Arabella and the Pirates Read online

  Arabella and the Pirates

  Naomi Jessica Rose

  Copyright © 2018 Naomi Jessica Rose

  Cover illustration copyright © 2018 Ellis Rose

  All rights reserved.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Ellis and Ivan for listening to story ideas, to Danny K for the loan of a notion about fathers and chickens and to Mrs Frost for her enthusiastic support.

  Contents

  Arabella and the Pirates

  Acknowledgements

  Contents

  Chapter One: Neria

  Chapter Two: Flo

  Chapter Three: The Black Cat

  Chapter Four: The Henrietta

  Chapter Five: Louis

  Chapter Six: Polly

  Chapter Seven: Jackanna

  Chapter Eight: Ham

  Chapter Nine: Jam

  Chapter Ten: Neshkapur

  Chapter Eleven: The Karnivasi Diamond

  Chapter Twelve: The House of Thieves

  Chapter Thirteen: The Chase in the Night

  Chapter Fourteen: The Island

  Chapter Fifteen: The Ghost in the Cave

  Chapter One: Neria

  Arabella hadn’t always lived in the same house but she couldn’t remember any of the others so she might as well have. It seemed strange to be putting all her things into boxes so heartlessly. Caitlin had said to throw away most everything and only keep the stuff she really wanted. That was easy. Arabella wasn’t particularly interested in things and she didn’t have many anyway. She finished filling boxes and black bin bags and sat on the floor looking at her room as it was now; empty of anything personal. She partly didn’t like it, and partly didn’t care.

  “Oh no, Mousie! You can’t take all that stuff!”

  Arabella pricked up her ears. Of course, it was easy for her, but not so much for Mouse, her little brother, who had countless stuffed toy animal friends, not to mention an enormous library. He wasn’t going to want to part with any of it.

  But Mouse wouldn’t say anything. Not when Caitlin was being so crisp and cheery and especially not when Neria was away. Arabella got up and opened her bedroom door, looking down the stairs to where her mother was stood outside Mouse’s little bedroom on the first floor landing.

  “It’s not that I don’t want you to have them,” Caitlin was saying. “But we won’t have room in the flat. You’re not going to have your own bedroom any more.”

  “What do you mean?” Arabella called down. “Do you mean I have to share a bedroom with Mouse? You never said that before! Why can’t I share with Neria?” It probably wasn’t a good idea to shout like that, but she couldn’t help it.

  “Oh goodness Arabella, you are a silly billy! Neria isn’t coming with us! There’s only one bedroom in the flat, I thought I’d said. I’m sure I said! One bedroom for you and Mouse to share while your poor old mother has to sleep on the sofa.”

  Arabella suddenly felt the walls whirl around her so that she had to sit down where she was, on the stairs. How could Neria not be coming? It was bad enough that they had to pack up and leave everything just because of what Caitlin wanted, but if Neria wasn’t coming Arabella knew she wouldn’t be able to stand it.

  “I really don’t understand why you children aren’t more excited,” Caitlin went on. “We’re going to live at the seaside! It’ll be like being on holiday all the time.”

  “But why can’t Neria come too?” Arabella asked desperately.

  “She could if she wanted to. She doesn’t. She wants to stay with her dad, that’s reasonable isn’t it?”

  What about my dad? Arabella thought. But she didn’t say it. Caitlin would just laugh at her, and call him ‘Charlie the chicken’ like she always did. Charlie was one of the reasons Arabella felt so strange about going. She hadn’t seen him for months and months, but he always turned up in the end. She’d give up wondering where he’d got to and then there he’d be. When they moved all that way away, hundreds of miles to Cornwall, she would probably never see him again, ever.

  “So you can have one box of toys and one box of books.” Caitlin had turned her attention back to Mouse. “If you hurry up we’ll have time to take the rest of them to the charity shop.” She turned on her heel and danced off down the stairs to get back to packing up the kitchen.

