The Secret of the Lonely Isles

Cover

Also by Joanne van Os

Title Page

Copyright

Imprint Page

Dedication

Map

The Daggiest House in the Bay

Green Ant Bombs

Ella

Old and Precious Things

A Carved Wooden Box

Sailing

You Can Trust a Boat

Suspicion, a robbery, and a map

Whirlpool

Finding Jack Tremayne

A Silver Knife

Coming Home

Author's Note

Acknowledgements

Have you read Brumby Plains and Castaway?

About the author

The daggiest house in the Bay, that was how people talked about the Isherwood House. It squatted beside its spruced-up neighbours like a big shaggy mongrel at a pedigree dog show. The Isherwood House had survived white ants, a war, cyclones and generations of children. It had survived the disapproval of its fussy neighbours. But whether it would survive another door-slamming like the one that had just rattled all its windows, was a good question.

‘I HATE YOU!!' shouted a tall skinny girl as she
flung herself down the back stairs and across the lawn to the garden shed, sending brown and white chickens flapping out of her path. She slammed the door of the garden shed too, and a pane of glass fell out and smashed onto the concrete step below. The chickens clucked nervously at each other. A boy poked his head out of a granny flat beneath the house. He stared after the girl for a moment, and went back inside.

‘What was all that racket?' said his grandmother, who lived in the flat.

‘Just Maddy,' he said, picking up the dice from the snakes and ladders game on the table. He didn't know what was going on with his sister. She seemed to get angry for no reason these days. Most of the time it was a good idea to stay out of her way. She'd obviously had a fight with their mother again. He rolled the dice, and moved his counter up a ladder on the board.

‘Your turn, Neenie,' he said, handing the dice to the old woman.

Jeremy Isherwood was thirteen years old and he was doomed. He was doomed to being the shortest kid in his family, and the shortest kid in his class, and he was doomed to play snakes and ladders with his dotty old grandmother for the rest of his life.

‘She'll be in trouble for breaking that glass,' said Neenie, shaking her head. Jem stared at her. Today
was a good day. She was making sense. She was even beating him at snakes and ladders. Neenie was short for Irene, her real name. When her first grandchild had tried to say ‘Irene' it had come out as ‘Neenie', and the name had stuck.

The Isherwood House was the last daggy house in the Bay mostly because of Neenie. Real estate agents prowled around the place, hoping to get it off the old lady for a good price so they could make a fortune turning it into a block of flats. Or they did, until Neenie tipped a bucket of fish guts over the last one and chased him off the property with her half-blind old blue heeler, Rambo. That was a couple of years ago. Now, thought Jem, on the right day, a smart salesman'd get the place off her for a bag of lollies. They poked their flyers through the letterbox, but the story about the fish guts had remained in people's memories because they never came to the door. They obviously didn't know that Neenie didn't go fishing any more.

Neenie dropped the dice into her cup, and stirred it with a teaspoon.

Uh oh, looks like the game's over, thought Jem.

Neenie stirred the dice a few more times, sipped the tea, and said, ‘I'll make Grandpa some breakfast. He's gone to get the paper.'

Jem nodded. His grandfather had died five years ago. It looked like today wasn't a good day after all.

‘Give me the cup, Neenie. I need to wash it up now.'

Neenie looked surprised but she gave him the cup and then stood up. ‘I'm going to have a little sleep,' she announced, and headed off to her bedroom.

Jem let himself out of the flat, and closed the door softly behind him. He climbed up the stairs and went into the kitchen where his mother was folding up a basket of washing.

‘Neenie's off with the fairies again. But she's having a sleep now,' he said, getting some cold water out of the fridge. His mother nodded, and kept folding towels.

‘What's the matter with Maddy?' he asked.

‘There's a party she wants to go to next week, and I won't let her,' said his mother. Karen Isherwood was almost forty, but looked younger, in spite of tired lines etched around her eyes. Jem thought she looked okay – for a mum. She wore her light brown hair twisted in a knot on top of her head, and bits of hair fell down around her face in a kind of comfortable messiness. She had the same slight build as Jem, but she was taller than him.

