Dear Scarlett by Sarah J; Fleur; Coleman Hitchcock

panting behind me.
    “What?”
    “
Letter Boxes, Dead and Live.
I slipped it into my bag.”
    I stop, diving into a bus shelter.
    “How?”
    “It was there, in the shelves.” She’s so out of breath she can hardly speak.
    “What! Let’s see it.”
    Ellie takes it out. It’s a small brown hardback, speckled with mildew. “Here,” she says.
    I hold the book in my hands and flick through the pages.
    Nothing falls out, nothing’s written inside, and there’s nothing to say it’s our copy.
    Clangalangalangaclang
.
    School time.

    I feel completely sick now. Completely like giving them the box, the key, all of it. Through maths I was thinking about Mum and Syd, they could be anywhere in the town, and no one would ever suspect the lady mayoress. Mum would just climb into that car and go…
    Ellie doesn’t seem to be worried. Maybe it’s because her dad’s a policeman, he can always rescue her – keep her safe. We’re hiding out in the school library and I’ve been through the book and it’s surprisingly dull. From the things I’ve heard about Dad, I’d have thought that he’d have chosen some racier reading. There’s miles of Russian names, andchapters with headings like: “The Idiosyncrasies of the Cargle Case.” I drift off the moment I start to read and have to keep reminding myself that there might be something important in there.
    Although the book’s truly toothgrindingly uninteresting, we do discover what a dead letter box is. It’s a public place, mostly used by spies, where one person leaves a message for another. Like, tucked into a cereal packet in a supermarket, or stuck under the sugar in a café, or in the left luggage department of a station.
    But it doesn’t mean anything to me.
    “Oh, this is hopeless,” I say, handing the book to Ellie.
    I pick up a comic annual and sink into a beanbag. I can’t help feeling that Dad’s box has been a bad thing.
    I was perfectly all right before it came into my life.
    Bored, perhaps, but all right, all the same.
    It’s been a roller coaster ever since. Not a roller coaster, maybe more of a dodgem car ride or one of those giant tea cups that make you throw up.
    “But, Scarlett, look!” says Ellie. She’s waving the book in my face. I can’t see anything but strings ofmeaningless names. “This – this is a dead letter box message itself.”
    “Is it?” I ask.
    “Look – here!” She points at page five. “…
F undamentally
…” but the F has been underlined. Not very strongly, but definitely underlined. “And here.” She turns over a couple of pages. “…
A sk yourself
… The A?”
    We scour the pages, collecting letters. F. A. Z. A. C. K. E. R. L. E. Y.
    “Fazackerley?” I say. “The only Fazackerley I know of is the hall place? With the café and stuff.”
    It takes Ellie about a nanosecond to log on to the library computer, enter Mrs Gayton’s password and get the Internet on screen.
    “Fazackerley Hall,” she says, typing the words in.
    Pictures of a large house pop up on the screen. It’s red and brick and covered in tea-shop signs and full of old people. I’ve been there with Mum.
    “Open daily, 10–5, located two miles from Dampmouth Bay, five miles from Dampington,”
reads Ellie. “Bingo,” she says.
    “How,” I ask, “did
you
know Mrs Gayton’s password?”

Feeling Dizzy
    I’m feeling bouncy on the school bus. Ellie gets off before me, taking the dead-letter-box book (apparently it could make good bedtime reading), and although Melissa and Amber sit on the back seat singing: “
Scarlett, Scarlett, give me your answer do
…” I don’t really mind.
    We’ve made a discovery; we know more than the box does.
    We know more than the mayoress and her driver.
    We know where we need to go next. I’m imagining us finding a chest of secrets in the corridors of Fazackerley Hall, one that the current ownershaven’t noticed. They’re so grateful, they share it with us, and give me a DVD that Dad made before he