Operation Eiffel Tower (3 page)

They weren’t kidding in the recruitment office when they said it was hard work. I’ve already run further in two weeks than I have in the whole of the rest of my life put together. I’ve got blisters the size of Manchester!

They make me eat properly – don’t worry. And I haven’t shot myself in the foot by accident. I’ll write again soon.

Big kisses to you all,

Paul
” ’

Auntie Joyce looked up. Her eyes were sparkly as though she might cry, but she was smiling. Mum reached over and squeezed her arm. ‘Don’t worry, Joyce. He’ll be OK.’

‘What food is he eating?’ Ruby asked, taking a brick out of Billy’s mouth.

‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose it’s much different to what he gets at home. Perhaps more chips than he’s used to. I’ll ask him in my next letter.’

Mum reached out and stroked Billy’s hair. He looked up, surprised.

Auntie Joyce sighed. ‘Still. He’s OK, that’s the main thing. Time for a cuppa?’

Mum nodded.

Auntie Joyce dropped the letter into her huge handbag and hoisted herself out of the chair, squeezing past the counter towards the kitchen. Mum followed.

Jack smartened up the rows of twenty pences; they had been too laid-back and sloppy. General Jack Dempsey would sort out that attitude.
First Battalion Twenty Pences, reporting for duty, sir!

Behind him, in the little kitchen, he could hear the low murmur of Mum’s voice. He couldn’t make out the words over the whirr of the washing machines. Auntie Joyce answered. Why were they whispering?

Because they didn’t want him to hear.

Jack’s hand froze above a wayward twenty pence. He held his breath.

Were they talking about Paul or about Dad?

Paul or Dad?

If it was Paul, then it was none of his business. But if it was Dad . . .

He took a step backwards, towards Mum and Auntie Joyce. On a shelf by his knees he could see the empty ice-cream tub where Mum kept pens and stray buttons and safety pins. He reached down, lifted out a pen, then dropped it on to the floor. It rolled towards the back room. Towards the kitchen.

There was a feeling in Jack’s chest, like being nervous, only it wasn’t that exactly. It was more insistent than that. It wasn’t fair that Auntie Joyce knew more about what was going on than he did. He stepped towards the pen.

On the other side of the counter, Ruby and Billy were squabbling over a building block.

‘Shh!’ Jack waved them quiet. He bent down, his ears aimed at the kitchen door. He scooped up the pen, but stayed crouched.

He could hear Mum and Auntie Joyce, but their voices came in short snatches: ‘. . . a battlefield . . . prisoner . . . can’t go on.’

Who were they talking about?

Then Auntie Joyce said, ‘You can’t take the world’s weight on your shoulders.’

Dad then.

‘Sorry . . . sorry . . .’

Jack heard Mum blow her nose.

Jack stood up quickly and dropped the pen back in the tub. He didn’t want to hear any more. He stepped around the counter into the shop. His chest felt tight, as though there wasn’t enough oxygen getting in. He sucked in two or three lungfuls of soapy air, then marched away from the counter and climbed up on top of the dryer, next to Lauren.

She turned the page of her magazine.

A customer walked in – a man carrying a big blue bag. He looked around and his eyes settled on Lauren, the biggest of the children.

‘Service wash?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Mum!’ Lauren yelled.

Mum appeared at the counter. Her eyes were puffy and red, but she did her best to smile. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked the man. He smiled gratefully and lugged his bag over.

‘Mum’s sad again,’ Jack whispered to Lauren.

‘Mmm,’ Lauren agreed.

Jack looked towards the counter where Mum and the customer were busy weighing his bag of laundry.

‘Couldn’t we do something?’ Jack said.

‘Like what?’ Lauren said sharply. ‘I’m not doing any more chores than I do already.’

‘No, not chores. I don’t know. Something special. Something to make Mum and Dad happy again. To stop them rowing.’

Lauren paused. ‘Something special?’

Jack nodded eagerly.

‘There’s a whole section in here on putting the romance back into relationships. A top ten. Look!’ Lauren flipped through her magazine quickly; it was a blur of lipstick adverts and girls with daft clothes and handbags. Then she found what she wanted.

Ten Ways to Put the Spark Back

Jack leaned in and read over Lauren’s shoulder. Number ten was a walk on the beach, number nine was a meal in a restaurant, number eight was –
yuck!
– numbers eight, seven and six were all gross. Number five was a balloon ride. Numbers four and three were gross too. Number two was a moonlight serenade. And number one – the number one most guaranteed way to put the spark back in any relationship – was a weekend in Paris.

‘We could organise a walk on the beach, easy,’ Lauren said. ‘It’s just at the end of the street.’

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘The beach is there every day and they’ve never wanted to walk along it before. Anyway, it’s the bottom one and they fight all the time. We can’t go with number ten. We can’t go with any of the bottom nine. It has to be number one.’ He looked at the photograph next to the article. In it, a woman and a man held each other close, gazing into each other’s eyes; there was a table laid with wine and candles, a man playing a violin, and above them all the Eiffel Tower rose up against a pink and gold sunset. ‘If the magazine says Paris, then it has to be Paris.’

‘But,’ Lauren said, ‘that will cost a fortune. Look.’ She pointed to the bottom of the page. ‘Two hundred pounds! Just for one night! Where are we going to get that sort of money? A walk on the beach is much cheaper.’

‘Paris,’ Jack said with determination.

