Attica Read Free Page A

always turn back, if they were too afraid to go on. It was that kind of place. It might make his old heart race and bang against his ribs to think about it, but theirs were stronger, stouter organs.
    Later, while Dipa was preparing dinner in the kitchen, Chloe told Alex and Jordy about the ‘secrets’ she’d learned from Mr Grantham. Predictably, Jordy was a little scornful and said they weren’t exactly headline revelations. Equally as predictable was Alex, who was more interested in the pocket-watch than in any ancient love story.
    Yes, he said, he wouldn’t mind helping Chloe look for the watch. ‘Those old watches with real brass works,’ he said reverently, ‘are ten times more interesting than modern watches. Digital watches are the worst, but the ones which try to look like old watches are just as bad. All they’ve got inside ’em is a chip. Just that. A rotten old computer chip. But just think of all the engineering that went into making an old watch! All those cogs and wheels, the hair spring, levers and – and,’ he said almost darkly, ‘there’s a thing called an escapement . If you didn’t have that, the whole works would go out of balance and tell the wrong time.’
    Jordy stared at his normally quiet step-brother and said wonderingly, ‘Once you wind him up he just goes on and on, doesn’t he?’
    ‘Are you being unkind?’ asked Dipa, entering theroom with a steaming dish of potatoes. ‘What’s all that about? Nelson, stop threading through my ankles or I’ll drop this dish.’
    Nelson continued weaving awkwardly between her legs and then toppled over when he caught the edge of the carpet. He was a cat who refused to acknowledge that he had only three legs. Giving the carpet an aggrieved look, he jumped up into Dipa’s chair.
    ‘No, I’m not being unkind – at least I didn’t mean to be,’ said Jordy. ‘We were just talking about …’ he caught Chloe’s warning look just in time ‘about old-fashioned pocket-watches. Alex seems to think they’re cool. He thinks wrist-watches are naff.’
    Dipa placed the dish on a mat on the table and stepped back to look at her youngest child.
    ‘Well, that’s because he’d look so smart in a waistcoat, wouldn’t you, Alex? With a shiny silver watch-chain dangling from the pocket.’
    ‘Nobody in this house understands me,’ Alex sighed. ‘It’s the works of a watch I like, not the watch itself. Wrist-watches are OK. But I know Jordy likes his because it looks snazzy on him and because it tells him the time to a hundredth of a second, even at ten fathoms under water. He likes it because of how it looks and what it does and what it’s capable of doing at the bottom of the ocean, though what use that is to him I’ll never know. I like watches because of how they’re made and what’s inside the case.’
    Chloe said, ‘And I couldn’t care less about any of it. Can we eat now?’
    Dipa returned to the kitchen to get the rest of the meal and Alex said, ‘Shall we all look for it? The watch, I mean?’
    ‘I’m going to,’ said Chloe.
    ‘Oh, all right,’ Jordy agreed, not wanting tobe left out. ‘I’ll come too, but I warn you,’ he twisted his face into a mask, ‘it’s horrible up there!’

CHAPTER 2
    Crossing the Threshold
    The three of them didn’t discuss whythey didn’t let Ben and Dipa know they wanted to search the attic. It wasn’t that each of them didn’t think about it. Chloe certainly did. Jordy did too. (And who knew what was in Alex’s head?) But for some reason, unknown even to themselves, none of them mentioned it. Not that it was anything their parents would have objected to. They simply kept it secret. They deliberately waited for a Saturday morning when Dipa was working and Ben was going out to do the shopping. Chloe asked Jordy to go with her. Alex, however, was engrossed in making another kite and said he wouldn’t join them after all.
    ‘What’s that?’ Ben had asked, coming into the kitchen and