بچه‌ها

Chapter fourteen

The Kids

It was two weeks later. The four friends had given their project about Lychford Green airfield to Mrs Tinker. She had been very pleased with it.

‘You’ve found out so much,’ she had said. ‘A lot of your facts surprised me. And they surprised Mr Ballard at the museum too. No one knew how the Ops Room was organized.’

Now the kids were sitting in Regan’s garden. The American girl was reading an article in the Lychford Gazette.

‘Listen to this,’ she said. ‘The newspaper says, “Terry Bowles, the owner of Facelift Construction, heard the children shouting. He went down into the Ops Room to save them.” That isn’t true!’

‘He didn’t come to save us. He wanted to get the diamonds,’ Frankie said. ‘But Glen stopped him!’

‘The paper doesn’t say anything about Glen,’ Jack said. ‘And we didn’t either. We couldn’t, could we?’

‘No,’ Tom replied. ‘Mrs Tinker doesn’t believe in ghosts. But we do - and Terry Bowles does too!’

‘The next part is terrible,’ Regan said. She read from the newspaper again. ‘It says, “Terry Bowles saved the young people - he is a hero. But his grandfather wasn’t a hero - he was a traitor! Mr Bowles found his grandfather’s diary. Squadron Leader Alfred Leighbridge-Smith had been working for the Germans. He was a spy. And he was in charge of lots of other spies. The Germans had given him a bag of diamonds. He was going to pay his spies with them.” Well that part is true! But listen to this! “Mr Bowles will not keep the diamonds. He is going to use them for Lychford. He is going to build a museum under the airfield. It will make Lychford famous! Mr Bowles is a hero!” That’s what it says! The article is wrong! Terry Bowles is not a hero,’ Regan shouted suddenly. She threw the newspaper onto the ground.

‘Glen was the hero,’ Jack said.

‘Yes, and Glen is happy now. I’m glad about that,’ Regan said. ‘And we’ve told Florrie Skinner the truth about the crash. I’m glad about that too. Glen tried to save the evacuees. He died because he tried to save them. He wanted us to help him rest. And now, he can rest.’

‘We’ll always remember him,’ Frankie said - ‘And we’ll always remember those poor children.’

Regan looked at her friends for half a minute. Then she took an envelope from her pocket.

‘Florrie gave me this,’ she said.

Regan took a small picture from the envelope - a photo of four children. There were a few words written on the back of it: THE KIDS - AUGUST, 1940.

The friends looked at the old picture of the four young evacuees. In the photo, they were standing close together. The two boys had fair hair. One of the girls was very pretty. She had fair hair. The other girl was younger and shorter. Her hair was long and dark.

‘It’s us,’ Regan whispered. ‘We are those children! Florrie Skinner didn’t see the ghosts of the evacuees in the underground room that day. She saw us!’

For a moment, everything was quiet. Then suddenly, a plane roared across the sky above them. It was a Spitfire!