How to Be Brave Read online

  108  Technically it had begun earlier that morning with the stink bombs, but we shall not deny Edie the use of a Dramatic Phrase.

  109  Number one being: Do not fall off.

  110  You should not fling books. You may yell at them and call them names and weep into their pages, but you should never use them as a projectile. Hanna knew this as well as the next person but the moment had put her under some pressure. She cannot be completely blamed.

  111  For Hanna was currently kneeling on the floor, cradling a copy of The Silver Brumby to her chest and whispering a frantic apology. The Silver Brumby is the sort of book you should apologize to, for it is magical and perfect in every way.

  112  It turns out that all you need to get furniture onto the roof are several very excitable first-years, the promise of free lemon drizzle cake for all concerned, and a solid knowledge of winches and pulleys. It is especially fortunate that these are all the sorts of things that the curriculum at the School of the Good Sisters encourages.

  113  When the fresh air hasn’t sent you to sleep.

  114  Fowl weather.

  115  Mr. Richardson is a lovely chap. He is our local police officer and firefighter, all at once. It is a small village. We have to double up on such things. Luckily he does not get much call for either and so, instead, spends his days breeding delightful angora cats. Sometimes I wonder what he would do in an actual emergency.

  116  Amelia and Sabia had decided to combine their trip to the dentist with some impromptu cat-wrangling. The only problem was that they had been discovered halfway through stuffing Princess Tibbles into their rucksack by Good Sister Paulette. Luckily Good Sister Paulette suffers from a rather acute case of blindness where cats are concerned. It is the most curious thing. She simply cannot see them. She did, however, insist that they charter a taxi back to the school and allowed Prince Marmaduke from number four, Agapanthus Way, to sit in the front.

  117  Technically she was allergic to feathers, fur, and, I suspect, fun.

  118  Sabia’s twin; identical in all ways save academic.

  119  Unfortunately he was a fairly solid young cat who had not climbed anything for a long time and so ended up ripping the curtains rather more than climbing them.

  120  Good Sister Paulette had offered the counterargument that “Perhaps the cats keep bringing the girls back,” but it hadn’t gone terribly well.

  121  Beautiful, beautiful work, if I do say so myself.

  122  Edie: “She wishes.”

  123  Edie: “Pointless.”

  124  Edie: “She won’t find us.”

  125  Edie: “What is this even meant to mean?”

  126  Edie: Silence. And then, thoughtfully, “I’m going to have to up my game.”

  127  Her voice had been recorded and inserted into the message. You may have heard something similar if you have ever phoned and got somebody’s voicemail. These really were very efficient kidnappers.

  128  Of course, Calla could have gone to the police. In fact, a little bit of me wishes she had, but I can understand why she didn’t. Calla North was the sort of girl who was used to fixing problems herself before people arrived to ask questions.

  129  And if you have, really well done, you.

  130  Between you and me, here is the truth about those reports. Calla accidentally-on-purpose lost them, and there you have it. Of course, Elizabeth should have noticed their absence but she has never been a particularly observant sort of person.

  131  “Do you have sports day this year?” said Elizabeth.

       “No we do not,” said Calla, who had accidentally-on-purpose lost the letter home about that as well.

  132  Also accidentally-on-purpose lost. Sensing a theme?

  133  Elizabeth was the sort of person who insisted on pockets being a feminist issue and sewing them into everything (even socks, which is less of a good idea than it seems).

  134  For potential bribery/distracting the kidnappers by throwing coins at them/buying tea.

  135  Biscuits should form part of every plan, naturally.

  136  Nobody normal says that, I can promise you.

  137  The headmistress could speak English, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Esperanto, Polish, Czech, Arabic, Mandarin, Twi, Estonian, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, and Klingon.

  138  Sound familiar?

  139  Calla had not, in fact, known this.

  140  Good Sister Honey will be thrilled to know that her lessons on light aircraft maintenance have come in so handy, I can tell you.

  141  Unfortunately there were no berries on hand so, alas, this is all on a metaphorical level.

  142  I, myself, have had a tiny cry upon being presented with a chocolate cake with jam in the middle when I was not expecting it. Of course, it does not parallel with Calla’s situation, nor the life-and-death predicament faced by her mother in the Amazon, but then not much would.

  143  I can assure you that at least some of the staff did know about the tunnels and used them to make trips down to the kitchens when they fancied a pink wafer in the middle of the night.

  144  She had removed all the vowels from the computer keyboards, poured jelly into the headmistress’s welly boots, and been observed lurking near the sprinkler system with a screwdriver and a suspicious look on her face.

  145  Pockets. Incredibly useful things.

  146  This is the fancy word for a duck’s cheeks.

  147  This is the fancy word for the patch of bright color you sometimes see on a duck’s wing.

  148  This is the fancy word for a small, tasty, and often quite misunderstood biscuit.

  149  Her name was Faith Reed and she was deeply overexcited about being part of this group.

  150  My current rates for silence are, just to let you know, two jammie dodgers and a slice of Victoria sponge.

  151  We have a helicopter. Now seemed a good time to mention it.

  152  Three in a row, in the precise outline of a mallard’s tertial feather.

  153  Nobody else but Edie was going to get anywhere near those macarons, let me tell you.

  154  It was the right one, might I add.

  155  I am not quite sure what “on the fly” means, but I am assured by Edie that it is an appropriate expression to use at this point due to the poor state of Gareth’s tradecraft. I am not even sure what “tradecraft” means, but sometimes it’s better just to accept the truth of what Edie says and move on. If you don’t, you’re there all week.