Jem grunted, and drank the water. He couldn't understand what the fuss was about. He could think
of a million things he'd rather do than go to a stupid party. Like take Mango out for a gallop.

‘I'm gunna go and feed the horses,' he said.

Jem's family had moved into the Isherwood House, as it was locally known, only a few months ago. Before that, they had lived on a small farm about sixty kilometres south of Darwin, where they grew mangoes. Karen and Steve Isherwood had built the homestead themselves out of rammed earth and mud brick. They grew most of their own food, kept a few cattle and goats for meat and milk, and made a comfortable living. The price of mangoes was good and for a few years they did well. But times were getting tough. The cost of diesel for the tractor, the generator and the four-wheel drive had skyrocketed, and so had the cost of everything else. Then the mango market became oversupplied – there were too many producers and lots of cheap imports, and the prices had crashed.

To keep the family going, Steve had taken a job in the mines, flying hundreds of kilometres away to work three weeks on, one week off, repairing the massive ore trucks, while Karen went back to teaching art at the local high school. Jem missed his dad like crazy, and was mortified to have his mother teaching at his
school, but otherwise life had gone on much as before. Then there was an accident at the mine, and everything had changed.

Steve lost his right leg, and had very little movement in his left one. When he came out of hospital, Jem barely recognised him. It wasn't because he was in a wheelchair. It was the dead, defeated look in his eyes that was new. Steve Isherwood was Jem's hero, the man who could do anything, and did it with a smile and a joke. Jem always felt that it didn't matter what happened – if his dad was there, it'd be okay. Now he felt as if the steering wheel had fallen off his whole life.

When Steve was ready to come home, Karen knew they couldn't stay out at the farm. He needed constant therapy, and that meant living closer to the hospital in Darwin. Neenie, Steve's mother, was also growing old and frail and needed looking after, so Karen decided that the family would move to the city. She rented out the farm, and they all moved into the Isherwood House. Not only was it close to the hospital, it was the only house in the whole town that had its own private lift. Grandpa Isherwood had it installed when he couldn't climb the stairs any longer, and his daughters were pressuring him and Neenie to move into a little ground-floor unit somewhere.

‘Only way you'll get me out of here is in a box!' he'd shouted at them. So he got onto one of his engineering mates, and they constructed a lift on the outside of the house, just big enough to take a person in a wheelchair. Steve hated the lift. He hated the wheelchair too. In fact, thought Jem, his father seemed to hate everything in the whole world. He yelled at everyone for the slightest reason, and if he wasn't yelling, he was looking desperate.

The only good thing about moving to town was that they'd been able to take their horses and Jem's dog. Changing schools and leaving friends behind had been difficult, but at least he still had Mango, and his little Staffordshire terrier, Bill.

Jem found his brother Tyler in the family room, sprawled on the floor in front of the television. Although he was a year younger than Jem, Tyler was the taller of the two. Jem kicked his brother's foot.

‘Ty. C'mon. Let's take the horses out.'

They rode their bikes down the road to where Karen had rented a large paddock for the family's four horses. Zac, the boy who lived next door, and who was Tyler's best mate, came with them. Zac Martin spent so much time at the Isherwood House that Neenie sometimes got confused and thought he was one of her grandchildren.

‘You might as well be,' Karen would say, grinning at him. ‘You practically live here.'

She didn't mind, of course. Zac was easy to get along with, and he treated Neenie just like his own grandma. Lately Zac had been spending a lot more time at their house because his parents had separated, and he didn't like being at home much any more. Zac's mother owned the paddock where their horses were kept, and Zac's own pony was there as well.

Catching Jem's little brown mare Mango and Zac's skewbald pony Nemo was easy, but Tyler's pony Turtle took a little longer. He danced out of reach for a few minutes until they cornered him, using Mango to block his escape route, and then he good-naturedly submitted to being caught and saddled. Maddy's horse, a tall rangy gelding named Jackson, and Karen's Archer, a beautiful chestnut thoroughbred, came over to investigate. Jem patted them both and promised them an outing next time. They walked their three horses slowly out of the gate and ambled along a quiet shady road towards the beach.

