Mrs. Spencer Senior was a tall, slender woman who looked a good deal younger than her seventy-five years. With her graceful, upright posture, long neck, elegant short hairstyle, and the cool blue eyes that she turned on each of us in turn, she’d have been the perfect casting for Snow White’s wicked stepmother—in a Thirty Years Later special.
I’d better explain that we hadn’t always been so hostile. At first we’d seriously tried to like Ernest’s mother, or at least understand her. At the end of August, she’d set off on a three-month around-the-world cruise, and when she got back at the end of November fit and well, with a good tan and loaded with souvenirs, she found that her favorite son had moved his American girlfriend into the house, along with her daughters, their au pair, and their dog. It wasn’t hard to see why Mrs. Spencer had been horrified at first, and so surprised that it rendered her speechless. But unfortunately not for long, because then she let fly, and to this day she hadn’t stopped.
Her main object in life seemed to be insinuating that Mom was after Ernest for his money and had used all sorts of nasty tricks to catch him. She combined that with attacks on Americans in general; she thought they were uncivilized, stupid, and vain. She wasn’t a bit impressed by Mom’s two academic doctorates. After all, she’d gained those degrees in the United States and not in a civilized country. (She studiously ignored the fact that Mom was now teaching and lecturing at the University of Oxford.) The only people that Mrs. Spencer thought were worse than Americans were Germans, because Germany had started the Second World War. Among other things. So she thought Mia and I were not just uncivilized, vain, and stupid (on Mom’s side) but also naturally nasty and underhand (on Papa’s side). As for Lottie, who was German on both sides of her family, she was just nasty and underhand, and when it came to our dog, Buttercup—well, Mrs. Spencer didn’t really like any animals at all unless they were on her plate, cooked and covered in gravy. Or if she was wearing them around her neck.
We really did try hard to overcome her resentment and get her to like us—but it was no use. (Okay, maybe we didn’t try all that hard.) And by now we’d given up the attempt. What was it Lottie was always saying? Call out into the forest, and the same sound comes echoing back. Or anyway, she had a proverb along those lines. We were part of a pissed-off forest, anyway, or at least Mia and I were. Mom was still hoping for a miraculous change of heart in Ernest’s mother, and as for Lottie—well, Lottie was a hopeless case. She firmly believed that there was good in everyone, even in the Beast.
The Beast now stared at Lottie and said, “I’ll just have a cup of tea. Earl Grey. Black, with a dash of lemon in it.”
“Coming right away!” There was no holding Lottie now. She jumped up, and the sleeve of her sweater almost tore because I was still clutching it firmly. Grayson did say, “I can make you a cup of tea, Granny,” but Lottie pushed past him. We had already explained to Mrs. Spencer, several times, that Lottie was not our maidservant (and besides, she had every Sunday off), but our explanations had fallen on deaf ears. It was her opinion that if you paid someone a salary, she couldn’t be your friend at the same time.
“In a proper teacup, please, not one of those thick mugs that you all use for your horrible coffee.” Mrs. Spencer sat down. As usual, in her company, I suddenly felt that I didn’t have enough warm clothes on. I wanted a nice thick cardigan. And some more coffee, in one of those thick mugs.
“Boker,” Mia whispered to me.
“What?” I whispered back.
“Short for the Beast in Ocher. Let’s just call her the Boker.”
“Okay.” I giggled. It really suited her.
The Boker glared at us. So did Mom and Florence—and it was true that whispering and giggling at meals didn’t exactly suggest we were well brought up. But then, I guess the Boker decided it wasn’t worth her while to tell us off.
“Grayson, darling, where’s dear little Emily?” she asked instead.
“Still in bed asleep, with any luck.” Grayson helped himself to yet more scrambled eggs, and spread butter on another slice of toast. At a rough estimate, it was his seventeenth slice. It was incredible how much he could shovel into himself without ever putting on an ounce of weight. “Dear little Emily,” he said quietly.
