All She Wants for Christmas

Kat snapped her mobile shut. ‘Anna told Marcie’s sister that Josh has been playing with Simon, but that they wouldn’t let her join in. Apparently they were digging for something at one point but Anna’s pretty drowsy and isn’t saying when.’

Beth dropped the Wellingtons onto the floor. Digging. What were those pages from the internet she had seen? She ran back to Josh’s room and snatched them up from the desk. Plan of a Roman Bath. Excavating a Roman Ruin. James had said something about Josh having insisted that he had found some pieces of Roman pottery the other day.

She picked up the pieces of dirty clay from the puzzle box. Surely these couldn’t have anything on them that would have hurt Josh? She sniffed at them tentatively, not really sure what she was trying to find, and put them back into the box. There had to be something more obvious than this.

Perhaps it was something else. Some kind of infection, maybe. But Matt didn’t think so, and Beth trusted his judgement.

If it was poison, it was up to her to find it, and her instinct told her that it wasn’t inside the house.

Beth grabbed Matt’s car keys from where she had left them on Josh’s desk, and ran to his car, taking the lantern-style torch she had seen in there from the boot. Back in the kitchen, she pulled on the coat and boots and stuffed her phone, a pair of rubber gloves and some plastic bags into the pocket.

‘Very stylish.’ Kat was grinning at her. ‘Going into the garden?’

‘Yeah. Give me a shout if you hear anything.’

‘Will do.’

Beth hurried past the spot where she and Matt had been together, just a few short minutes ago, taking the opportunity to curse herself again for her stupidity. Nothing good was going to come of it. Nothing good had come of it. He’d been out there kissing her when he should have been at Josh’s bedside.

Her phone vibrated and the small screen told her that she had a text from Matt. Thank goodness. If he had the time to send a text then things couldn’t be that bad.

Arrived hospital. Any news? M

She sent her answer quickly. Ask James where Josh digging for roman pottery.

Gripping her phone, Beth worked her way down to where the hole for the pond was being dug, wishing that she had thought to put find a pair of thick socks to put on. Marcie’s feet were a size bigger than hers, and her stockinged feet were slipping backwards and forwards in the boots, making it difficult to walk on the uneven ground.

Her phone vibrated again. Ten feet beyond pond. To the left. James was with Josh and Simon when they were digging.

It was unlikely that they’d found anything dangerous, then. Beth swung the beam of the torch to the left and saw some areas of disturbance. There were some small pits, where Josh had been digging, and she carefully examined the area for anything that looked as if it might be the cause of Josh’s illness. There was nothing.

She swung her torch around. There was some grass, a few scrubby bushes, but nothing that was either edible or poisonous. James would have rooted up anything that was that dangerous.

Beth almost cried out with frustration. What now? The garage lights were on and she could see men in there, looking around. It seemed that every part of the property had been covered and no one had found anything. Beth sank to her knees, feeling a trickle of water run into one boot. She had to think.

Of course she had to think, but not like an adult. She had to think the way that Josh did, look at things through the eyes of an eight-year-old. And she had to take a leaf from Matt’s book, too, and not even consider the possibility of failure.

Okay, so what did she know? Josh had been digging at the end of the garden for what he thought was a Roman ruin. He’d been interested enough to go onto the internet and find out something about his subject. He had a penknife in his pocket and had collected pieces of pottery, stones, feathers…

Feathers! That could be nothing to do with a Roman ruin—Josh was old enough to know that. What did that mean? Suddenly light dawned. Jack had been talking to Josh last week about Robin Hood, and the two had been running around Marcie’s kitchen, pretending to fire arrows at each other, until Marcie had called a halt to the game.

Beth swung the beam of her torch along the back fence and found what she was looking for. A hole, too small for an adult to squeeze through but big enough for a boy. Beyond the fence was open land and a shortcut through an area of woodland down to the main road.

She scrambled over to the fence. She could fit through the hole—just about. Beth dropped to her hands and knees and wriggled through, feeling her dress catch and tear on something.

Beth moved the torch beam around in a semi-circle. Up against the fence, there was a collection of old planks and branches, which formed a small shelter. This was Josh’s work. He had not just been engaged in digging for pottery, he had been doing some construction of his own. It was his own make-believe woodsman’s shelter, an eight-year-old boy’s version of something that Robin Hood might have built.

She walked carefully over to it and peered inside. There was a threadbare blanket, rolled up in the corner, wet from having lain on the ground. An old pot from Marcie’s kitchen, a tin of baked beans and a metal tea caddy that Beth remembered Marcie throwing away some months ago. She could just imagine Josh here, playing in his own make-believe world. She reached in and picked up the tea caddy, opening it up.

It was empty. Tears of relief sprung to Beth’s eyes and then she realised that she was no further towards finding anything. She swung the torch back and forth, looking for anything that might give some clue as to what had happened here.

‘Stupid!’ She signed to herself vehemently. Josh wouldn’t be standing out here, he would be sitting inside the shelter that he had taken so much trouble to build.

Crawling on her hands and knees, gripping her phone as if it was a lifeline, Beth squeezed into the tiny space and sat down, planting the lantern torch in front of her. Reaching over to sort through the little cache of supplies, she felt something brush against her face, and when she leaned back, she saw two bare branches bent into the shape of bows, with pieces of garden twine for bowstrings.

The branches had been stripped bare, probably with the penknife she’d found, so it was difficult to see what type of bush they came from, but she took no chances. Pulling the rubber gloves from her pocket, she put them on and carefully unhooked one of the bows from where it was fixed to the ceiling of the shelter and examined it.

It could be yew, and it would be just like Josh to try and use the right type of wood if he was making a bow. And from what she remembered, practically every part of the yew bush was poisonous and could produce exactly the symptoms that Josh was suffering from.