That took a lot of guts.’

  Fern didn’t say anything. She was a fraud.

  It had sounded great, talking about bungee jumps and being brave for what she believed in, but the truth was, without Lisette’s challenge, she wouldn’t have done it. She was such a hypocrite.

  As Josh collected the next clue, she rubbed her face with her hands. She’d been prepared for this treasure hunt to be physically demanding. What she hadn’t counted on was how emotionally draining it would be. The race was like a mirror, reflecting her life back at her. She’d taken a long, hard look and she didn’t like what she saw.

  Josh flicked through the clues that had led them back to the corner of Trafalgar Square as Fern snapped a picture of Canada House with the digital camera. From Speakers’ Corner, they’d made the short hop to Marble Arch and climbed right up inside the orphaned gateway, now marooned on a traffic island at the point where Oxford Street met Hyde Park.

  As far as he had known, it was made of solid stone but, sure enough, they’d found an entrance and climbed right up to a room at the top to find their next clue. Odd, how you could think you knew something well and yet you had no idea of the obvious truth that was right under your nose.

  ‘Done,’ Fern said and carefully stowed the camera away in her backpack.

  Something was up with her. She’d been very quiet since the task at Speakers’ Corner. Perhaps she’d noticed that he’d walked away out of earshot when she’d got going on her speech.

  He hadn’t meant to desert her, but he just hadn’t been able to stay. As soon as he’d heard her talking about Ryan, her voice going all husky, he’d had the irresistible urge to move his legs. Maybe she was braver than he was. Maybe she could let herself talk about Ryan. Heck, he couldn’t even think about his friend without wanting to jump up and do something—anything. Life was too short to sit around moping. He’d promised himself years ago that he wouldn’t waste a second.

  Fern read the clue she’d got from a Secret London clue box standing in the lobby of Canada House:

  Take in the sweet sight of one of London’s best-known art galleries and find the Constable river scene showing Farmer Lott’s cottage with people and livestock in the foreground. Check the room number, then go to the room that is four numbers higher to find a painting of four flowers, two the same.

  They both looked up and stared at the National Gallery, which stood on the north side of Trafalgar Square.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ he asked and they ran across the
square, darting through the groups of tourists gathered round Nelson’s Column, scaring a flock of pigeons in the process.

  Once inside, Fern whacked him on the arm. ‘Look!’

  Straight ahead of them, looking this way and that and then sprinting off into a side room was Kate, the girl he’d chatted to earlier, and her brother Aidan. Josh ran up a small flight of stone steps, stopping on a brightly coloured mosaic, and watched them make their way through one of the many rooms of paintings, stopping to scan each one before running on again.

  They’d been one of the first teams to leave the market this morning. He grinned. This must mean his team was making headway. There were staircases in front of him and to the right and left. He picked the one on the left and started running up it, partly because it happened to be the one he’d been looking at and partly because it was the way Kate and Aidan had gone.

  By the time he was two stairs from the top he realised something was missing—the sound of another pair of feet following him. Where was Fern? All day he’d been able to hear her steady footsteps behind him like a heartbeat.

  He pivoted round and spotted her talking to a guide in the entrance hall. She waved a gallery plan in the air and pointed to her right. He jogged down the steps, met her at the bottom and then they ran up an identical flight of steps heading in the opposite direction.

  ‘Constable’s paintings are this way,’ she said in gasps. ‘You were about to look at paintings around two hundred years too early.’

  ‘Really? That’s the way the other team went.’

  ‘All the better for us if they’re headed in the wrong direction. The Hay Wain—a river scene and Constable’s most famous painting—is hanging in room thirty-four!’

  He felt like grabbing her and kissing her, but thought he’d better not.

  Of course! His Aunt Beryl had a set of dog-eared place mats printed with the very same picture. He could see it so clearly in his mind’s eye. The river, the cottage…It was just what they were looking for.

  They ran through a few rooms of paintings and he glanced around, looking for river scenes or flowers. Thankfully, Fern seemed to know where they were going. Each room had a large central square arch leading into the next section of the gallery. Sometimes there were side openings as well, but she was heading straight through from one room to the next. That was until their progress was blocked by a locked door and a rather stony-looking guide.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, peering over the top of her thick-rimmed spectacles. ‘This part of the gallery is currently closed.’

  He looked at Fern and she at him, mouths open, and then they looked back at the guide.

  ‘Not room thirty-four?’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘No. Rooms forty-one and forty-two. Thirty-four is…’

  They didn’t wait to hear the rest. Fern had the map in front of her nose again and a split second later she took off back the way they’d come. He raced after her. They took a right. And then another one. And pretty soon room thirty-four was straight ahead of them.

  There, filling a large space on the deep red wall, was The Hay Wain. Fern ran over to the display caption and then grinned back at him. ‘“Painting of a farmhouse belonging to Willy Lott, one of Constable’s father’s tenants…” It says it right here!’