Chapter 4

Back home, Jack called a council of war. Lauren, Ruby and Billy all crammed into his bedroom. Billy sat on the floor chewing Teddy Volvo’s leg, Ruby sat on the bed and Lauren sat on the chair. Jack stood, holding Lauren’s magazine open at page 32 so that everyone could see it.

‘Operation Eiffel Tower,’ Jack said. ‘Ignore everything between number two and number ten. We are going straight to number one. Listen.’ He read from the magazine, ‘ “
You walk arm in arm down a wide boulevard; the scent of spring blossom fills the night air. You stop at a cafe; candlelit tables spill out on to the pavement. A waiter brings wine. And you? You smile at each other, remembering.
” ’

Jack wrinkled his nose. ‘Actually, that all sounds gross. But the important thing is that the two people here aren’t arguing. They aren’t throwing plates and slamming tables and keeping us all awake at night.’ He prodded the people on the page.

Ruby smiled. ‘It sounds pretty,’ she said.

‘It sounds expensive,’ Lauren said.

‘Two hundred pounds. We need to find two hundred pounds,’ Jack said. ‘That’s for the train to Paris and one night in a hotel. They’ll need to have dinner too. How much does dinner cost?’ He looked at Lauren.

She blushed slightly, then shrugged. ‘How would I know? I’ve never had dinner in Paris.’

‘I’ll ask Paul. He’ll know. But we need to get at least two hundred pounds, probably more. Ideas? Anyone?’

‘How many goes on the grab-a-bear machine is two hundred pounds?’ Ruby asked.

Jack smiled. Then he took his calculator from his desk drawer. ‘Two hundred divided by point two is one thousand. A thousand goes, Ruby.’

‘A thousand?’ Ruby whispered. ‘That sounds like a lot.’

There was a pause while everyone thought about this. Except Billy. Billy pulled off one of his socks and tried to put it on Teddy Volvo’s arm.

‘It is a lot,’ Lauren said.

‘Yes,’ Jack agreed. It was a huge, colossal, ginormous amount of money. ‘But we want to make Mum and Dad happy again, don’t we? We want them to stop rowing all the time about stupid things that don’t matter. Don’t we?’

Ruby nodded quickly.

Lauren sighed, then nodded too.

‘So,’ Jack said. ‘How much have we got for starters? Everyone, go and get any money you have and bring it here. Now.’

Everyone stood up and charged out towards their own room.

Jack took down his piggy bank from the windowsill. It wasn’t really a pig; it was a bright red London bus. Paul had brought it back for him when he’d been to London on a college trip last year. The bus felt quite heavy, but Jack knew that it was mostly just two and five pence coins.

He pulled out the white plastic plug and tipped it on to his bed.

The others came back just as he was counting out the last pile.

‘Well?’ Lauren asked.

‘Three pounds and twenty-six pence.’ Jack sighed.

Lauren was carrying a jam jar with a small roll of notes inside. ‘Birthday money,’ she said. ‘I was saving for a hairdryer with built-in conditioner. That’s twenty pounds.’

‘Wow!’ Jack said. ‘Thanks. And what about you two?’

Billy held out a wodge of green plasticine. There was a two-pence coin jutting out of it like a tooth. Jack grinned and took the coin.

‘Ruby?’ Lauren asked.

‘Well,’ Ruby said, ‘I didn’t have any money. So I had a look in Mum’s purse and she had twenty pounds.’ She held up a note.

‘Ruby!’ Jack said.

‘What?’

‘You can’t take Mum’s money to buy her a present! That’s not how it works.’

‘Oh.’

‘Go and put it back right now. And make sure she doesn’t see you. This is meant to be a nice surprise. Finding out that your daughter’s a thief is not a nice surprise.’

Ruby hung her head. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered.

Lauren laughed. ‘Don’t cry about it. We’ll get the money somehow.’

Ruby nodded then ran to replace the money.

Jack looked at the jar of notes and the coins on the bed. ‘Twenty-three pounds and twenty-eight pence,’ he said. ‘Only a hundred and seventy-five pounds to go, more or less. Plus dinner.’

He sat down on the bed and the coins slid towards him. Billy crawled up next to him and started feeding his ball of plasticine to Teddy Volvo. Lauren sat down on the chair.

‘Come on, people,’ Lauren said. ‘Ideas.’

‘Sponsored walk,’ Jack said. ‘Sponsored silence. Or we could do odd jobs for people, like washing cars.’

Ruby danced back in. ‘We could sell stuff, like on the telly.’

‘We haven’t got anything worth selling,’ Lauren said.

Jack unscrewed the lid of Lauren’s jam jar and scooped his coins inside. ‘We could get a lottery ticket and win the jackpot. Or I could become a pro golfer and earn a fortune.’

Lauren grinned. ‘Think you’re ready to beat Tiger Woods, do you?’

‘Jack can beat anyone!’ Ruby said.

Jack peeled the label off the jam jar. It left behind a thin layer of white paper glued to the glass. He took a pen from his desk and wrote ‘Paris Fund’ on the jar.

‘If I asked William,’ Jack said slowly, ‘if I asked him really nicely, he might hold a competition. Like a real Open. If we charge people to enter, there could be prizes –
cash
prizes. Then all I have to do is win!’

Lauren nodded slowly. ‘Don’t let this go to your head, but you are pretty good. Would William go for it?’

Jack nodded. ‘Of course he would. We could make loads of money!’

‘It could work,’ Lauren said. ‘It could actually work.’

Chapter 5