  156  It was no impression. She really didn’t have a clue what was happening.

  157  Rose Bastable, champion sprinter.

  158  Clearly, this one was Edie herself.

  159  I confess she is not wrong.

  160  His name is Gareth Angus MacDonald to be precise, and I can tell you that he went on to become an excellent chef after all of this was done. I’m still in touch with him and sometimes he brings me cupcakes. His sister is called Helen Antonia MacDonald, which really, if you consider the initials of that, is a much more unfortunate state of affairs.

  161  She could not.

  162  She did not.

  163  You might be wondering where the plank of wood came from. I know I was when they told me this story, but then I decided not to ask anything else as it was almost lunchtime and Good Sister Honey was making some of her miraculous cheese and broccoli quiche.

  164  They do not. Nobody, in fact, knows everything.

  165  This, in case you don’t know, is a fancy expression for having a bit of an emotional wobble.

  166  He is being generous here because nobody is pleasant all the time, but we must forgive him. He was having a complicated few days.

  167  Some people might have described this as more of a smelling a fart face, but those people are called Edie Berger and weren’t there to see it so can’t have any input on the matter. Lucy has described it as wistful but quite confuse
d, and as I have met Gareth, I think this is a description we can all go with.

  168  The donor’s name rhymes with Schmelizabeth Schmorth.

  169  This is true.

  170  Gareth was not the sort of henchman who could grab somebody and search them at the same time. He had grabbed Calla in the study and held her at a distance. Gareth was, and indeed is, the sort of man who could not happily handle something unless it came in a pastry case or was wrapped in a chocolate shell. And so on the day that he carried Calla to the North Tower bedroom, he had not searched her and found the notebook. I, for one, am quite glad that he was remiss in his duties.

  171  Perhaps she had. I have learned not to underestimate dear Edie.

  172  This is perhaps a little bit ambitious, but it was quite an ambitious sort of moment.

  173  Why she felt she had to do this on the roof escaped me at the time, but I am quite glad in hindsight that she did.

  174  She still has bodyguards now, even though much of the immediate danger to her has passed. Good Sister Robin is proficient in jiujitsu, and Good Sister Paulette has a peculiarly deep knowledge of poison darts.

  175  It’s a good job I wasn’t there to stop them because, I suspect, I would have been stopping them with all the authority I could muster.

  176  It is not.

  177  Edie had gotten this quote wrong but she will never admit it if you ask her. The actual quote is “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war” and so Eloise and Co. are to be forgiven for looking a little baffled.

  178  It was a helicopter taking off, and it was to prove very important in the events that followed.

  179  Edie had set off all of the sprinklers in the school, after doctoring the water with dish soap and food coloring. The foam was, as she has asked me to mention, nontoxic, non-flammable, and skin-friendly as “I’m not a monster.”

  180  If you have, you have led Quite the Life.

  181  Obviously, they were using a bullhorn from inside the helicopter to amplify their voice, for things were quite loud and they really did want to be heard very clearly at that point in time. It is a top tip for you to remember, should you be in similar circumstances. And, if you are, also bring a biscuit. Biscuits are excellent in a helicopter. The altitude gives them a certain bite.

  182  Do I need to tell you that this was Edie? Really, she was ready for all situations.

  183  You may be interested to know that once I finished writing this story, I sent a copy of it to each of the people mentioned within. One of those was Mrs. Fraser herself, who has now retired and spends her days sharing fondant fancies with a very elderly and intensely happy Aslan (who has special dog-friendly fondant fancies made especially for him). He has lived the most perfect and gentle of lives with her, and recently celebrated his twenty-second birthday.

  184  This is a class that is restricted to girls in their final year of the school. This is not to say that the smaller girls cannot fly a plane, for they are certainly more than able. One should never doubt a tiny and purposeful girl. One should, however, be aware that sometimes her limbs are not quite long enough to reach all of the pedals.

  185  And this, I feel is a superpower all of its own.

  186  Although it was not a skill that surprised Good Sister Paulette, who had fond memories of Elizabeth’s talents during her camouflage classes.

  187  It is also particularly fortunate that a plane crash does help in finding somebody. It was one of the first things that Calla and her friends discovered and once they had the location of that, they were able to guess how far Elizabeth may have been able to walk from it, whilst cross-referencing those locations with the information that Calla had found in the notebook. There are not many places where the flowers bloom at midnight and the east and south winds meet above fresh water, and then it was only a question of hiring a guide to take them to see if one of them contained a forgetful and somewhat hungry scientist.

  188  It was no dream. Hanna was finding the rainforest a lot to deal with. She had grown up in eastern Europe and knew woods and forests and trees. The landscape here was the same but so very different, and she was almost overwhelmed by it. Every step she took made her exclaim loudly in wonder.

  1  Honestly, you’re pretty great.