  He took one last look at the painting. It was all there: the river scene, the livestock—well, horses—and the people. Josh was so excited he considered whooping, but decided it probably wouldn’t be popular with the museum officials.

  ‘So the other painting must be in room…thirty-eight.’

  Fern nodded in agreement and glanced at the map again. ‘That way!’

  They dashed back through the entrance they’d just come through and kept on running until they found the right spot. Now he didn’t want to whoop any more; again, he wanted to grab Fern and kiss her in jubilation. His veins were fairly buzzing with adrenaline. Who would have known that rushing round art galleries could give you the same high as snowboarding?

  Then the buzz fizzled into nothing, just as instantly and completely as if someone had pulled the plug on him. Room thirty-eight was small and square and covered entirely in paintings of—

  ‘Venice!’ Fern exclaimed. ‘Every one of them is a painting of Venice! And not a flower in sight. Are you sure this is the right room? Number thirty-eight?’

  He looked up at the wall. There it was, in big, bold numerals.

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  At that moment, a pair of identical twins in familiar red T-shirts skidded into the room, looking frantically this way and that. Josh grabbed Fern by the arm and tugged her into the next room, which overlooked the main stairway, separated by a row of glazed doors.

  ‘Josh! What are you up to?’

  He opened his mouth to speak, drawing in air, but stopped short. It was his turn to whack Fern on the arm to get her attention. Two more teams dashed through the entrance hall from one side to the other. Only seconds later, another team barged past him and ran down the stairs towards a guide and proceeded to have a rather heated conversation with him.

  ‘The whole place is filled with treasure hunt competitors running around like headless chickens. At least it’s not just us who can’t find the right painting.’ He shook his head. ‘There must be something wrong with the clue. Maybe it’s supposed to be “four numbers lower” or “five numbers higher”, or six…or seven…’

  She fidgeted under the weight of her backpack. ‘In other words, it could be anywhere.’

  She was right. And there was only one possible approach.

  ‘We’re just going to have to go about this systematically,’ he said. ‘Start in the section of the gallery we’ve just been looking in and eliminate paintings room by room.’

  She nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s start back where we first came off the main staircase.’

  They searched a handful of rooms. Plenty of river scenes. Plenty of flowers—sunflowers, water lilies—but nothing that matched the clue. They were getting nowhere. Pretty soon they were standing looking at The Hay Wain once again.

  ‘Josh? Have you got the clue there?’

  He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to her, all the while staring at the canvas in front of him. The adrenaline rush had definitely subsided. Now he felt like a hamster on a wheel—endlessly running, but never getting anywhere. It was so frustrating. He hated staying in the same place, marking time.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ she said breathlessly. ‘Look at this…it says “one of London’s best-known galleries”. It doesn’t say this one. We just assumed it meant here because we were standing right outside it.’

  The sheer logic of what she was saying hit him like a hard slap on the forehead. ‘If not this gallery, which one?’ He racked his head. The National Portrait Gallery was next door, but it hardly seemed the place for river scenes and flowers.

  Fern began to laugh. ‘Oh, they are so sneaky! The National Gallery is a complete red herring!’

  It was?

  She prodded the card with her finger. ‘It says “take in the sweet sight”. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but it’s part of the clue! Sweet! What is sweet?’ she asked, her eyes full of humour and quick intelligence.

  You are, he wanted to say. Especially when she was all fired up and glowing as she was this very second. Thinking she was sweet was okay, wasn’t it? It was certainly a big-brotherly kind of reaction. Much better than desirable or incredibly hot in those jeans or…he watched her lips purse into the tiniest of pouts…kissable.

  ‘Josh! You’re not listening!’

  No. He was too busy looking instead. And he didn’t seem to be able to stop looking at her mouth. She whacked him on the arm again. That did the trick nicely. He was going to be black and blue by the end of the treasure hunt, especially if thumping him was the only reliable method of distracting him from…

  Pain exploded in his upper arm once again.

  ‘Wake up, will you?’

  He ru
bbed his arm as she continued talking, almost too fast for him to catch the words.

  ‘Sugar! Sugar is sweet. And which major London gallery was founded by a sugar tycoon?’ She raised an eyebrow, willing him to catch on.

  ‘The Tate!’ he yelled, then remembered how many other teams might be within earshot. ‘The Tate,’ he said again, whispering this time.

  Now they were both chuckling.

  ‘We might be in completely the wrong gallery…’ he said as he guided her through the glazed doors and down the main staircase. They stayed well back as another few teams raced this way and that and decided to slip out of the gallery through the gift shop, rather than using the main entrance. ‘…but at least almost all the other teams are just as lost as we were.’

  They looked around, then quietly left the gallery via the gift shop entrance, making sure they weren’t followed. The large paving slabs outside were slick with rain when they emerged, the shower having come and gone while they’d been racing around the gallery.