“Anna Karenina. Rather a melancholy book, don’t you think, my dear?” I saw my grandmother’s slender hands pick up the book and open it at random. Presumably Lucas was holding his breath—I know I was holding mine. “Can one ever explain to someone else exactly how one feels? Maybe I ought to reread it sometime. But I’d need my glasses.”
“I’m rereading it first,” said Lucas firmly.
“Yes, but no more reading tonight.” She put the book back on the table and bent down to Lucas. I couldn’t see for sure, but it looked as if the two of them were kissing.
“I’ll come straight up in a couple of minutes, honeybunch,” said Lucas, which was a mistake on his part, because at the word honeybunch—Good heavens! He meant Lady Arista!—I jumped so violently that my head banged against the desktop.
“What was that?” asked my grandmother sternly.
“What do you mean?” I saw Lucas’s hand sweeping Anna Karenina off the table.
“That noise!”
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Lucas, but he couldn’t prevent Lady Arista from turning my way. I could almost feel her eyes sparkling suspiciously above her Roman nose.
Now what?
Lucas cleared his throat and gave the book a good kick. It slid over the parquet floorboards in my direction and came to rest eighteen inches from the desk. My stomach cramped as Lady Arista took a step toward me.
“But that’s…,” she was murmuring to herself.
“Now or never,” said Lucas, and I assumed that he meant it for me. With a sudden gesture I put out my arm, snatched the book, and clutched it to my breast. My grandmother let out a little scream of surprise. But before she could bend down to look under the desk, her embroidered slippers blurred before my eyes.
Back in 2011, I crawled out from under the desk with my heart thudding and thanked my stars that no one had moved it an inch since 1993. Poor Lady Arista—after seeing the desk grow an arm and gobble up a book, she’d probably needed another whisky.
As for me, all I needed was my bed. When Charlotte barred my way up on the second floor, I wasn’t even startled anymore, as if my heart had had quite enough excitement for one day.
“I heard you were very sick and had to stay in bed.” She switched on a flashlight, dazzling me with its bright LED beam. That reminded me that I’d left Nick’s flashlight behind somewhere in 1993. Presumably in the wardrobe.
“That’s right. Obviously I caught your bug,” I said. “Seems to be a bug that keeps us from sleeping at night. I went to find something to read. And what are you doing? A little fitness training?”
“Why not?” Charlotte came a step closer and directed the beam of the flashlight on my book. “Anna Karenina. Isn’t that rather heavy going for you?”
“You think so? Well then, maybe we’d better swap. I’ll give you Anna Karenina, and you can lend me your copy of In the Shadow of Vampire Mountain.”
Charlotte was so taken aback that she said nothing for a full three seconds. Then she dazzled me with the bright flashlight again. “Show me what’s in that chest … and then maybe I can help you, Gwenny. Help you to avert the worst…” She could sound all gentle and persuasive when she liked, almost concerned on my behalf.
Tensing my stomach muscles, I pushed past her. “Forget it, Charlotte. And stay away from my room, will you?”
“If I’m on the right track, then you really are even stupider than I thought.” Her voice was back to normal. But although I expected her to go on standing in my way, and probably to smash my shinbone at the very least, she let me pass. Only the beam of the flashlight followed me a little distance.
We can’t stop time, but it will sometimes stand still for love.
PEARL S. BUCK
SEVEN
AT ALMOST ten o’clock, there was a knock at the door of my room. I woke from deep sleep abruptly, although it was the third time I’d been woken that morning. The first time had been at seven, when Mum came in to see how I was (“Your temperature’s gone right down—it just shows what a tough constitution you have. You can go back to school tomorrow!”) The second time was Lesley waking me three-quarters of an hour later. She’d come in on her way to school on purpose, because I’d sent her a text message in the middle of the night.
I was surprised that the message had made any sense at all, because when I wrote it, I was almost out of my mind with fear, and my hands had trembled so much that I could hardly press the letter keys. The only way into my locked room had been from outside, over the windowsill, which was about forty feet above the road. Xemerius had come up with the idea that if I climbed out the window of Nick’s room, I could keep close to the wall of the house and work my way along it to the sill of my own window. Xemerius himself had contributed nothing to the success of the operation except to say, “Don’t look down!” and add, “My word, it’s a long way to the road!”
Lesley and I had only a few minutes before she had to go on to school, while I went back to catching up with my sleep. Until I heard loud voices outside the door. It opened, and Mr. Marley’s red head appeared.
“Good morning,” he said stiffly.
Xemerius, who had been dozing at the foot of my bed, sat up with a start. “What’s that gingernob doing here?”
I pulled the covers up to my chin. “House on fire or something?” I asked Mr. Marley, not very imaginatively. According to my mother, I wasn’t expected to elapse until this afternoon. And then not, I sincerely hoped, straight from my bed!
