Free The Changeling by Helen Falconer Page B

a lot of coins, but none worth more than twenty cents; in the wallet section were shop receipts, stamps, three raffle tickets, a library card, and the crushed skeleton of an oak leaf. ‘Try the floor. Maybe you dropped it.’
    Maeve got out of the car and checked frantically around in the foot well, then under the seat. Nothing but old newspapers. ‘Oh God, this is a total nightmare . . . I can’t believe I’ve lost it. I feel so stupid – I’m such an idiot. I’ll still pay you back tomorrow . . .’ There were tears in her voice.
    Aoife said hastily, ‘Maybe it’s in the back?’
    ‘ Why would it be there? ’
    ‘I don’t know – you had the window open, maybe it blew there?’
    While her mother searched the back seat, now almost sobbing, Aoife quickly took another hundred euros out of her pocket and ‘found’ it in the glove compartment.
    Maeve stood wiping her eyes with the corner of her cardigan. ‘Well done, Aoife. Thank God . . . I remember putting it there now, that’s my safe place in the car . . .’
    ‘Will I go to the shop now?’
    ‘Yes! Quick before I lose it again!’

CHAPTER SEVEN
    The rain was still holding off, and a watery sun was breaking through. Strolling up the flowering lane, flies annoying her head, Aoife flicked through the remaining eleven hundred-euro notes.
    She couldn’t even begin to understand it.
    Maybe everything else that had happened to her in the last couple of days could be explained away. Imagining she could bicycle so much faster than normal could be down to the timer on her phone not working. Secretly believing that she was responsible for Shay Foley crashing his brother’s car, just because she’d wanted him to turn right? OK, that had to be delusional. Like the way she believed, deep down – no, far from deep down – that she’d shoved Sinead into the desk and poked Killian in the stomach without touching either of them. (An entertaining idea, but surely way too good to be true.)
    But the twelve hundred euros was not an illusion. They existed. Her mother had seen two of these notes – had held one of them in her hand. Shay had seen the money too, when she offered it to him to buy his brother a car.
    Because that was what it was for  . . .
    A new determination filled her. She wasn’t going to tell her mother about this. She would have liked to give Maeve more than a hundred euros, but she couldn’t risk her mother deciding that when it came to this amount of cash, finders wasn’t keepers. Yes, now she thought about it, she was pretty certain Maeve would hand the money over to the guards.
    Reaching the garage, Aoife turned into the yard. Shay’s brother had beaten him, and nobody else seemed to care. She wanted to help him. She needed to help him. This money was the answer to her prayer. Didn’t people pray for all sorts of things? Health, love, good exam results? Why not money for a car? Maybe it was crazy to believe that it was literally a gift from heaven, but for now she was going to go with it.
    Dave Ferguson’s garage consisted of two petrol pumps, a tin-roofed shed where he did his repairs, and a small shop selling bits and pieces to do with cars, motorbikes and push bikes. The owner was in the yard, prostrate under a green post office van. Aoife crouched down to speak to him. ‘I need some new tyres for my bike.’ It seemed an easier place to start than just coming straight out with wanting to buy a car.
    ‘Five minutes . . .’ He hit something fiercely with a wrench.
    While waiting, she wandered around the yard. There was a rusty Toyota for sale at seven hundred and fifty, a small Honda for six hundred, and a very old but very beautiful cream-coloured BMW convertible, with no price on it – the vintage car she had seen Dave Ferguson tinkering with yesterday afternoon. She peered inside. It had red leather seats.
    ‘Like her?’ Dave Ferguson had finished with the post office van and was now standing at her shoulder wiping