  Arabella watched Mouse sidle back into his room. She was still sat on the stairs, too weak to get up. She couldn’t see her brother’s face, but he didn’t usually wear much of an expression anyway.

  “I think we’ve done very well,” Caitlin said. “We deserve this.”

  They were eating take-away pizza, sat at the table together. They never usually had take-away pizza; usually it was too expensive. They never sat at the table together either, since it was generally piled with stuff and inaccessible. Now it was completely clear; the whole house was. Arabella didn’t think she liked it, but Neria was back now, and nothing was ever as bad when Neria was there.

  Arabella looked shyly at her sister who was shovelling in pizza and laughing just as if nothing strange was happening at all, and how could she?

  Neria had always been the perfect sister, tall and strong and beautiful, and kind and clever too. She always had time to listen and time to play; she had the best ideas for things to do and the answers to everyone’s problems. Neria had to come with them, she just had to! Arabella was suddenly determined to persuade her, but she couldn’t do it now. She would have to wait until it was just the two of them.

  “Don’t you like your pizza, Mouse?” Neria asked.

  “Well I do,” Mouse said, “only I’m not very hungry.”

  Mouse had nibbled just a tiny corner of his pizza. Arabella was amazed. Mouse did like pizza, and this pizza was heavenly, all oozing cheese and stuffed crust. She had eaten so much herself she felt sick.

  “I don’t know what’s up with these kids Neria,” Caitlin said. “One not eating and the other sat there with a face like a wet week. What am I supposed to do with them? Take them to live at the seaside; you’d think they’d be grateful!”

  “It’s a big change that’s all,” Neria said, smiling. “They’ll get used to it. And anyway it’s late. Mousie needs to go to bed. I’ll take him up and then me and my little sis are going for a walk to the park. You up for that AB?”

  They usually took the football with them when they went to the park, but the football was packed. Arabella didn’t care. They didn’t talk at all as they walked along. This is the last time, Arabella told herself; we’ll never go to the park again.

  She ran off ahead, unable to deal with any of it, to the roundabout, pushing it round and round with all her strength and finally flinging herself on and lying there gasping for breath while the whole world spun about her.

  “What’s wrong Babybel?” Neria was there when the roundabout stopped.

  “What do you think? We’re moving to miles and miles away and you’re not coming!”

  “I know,” Neria said. And she sat down on the roundabout too. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “You could come with us! Why can’t you?”

  Neria laughed. “Because I’m halfway through my A levels, that’s why. And because my papa needs me.”

  “But what about after you finish your A levels? Can’t you come then?”

  “I’ll come to visit, of course I will, but I don’t know what I’m going to do when I’ve finished school. That’s my life, isn’t it? I would have left home then anyway! Papa’s going to take me to Ghana to see all of our family next year and then I might go to university, I don’t know.” Neria smiled. “Maybe I’ll run away and become a pirate and then I can cross the ocean to visit you!”

  “It isn’t a jo
ke!” said Arabella.

  “All right, if you want,” Neria said. “But it isn’t the end of the world either.”

  “Yes it is!” Arabella shouted. “You don’t understand and you don’t even care!” She jumped up and ran away in no particular direction. It didn’t matter where she went did it? But Neria came after her, and Neria could run like the wind. Arabella found herself caught and held tight.

  “I’m sorry AB, I really am,” Neria said. “I tried to talk her out of it but she wouldn’t listen.”

  This was better. Arabella could feel her heart pounding and she could feel Neria’s heart pounding too. But at least her sister was being honest now.

  “You’re tough. You’ll be fine,” Neria whispered.

  Chapter Two: Flo

  “Look, there’s Sienna and Rachel! We can spy on them!”

  Arabella could see Sienna and Rachel, two girls from her new class in her new school. She looked at Flo and tried to work out what she was talking about.

