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Humbert.

      The following words were delivered by Ruby at super high speed to avoid conversation.

       ‘Hello Mrs Humbert yes I’m weller than you could begin to imagine I would love to chat but I know my mother is on the edge of her seat at the prospect of talking to you – bye, bye, bye!’

      Ruby handed the phone to Sabina. ‘Gotta walk, Bug,’ she said, and whistled to the dog.

       Jeepers, could I use some air.

      Ruby and Bug left by the back door and made their way down Cedarwood Drive, turning right on Amster Street. Ruby decided to stop by the tree on Amster Green; a large oak in the middle of a triangle of grass. It stood there surrounded by blossom trees; a wooden bench sat directly under it. The oak tree was old, with branches that twisted towards the ground and swept up again. It was perfect for climbing. Ruby and Clancy liked to sit up this tree and watch the people down below; when the tree was in leaf it provided perfect cover.

      Ruby jumped on to the bench, swung herself onto the lowest branch and from there made her way quickly up to the highest climbable limb. Finding the hole in the bark, she felt around with her hand and pulled out a piece of elaborately folded paper. A perfectly formed origami turtle. Ruby and Clancy had got into the habit of leaving each other tree notes, written in code and usually folded in this complicated way as it meant they would be sure to know if someone had got there first – origami was impossible to re-fold without knowing how, and very few people knew how. Clancy had obviously written the note on his way back home because it said,

      wvitp xrauuziv vuwp eofyboc efivrlw ay va mq vcwpw ^*

      Ruby smiled, scribbled something on a bubblegum wrapper,

      nsyq ltszsjyk wvy ptrwayoe

      pushed it into the hole in the tree and climbed back down. When she got home, she found her parents were still discussing the tomato gloop incident. Her mother was saying, ‘I hate for Mrs Digby to be unhappy but we can’t lose Consuela, she is a dietary genius.’

      ‘Why don’t I call that house management agency?’ said her father, ‘see if they can’t send someone to sort of keep control.’

      ‘I guess it’s worth a shot,’ replied her mother.

      The telephone began to ring.

      ‘I’ll get it!’ called Ruby, she was sure this time it would be Clancy complaining about all the smiling he had had to do at his dad’s dinner, but disappointingly there was no one on the end of the line.

      *CLUE 1: THIS IS A VIGENERE CIPHER. YOU WILL NEED TO FIND THE KEY. THE EYES HAVE IT.

       Chapter 4.

      Full of nothing

      THE NEXT MORNING RUBY WAS JUST fixing her barrette the way she always fixed her barrette, when the phone in her bathroom rang.

      It will be Clancy, she thought. I’ll bet he’s calling to complain about his hives.

      She picked up the receiver.

      ‘Twinford sewage plant, how may we assist?’

      But there was no reply.

      ‘Weird,’ muttered Ruby, replacing the handset.

      There was no sign of Mrs Digby – no doubt she was still smarting about the tomato incident. So Ruby swallowed a large glass of orange juice in a single gulp, grabbed her school bag with one hand and a chocolate peanut cookie with the other, and shouted goodbye to her parents, who didn’t hear because they were engaged in a fascinating discussion about which drycleaners might best remove a tomato stain from a silk jacket.

      BRANT: ‘Honey, take it to Quick Clean, then you’ll have it back in no time.’

      SABINA: ‘Are you kidding, Brant? This is an Oscar Birdet jacket! Do you even know what that means? I’ll take it to Grosvenors.’

      RUBY: Oh brother.

      Ruby’s bike had a flat so she was taking the school bus this morning.

      Twinford Junior High School was two buildings really. One old, grand and in some ways beautiful – a little run-down on the inside but somehow comfortable. The other starkly modern, stylish and sterile. Ruby sauntered into class just before Mrs Drisco, her homeroom teacher, called out her name. Mrs Drisco made the same comment she always made when Ruby was late, and Ruby made the usual faces behind her back.

      The truth was Mrs Drisco found Ruby Redfort ‘rather full of herself, utterly unmanageable and impossible to teach’. Ruby Redfort found Mrs Drisco ‘a royal pain in the derriere’.

      They were both right.

      When it came to teaching the cleverest student in the history of Twinford Junior High, Mrs Drisco was out of her depth. On the other hand, it was a little pathetic for a grown-up teacher to be so snarky.

      Once this little pupil-teacher exchange was over, Ruby went and sat down next to Clancy.

      ‘So was last night fun?’ whispered Ruby.

      ‘Well, that depends on what you call fun – my sister Nancy accidentally sat on the Spanish ambassador’s dessert,’ replied Clancy.

      ‘Oh, well at least she got dessert – some of us weren’t so lucky,’ said Ruby

      ‘What?’ said Clancy

      ‘Never mind, I’ll tell you later,’ whispered Ruby.

      It was the usual Twinford Junior High day, nothing in any way out of the ordinary. Ruby had the usual interaction with her arch enemy Vapona Begwell, which went something like this…

      VAPONA: ‘Hey Ruby, can you see outta those glasses because my suggestion would be – don’t look in the mirror if you don’t wanna give yourself a fright.’

      RUBY: ‘Why, you gonna be standing behind me?’

      There was a mildly interesting geography lesson followed by a mind-numbingly dreary French class (Ruby’s French was already so good that she spent the lesson reading War and Peace in the original Russian). History had Mrs Schneiderman promising in the next week or so to give a lecture on the Jade Buddha of Khotan. ‘My, is it ever the most fascinating story,’ she said. ‘I could talk about it forever.’

      ‘Meet my folks and you probably will,’ muttered Ruby.

      At lunch time Ruby got into an altercation with Mrs Arthur over the let them eat cake T-shirt she was wearing. Ruby was protesting about Mrs Arthur’s strict guidelines about cake – or, more accurately, no cake. Mrs Arthur had banned cake.

      MRS ARTHUR: ‘Cake is in no way essential and should not be present in any child’s diet.’

      RUBY: ‘Cake is one of life’s great wonders and who would deny wonder to a child?’

      All the pupils, with the exception of Denning Minkle, who had a sugar allergy, supported Ruby. However, Ruby was requested to turn her T-shirt inside out or risk a month of detention.

      Ruby said goodbye to Clancy, who was being kept behind so he could retake his French vocab test. He was nervous; French made him feel queasy and Madame Loup gave him the shivers.

      ‘You’ll be fine, Clance,’ said Ruby, as she secretly slipped him an index card. ‘Copy this list onto your arm and you’ll have no problem.’

      The piece of paper had all the test answers written in code – the code they had devised a couple of years ago and perfect for a situation like this. To the regular human on the street it just looked like gobbledygook.

      Then it was time to catch the bus back to Cedarwood Drive.

      Yes,

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