‘Race ya!' yelled Tyler as they angled down the slope onto the beach. It was deserted, so they nudged the horses into a gallop, and gave them their heads. They tore along the sand, whooping and yelling like lunatics until the rocky headland at the far end turned them into
the sea and they splashed to a panting, sweating halt. The horses blew and snorted, pretending to be spooked by the tiny waves and the sparkling water.

‘Man, I wish we could swim them,' sighed Tyler.

‘Wanna get stung by a jellyfish? No way bro, I'm not goin' in that water.' Zac shook his head and shivered. ‘Me granddad saw a croc here last week he reckons.'

Zac's grandfather was a respected old Aboriginal man whose family had lived in the town for generations. The Martin family had supplied the country with several A-grade footballers and hockey players, and Martins had lived in the house next door even longer than Isherwoods had lived in theirs.

Jem looked at the calm blue water. He never really felt comfortable in the sea. He would take Mango in for a swim when the weather was cool and the deadly box jellyfish were gone, but he didn't like it much. Rivers, creeks, swimming pools – they were fine. There was just something about all that wide expanse of salt water that made him nervous.

They turned out of the water and walked the horses slowly back along the beach. Mango tossed her head and snorted in the way that meant she was feeling good. Jem felt alive and tingling, and smiled for the first time in days. ‘Man I'm so glad we've got these guys here. Woulda been so bad if we had to leave 'em behind, ay?'

Tyler nodded. He rubbed his horse's neck, looked up and down the beach and out to sea, and said, ‘Whaddya reckon's gunna happen? With Dad, I mean.'

Jem felt the good tingly feeling ebb away and the smile fell from his face.

Tyler went on. ‘If he can learn to walk on that steel leg he'll be all right, won't he? And his arm'll get better, won't it?'

Jem felt like yelling, ‘How the hell would I know? I'm just a kid!' But Tyler's face was about ready to crack up into pieces, so instead he said, ‘He'll be all right. Just takes time, that's all. We better get these horses fed, anyway.' He kicked Mango into a canter, and Tyler and Zac followed on his heels.

As they rode their bikes back in through the gate, they could hear Maddy yelling again. Why did everyone have to yell, he thought, putting his bike in the shed. He lingered outside for a while, feeding Bill and filling up his water bowl. He sat at the bottom of the steps with the younger boys, scratching Bill behind the ears and listening to the row. Tyler and Zac looked at each other and shrugged, then went upstairs to find something to eat.

‘Why NOT? It's not fair!' Maddy was in the downstairs laundry yelling at her mum. ‘Everyone ELSE is allowed to go except ME!'

The downstairs laundry was bigger than most houses' living rooms. It sat behind Neenie's little flat, and besides being the place where the laundry was done, it was also Karen's studio. It was where she painted when she had time. An easel stood in a patch of light near the window, with a table full of jars and tubes of paints beside it.

‘You're too young to be going to a party where there's grog and young men and –'

‘No I'm not!' Maddy shouted. ‘Even Aleisha's allowed to go!'

‘Aleisha's parents are away and you know it. Her sister shouldn't be letting her go either.'

‘It's not fair! I'll be sixteen soon and I'm responsible and I'm not gunna do anything stupid.' Maddy was almost in tears.

‘Maddy, you won't be sixteen for another nine months. I know you wouldn't do anything stupid but I can't let you go to a party where there's no adult supervision, and that's that. I'm sorry, but I'm
not
changing my mind.'

Maddy opened and closed her mouth a few times, burst into tears and charged out of the room, almost knocking Jem over as she crashed past him up the stairs. Jem shook his head, and went into the laundry.

Karen Isherwood sighed and turned back to the
painting in front of her. She picked up a brush and slashed at the easel, frowning and biting her lip. Jem looked over her shoulder.