Caroline Hartley and the Dreadnought Battleship

Central Europe The story so far… Just before the end of the school summer term, the postman had delivered a large padded envelope to Caroline Hartley’s house in Welwyn Garden City. The mysterious envelope, addressed to Ms C. Hartley, had a Zurich postmark on it. Caroline’s mother had thought the Ms should be Mr, and should be for her ex-husband Chris, who had a bank account in Switzerland. Knowing her children were due to go on holiday with him the following day, she had asked her daughter to give him the envelope. The Hartley children had met their father at London-Stansted airport. They had travelled with him on Ryanair to Bratislava in Slovakia, where he now lived. The next day, their father had opened the envelope in front of his kids. A large old key had rolled out that had been carefully wrapped in an old pink piece of paper. On it was a name – Caroline. Caroline had wanted to know who had sent her the key, who had written the word, and most of all, why would someone send her a key that according to her brother was magical? Their father took his children to a small castle in mid-Slovakia. Caroline and Martin had discovered its huge overgrown garden, which they had run around and explored. They also discovered the key fitted a door at the bottom of a stairway at the castle. It was here Caroline discovered her key really was magical. Curious, the children had ventured up the attic stairs; where at the top they were drawn forward by a mysterious white beam that had appeared just before she had unlocked the upper attic door. Caroline and Martin arrived in 1912, where they met two children called Veronica and Manfred Strauss, who were the same age as them. The Hartley children were then thrilled to discover the castle garden as it once was. They went on to have many adventures with their new friends in it, as well as around the lake and forest that lay beyond. The children also discovered the magic key had a mind of its own. No one knew why it kept flashing different numbers, other than the fact that it allowed the Hartley children to travel backwards and forward between their time period and 1912. Disaster however soon struck. Following their last adventure to 1912, on returning to their own time, bad weather caused some serious damage to their father’s flat in Bratislava, forcing the Hartley family to have to unexpectedly return to the city. The children were aghast at the thought of leaving the castle so suddenly, without saying goodbye to their new friends from the past or present. Caroline still hadn’t found out who had written her name on the pink piece of paper. Nor had she discovered who had sent it to her. Mortified, she realised she might now never find out the answer. Worse was the thought that they might never return...