Page 79 of The Secret Christmas Library
Esme didn’t answer, but instead ducked down and, as elegantly as she did everything else, shimmied through the hole.
Mirren looked at the grey clouds gathering on the horizon – surely not more snow – and shivered, pulling the huge coat closer round herself. Then she, too, crouched and squeezed herself through the narrow hole in the hedge wall, thinking, not for the first time, that this was quite the oddest Christmas she’d ever known.
‘First problem,’ Jamie was saying. ‘We’re already lost.’
Inside the maze it felt cold and gloomy; there was snow that hadn’t iced over because the hedges were too thick, and the sky really felt grey now. It wasn’t pleasant at all. Long passages ran in both directions, the hedge a dark green with a topping of white. In the summer, Mirren thought, it must be magical. But now, with the sky darkening, it felt threatening. Not a sound could be heard that wasn’t the crackling of snow and ice beneath them.
‘What do you mean? Isn’t this your maze?’ said Theo.
‘Yeah, explain to me how your phone works,’ said Jamie. He glanced around. ‘The thing is, if we have to follow the locket’s instructions that means we have to start from the entrance, and I’m not sure . . . ’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mirren. ‘It’s over this way.’
And she set off confidently back in the direction of the loch, only to find herself, two seconds later, in a cul-de-sac which contained a mildewed stone statue of a gryphon. She came back and went the other way, with the same results.
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’
‘My great-great-great-something designed it,’ said Jamie. ‘There was a fashion for mazes, the more complicated the better. They were like the rollercoasters of their day.’
Mirren stomped back crossly. ‘There is an incredibly big streak of nonsense in your family tree.’
‘When I was small,’ said Esme, with an uncharacteristically romantic cast to her voice, ‘I used to come here and think the maze went on forever. I used to think I would pop out at school, or in London.’
‘That would be cool,’ said Theo, and for once he didn’t sound as though he was just agreeing to agree. ‘Isn’t the answer “always go left”, or something?’ he added.
‘At Hampton Court it is,’ said Jamie. ‘This is much bigger.’
‘Can’t we just smash through the hedges?’ said Esme. ‘It’s our bloody maze.’
They looked at her, appalled.
‘You sound like Mum,’ said Jamie.
‘That would be terrible,’ said Mirren. ‘We just have to keep heading east. Someone keep in charge of where east is.’
‘Where is it?’ said Theo.
‘Where the sea is,’ said Mirren impatiently, shivering, even in her big jacket.
By popping his head over the hedge like a friendly otter, Theo managed to steer them more or less in the direction of the starting gate, and when they were only one hedge away they crawled underneath it as best they could, and stood, wiping the snow off themselves. Everyone was mucky. But they were on the right side of the gate. Now, maybe, they could begin.
40
‘Okay,’ said Jamie, taking out the locket, his hands trembling slightly.
‘I’m still not sure about your lemur hypothesis,’ said Esme. ‘What if it’s a badger or something?’
‘I don’t know what you want me to do with that information,’ said Jamie. ‘Seeing as your contribution so far has mostly been “please buy me some shoes”.’
Esme tutted. ‘Isn’t getting to the centre . . . doesn’t it start with a right?’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Jamie. ‘Yeah, it definitely does. I remember that much. Okay,’ he said. ‘One right, two left.’
‘What’s in the middle?’ asked Mirren.
‘A fountain,’ said Jamie. ‘Well, there was. I don’t think it’s working any more.’
‘You wouldn’t hide a book out here, surely,’ said Mirren.