“This is going too far, young man!” cried a voice behind him. It was Aunt Maddy. She nudged Mr. Marley to make him move aside and pushed her way past him into my room. “Obviously you have no manners at all, or you wouldn’t just burst into a young lady’s room like that!”
“Yes, and I’m not fit to be seen in public yet myself,” said Xemerius, licking his forepaw.
“I … I…,” stammered Mr. Marley, red as beetroot in the face.
“It’s really no way to behave!”
“You keep out of this, Aunt Maddy!” A third person appeared: Charlotte in jeans and a bright green sweater that made her hair shine like fire. “Mr. Marley and Mr. Brewer have just come to fetch something.” Mr. Brewer was obviously the young man in the black suit who now appeared. That made four of them. My bedroom was beginning to feel like Victoria Station at rush hour, only with nowhere near enough space in it.
Charlotte made her way to the front, using her elbows. “Where’s the chest?” she asked.
“Telltale tit, your tongue shall be split!” sang Xemerius.
“What chest?” I was still huddled under my quilt as if rooted to the spot. And I didn’t want to get out of bed, because I was still wearing the grubby pajamas, and I had no intention of giving Mr. Marley a look at them. It was bad enough for him to see my untidy hair.
“You know perfectly well what chest!” Charlotte was looming over me. “So where is it?”
Aunt Maddy’s curls shook with her indignation. “No one is to touch that chest!” she said in surprisingly imperious tones.
But they were nothing compared with the cutting edge of Lady Arista’s voice. “Madeleine! I told you to stay downstairs.” Now my grandmother also entered the room, straight as a ramrod, chin in the air. “This is none of your business.”
Meanwhile Charlotte had fought her way through the crowd over to the wardrobe. She flung the door open and pointed to the chest. “There it is!”
“It certainly is my business. It’s my chest,” cried Aunt Maddy again, this time with desperation in her voice. “I only lent it to Gwyneth!”
“Nonsense,” said Lady Arista. “That chest belonged to Lucas. All these years I’ve wondered where it was.” Her icy blue eyes examined me. “Young lady, if Charlotte is right in what she says, I wouldn’t care to be in your shoes.”
I pulled the quilt a little farther up and considered disappearing under it entirely.
“It’s locked,” Charlotte announced, leaning over the chest.
Lady Arista put out her hand. “The key, Gwyneth.”
“I don’t have it.” My voice was muffled by the quilt. “And I don’t see what—”
“Don’t be so stubborn,” Lady Arista interrupted me. But as the key was back on its chain around Lesley’s neck, there was nothing I could do but keep on being stubborn.
Charlotte began searching the drawers of my desk, and Aunt Maddy slapped her fingers. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”
Mr. Marley cleared his throat. “With respect, Lady Montrose, at the Temple we have ways and means of opening locks without a key.…”
“Ways and means,” said Xemerius, imitating his mysterious tone of voice. “As if there is anything magical about a crowbar!”
“Very well, you had better take the chest away with you,” said Lady Arista. She turned to the door. “Mr. Bernard,” I heard her call, “please show these gentlemen downstairs.”
“You’d have thought the Guardians had enough antiques already,” said Xemerius. “A greedy bunch, if you ask me.”
“I want to make a formal protest again,” said Aunt Maddy, while Mr. Marley and the other man carried the chest out of my room without so much as a civil good-bye. “This is … is trespassing. When Grace hears that people have been simply marching into her apartment, she’ll be furious.”
“This is still my house,” said Lady Arista coolly. She was already turning to go. “And my rules apply here. One may perhaps ascribe the fact that Gwyneth is unaware of her duties and unfortunately shows that she is unworthy of the Montrose family to her youth and lack of training, but you, Madeleine, ought to know what your brother was working for all his life! I would have expected more of a sense of the honor of the Montroses from you. I am severely disappointed. By you both.”
“And I’m disappointed too!” Aunt Maddy put her hands on her hips and stared angrily at the retreating figure of Lady Arista. “By you both. After all, we’re a family!” And as Lady Arista couldn’t hear her anymore, she turned to Charlotte. “Little bunny! Oh, how could you?”
Charlotte went red. For a moment she looked like the unspeakable Mr. Marley, and I wondered where my mobile was. I’d have loved to take a photo for posterity. Or maybe for purposes of blackmail later.
“I couldn’t allow Gwyneth to sabotage something that she doesn’t even understand,” said Charlotte. Her voice shook slightly. “Simply because she always wants to be the center of attention. She … she has no respect for the mysteries! She doesn’t deserve to be linked to them.” She gave me a nasty look, which seemed to help her to recover her self-control. “You brought it on yourself!” she spat, with new venom. “And I even offered to help you! But no, you just have to go around breaking rules the whole time.” With those words, she was her old self again, doing what she did best: tossing her head and marching out.