Take Your Last Breath. Lauren Child

      Ruby pulled on her clothes: jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt printed with the words honk if you’re happy, hoot if you’re not, toot if you couldn’t care less and scooted down the stairs two at a time. Mrs Digby and Hitch were already in the kitchen and discussing the avian invasion.

      ‘So what is it?’ asked Ruby, sliding into her chair. ‘Some kind of bird-banishing gizmo?’

      ‘Works on the same principle as a dog whistle – it emits a sound that humans can’t hear and birds can’t stand,’ replied Hitch, tucking the device into his shirt pocket.

      Ruby was impressed – not a bad gadget to have up your sleeve when the wildlife went wild.

      ‘I might have to get myself one of those,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘Where dya buy it – SmartMart?’

      ‘Well, they do say SmartMart’s the smart place to shop!’ said Hitch, quoting the store’s tagline.

      ‘Well, all I can say child,’ said Mrs Digby earnestly, ‘is that it’s just as well your parents ain’t here to see this. Your mother would have a three-cornered fit if she witnessed what those critters have done to her sheets.’

      Mr and Mrs Redfort were currently away – as they so often were – this time on a mini cruise which was taking them and the local Historical Society around Twinford’s coast. Dora Shoering was giving a series of on-board lectures about the smugglers’ caves, the famous Twinford shipwrecks and various other seafarers’ legends.

      ‘Don’t you give those sheets a second thought Mrs D,’ said Hitch. ‘I’ll get the laundry service to pick up the linen – no need for you to waste your valuable energy on that.’

      ‘Shucks and fiddlesticks,’ said Mrs Digby. Which didn’t really mean anything, but often translated as, If you insist.

      It had been less than two months since Hitch had joined the Redforts as house manager (or butler, as Sabina Redfort preferred to think of him) but to look at Mrs Digby you might have thought he had been there always. She had accepted him at once and woe betide anyone who said a bad word about him. As far as she was concerned, he was the best darned butler, house manager (or whatever else he wanted to call himself) this side of anywhere.

      Of course, what Mrs Digby didn’t know was that Hitch was actually an undercover agent, sent by Spectrum to protect and work alongside Ruby. She had no idea that the butlering was just a cover – that really would have impressed her.

      But it was a Spectrum imperative that Mrs Digby should never know, never even suspect, that this alarmingly attractive man might not be all that he seemed. Although Ruby and Hitch had got off to a somewhat rocky start, they made a dynamic team. LB had seen this: she was a smart woman and she knew that unflinching loyalty was what made a good agent, and agents who were loyal to each other made for a solid agency.

      ‘So,’ said Hitch to Ruby. ‘How are you going to get yourself in and out of trouble today?’

      ‘I’m not,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m gonna lie low – take it easy – probably hang out with Clancy.’

      She went over to where the kitchen phone sat, picked up the receiver and dialled a number she had dialled approximately several thousand times.

      ‘Hey bozo, meet me, usual place, just as soon as.’ She replaced the receiver.

      ‘And they say the art of conversation is dead,’ commented Hitch, shaking out the newspaper.

      Mrs Digby looked at Ruby and shook her head. ‘It’s a crying shame,’ she said. ‘All life’s good manners and fine etiquette gone to pot. I tried to raise this child a nice child, but I probably got to accept failure here.’

      ‘Ah, Clance don’t mind,’ said Ruby. Which was true: Clancy Crew was Ruby Redfort’s closest friend and they understood each other without words – though that said, they spent most of their time ‘non-stop yacking’, as Mrs Digby would often comment.

      For this reason there was very little Clancy Crew didn’t know about Ruby Redfort – though another was that it was almost impossible to keep a secret from him – he always sniffed them out, and Ruby was good at keeping secrets. So, despite all her efforts, Clancy had managed to find out about her recruitment to Spectrum. Ruby had been forced to assure LB that from now on she would keep her mouth shut, that she would not blab to him again, that she would keep it zipped at all times.

      But Hitch was astute enough to know that this was a promise Ruby Redfort just couldn’t keep. So they had made a little agreement – LB must never know that Clancy knew everything and Clancy must never tell anyone anything, on pain of death. He never would; there was no question about that. Clancy Crew knew how to keep it zipped.

      However, Ruby did still have one secret that not even Clancy Crew was aware of.

      She kept it in her room under the floorboards and not one living creature except perhaps a spider or a bug knew anything about it. Since Ruby was just a kid of four she had written things down in little yellow notebooks. Not a diary exactly, but a record of things seen or overheard, strange or mundane. She had just completed notebook 623 – this she had placed underneath the floorboards along with the other 622. The one she was working on now, 624, was kept inside a compartment concealed in the frame of her bedroom door.

      Now, Ruby went upstairs and took the notebook out.

      The way Ruby saw it you just could never be sure when something inconsequential could become the missing link, the key to everything. RULE 16: EVEN THE MUNDANE CAN TELL A STORY. Though usually it was just inconsequential.

      She opened the notebook and wrote:

      Sixty or seventy seagulls invaded the garden.

      She added other important details she had noticed and replaced the notebook in its hiding place. She was just about to exit via the window when she heard Mrs Digby calling.

      ‘Ruby, you troublesome child, you better not be about to climb out of that window! I want you down here on the double!’

      Now, Mrs Digby was one of the few people Ruby could not always twist round her little finger – sometimes Ruby just had to do things Mrs Digby’s way and today, unfortunately, was obviously going to be one of those days.

      AFTER APPROXIMATELY FORTY-FIVE MINUTES of running errands, dropping things off and picking them up, Ruby finally pointed her bike towards Amster Green and rode the short distance to the small triangle of grass where a big old oak tree grew, its vast branches reaching off in every direction. She leaned her bike against the railings, quickly looked around just to make sure no one was watching and then, in a blink, swung herself onto the branch above and up and out of sight before you had time to think you had seen her.

      ‘What kept you?’ came a voice from high in the tree.

      ‘Mrs Digby,’ said Ruby, climbing up the tree.

      ‘Oh,’ said the voice. ‘I was about to give up on you. I’d just finished writing you a message.’

      ‘Yeah? What did it say?’ she asked, still climbing.

      ‘Here,’ said the voice, and a piece of paper fashioned into the shape of a condor came floating towards her. She unfolded it.

      Ec spgkwv kxoss kzi ulabtwwyj’w klmj srv hrvjv llw emiojkevsrpoc uej xo avv eedp*

      ‘No kidding?’ said Ruby, impressed. The paper, like most of the messages they left each other, was folded into an origami shape, the words encoded using their own Redfort-Crew code, which no one, but no one knew how to decipher.

      ‘So how did training camp go?’ asked Clancy.

      ‘Good,’ replied Ruby.

      ‘Good? That’s it?’

      Silence, and