“Oh, she has a friend in Elstree.” It was the first we’d heard of it. “My papa isn’t liking her a lot,” she said by way of explanation, I suppose, for Håkan Almquist’s staying in an hotel. Then the inevitable “Where is my money?”

Now Silver and I didn’t exactly know. We only knew that the police hadn’t mentioned the backpack. But there were a lot of things left unmentioned. Silver said Liv would have to go to the hospital. She’d have to go to the police and tell them the whole story, or part of the story presumably, leaving out the fact that she had stolen the money in the first place, if she wanted answers to that.

Liv became hysterical. I had never seen her like this before. She was crying and laughing at the same time. She rocked back and forth, uttering short sharp yelps of laughter, the tears pouring down her face. I knew she wouldn’t go to that hospital. Even if her father was dying she wouldn’t go. We looked at each other in despair. It was Wim who saved things. He took hold of her, pulled her up, said, “I can’t stand that noise. Come to bed. That will shut you up.”

She was taken care of for another hour or so. Silver and I decided to take our washing to the launderette.

“Why haven’t your parents got a washing machine?” I grumbled.

“They did have. It wore out and when they got a new one they took it with them to St. Albans.”

I emptied pockets and turned socks inside out. In the right-hand pocket of the jeans I had worn two nights before, I found the fragments of the little china bullfinch broken by Silver and Andrew while they fought. Silver looked at the pieces in my hand with a strange expression on his face. If I hadn’t known he never worried and was seldom afraid, I’d have fancied I saw anxiety there or even fear.

“Are you thinking it might be mended?” I said.

“No, no, it’s beyond repair.” He sounded as if he was talking of something entirely different, of a quite other possibility, which struck a little chill into my heart. Then he smiled at me and gave me a quick kiss and all was well.

Chapter 24

24

GOING THROUGH THAT ELEVEN-year-old diary, I find that Silver and I visited Andrew and Alison that Saturday evening and on three occasions in the following week. Once Wim came with us, at first frightening them inexcusably. They thought we had betrayed them and brought the police, though anyone less like a policeman it would have been hard to find. Apparently they saw his yellow tunic as a disguise. Then Alison identified him as our friend, who had been with us the first time we showed ourselves to them.