Did he sound a tiny bit sarcastic? I stared at Grayson with interest. Emily was his girlfriend, also in the top class at school, editor of the school magazine, a prizewinning dressage horsewoman, and she was neither dear nor little. The Beast in … er, I mean, the Boker had obviously taken Emily to her heart. When she mentioned her, and she often did, it was obvious that she thought Emily was the bee’s knees, and she was always praising Grayson, too, for his excellent taste in women, which, apparently, he hadn’t inherited from his father.
Now she sighed indignantly. “Oh, I was hoping to see her here. But obviously the only guests you’ve invited to breakfast today are the domestic staff.”
“Lottie lives here,” said Mia, not going to the slightest trouble to sound friendly. “Where else would she eat breakfast?”
Mrs. Spencer raised her eyebrows again. “As far as I know, my granddaughter has had to give up her rooms on the top floor to your au pair—goodness knows there’s more than enough room there.”
Here we went again.
“Mother, surely we’ve discussed that quite often enough. Can we please talk about something else?” Ernest wasn’t looking at all happy anymore. And Mom was clutching the tablecloth as if she were afraid that if she didn’t, she’d jump up and run away.
“All right, I’ll change the subject: you must come and put new batteries in my fire alarms, Ernest,” said Mrs. Spencer. “Charles’s alarm went off in the middle of the night last night because the battery had run out.” (Oh, good. Then he was still alive!) “I’d have a heart attack if such a thing happened to me.” She ostentatiously put her hand to her ocher twinset at roughly the spot where her pacemaker would have been fitted if she’d had a weak heart, which she didn’t. She had the constitution of an ox.
“A nice cup of tea.” Lottie put the teacup down in front of her. “Earl Grey, with a dash of lemon.”
“Thank you, Miss … er?”
“Wastlhuber.”
“Whastle-whistle?” repeated Mrs. Spencer.
“Oh, just call me Lottie,” said Lottie.
Mrs. Spencer stared at her, horrified. Then she said, “Certainly not!” emphatically, and began rummaging in her handbag, probably looking for smelling salts.
“Oh, loosen up, Boker,” muttered Mia under her breath.
The Boker let a little sweetener drop into the tea from her personal pillbox and stirred the cup. “Why I’m really here is … well, as you know, I always have a little Twelfth Night tea party in January.”
“Little is good,” murmured Grayson, but his remark was drowned out by Florence’s enthusiastic, “Oh, I just love, love, love your Twelfth Night tea parties, Granny!” As if they were the grooviest occasions of all time.
Mrs. Spencer smiled faintly. “Well, I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to, but as my friends are always asking, and clearly none of you here are going to come to your senses”—at this point she cleared her throat and looked sadly at her son—“I can see I have no option but to extend my invitation to your new entourage, Ernest.”
When no one reacted—Mia and I because we weren’t sure what entourage meant, and were trying to work out whether it was something nasty—she added, sighing, “That means that I would”—once again she cleared her throat, and this time she fixed her eyes on Mom—“that I would be very glad, dear Ann, to welcome you and your two daughters to my house.”
It was remarkable the way she managed to make that sound like an order. And you could bet that no one had ever looked less happy than she did when she uttered the words very glad.
Ernest thought so too. “If you…,” he began, frowning, but Mom put her oar in before he could go on.
“That’s so nice of you, Philippa,” she said warmly. “We’d love to a
ccept your invitation, wouldn’t we, girls?”
It took us a couple of seconds, but because Mom was looking so hopeful, we finally managed to smile and nod.
Okay, so we’d be going to an English tea party on Twelfth Night, to have a lot of old ladies look at us curiously. We’d been through worse.
Mrs. Spencer, satisfied, sipped her tea. She’d certainly have swallowed the wrong way if she’d known that Twelfth Night was to be the day when Mr. Snuggles died, and she had just invited his murderers to her house. The murderers themselves hadn’t the faintest idea who Mr. Snuggles even was. Without any forebodings at all, we reached for the cinnamon waffles.
TITTLE-TATTLE BLOG
The Frognal Academy Tittle-Tattle Blog, with all the latest gossip, the best rumors, and the hottest scandals from our school.
