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In the distance, they heard the sound of sirens cutting through the howling of dogs and the shrill repetition of car alarms.
Hector looked behind him, and both Jaide and Jack followed his glance. Smoke was beginning to curl and twine out of the shattered walls and rooftop, and little flames were jumping in the shadows.
‘They have to go,’ said Hector. ‘The twins . . . we might not be so lucky next time. I need you to take them to Mother before their Gifts fully awaken.’
‘What gifts?’ Jaide finally found the strength to speak up. ‘What’s happening?’
Hector looked at both of the twins. ‘I can’t tell you now. But you’ll find out soon. All you need to know is that it’s very important that you go with your mother. Now.’
‘You’re not giving us any choice?’ Jack asked.
‘There is no choice.’
Jaide still didn’t understand. ‘What about you? Aren’t you going to come with us?’
‘Yes, Hector,’ Susan said. ‘Aren’t you going to come with us?’
A flicker of intense pain passed across Hector’s features. ‘You know I can’t go with you, Susan. Me being there would . . . interfere . . . as I interfered today.’
Susan looked away, back toward the burning house.
‘You might as well go now, then,’ she said.
Hector nodded sadly. He bent down and kissed both the twins on their foreheads, picked up the iron rod, and stood, his glasses askew and misted over.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘One day, troubletwisters, I hope you’ll understand.’
Hector turned to Susan, but she would not look at him, not even as his footsteps slowly receded down the lane. Jack couldn’t watch him, either – he felt like something inalterable was happening, and their family was never going to be the same again. Only Jaide managed a small wave as their father left. She had no idea whether or not he saw it.
A minute later, a clap of thunder echoed across the ordinary suburb and a single black cloud slunk off toward the horizon, marking the end of the ordinary life of Jaide and Jack Shield.
EVERYONE KEPT TELLING JACK, JAIDE and Susan how lucky they’d been to survive the explosion that destroyed their home.
‘I’d buy a lottery ticket, if I were you,’ the insurance assessor had said. The fire department investigator had agreed, adding, ‘A gas main normally goes up all at once, not in stages. You’re the luckiest family alive.’
But the twins didn’t feel lucky. As far as they were concerned, they just got unluckier and unluckier. First their home was blown up, and then they were told they had to move to their unknown grandmother’s house, miles and miles and miles away. And yet, every time someone heard their story – like that morning in the latest and hopefully last slimy motel off the freeway – out came that annoying sentence: ‘You were lucky!’
‘Everyone keeps saying we were so lucky,’ said Jaide as they got back into the car. ‘So how come we’ve had to drive for three whole days to some hick town we’ve never heard of, to see a woman you clearly don’t like? Dad is who-knows-where —’
‘That’s enough,’ snapped Susan. ‘It’s been a long drive, and I need you both to be cooperative. We’re almost there. Don’t ruin it now.’
They drove in silence for a while, Susan fuming to herself and the twins in no better mood. Then Susan quietly added, ‘Your father will come when he can. He has urgent business. And we are very lucky that we’re alive and that your grandmother is so keen to have us come to live with her.’
Grandma X lived by the sea in a town called Portland – but not one of the Portlands that anyone had heard of. In fact, as Jaide quickly learned on the internet, this Portland didn’t even make the top ten of cities or towns with the name. It was small and old and sounded generally unexciting. There was only one small school, two parks, one part-time cinema (without a 3-D screen), and a main street with a half-dozen shops. The nearest shopping centre was a minimum of forty minutes’ drive away. To the twins, it might as well have been on the moon, but without the fun of riding in a spaceship to get there.
‘Are we going to be stuck here for good?’ Jack asked as their mother drove slowly down the main street of Portland, peering at the street signs. Some of them were so faded, they were completely illegible. ‘I mean, like, for always?’
‘No,’ said their mother. ‘It’s only till the insurance money comes in and our old house is rebuilt.’
‘Why couldn’t we stay in the hotel until then? Or with Aunt Marie?’
‘I told you. Aunt Marie has her hands full with Mamma Jane. It’s going to take months to rebuild and . . . and I thought we needed a change of scene anyway.’
Jaide knew it was pointless to try to pin her mother down any further than this. Clearly, something strange had happened the hour their house had been destroyed. And there was a link between the freaky things the twins had seen, their father’s quick disappearance, and the relocation to Grandma X’s house. But Susan wouldn’t talk about it. Once Hector had gone, it was like the words they’d exchanged had never happened.
There was one question Jaide figured was safe. ‘Do we have to call her Grandma X?’ she asked.
‘Just call her Grandma.’
‘What does the X stand for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know Dad’s mother’s name?’
‘No,’ their mother answered with a distracted sigh. She was looking back and forth between the hand-drawn map Grandma X had sent and the GPS screen. With an irritated snort, she pulled over to the side of the road. ‘I don’t understand this. We’ve just passed Crescent Street and Dock Road. There’s no Watchward Lane between them, and it isn’t in the navigator database.’
‘She said to come in from the east.’ Jaide held up the map, which had some carefully lettered instructions on the side.
‘It can’t make any difference which way we come from,’ said Susan. But her voice trailed off, and she made a U-turn. ‘I must have missed it. We’ll have to go back around.’
‘Why does she call us troubletwisters?’ Jaide asked.
‘She’s old,’ said Susan. ‘It’s probably some saying from long ago, like a pet name.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Jaide. ‘We’re not trouble.’
‘Yes, you are,’ said Susan. ‘Sometimes, anyway.’
‘And what do her cats have to do with anything?’
Jack glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of a narrow lane between a bookshop and a hardware shop. He blinked and lost sight of it, then spotted it again through the rear window.
‘There!’ he called out. ‘We’ve gone past it! Next to the shop with all the different stepladders out the front.?
??
‘Well done, Jack!’ Susan said. She spun the wheel and executed another U-turn. ‘There’s the wretched lane at last.’
The car turned into the narrow, cobbled lane that zigzagged between two blocks and then up a slight hill, ending in a cul-de-sac opposite a high, whitewashed stone wall topped with gargoyle cats and roosters. There was an arched entrance just wide enough for the car, its gate propped open behind it.
Susan drove through the entrance and followed the long circular drive and its companionable line of poplar trees around to the front of the house. When she turned the engine off, they all sat in silence for a moment, looking out.
The house was old and built of once-rosy bricks that had mostly faded to a dull pink. It was three storeys high, and in place of a fourth storey it had a widow’s walk, a kind of veranda that embraced the very steep roof, which was made of pale timber shingles. Several chimneys projected up much higher than the roof peak, and on the tallest, a weathervane in the shape of a crescent moon with attendant stars pointed firmly southwest despite the wind quite obviously bending the tops of the poplar trees from the east.
‘I bet it’s mouldy inside,’ said Jaide.
‘And there’s no hot water,’ said Jack.
‘We’ll just have to make do,’ said Susan. ‘It’s not as if we have any choice, thanks to your fa —’
She bit her lip. Jack waited expectantly for her to finish.
Neither Jack nor Jaide bought the official story of a slow gas leak that rapidly got worse and ended in the explosive destruction of their house. The only problem was, they couldn’t explain what had happened, either. Jack and Jaide had talked about it between themselves, but all they could recall was taking their father’s suitcase upstairs, touching some kind of metal pipe, and then suddenly everything was twisted and staring and exploding. But the only other person who’d seen it was their father, who was gone. It made them think that maybe it hadn’t been like that at all. Because it was so unbelievable. Even thinking about the weird white eyes made Jaide shiver.
