The Thirteenth Home of Noah Bradley by Amber Lee Dodd

Author:Amber Lee Dodd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 1989-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

“But your mum can’t give up,” Neena gasped when I told her all about it. “She was so close to finding Helga and breaking the curse. This might be your only chance—”

“Shh,” I said. “I don’t want to upset Billy.”

We were sitting on the bed in Jasmin’s room, while Billy played with Arnold in Neena’s room.

“But why?” Neena said.

“Because she thinks it’s too dangerous,” I said, falling back on to the bed and staring up at the ceiling.

“Parents! They always think we need protecting even when we don’t,” Neena said, rolling over and throwing a pillow angrily against the door. Then she sat up and looked at me. “We just have to do this on our own.”

“What?” I said. “Find Helga Bradley ourselves?”

Neena looked at the closet where the trunk was hidden.

“Yes.” Her eyes were shining in a way that felt familiar by now. “Your mum must have left some clues to where she is.”

We both sprang out of bed and pulled the trunk out of the closet. We rummaged through the notebook. There were lists – lists of the objects, lists of Bradleys dead and gone, lists of places they had all lived. There was Helga’s letter. There was the door knocker (but neither of us felt like touching that again). And there was the photograph. But that was all.

“OK,” said Neena, sitting back on her heels. “Maybe not so many clues there. But we’ve only just begun. Let’s try looking her up.”

Neena pulled out her laptop from under the bed, turned it on, and typed Helga Bradley in. There were what seemed like endless search results for Helga Bradleys. After an hour of clicking through we didn’t seem to have any luck finding anything.

“OK, I can see why your mum had a hard time finding your family. Bradley is a pretty common name.” She sighed. “If only she’d written her address on the letter.”

“But she didn’t. So we’re stuffed, aren’t we?” I said, flopping down on to the bed and jamming my hands into my pockets.

“Not quite,” Neena said thoughtfully. She was holding the photograph of Helga. “We have this.”

“And how does that help?” I said. I peered at the photograph. Helga wore a bright green dress that matched her strange green eyes and a floppy hat that cast half her face into shadow. The camera had caught her mid laugh with her arms wide and one leg thrown in the air, like she was dancing. She looked full of fun and a little mysterious too.

“I have no idea,” said Neena. “But Mrs Shelly the librarian might. She’s brilliant at finding lost things and hard-to-get stuff. Once she tracked down a whole set of out-of-print detective novels from the sixties for me. She read them after me and always figured out who did it before the end.”

“You really think she can find Helga from this photo?” I asked.

“If anyone could, it would be her,” Neena said.

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