next sheet Chloe read was the most fascinating of all. Like the two letter writers, the typist had simply stopped typing. The page remained in the machine and, like the others, the machine must have been put up in the loft without anyone having the interest to bother to remove the piece of typing paper. It seemed to be the start of a story.
Chapter One
The night sky was full of stars. Suddenly one dropped, then another, and then two, three, five more, until stars were showering on the Earth, falling, falling like glittering hail (rain?). Walter Smelton (Smileton? Smuggleton?) looked up and a falling star struck him blind in his right (left?) eye
‘Now that might have been a best seller,’ murmured Chloe. ‘I wonder what happened to the writer? Maybe she was attacked by a rival, just as she was about to astound the literary world.’
‘How’d you know it was a she?’ grumbled Alex. ‘Could’ve been a bloke.’
‘Blokes aren’t sensitive enough to write about falling stars,’ replied Chloe. ‘You have to be a woman to appreciate beauty.’
‘Load of tosh if you ask me.’
‘I rest my case,’ she said.
The pair of them began to climb the typewriters. It was not as easy as it had looked from the base of the hill. There were footholds and handgrips, sure, but there were also hollows which grabbed at their feet, clinging on to them with keys like fingers. Their bare hands were scratched and cut by the rough edges of the metal frames. Their clothes snagged on hooks. While the typewriters were locked fairly tightly together there was the odd landslip and when it did occur it was quite dangerous. If one of those heavy instruments had struck either Chloe or her brother it would have bowled them off their feet and sent them hurtling down to the ground below.
‘Are we getting there?’ gasped Alex, clawing at the typewriters, heaving himself upwards. ‘It’s getting steeper.’
Chloe turned her attention back to the hill. They were almost at the top now. She looked up, expecting to see the roof closer to them, but it was still miles above their heads.
Chloe offered Alex a drink of water, which he took gratefully.
She then had a drink herself.
Alex grinned.
‘What?’ she said.
‘You don’t wipe the bottle any more. Whenever Jordy or me took a drink before, you used to make a face and wipe the bottle before you drank from it yourself.’
‘Well,’ she said, sighing, ‘that was when I was civilised.’
‘What are you now? A savage?’
‘Wild, like the animals,’ she said.
‘Wild and trapped, that’s what we are. Animals in a zoo.’
Chloe agreed. ‘Yes, and now we’ve got to get out.’
She began to descend the far side of Typewriter Hill, with Alex following her. It was more difficult going down than it had been going up. Any climber could have told her that would happen. It was all in the knees. The knees suffered on a descent. And that was usually when the climber was most fatigued, the muscles giving out, the legs wobbling.
However, they made it to the bottom and rested again.
Studying the great mountain ahead of them, Chloe was aware that there was still no sign of Jordy. Jordy had been gone now for quite a while. She knew that, while he was not the most sensitive boy in the world, he would not deliberately cause her anxiety. Wherever he was she was certain he would be trying to get back to her and Alex, knowing they would be getting frantic.
‘I think I need a bit of a sleep now,’ said her younger brother.
‘Good idea,’ replied Chloe, intending to stay wide awake. ‘We need to get our strength back.’
Alex curled up on the bare boards and was soon asleep.
Chloe remained sitting upright, but soon her eyelids began to feel very heavy. Alex’s steady breathing did nothing to help her stay awake. Soon she too was slumbering peacefully at the foot of Typewriter Hill.
Alex woke to find Chloe slumped over and snoring lightly. He smiled grimly, intending to tell her when she woke that she too made noises while she was asleep. But he realised his sister must have been quite tired to sleep so soundly, so he tip-toed away from her, intending to explore the surrounding area.
He soon found some cardboard boxes which looked worth investigating. Alex went to them and studied them for a while. He was not foolhardy enough to open them immediately. He had been in Attica long enough now to know that some unpleasant