‘Of course, they were my great-great-great-grandmother’s rubies.’ Sabina paused. ‘Or were they my great-great-great-great-grandmother’s? Either way, people say they were the most stunning jewels this side of India.’
‘What was the whole big deal about them?’ asked Ruby, who of course knew the whole big deal, but her mother liked to explain and Ruby was feeling kind enough to ask.
‘They were flawless – crystal clear and flawless – big too,’ replied her mother. ‘They would have been yours of course, eventually.’ She sighed. ‘They would have gone so well with this Marco Perella dress.’ Sabina was scrutinising herself in her dressing-room mirror.
‘Oh, you don’t need jewels Mom,’ said Ruby. ‘You always knock ’em dead – rubies or no rubies.’
Her mother smiled. ‘So long as I got my little Ruby Redfort,’ she said, hugging Ruby. ‘Who cares about stones?’
Ruby didn’t usually go in for this sort of schmaltzy convo, but tonight, well, tonight her parents had come back from the dead so Ruby was easing up on the teen attitude. She did actually mean every nice word she said, but she also wanted to get out of having to wear the flouncy yellow blouse her mother had picked out for her. It was touch and go as to whether this strategy would work, but it was worth a try.
‘So,’ said Ruby, ‘tell me again, what exactly happened out there?’
‘Oh, come on Rube!’ said her mother laughing. ‘We’ve told you around four times!’
But Ruby couldn’t get enough of the story – she was kind of proud that her parents had survived such a dicey situation. There was of course another reason for wanting to hear it over and over; it was RULE 14: VERY OFTEN PEOPLE NEGLECT TO TELL THE MOST IMPORTANT DETAIL. She’d learned this from Detective Despo; Crazy Cops might just be a TV show, but if you wanted to learn about detective work, then this show was packed with an awful lot of good tips.
‘Well,’ said her father, ‘I woke up to hear that little dog yapping…’
They went through the whole terrifying ordeal again. How, as the pirates started shooting into the water, both of them had escaped the clutches of almost certain death by diving deep down under the boat and holding their breath.
‘The pirates left us for dead, no lifebelts, no nothing,’ said Brant. ‘But we managed to grab onto Ambassador Crew’s luggage. The pirates had thrown it overboard. I think he might have been getting on their nerves; Lester can do that to people.’
‘Yes, we were very lucky with the suitcase,’ said Sabina. ‘It floated beautifully – it’s top-quality luggage, you know. Good luggage is always a good investment. The three of us, that’s Pookie, your father and I, clung on for dear life.’
‘Pookie?’ said Mrs Digby, who had come in to collect the tea things.
‘The yappy dog,’ said Ruby.
‘What kind of creature suits a name like Pookie?’ sniffed the housekeeper.
‘Pookie,’ said Ruby.
‘Well, I pray I don’t meet him,’ said Mrs Digby, picking up a tray and making her way back up to the kitchen.
‘Yes, the three of us managed to paddle towards the Sibling Islands, though why they call them islands I don’t know; they’re nothing like islands, just big old rocks – there’s absolutely no sign of life there. You can’t even climb onto them, unless of course you happen to be Spider-Man.’ Her mother was dusting her nose with powder.
‘But I thought the waters near the Sibling Islands were supposed to be super dangerous, what with the currents and tides and all?’ said Ruby.
‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said her father. ‘But the darnedest thing must have happened – the currents were still, totally still. Something to do with the moon, or is it the stars? I forget what causes it, but something up there.’ He pointed vaguely above him.
Of course, thought Ruby. He wasn’t exactly on the money with his explanation, but it was close enough – the asteroid! YKK 672. She had read somewhere that large asteroids, passing close enough to earth, could modify the local attraction of the moon and stop water currents for as long as the asteroid stayed near the atmosphere.
‘It can last several days, or just a matter of hours, you never can tell,’ continued her father. ‘For just a short window of time the currents calm, and you can actually swim without getting sucked under, and hey presto! Your parents don’t drown!’
‘Yes, were we ever lucky with that!’ said her mother. ‘Your dad and I are excellent swimmers, but no one can swim in the Sibling waters when the currents are strong. What are the chances?’ Her mother grinned and powdered her nose some more. ‘This happens once in a blue moon and we get lucky – who could believe it?’
Ruby could: her parents were born lucky.
‘So how come you know all this info on the tides and currents an’ all?’ asked Ruby.
‘It all comes from his days aboard the Sea Wolf – you remember, your dad worked for that diver guy in Tuscany, Italy?’ said Sabina. ‘Of course, he already had a free-dive scholarship at Stanton too.’
Ruby did remember this, but she had no idea Brant had actually taken any of it on-board – her dad wasn’t exactly the smartest fish in the barrel.
‘I studied under a genuine marine genius. Well actually, I worked for his marine genius co-divers. Francesco Fornetti rarely spoke to me, I was too junior,’ sighed Brant.
‘He was a terrific breath-hold diver,’ said Sabina. ‘Too bad about what happened to him.’
‘Yes, too bad – he knew more about ocean life than just about anyone around,’ added Brant.
‘Why, what happened to him?’ said Ruby. ‘Did he die?’
‘Professionally I guess,’ said her dad.
‘Meaning what?’ asked Ruby.
‘It happened in Twinford actually. We’d seen him a couple of times. We went on… um… a sailing trip with him. Then he started jabbering on about something he’d seen, some weird creature, couldn’t stop going on about it. He got laughed out of the ocean by a bunch of marine life experts. They all said he had gone crazy, swallowed too much saltwater or something,’ said Brant. ‘It was too bad; he just sort of disappeared after that.’
‘Anyway,’ said Sabina excitedly, ‘I just wish he’d been there when we saw the worrying thing in the water. He might have been able to identify it.’
‘What worrying thing in the water?’ asked Ruby. This was a new detail – they hadn’t mentioned the worrying thing in the water before.
‘Well,’ said her mother, ‘there we were, just busy swimming around the Sibling Islands, trying to find fresh water – which you might think impossible.’
‘Fortunately for us, it wasn’t,’ said her father. ‘There was a natural stream that ran down the north side of the north rock into the ocean; we found an old plastic bottle which we filled to the very brim and that’s what saved our lives.’
‘Terrible how people litter,’ said her mother. ‘Although we were very grateful for it at the time – without it we might have perished of thirst.’
‘But what about the thing?’ asked Ruby, impatient for them to get to the point.
‘Oh yes, there was definitely a thing in the water,’ said her father. ‘Pookie heard it – you know what a dog’s hearing is like.’
‘Very sensitive,’ agreed Sabina.