Monday 21 November (continued)

We lost track of time after that. Kirsty started talking about the band that she has started up with Cameron, Carla and Lewis. Their first gig is supposed to be in the university on the fourteenth of December and she was wondering now if she would ever see it happen.

Dad started talking about The Bird, and wondered if he would see it again.

I was wondering if I would ever see Fiona again. The thought that I might not made me feel sick to my stomach. I wondered if she was alright. Didn't say anything about her though, because I had no idea how Dad would react.

To take my mind off of it, I spent the time talking with Kirsty about a couple of songs that she's been writing. She's been working on one number in particular called "The Land of Adventure." It's all about the mountains and hills of Scotland, calling you home. Very nostalgic and evocative and homesickness-inducing.

We must have been there for at least two or three days when auntie Lucy said, "Do you hear something?"

We all stopped talking and listened carefully. There was a sound coming from up above. The sound of the bolt in the hatch being slid back. We braced ourselves for an explosion. I could see my life flashing before my eyes.

But the explosion never came. The hatch opened, revealing the night sky above us. And standing above the hatch was a figure that I recognised.

Fiona!

Had my robot spider worked? How had she managed to find us? How had she managed to open the hatch without triggering the booby trap? Had she managed to open the hatch without triggering the booby trap, or had it blown up and were we all dead? Questions were piling up in my mind left, right and centre.

But then Dad let out an exclamation.

"Fiona Tripalong! What are you doing here? Are you in on this? Just wait till I get my hands on you!"

I could hardly believe it. Thirty years ago, Fiona's own father had reacted to Dad exactly the way that Dad was reacting to her now. That was the one thing about him that he complained about the most. Was he so obsessed with his vendetta against Horace that he was actually turning into Horace?

But Fiona wasn't fazed in the slightest. She simply lowered the ladder.

"It's OK," she said. "There's nobody here. No guards or anything. You can party the night away if you like. Raise your glasses. Shout Slàinte mhath. But I'd suggest you come out first. In fact you'd better come out sooner rather than later, because this boat is programmed to set sail any minute."

We all climbed out one at a time. When I got to the top of the ladder, I gave her a massive hug and a kiss. I could hardly contain myself for joy at seeing her again.

Auntie Lucy, then Kirsty, then Barry, then Dad all jumped onto the pier. There was a gap of about a metre between the boat and the pier, but they all managed it with ease. Then Fiona let go of me and jumped onto the pier.

"Come on, Samuel," she said. "Your turn now."

I looked at the gap and suddenly started to panic. I've never been all that coordinated. I remember when I was little and we had a climbing frame in the garden. Carla and Lewis both easily mastered jumping from the top rungs without any problem. So did all their friends. But I struggled to jump from as much as halfway up. Now there was this big gap in front of me. They could just as easily have asked me to jump the Grand Canyon.

"Come on Samuel," said Dad. "Jump. You can make it."

Then I heard a cough. The boat's motor was starting up!

"Come on, Samuel!" called Fiona. "You can rollerblade! You can do this!"

"What if I miss?" I called back. "I can't swim!"

"Don't be like my father!" shouted Fiona. "You can do it!"

"Just jump in anyway," shouted Dad. "I'll jump in and help you."

The boat started to move and the gap was widening. It was now or never. I took a few steps back, ran towards the edge of the boat, and leapt into the unknown. I landed awkwardly right on the edge of the jetty, lost my footing, slipped and fell, landing awkwardly on my left wrist. I could hear a crack and a searing pain shot up my arm.

Dad and Barry grabbed me by the hands to stop me from sliding off the jetty and into the harbour. The pain in my arm got so unbearable that I screamed and then passed out.

I don't know how long I was out for, but I woke up to find myself in a hospital bed with my left arm encased in plaster. Dad was sitting in a chair on the left hand side of my bed; Fiona was in a chair on my right. She had my hand in hers and was stroking it gently.

"What happened?" I asked. "Where am I?"

"You're in Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, my love," said Fiona. "You fractured your wrist when you landed on the jetty. The doctors say it will heal, but you'll need to rest it for a few weeks."

I looked from Fiona to Dad and from Dad to Fiona. I was all groggy and still not sure if I was dreaming or not, but if it was a dream, it was one I didn't want to wake up out of.

"Your girlfriend saved our lives," said Dad. "She put her own life on the line to do so."

Asked him what he meant.

"The hatch was booby trapped," explained Fiona. "We had to disarm it first before we could open it. Lucas managed to find the control wires, but there were two of them, both red, and we weren't sure which one to cut. I told him to let me make the decision, so he got off the boat and retreated to a safe distance, while I took a guess at which one to cut. Looks like I made the right guess."

I gave her hand a squeeze. That's my girl.

Dad said, "Listen, Samuel, forget everything I said about asking you and Fiona to split up. There's no way on God's green earth that I'd object to you having a girlfriend as brave and plucky and loyal and devoted to you as she is. Even if she is Horace Tripalong's daughter. I don't know what her father is going to say about this, and quite frankly I don't care either. But after what she did last night, she is welcome in the Trent home any time she likes as far as I'm concerned."

"Thanks, Dad," I said weakly. I gave Fiona's hand another squeeze. "Fiona, I love you."

"I love you too," she said. She leaned over and gave me a kiss.

Tuesday 22 November

Discharged from Ninewells at about eleven o'clock this morning and Dad drove me back home to Strathkinness. The stretches of road through Dundee, the Tay Bridge, and south past St Michaels, Leuchars and Guardbridge that seem very flat under normal circumstances feel very not flat when your arm is newly broken and in a cast. Dad will be taking Fiona and me (together!) back to Cambridge tomorrow if the pain has subsided enough for me to manage it.

Auntie Dinah's amendment went through yesterday unopposed. She got an email shortly afterwards with a link to some drone footage of the King of the Sea exploding in the middle of the North Sea. It didn't faze her in the slightest: Dad had already texted her to let her know that we were all back to safety. She just forwarded it to the police for use as evidence. Sophie Meier was arrested when she turned up to work today in Westminster.

Mum, Carla, Lewis and The Bird all arrived back home today. They'd spent a quiet but tense week with uncle Philip and Cameron at Craggy Tops of all places. The place was bought over by the RSPB in the nineties and renovated into a hostel for ornithologists and bird watchers. The Isle of Gloom is now a bird sanctuary.

The police are still crunching the data from my robot spider, with assistance from Dick Kirrin and his team at Famous Five Technologies. It turns out that it emerged from a secret passage in an alleyway off of South Street in St Andrews. It leads down to a whole network of tunnels that nobody knew existed underneath the old part of the town. Some parts of it date back as far as the thirteenth century. They've found a massive stash of incriminating evidence against them—apparently they had quite an extensive operation. There's a warrant out for their arrest.

Kirsty said, "Is that what that fidget toy thing was about then?"

I said, "Yes. You remember that I said I was missing Kiki's shenanigans such as 'Fusty musty dusty, pop goes the weasel'?"

"Fusty musty dusty," repeated The Bird. "Samuel's got a girlfriend. Slàinte mhath."

I ignored it. I said, "I'd added a voice recognition feature to it. Those catchphrases would wake it up and set it into escape mode. It was programmed to hunt for a way out, taking recordings and videos as it went."

Kirsty said, "Wow, that's so cool. Samuel, I'd do anything to have a brain like yours. You must be so intelligent to come up with things like that."