The Key to Finding Jack by Ewa Jozefkowicz (best classic books to read TXT) 📕

how did you go all the way to the high street?’ I looked at her legs stretched out, the knees swollen.

‘I have a new electric wheelchair,’ she told me. ‘Your mum arranged it for me – it’s very good of her. I just need to press a few buttons and I can go exactly where I want to. But sometimes Martin insists on pushing me. He’s such a gentleman, you know.’

‘Do you think that’s what Jack wanted to do? To set the two of you up?’

‘Quite possibly. He never admitted it though. He smiled at me in the way he always does – you know that cheeky half-smile he has?’

I knew it well. Only the left side of his mouth went up and a dimple appeared.

‘Of course.’

‘He certainly knows how to bring fun into people’s lives, doesn’t he? And you know what? I’m glad that he does. I was worried about him when he was little and we first found out about his illness. His doctor at the time seemed to think that Jack should avoid all risk and that he should be taken entirely out of harm’s way. “Even a grazed knee might be dangerous,” she said. I’m sure you know, but for ages he wasn’t allowed to do loads of things.’

‘I know.’ When I’d insisted on going to a trampolining park for my sixth birthday Jack watched from the side, reading a book. He pretended that he was too old for bouncing madly up and down, but I could tell that he would have loved to have joined in if he could.

‘I’m glad he didn’t let haemophilia stop him,’ said Grandma and I had to agree with her.

‘Who knows what he’ll do next?’ she continued. ‘Martin thinks that Jack will play in a band of some sort. You know teenagers these days are into forming bands? Then they get into drinking and all sorts of trouble. But deep down I don’t think he’s that kind of a musician. You can tell that he really enjoys playing to individual people, not huge crowds. I bet he would love to teach guitar. He definitely has a knack for it.’

I didn’t know what to say. I stared at the TV where a black and white film was still running. Grandma must have turned off the sound when I’d arrived. On the screen, a band was playing on stage – two guitarists, a bass player and a singer. Before them, couples were rotating around the dance floor in time to the music. I wondered if it was soul, or blues or jazz.

I thought about all the different versions of Jack that I’d discovered since his disappearance: Jack the helper, the caring friend, the musician, the matchmaker. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that they weren’t new at all. They were versions that we didn’t see at home. Or maybe that we didn’t want to accept. I saw the exciting, daring older brother, and Mum and Dad saw the son who didn’t seem to want to take the road that they’d mapped out for him.

When I’d first found out these new things about Jack, I’d felt cheated and a little bit sad. But there were things that Jack didn’t know about me too. He had no idea how much I like writing as I’d never shared any of my stories with him. I wanted to perfect them – to make them as good as they could be before he read them. I wondered whether this was, in a way, what Jack had been doing too. Maybe he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do with his life and he was waiting until he’d made a decision before he told us. Although he knew Keira, who was always round at our house, he didn’t really know any of my other friends. So perhaps it wasn’t so strange that I didn’t know many of his.

Gertrude turned on the fire, and I crawled over to Jack’s wicker chair, nestling in it. We sat in silence, watching the dancing couples on the screen. My eyes grew heavy.

Grandma’s voice woke me up.

‘Felicity, it’s late. I’m going to ring your mother to say you’ll stay here tonight. Gertrude, will you make up the bed in the spare room? Felicity can borrow one of my nightgowns.’

‘I have some pyjamas with me,’ I mumbled. ‘I thought I was staying at Keira’s but, well, here I am.’

Half an hour later, I was lying in a huge double bed in what Grandma called the Yellow Room, which had been Mum’s room when she was little. Some of her old things were still here – the wooden house, home to a family of scary-looking dolls with oddly big heads, a pile of French storybooks and the postcards that Grandpa sent from all over the world when he travelled with the Navy. ‘Ma petite souris’ he’d called her – ‘my little mouse’.

At the top of the bed, there was a big photograph of Grandma and Grandpa when they were young, probably before Mum was born. They were standing in a valley, with green mountains towering above them and the outline of a river in the background. Grandpa was carrying a big backpack and they looked incredibly happy.

I curled up into a tight ball, breathing in the room’s faint musty smell, and thought what a good idea it had been to come here.

Eight

It was Monday morning and I’d set Mum’s old bedside alarm to 6.45 a.m. so that I had plenty of time to get home and change for school. As I was pulling on my jeans, I stepped up onto the bed and studied the picture again. I was trying to see how Grandad had looked when he was younger. I’d only been six when he died and Jack had been twelve. This young, smiling, blond man looked different to the grey-haired, stooping Grandpa I remembered, but there was definitely something about his eyes that was