Cuckoo in the Nest. Michelle Magorian

can I help?’ he asked innocently. ‘I know where everything is. I’ve reorganised it, you see. I expect that’s why you’re having a problem.’

      ‘I ain’t havin’ a problem,’ she said ruffled. ‘I found what I wanted.’

      ‘Oh?’ he said looking at her empty hands. ‘What was it?’ Her face reddened again. ‘It’s not big enough,’ she stammered.

      ‘Maybe I could find a bigger one,’ said Ralph enjoying himself. ‘I’ll have a look. Just give me a clue.’

      ‘Hedge cutters,’ she said after a pause.

      He took a pair from the shelf nearest the window. ‘Will these be big enough?’

      ‘Oh! There they are!’ she gushed, acting so badly that it was all Ralph could do not to laugh.

      ‘Good job I was here, eh?’

      ‘Yes. Yes,’ she said hurriedly.

      ‘Now which hedge did she want cut?’ She looked startled. ‘Or shall I ask her?’

      ‘No!’ she screamed. She backed out of the shed. ‘She won’t remember anyway. Her memory’s not so good now. She’s got a lot on her mind.’

      He watched her fly back to the kitchen.

      ‘I’ll just start on the ones near the river, then,’ he called after her.

      He had been standing on a stepladder clipping a huge hedge for about an hour when he saw a familiar figure striding towards him.

      ‘You’re not supposed to be here till Monday,’ she hollered.

      ‘Weather forecast said it would be raining all day on Monday.’

      He sat on the ladder and watched her approach.

      ‘Liar,’ she said. ‘What’s the real reason?’

      ‘Couldn’t keep away, could I? Wondered if you’d had time to look at those gardening books?’

      ‘And?’

      ‘Queenie said you wanted the hedge cut. I found her in the potting shed. She knows where that small tin trunk is now.’

      Mrs Egerton-Smythe paled.

      ‘It’s none of my business, madam, but maybe you ought to unlock them and put whatever’s in them somewhere not so easy to find.’

      ‘I can’t,’ she said quietly, and she hastily looked away.

      ‘Oh. Have you lost the keys?’

      She swung round. ‘Yes.’ He could see she was lying and he wanted to help her lie even better. ‘I thought so. Having been up there so long.’

      ‘How did you know that?’ she said sharply.

      ‘From the dust.’

      ‘Oh yes, of course.’

      ‘May I make a suggestion, madam?’

      ‘Out with it then.’

      ‘I break the locks for you.’

      ‘Thank you, Hollis, but I’ll probably want to lock them up again.’

      In case Mr Egerton-Smythe checks up on you, he thought.

      ‘I can get ones that match from the High Street.’

      She smiled. He knew she had agreed.

      ‘We’ll have to move fast,’ he added.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Just a feeling,’ he said.

      ‘Queenie?’

      ‘Something like that. We’ll have to get rid of her.’

      ‘Yes. She’s probably on the phone right now.’

      ‘The butcher’s!’ said Ralph. ‘My mother says the queues are always a mile long there. Tell her you’ve heard there’s a special offer of tripe. Then wave to me from the French windows when she’s gone.’

      ‘Where do you get all these ideas? From the theatre?’

      ‘My Auntie Win reads green Penguins out to my mother. Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh. You name it.’

      ‘How nice for your mother.’

      Ralph shrugged uneasily. It was then that he noticed Queenie hovering at the end of the garden.

      ‘What are you going to say about me hedge clipping?’

      ‘I’ll pretend I forgot and thank her for remembering. That do, Hollis?’

      He grinned and carried on snipping.

      Half an hour later, he was pushing his bike back down the road, the pockets of Laurie Egerton-Smythe’s large sports jacket bulging with new identical looking padlocks.

      He was about to take a detour so that he could avoid the part of the High Street where the butcher’s was when he saw Queenie coming round the corner and heading in his direction. Swiftly he crossed over the road. Ahead of him was the stage door of the theatre. He flung his bike on to the pavement and dived in between the doors. Wilfred was talking to a tall man with white hair and a flushed complexion. He spotted Ralph as soon as he walked in. Ralph walked boldly over to him and said very firmly, ‘It’s me again. I thought I’d just pop in to see if there was any chance of me seeing Mr Johnson before the strike tonight.’

      ‘You’re in luck. Mr Johnson, the lad I was telling you about.’

      Ralph looked upwards and found Mr Johnson staring down at him from a great height.

      ‘I’m Isla’s friend,’ he gulped. ‘I expect she’s mentioned me.’

      The man continued to stare at him. ‘Young Isla thinks you can do things back to front, lad. You shouldn’t have been anywhere near the strike last week.’

      ‘Oh,’ he said feebly.

      ‘But,’ he went on, ‘the master carpenter told me you made yourself useful.’ He frowned at Ralph and then eventually gave a weary sigh. ‘You toe the line. Whatever Jack Walker says, jump to it. Understand?’

      ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

      Ralph was so exhilarated by this stroke of luck that he quite forgot that he was hiding from Queenie until he leapt out into the street and spotted her at a public phone box. Luckily she had her back to him. He wheeled his bike swiftly round the corner and hopped on to it, cycling down an alley past the second-hand clothes shop he had discovered actors from the rep frequented.

      As soon as he hit the High Street he pedalled as fast as he could.

      With relief he saw there was no car outside Mrs Egerton-Smythe’s house. He leapt off his bike, ran with it up the side of the house, rang the bell and dumped his bike by the wall.

      Mrs Egerton-Smythe flung open the kitchen door. He pulled the padlocks out, sweat pouring down his face. ‘Have you emptied them?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said.

      ‘Buckets!’ he panted. ‘Buckets! Earth!’

      ‘Hollis, what are you talking about?’

      ‘Fill the trunks,’ he gasped. ‘Queenie telephoning from the box.’

      For the next quarter of an hour she and Ralph shovelled earth into buckets which they carried upstairs. They filled the large trunk and suitcase and re-padlocked them. Then, between them, they pulled the stepladder from the loft down and hauled them back up. Ralph slid them across the floor. ‘Two up and two to go,’ she declared. They filled the suitcase which had been in the car boot and returned it to the loft. They were shovelling earth into the one in the shed, when Ralph suddenly said, ‘Queenie will have told him about this.’

      ‘Oh