Free Diamond Star Girl by Judy May

explained.
    ‘God, that is such a guy move,’ she grinned.
    ‘Lifted a boulder … maybe … Got any large rocks lying about the place, Stephen?’ For the first time since discovering the painting was fixed, Paul seemed to wake up and care about more than simply standing a bit too close to Ro.
    ‘Yes,’ something was dawning on Stephen, ‘Yes, there’s a huge boulder near the orchard now that you mention it. I used to sit on it to read The Iliad when I was younger.’
    ‘ The Iliad ? Too much information, Stevey Babe,’ Paul shook his head in mock angst and led the way out the door.
    Unfortunately it had begun to pour with rain, the kind of rain that you couldn’t stand up in, the kind that would make you think of donating money to a flood charity, just in case. So we stayed in.
    Paul decided to teach Ro to play chess, which is as dangerous as teaching anyone else to drive. I left the sitting room when the second rook went sailing past my head. I came up here to the library to write this and was surprised to find Stephen here as usually the place is all mine. He’s had his head buried in several large reference books and doesn’t look set to join the real world again any time soon. I think he’s forgotten I’m here.
LATER
    Or not. That was so weird, as soon as I wrote that last sentence he looked up and said, ‘Lemony, I think I’ve found something. Tell me what you notice about this.’
    The book was ancient and the size of a small coffee table, and was an illustrated history of The Grange. It had plans and blueprints and whatever from the first hundred years of the house. I wished I’d put my contacts in (as if they would make me see things that my head was too slow to notice).
    ‘Is the little cottage missing? Or did it used to be round like that?’ I guessed.
    ‘I think that round thing is the boulder – look there’s no boulder where it is today … my guess isthat the boulder was moved and the cottage built on the exact spot where it used to be. Which means the necklace could be hidden in the cottage.’
    That’s one cool thing about Stephen, I actually sometimes have to put in a bit of an effort to keep up.
    ‘Stephen, if this is true then someone else is onto it! Remember we couldn’t open the cottage door because someone had made a lock with a six-inch nail.’
    I stopped just long enough to throw this under a chair as Stephen and I both raced for the door and outside into the rain, which had gone from being outrageous to just unkind. I don’t know why we didn’t stop for coats or an umbrella, it wasn’t as if the cottage was going anywhere, or as if our adventure involved a kidnapped toddler in need of urgent meds.
    We were soaked through by the time we rounded the rose garden and reached the cottage door. Stephen was a man on a mission; he grabbed a huge stone and kept bashing at the nail until it gave. Then he pushed and shoved to open the door, as there were planks of wood, a wheelbarrow and a broken chair just inside it. Once we were standing inside the cottage – me upright with my head an inch shy of the ceiling, and Stephen stooping slightly – we laughedat how we were drenched through.
    The obvious thing to do was to start searching, hoping there would be something to find.
    I’m not sure if it was ten minutes later or a lot longer, and I’m not sure how it happened exactly, but I somehow managed to loosen a high shelf while looking under a tin of paint. In a split second it became a missile, flying sideways off the wall, weighted with half-full tins of paint and carpentry tools, which began falling in all directions. Stephen was lifting something and turned just in time to be hit across the head with the corner of the shelf; as he fell to the floor, several heavy tins and a hammer crashed down onto his chest. I screamed, but he was totally silent. I pushed the debris away from him, tripping over myself with apologies until the sight of the blood dripping from his head made me