  The reason they had come to this particular seaside town in Cornwall was because it was where Lucy lived. Lucy had been Caitlin’s best friend once upon a time. The two of them had travelled together and got lost together; had countless hilarious adventures that Caitlin loved to relate and Arabella had never properly listened to. It had all happened so long ago, it seemed like it might have been in another world, or made up, and besides, she had never met Lucy, not till now. Flo was Lucy’s daughter, almost exactly the same age as Arabella.

  “You and Flo will end up being best friends like we were best friends!” Caitlin had said.

  But Arabella knew somehow that that would never happen. She had seen pictures of Flo enough to know it; Flo in her cheerleader tops and little skirts with her hair pulled up in a high ponytail, grinning.

  “They look like they’re going to Jeremy’s house; he lives down there,” Flo whispered. “Jeremy was Sienna’s boyfriend, but they split up.”

  There was nothing wrong with Flo exactly; she was perfectly nice, full of energy and always busy. She liked tidying her bedroom and practising dance routines, making dozens and dozens of tiny fairy cakes decorated with flowers and giving them to her friends in cunning little boxes she had also made. It all turned Arabella’s head into a spin like a washing machine. Flo liked gossiping about everyone at school, and, it seemed, spying on them, whatever that entailed, and she wasn’t the least bit interested in football.

  “Girls don’t play football at our school,” she had said, laughing. “Why would you want to?”

  Arabella hadn’t particularly liked her old school, but she had never been to any other, so she had nothing to compare it to. Now she ached for it. And Flo was right about girls and football. At her old school Arabella had been in the girls’ football team and had spent most of her playtimes and lunchtimes practising. The new school didn’t have a girls’ football team, and when she tried to play with the boys, none of them would pass to her so she gave up. Without football, Arabella found she didn’t know how to make friends.

  “They didn’t go to Jeremy’s house at all!” Flo said excitedly. She had skipped off after those other girls and was now back and breathless. “They went up the steps to the top road and I don’t know why they would go there. What do you think?”

  Arabella didn’t think anything.

  Flo looked at her hopefully for maybe twenty seconds and then sighed. “Oh well,” she said. “I suppose we’d better catch up with your mum.”

  Caitlin’s friend Lucy turned out to be nice enough. She was small with short grey hair and glasses and she and Caitlin seemed to want to stay up late into the night drinking wine and talking about entirely incomprehensible things while their children waited, wilting and bored, to be allowed to go home or simply to bed. Lucy and Flo lived in a lovely little cottage with a sea view but it was expensive; so much so that Lucy had to work all the time to pay for it, squinting at her computer and tapping away on the keyboard, writing things. She didn’t have time in the day to do anything with Flo, so Flo tagged along with Arabella and her family, happy and chirpy and eager to help.

  “Look at that light!” Caitlin said.

  Arabella looked. The sunlight twinkling, a million points of light on the gently dancing waves over and between the rocks. The sea was like forever. You could get lost wondering if you looked for too long. Mouse liked it too; it was more his sort of thing really than Arabella’s, full of stories like the books he was always reading.

  Caitlin got one of her cameras out of its case and began clicking away. She might be ages, but it didn’t matter. Caitlin had been unstoppably excited and filled with feverish energy since they’d moved into the flat. Since before they’d moved really, Arabella remembered. Rushing around taking pictures; obsessively editing, printing and framing; marching in and out of the many shops and galleries looking for places to sell them.

  “Come and try this dance step Arabella,” called Flo. “It’s an easy one!”

  “No time for that!” said Caitlin. She had got all the shots she wanted, seemingly. “We need to get down to that cave before the tide comes in.”

  The cave was something else Arabella had stopped bothering to listen to her mother going on and on about. Caitlin had dragged them all around town and up and down the beach for weeks now, when they weren’t in school. Arabella felt her feet might be worn away with all the walking, but they hadn’t yet visited the cave; it was further along the shore than they had been before. Even more walking.

