Page 36 of Happily Ever After
‘With the lead piping?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Nothing. It’s a game. Cluedo.’ Jay shook his head. ‘Please don’t tell me you never played Cluedo on the long, dark nights in your bus.’
I remembered the long, dark nights in the bus. Jude away at school, my parents fussing about doing something. Dad checking the engine, Mum sorting out stuff for the next laundrette we passed or making a list of provisions we’d need when we got to the next town. Me, reading. Always reading, in a corner somewhere, with a little battery-powered light.
‘Not really. But come up to the house after lunch. I’ll be in the library. We can talk in there.’
Jay hesitated, lowering his voice as Mrs Compton came back past us again and strafed us both with her disgust. ‘I’m not sure. Lady Tanith probably doesn’t allow ground staff in the house. I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble for fraternising, if she caught you.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll let you in through the window. Once she’s read me the riot act, I suspect she’ll have to go for a lie down anyway. Lady Tanith seems to spend an inordinate amount of time lying down or resting, and I suspect that a conversation with me will enrage her into a couple of hours’ shut-eye. Besides,’ I grinned, ‘the door locks.’
Jay gave a one-sided nod. ‘All right then. I’ll creep up to the house like a boot boy meeting the tweeny, shall I?’
‘I have no idea what you just said, but yes.’ I looked up to see Hugo making frantic beckoning motions to me, behind his mother’s back. ‘I’d better go.’
‘Right. I’ll come up later and peer through the window to make sure you’re alone. Don’t be alarmed if you see me squeezed up against the glass.’ Jay looked happier now, less tired.
‘As long as you haven’t got your willy in your hand again…’
Of course, at that point Mrs Compton, who had apparently returned for a lost umbrella, walked back up the aisle again, bearing the forgotten brolly and an obvious desire to try to overhear us. My final words sent her eyebrows into her hairline and the rest of her scuttling outside as though the mention of willies offended every sensibility she had.
‘Willy decently restrained. Trust me.’ Jay grinned again. ‘Go on. Hugo’s having a small fit out there.’ He nodded towards the doorway. Mrs Compton had reached Lady Tanith and was giving her a meaningful look, whilst Hugo was rotating with anxiety and making ‘come on’ motions that made it look as though he was groping the air.
Feeling a lot happier, suddenly, I squeezed my way out of the pew and went outside to join Lady Tanith, Hugo, and the combusting Mrs Compton.
16
THE BURROW – HARRY POTTER, J K ROWLING
‘I can’t help feeling’ – Lady Tanith looked across the desk at me – ‘that you haven’t really been trying to find’ – she lowered her voice although Hugo was in the kitchen, helping Mrs Compton load the dishwasher after lunch – ‘Oswald’s diaries.Not putting in sufficient effort.’
Behind us the door squeaked open a few centimetres and The Master oozed in through the gap.
‘I’ve looked everywhere I can think of,’ I said. ‘Honestly, Lady Tanith. Are yousurethat they were definitely in here?’
‘Why would I not be?’ Lady Tanith patted her lap in invitation, but the cat strolled up to me and yowled his Siamese yell.
‘Because, short of dismantling the walls, I can’t think of anywhere else to look, and I haven’t found them. I have managed to catalogue all those books, though.’ I waved at the one wall of shelving that I’d cleared, entered onto the spreadsheet, dusted and returned.
‘Hmm.’ Lady Tanith blew through her nose and eyed me strangely. The Master jumped onto my lap and sat facing her across the desk with his back to me and the tip of his tail twitching. His solid weight forming a barrier between me and his mistress, was reassuring. ‘I can’t help feeling you could be doing more.’
‘I’ll keep looking. Why must they be in here, though? Couldn’t Oswald have put them somewhere else in the house?’ Without thinking I began stroking the cat’s ears and the top of his chocolate head. He purred.
‘Oswald did all his writing in here, his novels, his poetry and his diaries. The other things…’ Tanith hesitated as the cat put his front paws onto the desk and eyeballed her, almost as though he were interviewing her. ‘The other things I know the whereabouts of,’ she went on. ‘But not the diaries. Theymustbe in here.’
‘Have you thought about taking up the floor?’ I asked, sarcastically.
‘Well, yes. We removed the carpeting and checked for loose boards, hidden vaults, that sort of thing,’ Lady Tanith replied as though taking up the floor was as reasonable as dusting the furniture. ‘But there was nothing. Let me tell you, I am considering terminating your employment. Replacing you with someone who is a little more… diligent, shall we say.’
The cat yowled again. I carried on stroking, whilst I thought furiously. Being fired from what was, essentially, a data-entry job, wasn’t going to look great on my CV, such as it was. Leaving Templewood would mean leaving Hugo friendless, and me, either in the bus mouldering away the winter, or child-wrangling for Jude.
‘However.’ Lady Tanith switched her attention from the cat back to me. ‘Hugo seems to like you. We really must secure the next generation, so that Templewood remains in the Dawe family, if you understand me, and he has so few friends apart from the boys he was at school with, who rarely visit. You have no society connections, of course, and you are rather’ – a curled lip and a contemptuous pass of the beady stare – ‘less physically fortunate than I would have chosen for my son, but beggars really can’t be choosers here, and he’s not getting any younger.’ Now she leaned forward until she was practically on my lap. ‘So I would bemost grateful,’ she said, giving the words a spin that made them sound threatening, ‘if you and Hugo were to form – an alliance. It must be legally sanctioned, of course, none of this “out of wedlock” nonsense. And a watertight pre-nuptial agreement would be required.’
Lady Tanith stood up now. ‘And find those diaries,’ she said. ‘You’re only here because Hugo and The Master like you.’ She swept out of the library and closed the door with a genteel little click that rebounded from the panelled walls like a gunshot.
‘Oh heck,’ I said to the cat, who seemed, as far as a cat can, to agree.
