The Boudicca Parchments

Chapter 63

“It’s locked!” one of the twins screamed.

“But where’s the key?” shouted the other.

“It ought to be in the lock. It’s dangerous not having a key in the lock! What if there’s a fire and you need to get out quickly?”

“We do need to get out quickly!”

They could hear the nasty man banging on the door of the room at the end of the corridor and shouting at them, saying God was going to punish them for breaking their promise.

“Where is it?”

“It must be somewhere!”

They were panicking now.

“There!”

She was pointing at the wall. The other looked round and up.

“Where?”

“On the hook.”

She tried to reach it, but it was too high. The other one tried, but she couldn’t reach it either. They could hear banging on the door of the room where they had locked the man. And then the handle started rattling.

He was trying to get out. He was going to get out! Any minute now, he’d break the door down!

One of them tried to jump and grab the bunch of keys. She couldn’t reach it. The second tried… same result. The first one tried again, this time managing to get her fingers too it, but not to pull it off the wall. The second one tried and she too made contact, but failed to retrieve the keys. Finally, the first one tried, jumping with all her might and timing her grab perfectly.

This time she succeeded, but dropped the key on the floor, unable to support its weight in her fingers. The other scooped it up off the floor.

“Quick we’ve got to find the right key!”

Several of the keys were obviously the wrong size or shape and wouldn’t even fit the lock. Eventually they found one that fit. But it didn’t turn. They tried another, with similar lack of success.

By now the banging and rattling and shouting was becoming so loud that the girls were terrified. They were sure he was going to get out and if he did they didn’t know what he would do, he sounded so angry. Finally the third key went into the lock and turned. They managed to get the door open just as they heard something break in the other room.

Not waiting to discover if that meant that the man had got out, they raced out of the flat, into the corridor and down the stairs. From there they raced into the street, turned one way — without even caring which way it was — and started running down the pavement.

“Stop those girls!” A man’s booming voice called out behind them. They looked back to see the man running after them. Several people looked at them but no one stopped them. Then a man blocked their path and they were filled with terror.

In desperation, the one who was in front darted out into the road. A car screeched to a halt and the driver leaned to shout at them for being so stupid. Ignoring him, the girl waved her arms in the air as if waving at some one in the distance. She turned to her twin who was still on the pavement and called out: “It’s a police man!” Then she turned back the way she had been facing and shouted “over here!”

By the time she looked back to her twin, she saw that the man who had been chasing them had turned round and was now running in the opposite direction.