No idea what the title is but I have the story! XD! (chp 4)

Eve returned after about half an hour, shaking her head. She hadn’t found him. “Have you tried his house?” asked Maya. She nodded. “What are you going to do?” asked Bastian, forgetting to sulk. The others stayed on their beds and stared helplessly at each other. There wasn’t anything they could do. 1

They’d only been sitting in silence for a few minutes when Bastian raised his head. “What was that?” he asked. Everyone listened hard. There was a sort of scuffling noise, quiet but unmistakeable. Someone had found their hideout. Vedette sat rigid with fear while the others snapped into action around her.2

They grabbed everything they might need if they couldn’t come back for a while. Eve was trying to organise everyone into doing a certain job while heaping some of her precious books into a bag. Bastian was grabbing all the soft toys he had brought from Aunt Edith’s and crying with fright. Maya and Thermione were doing their best to lug the tin they kept the week’s money in out from under the desk; not an easy job at the best of times. 3

Vedette scooped Bastian into her arms and tried to work out what else they might need and would be able to carry. She did her best to soothe Bastian but her own heart was thumping madly and a voice in her head was saying “They’ve caught you, They’ve caught you and now Bastian’s in danger.”4

Suddenly everyone froze and Bastian stifled his sobs. The handle of the door rattled. They’d waited too long and they were trapped. The door opened and Gem came in. He stared at their white faces and at the mess of objects they’d been piling together in their hurry to get out. “Did I miss something?” he asked. They always arranged meeting times if they’d been out separately because of the panic it sent them into when someone turned up unexpectedly. 5

Gem was rather inclined to laugh at them. Even to Vedette, their sudden panic seemed silly. They should have know it was only Gem. But he looked slightly pale himself as he helped them to get the room tidy and was surprisingly obedient when Eve ordered him backwards and forwards to fetch something or put stuff away. 6

Then Eve made him get changed because he was absolutely drenched. Only when the room was more or less straight did they set Maya to the task of counting the money they had and then hurry into the kitchen. 7

Bastian watched in delight as Eve set out the table for a very late lunch and carefully laid the birthday cake they had got from the baker’s right in the centre. She lit the candles on the cake and sent Thermione to fetch Maya. They sang Happy Birthday and then Maya cut the cake. It was delicious but Vedette couldn’t help noticing that Gem didn’t eat a lot of it. Eve saw it too and when they returned to the bedroom she sat down on her bed and asked Gem where he’d been and why he had been soaked to the skin when he came in.8

“I was soaked to the skin because it’s raining and that tends to make you a bit wet and I was late because I got…uh, held up.” said Gem rather unhelpfully.9

“You, held up? How exactly?”10

“Um, do you mind if I don’t go into that?”11

“Gem, please tell us. We were really worried.”12

“Well, part of the reason is that I dropped my watch in the lake.” He held up his bare wrist in evidence. 13

“And the rest of the reason…?” asked Maya.14

“Well, I went home and then I ran into… someone I knew.”15

Vedette sighed at his elusiveness but they couldn’t get anything else out of him so in the end they left him alone. He settled himself on his bed and started to read Lord of the Rings for the nineteenth time.