Rundell - Rooftoppers

K ATHERINE R UNDELL

grew up in

AFRICA AND EUROPE

and is a fellow in English

literature at All Souls

College, Oxford.

SHE BEGINS EACH DAY

WITH A CARTWHEEL

and believes that

reading is almost exactly

the same as cartwheeling:

it turns the world upside down

and leaves you breathless.

R OOFTOPPERS

was inspired by summers

WORKING IN PARIS

and by

NIGHTTIME TRESPASSING

ON THE ROOFTOPS

of Oxford colleges.

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

Simon & Schuster New York

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Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Katherine-Rundell
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Terry-Fan

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2013 by Katherine Rundell

Illustrations copyright 2013 by Terry Fan

A slightly different version was published in 2013 in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Book design by Lizzy Bromley

Jacket design by Lizzy Bromley

Jacket illustrations by Terry Fa

Author photo by Blair Mowat

The text for this book is set in Bell.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rundell, Katherine.

Rooftoppers / Katherine Rundell. First edition.

pages cm

Summary: When authorities threaten to take Sophie, twelve, from Charles, who has been her guardian since she was one and both survived a shipwreck, the pair goes to Paris to try to find Sophies mother, and they are aided by Matteo and his band of rooftoppers.

ISBN 978-1-4424-9058-1 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4424-9060-4 (ebook)

[1. Guardian and wardFiction. 2. Missing personsFiction. 3. Homeless personsFiction. 4. RoofsFiction. 5. Paris (France)Fiction. 6. FranceFiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.R88827Roo 2013

[Fic]dc23

2012049469

To my brother, with love

1

O N THE MORNING of its First Birthday, a baby was found floating in a cello case in the middle of the English Channel.

It was the only living thing for miles. Just the baby, and some dining room chairs, and the tip of a ship disappearing into the ocean. There had been music in the dining hall, and it was music so loud and so good that nobody had noticed the water flooding in over the carpet. The violins went on sawing for some time after the screaming had begun. Sometimes the shriek of a passenger would duet with a high C.

The baby was found wrapped for warmth in the musical score of a Beethoven symphony. It had drifted almost a mile from the ship, and was the last to be rescued. The man who lifted it into the rescue boat was a fellow passenger, and a scholar. It is a scholars job to notice things. He noticed that it was a girl, with hair the color of lightning, and the smile of a shy person.

Think of nighttime with a speaking voice. Or think how moonlight might talk, or think of ink, if ink had vocal cords. Give those things a narrow aristocratic face with hooked eyebrows, and long arms and legs, and that is what the baby saw as she was lifted out of her cello case and up into safety. His name was Charles Maxim, and he determined, as he held her in his large handsat arms length, as he would a leaky flowerpotthat he would keep her.

The baby was almost certainly one year old. They knew this because of the red rosette pinned to her front, which read, 1!

Or rather, said Charles Maxim, the child is either one year old or she has come first in a competition. I believe babies are rarely keen participants in competitive sport. Shall we therefore assume it is the former? The girl held on to his earlobe with a grubby finger and thumb. Happy birthday, my child, he said.

Charles did not only give the baby a birthday. He also gave her a name. He chose Sophie, on that first day, on the grounds that nobody could possibly object to it. Your day has been dramatic and extraordinary enough, child, he said. It might be best to have the most ordinary name available. You can be Mary, or Betty, or Sophie. Or, at a stretch, Mildred. Your choice. Sophie had smiled when hed said Sophie, so Sophie it was. Then he fetched his coat, and folded her up in it, and took her home in a carriage. It rained a little, but it did not worry either of them. Charles did not generally notice the weather, and Sophie had already survived a lot of water that day.

Charles had never really known a child before. He told Sophie as much on the way home: I do, Im afraid, understand books far more readily than I understand people. Books are so easy to get along with. The carriage ride took four hours; Charles held Sophie on the very edge of his knee and told her about himself, as though she were an acquaintance at a tea party. He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time. But I will be more careful, he said, now that there is you, little cello child. Charless home was beautiful, but it was not safe; it was all staircases and slippery floorboards and sharp corners. Ill buy some smaller chairs, he said. And well have thick red carpets! Althoughhow does one go about acquiring carpets? I dont suppose you know, Sophie?

Unsurprisingly, Sophie did not answer. She was too young to talk, and she was asleep.

She woke when they drew up in a street smelling of trees and horse dung. Sophie loved the house at first sight. The bricks were painted the brightest white in London, and shone even in the dark. The basement was used to store the overflow of books and paintings and several brands of spiders, and the roof belonged to the birds. Charles lived in the space in between.

At home, after a hot bath in front of the stove, Sophie looked very white and fragile. Charles had not known that a baby was so terrifyingly tiny a thing. She felt too small in his arms. He was almost relieved when there was a knock at the door; he laid Sophie down carefully on a chair, with a Shakespearean play as a booster seat, and went down the stairs two at a time.

When he returned, he was accompanied by a large gray-haired woman; Hamlet was slightly damp, and Sophie was looking embarrassed. Charles scooped her up and set her downhesitating first over an umbrella stand in a corner, and then over the top of the stoveinside the sink. He smiled, and his eyebrows and eyes smiled too. Please dont worry, he said. We all have accidents, Sophie. Then he bowed at the woman. Let me introduce you. Sophie, this is Miss Eliot, from the National Childcare Agency. Miss Eliot, this is Sophie, from the ocean.