Eva Ibbotson - Island of the Aunts

Meanwhile in London, Minette’s parents and Fabio’s grandparents had called a meeting to complain about the police and the feeble way they were handling their case. The superintendent had told the Danbys and the Mountjoys that there was a possible lead on the children’s whereabouts and having some hope again brought out all their disagreeableness.

The meeting took place in the Mountjoys’ cold house with the brass gong in the hall and the portraits of dead Mountjoys on the wall. The Mountjoys didn’t like the look of Mrs Danby, who was as usual chain-smoking and wearing a blouse which showed more than they thought was right. They liked Professor Danby a bit better because he was stern and gloomy like themselves. But the main point of the meeting wasn’t to make friends, it was to complain.

“If you ask me, the police are too busy finding homes for dirty tramps and mollycoddling the unemployed to do their job properly,” said old Mr Mountjoy.

He had decided not to send for Hubert-Henry’s family after all. His wife had been having nightmares about Indians with poisoned arrows ambushing her in her bed, and her heart was not strong.

Professor Danby agreed. “Even when they find the kidnappers I expect they’ll just send them to prison. In the old days they’d have been hung, and rightly so.”

The Mountjoys nodded their heads. “It is absolutely shocking the way this case has been dealt with. Outrageous.”

They decided to complain to their Member of Parliament, and Professor Danby said he would insist on a full inquiry.

Mr Mountjoy approved of that. “And I shall write to the Minister for Law and Order. God knows what the country is coming to when three children can vanish off the face of the earth without anything being done about it!”

Mrs Danby stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one. “I’m thinking we might sue the police,” she said thoughtfully. “Get some, money out of them. We might as well have something for the anxiety we’ve been through.”

Professor Danby was about to disagree with her. He always disagreed with his wife — but this time he didn’t.

“It’s an idea,” he admitted.

“We could give the kids a good time with the money we get,” said Mrs Danby. She’d buy Minette lots of new dresses and if there was any money over she could do with some new clothes herself. There was a lovely pink georgette with a black underskirt she’d seen at Adrienne’s Boutique…and the sitting room carpet was getting really shabby.

Professor Danby too was thinking of how he could help Minette with some extra money to spend; her bedroom when she stayed with him could do with a proper writing desk so she could do her homework, and if there was any money to spare he needed the new three-hundred-volume Grammar Scholastica. He’d had his eyes on it for months but the cost was absurd.

Even the old Mountjoys thought that suing the police was a good idea. Hubert-Henry’s fees at Greymarsh Towers were ridiculously high; any help would be welcome.

They were working out how best to do this when the parlourmaid came in with the tea things on a silver tray. She was the only one who had been fond of Fabio and now she asked whether there had been any news of him.

“No, there hasn’t,” snapped Mrs Mountjoy and told her to bring some more hot water. What were servants coming to, sticking their noses into family business?

While the Danbys and the Mountjoys met to complain in London, something sad and serious happened in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The mother of Boo-Boo and the Little One tripped on a cracked paving stone and broke her hip.

Breaking a hip is a bad business. An ambulance came and rushed her off to hospital where they put a pin into the joint and told her she had to stay in for a week and be careful for a long time after that.

This left her husband, the tax inspector, with a problem. Being a tax inspector is very hard work. You have to go to an office every day and fill in lots and lots of forms and send rude letters to people who are trying not to pay their tax, and do a great many sums. Betty’s husband, whose name was Ronald, was a very good tax inspector and he did not feel he could look after Boo-Boo and the Little One as well as doing his job.

But now something amazing happened. He was just wondering what on earth to do with his children when a tall, fierce-looking lady came striding up the path, carrying a suitcase and the kind of saucepan that people use to stir-fry things in. The tax inspector had never used one because his wife Betty did not cook foreign foods, but he knew it was a wok and once he had realized this, he knew who the lady was. It was Betty’s sister Dorothy, who had been imprisoned in Hong Kong for hitting a restaurant owner on the head because he was serving pangolin steaks in his restaurant. She must have kept the wok as a memento and as she came closer he saw that he was right because there was a dent in the side which might well have been made by the restaurant owner’s head.

“Where’s Betty?” said Dorothy, putting down her case. She did not like her sister Betty, who shaved her legs and had three kinds of toilet freshener in her loo, but families are families and on her way home to the Island she had decided to call on her and see how she was.

She soon realized her mistake. Visiting Betty in hospital was one thing, but being asked to look after Boo-Boo and the Little One was quite another.

“I can’t stand children, you know that,” said Dorothy. She could have said, “I can’t stand your children,” but she didn’t because of Betty being “family”.

Betty began to cry. Her leg was in plaster and hitched up to something and she had a bruise on her face where she had fallen, so when she cried she looked very pathetic indeed.

“Please, Dotty — oh, please. Poor Ronald works so hard, and he can’t give up his job.”

Dorothy didn’t like being called Dotty and she didn’t like Ronald and she really loathed Betty’s house where everything was covered in little crocheted hats or frilly embroidered cloths or sprayed with some gooey scent which climbed into your nostrils and stayed there. Betty’s chairs had chair covers and the chair covers had more covers to keep the covers clean, as though sitting down was a dangerous act, and the whole thing drove Dorothy round the bend. Also she was homesick for the Island and for Myrtle and Coral and in particular for Etta who was next to her in age and her closest friend.

But there was Betty looking absolutely miserable — and after all it wasn’t her fault that she was an idiot and had two ridiculous children. Life isn’t fair and never has been.

“I’ll stay for a week,” Dorothy said. “Till you’re over the worst. But that’s all.”

But after a few days Dorothy cracked. Boo-Boo (who was a boy) and the Little One (who was a girl) were the daftest children she had ever seen. They cried if their pyjama cases got mixed up, so that Boo-Boo’s sleeping suit ended up in the skirts of the fairy doll and the Little One’s nightdress was zipped into the stomach of a fluffy poodle. They cried if she handed them the wrong bath towel so that Boo-Boo had to dry himself on Big Ears and Noddy whereas the Little One was rubbed down in roller-skating Yogi Bears. They threw a tantrum if she brought the cereal packet to the table without its frilly cereal packet container, and they complained because she hadn’t combed out the tassels on the lampshades.

“Right, this is it,” said Dorothy on the fifth day. “I’m going home.”

But when she told Betty, who was still in hospital, her sister cried once more.

“What am I going to do?” she sobbed. “None of my neighbours seem to want to look after my children.”

Dorothy opened her mouth to tell her why and closed it again. After all, Betty was ill and she was her sister and she wouldn’t be able to shave her legs for weeks because of the plaster. On the other hand nothing now could stop Dorothy from going back to the Island.