“Oh, per-leeeeze, Mum,” I wheedled. “We’d be dead careful.”
“I mean, if it really is buried treasure, there’s bound to be more down there, isn’t there?” Kenny reasoned. “After all, no one would bury a single ring, would they?”
“It’ll be just like Time Team!” Frankie piped up. “I saw it the other week, right, and they’d found this whole Roman campground that they were digging up. It was soooo cool. They found bits of old Roman wine goblets and parts of old spears and all sorts of cool stuff!”
“Awesome,” Kenny said. “Hey – what if Romans used to live here in your village, Lyndz?”
“What if they lived in your HOUSE?” Fliss breathed excitedly.
My dad burst out laughing. “As this is a Victorian house, I doubt it,” he chuckled. “Fliss, remind me – what century is this again?”
Fliss frowned at him. “Is this a trick question?” she asked suspiciously. “It’s the 21st century of course!”
“Right,” Dad said. “And the Romans were around… when?”
Fliss shrugged. “Erm… about a hundred years ago?” she guessed, looking uncomfortable.
“The Romans were around in the FIRST century,” Dad told her. “Nearly two THOUSAND years ago. Now, I know our house might look two thousand years old, but… ” he joked.
“Dad, do you think this ring could be two thousand years old?” I asked excitedly. “How old might it be?”
Dad peered at it again. “It’s hard to say with gold,” he said, shaking his head. “It ages very well. I very much doubt it’s Roman though, but… ”
“Just think, if we DID find a whole hoard of Roman treasure, we’d be famous,” Rosie said dreamily, completely ignoring my dad. “We’d be on the news and everything.”
“And rich,” I said pointedly. “Weren’t you saying the other night, Mum, that you didn’t know how you were going to pay for the loft extension?”
“Lyndsey, I don’t think your friends need to hear about our money problems,” Mum said with an edge in her voice. She gave me a sharp look over the top of her glasses which said, clear as day, Shut up, Lyndz.
I closed my mouth and looked down. When my mum gives you THAT look, you know it’s best not to argue. But why is it that parents go all weird when you start talking about money? When I’m grown up, I won’t care about how much people earn or how much someone’s house is worth – who’s interested, anyway? I’ve noticed that grown-ups get dead twitchy and secretive about it though. Odd, isn’t it? You’d think they could find something more interesting to get their knickers in a twist over.
I was just starting to think that was going to be the end of any treasure hunting, there and then, when my dad cleared his throat. “Well, maybe it would be worth having another quick look around the ash tree,” he said slowly. “A SUPERVISED quick look under the tree so that no one does any damage to the rose bushes. Or their roots,” he added quickly before my mum could say it.
“YEAHHHH!” I yelled.
“Yay!”, “Result!”, “Nice one, Mr C!” the others cheered.
Mum still didn’t look too thrilled at the idea of us digging up the garden. “Keith, I mean it – if anybody digs up anything they shouldn’t, I really will not be happy… ” she said to my dad warningly, as she started tidying up the newspapers and Spike’s toys.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “You won’t even know we’ve been there. Apart from the huge heap of gold coins and goodies we’re going to bring back with us, of course… ”
“WHOOOPEEEE!” Kenny yelled, bouncing around the kitchen like a mad jack-in-a-box. “Come on – let’s go and dig up that booty – like, NOW!”
“Clever, clever Buster,” I said, stooping down to pat him proudly. “We’re going to be rich and famous – all because of you. You’ll get the biggest, juiciest steak there ever was for being such a good little treasure hunter.”
Mum rolled her eyes. “Now, don’t go making promises you can’t afford to keep, Lyndz,” she said, as we went out the back door.
Luckily, Dad was a bit keener on the idea of treasure than Mum was. He once told me his favourite book when he was a boy was Treasure Island, so he was getting well into the idea. “Right, girls, let’s sort out some digging tools,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Follow me to the shed and we’ll see what we can find.”
Minutes later, we were “all tooled up” as Dad put it. He had Mum’s garden spade, I had my brother Stu’s smaller spade, Kenny and Frankie had trowels and Rosie and Fliss drew the short straw and had to make do with plastic beach spades. “I’ve never seen the Time Team people using bright pink and yellow spades before!” Rosie joked as we went over to the tree.
“That’s ‘cos we’re the cool new version of Time Team,” Frankie said. “Treasure Team!”
Dad chuckled. “Right then, Treasure Team – where did Buster dig up this ’ere ’ighly valuable piece of gold?” he asked.
“Just there,” I said, crouching down and pointing. “See his scratch marks?”
“You know what, if we really ARE going to be like Time Team, we’re going to have to be very careful,” Fliss said solemnly. “They just scrape away at the soil dead gently, don’t they, so they don’t damage or scratch any of the buried treasure in the ground.”
“Oh, let’s just get on with it and get stuck into the digging,” Kenny said impatiently, and then remembered my mum’s warning. “Er… Very carefully, of course… ”
“Fliss, if by any remote chance there does happen to be Roman treasure down there, we’ll be scraping away at the soil for weeks before we get to it,” Dad pointed out. “It won’t be lying just under the surface, will it?”
“And remember, Mum’s just dug up loads of this flowerbed and she wasn’t scraping gently at all,” I added. “So it might be a bit late to start all that now.”
“All right, all right,” Fliss said huffily, her cheeks going a bit pink. “I just think, if we’re going to do this, we may as well do it properly, that’s all, but if you all think you know better, then… ”
“Let’s get going, then,” Frankie said, before Fliss could get too carried away. “And anything we find gets split equally, yeah?”
“After we’ve bought Buster’s steak, yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s get to work!”
So the great garden dig-up began. At first, we were all dead excited about what we might find, and started talking about what we’d spend our riches on. Fliss was going to have a wild shopping weekend in London with her mum (of course). Kenny fancied an adventure holiday bungee jumping and snowboarding in New Zealand. I was going to set up an animal welfare centre. Rosie wanted to buy a posh new house for her mum and Frankie was going to take her family on holiday to Florida so she could go to the Epcot Centre and the NASA space station. Dad said he was going to take Mum away on a romantic holiday and leave us kids to fend for ourselves for a few weeks. I think he was joking…
Then a scream came from Fliss. “Oh, oh, ugh, GROSS!!” she squealed, dropping her spade as if it was burning hot, and leaping away.
“What’s up? Is it the dead woman’s hand?” Kenny asked eagerly, coming to have a look at what Fliss had found.
Fliss shuddered and closed her eyes. “A worm! A worm!” she moaned dramatically. “It was wriggling on my spade and everything!”
“Oh, FLISS,” I said, going over to pick it up. “You’ve