  But it turned out to be worth it. Going from the bright warm daylight of early autumn into that cold, dripping mysteriousness was like magic. The floor was sandy to start with, but then there were steps down, a staircase carved out of the rock and everything glowing blue and gold, lit up by lights put there for those summer tourists who were almost all gone now.

  At the bottom of the steps there was a turquoise pool that disappeared into darkness and a little boat sat tied to a jetty.

  “Do you know how to row?” Arabella asked Flo.

  “We can’t take that boat, it’s not ours! And anyway it isn’t safe without a guide.” Flo’s voice echoed strangely; she was shivering and rubbing her arms. There were dozens of boats in the harbour in town; boats of all shapes and sizes, and Arabella was fascinated by them but Flo didn’t seem to know anything about sailing, or to want to either.

  “Well let’s explore the land bit,” Arabella said.

  There were so many corners and crannies, any of which might be a tunnel or the mouth of another cavernous chamber. Away from the light the possibilities were endless. She wandered that way, pulling a reluctant Flo with her, down the slippery rock where there appeared to be a yawning chasm, infinite blackness. Arabella crouched down to feel the edge of it for a way down.

  “We shouldn’t!” said Flo. “There’s a ghost!”

  “I heard that story too. The ghost of a young boy, isn’t that right?” Arabella was startled by her mother’s voice, much nearer than she expected.

  “He climbed down here and got stuck, that’s what they say,” said Flo. “In the end they found his bones, a little pile of them. And in the winter you can hear him calling.” Flo’s voice had gone all deep and solemn, or maybe it was the echoes in the cave made it sound that way. “He’s supposed to say, ‘Why don’t you talk to me any more?’ Like he wants people to come and sit here talking, only if they do he’ll drag them off into the hole after him!”

  Arabella heard a sharp intake of breath from someone and turned round. She’d completely forgotten Mouse was there since he’d crept along so silently. And that story wasn’t the kind Mouse liked. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she said firmly.

  “Reenie said she heard him once,” said Flo. Reenie was another girl from school. Flo shivered again. “I wouldn’t come down here in the winter anyway.”

  Arabella woke up for no reason. It was the middle of the night, dark, or it seemed like that at first. She heard shuffling from Mouse’s bed, not very far away in
the little room they had to share. And there was light too, she realised, shining through Mouse’s duvet which was over his head.

  “What are you doing awake?” Arabella whispered.

  “Reading,” said Mouse, poking his head out and letting the light from his torch out with it. Mouse was only six but he could read almost as well as Arabella, and he practised much more.

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “Don’t want to.”

  Arabella knew it was because of the ghost. Mouse didn’t want to think about the ghost or dream about it. But if she brought it up it would surely only make things worse, and telling Caitlin would make it double worse. It was the kind of impossible problem Neria could always fix. Mouse put his duvet back over his head and Arabella listened to the rustling of pages turning until she fell back to sleep herself.

  Chapter Three: The Black Cat

  The fishing boats had all gone out hours ago, but there were plenty of other boats to look at. It was the weekend. Arabella watched enviously as a family set the sails of their yacht ready for a voyage. There were children in the water in dinghies too, and further out in the bay she could see a school of kayaks and a man standing tall over his paddleboard. The yacht and the dinghies were all modern fibre-glass things, but some of the moored boats were older; made of wood and painted in bright colours once upon a time. Arabella liked those ones better and Caitlin liked them too, taking seemingly endless photos and exclaiming about the light and the reflections. But no-one ever said anything about Arabella or Mouse getting in any kind of boat themselves. Learning to sail cost money and of course they didn’t have any of that.

  “Arabella, where are you?” Caitlin’s voice rang across the rocky walls of the harbour.

  Arabella started guiltily. She’d begged to be allowed to wait outside the shop, standing dutifully by the wall looking out across the bay but had somehow been drawn away to the boats even though she knew her mother didn’t like her being by the water on her own.