ABOUT ME:
My name is Secrecy—I’m right here among you, and I know all your secrets.
25 December
Merry Christmas, everybody! Enjoying the holidays? And did you find exactly the presents you wanted lying under the Christmas tree this morning? Not in the Porter-Peregrin household, I’m afraid. Persephone wept buckets because she unwrapped a little Cartier watch instead of her heart’s desire. But what were her poor parents to do? I mean, they could hardly have done Jasper Grant up in gift wrap for her, could they? In fact, I can understand her. I miss Jasper myself. It simply won’t be the same without him! A whole term in France, just to get a better French mark on his final school report—did he spare a thought for us? Who, may I ask, is going to provide the really good scandals at parties now that he’s not here? And how are the Frognal Flames going to win their games without their second-best man? They’re already suffering because Arthur Hamilton was voted out as team captain. And no, I still haven’t the faintest idea what exactly happened after the Autumn Ball, or why Arthur argued with Jasper, Grayson Spencer, and Henry Harper, so do stop sending me e-mails about it. I’ll soon find out—and when I know, I’ll tell you right away. That’s a promise!
It’s fairly quiet in London at the moment. Mrs. Cook, the headmistress, is in Cornwall, like half the school (hey, is there anyone who DOESN’T have a holiday cottage in St. Ives?), and Mrs. Lawrence has flown to Lanzarote. Just like Mr. Vanhagen, by the way. Funny coincidence, don’t you agree?
How about the rest of you? How are you spending the holiday season? Are you staying home in the warm, like the Spencer twins? I’d love to tell you what I’m doing, but then you’d only go trying to find out who I am again—and that would be such a bore. You’d better reconcile yourselves to the fact that you’ll never know.
See you soon!
Love from your very Christmassy-feeling Secrecy
PS—Speaking of Christmas: Liv and Mia Silver are away with their father in Zürich for a whole ten days—but I doubt Henry is missing his girlfriend much. I guess it’s more of a platonic relationship between those two—they’ve been an item for months, and they still haven’t slept with each other. Only making out and holding hands … Hmm, what do you make of that? Seeing that we all know Henry Harper isn’t exactly famous for holding back, it must be something to do with Liv. Is she a prude? Frigid? Or does she belong to some kind of religious community where sex is forbidden before marriage? Then again, maybe she’s just a little slow for her age, poor thing.
4
I FELT FOR Mia’s hand as the plane prepared to land, because as we came in, losing height, it did a couple of violent little jumps suggesting it was about to crash. But then we slid through the clouds and saw the Thames below us, and London in the snow, and the queasy feeling inside me turned to anticipation.
Mia pressed my hand. “Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen to us. But next time you’re welcome to make a will leaving everything you possess to your little sister, if it makes you feel better.”
“First, if we crash, you’ll be as dead as me, and second, I’m afraid I don’t have anything to leave.”
“You’re forgetting your guitar and Aunt Gertrude’s Christmas present.” Mia giggled.
“No, sorry, I want that buried with me in my casket.”
Our American great-aunt had excelled herself with this year’s choice of presents: she had given Mia a Barbie coach (suitable for Shaving Fun Ken?) drawn by a pink Pegasus, and me a set for breeding primeval crustaceans. We could really use those things.
However, we’d long ago given up expecting much in the way of Christmas presents. For some reason, Santa Claus didn’t seem to like us very much. Once again he hadn’t brought the smartphones we so urgently needed to replace our Stone Age cell phones. Although we did get very stylish Stone Age cell phone cases, handmade out of felt by Lottie.
“I wonder why I have to write that stupid wish list every year, when we never get what we wish for,” said Mia. “At least, I don’t remember putting plastic horse with wings on my list. Or near-death experiences on a ski lift.”
“Or bruises all over me,” I added.
“What’s so difficult to understand about night-vision aid, bugging set, and red wig with bangs?” Mia snorted sadly. “Instead we get sweaters, pillows, DVDs, and a skiing trip! And then we have to pretend to be grateful! Think how many smartphones Papa could have bought for that amount of money!”
“One would be enough for me,” I said. You couldn’t even phone to another country with my cell phone. Which meant I hadn’t heard Henry’s voice for ten days. At least, not on the phone.
The last time Mia and I had been on skis was eight years ago. So it was exciting when Papa took us to the top of the slope on our very first day. He thought skiing was like riding a bicycle: you never forgot how to do it. We could now refute that theory. I guess I was the first person ever to come down the entire World Cup slalom course at Adelboden on my behind. Papa had laughed like crazy and kept on asking solicitously about my poor bruised bum. That reawakened my ambition, so on the second day I spent only half as long lying in the snow. By the end of the vacation, I could ski faster than Papa, but I’d paid a high price for it.
At least I wasn’t still limping as we came through the arrivals gate with our baggage. My stiffness was beginning to wear off.
We heard Mom’s cries of “Yoo-hoo! Here we are!” before we saw her, and funnily enough it didn’t bother me at all to see that Ernest was with her. By this time, I’d obviously not only gotten used to the idea that he was part of our lives now—at some point in the last four months I must have begun to like him. I was only a tiny bit disappointed that Henry wasn’t there, when he’d said that he would meet me at the airport.
“You two look as if you’ve had a good time,” said Mom after she’d hugged us. “As fresh and rosy-cheeked as two Swiss girls straight from the Alpine pastures.”
“That’s frostbite,” said Mia. “With luck, we’ll never need to use blush again.”
Mom laughed. “Oh, how I’ve missed you!” she said. She looked fantastic, even though she’d been back to the hairdresser who gave her a style like Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall’s. I hoped I’d look as good as Mom did at her age—aside from the hairstyle, of course.
But however hard I looked for Henry, there was no sign of his untidy shock of dark-blond hair anywhere. I was now more than just a tiny bit disappointed. Maybe he was waiting at the wrong airport.
Ernest, very much the English gentleman, took charge of our suitcases. “Haven’t you brought any Swiss cheese back this time?” he inquired with a twinkle in his eye.
“We did get some Toblerone for you and Mom, but Mia ate it while we were waiting for our flight.”
“Tattletale!”
“Better a tattletale than a greedy pig!”
“Watch out or I’ll kick your poor bruised bum,” said Mia.
Mom sighed. “Now that I come to think of it, it’s been really peaceful without you girls. Come along! Lottie was going to bake sweet rolls filled with jam, her granny’s recipe; they’re called Buchteln, and she says they’re best eaten warm.”
; We’d missed Lottie’s food, so we hurried to the car. Eating cheese fondue every evening can be boring. While we’d been in Switzerland, Lottie had gone to visit her family and friends in Bavaria, and whenever she came back from there, she always had lots of wonderful new recipes and couldn’t wait to try them out. We were happy to taste them for her.
On the way home, Mom and Ernest told us all the news (there wasn’t actually any of that, but they talked thirteen to the dozen all the same), and Mia told them all the adventures we’d had skiing. She exaggerated a bit—we hadn’t been stuck in the ski lift for half a day, only fifteen minutes, and it hadn’t been dark by the time the mountain rescue outfit got it going again with a winch; the lift had started moving again in the normal way of its own accord. And there hadn’t really been any avalanche dog coming to our rescue. But, hey, it was more interesting than what Mom and Ernest were saying, so I let her talk away while I switched on my cell phone and looked for any texts from Henry. I found a message from my network provider telling me that I was now back in the United Kingdom, and eleven texts from Persephone wittering on about Jasper, not yet her boyfriend but maybe he would be someday, and calling down curses on all the French schoolgirls he’d be meeting. But nothing from Henry.
Hmm. Did that mean I ought to worry?
We hadn’t met in our dreams as often as we’d agreed to over the last ten days. That had been my fault, or at least the fault of my unaccustomed mixture of exercise, fresh mountain air, and Swiss cheese, all of them taken in large doses. I’d usually slept so soundly that in the morning I couldn’t even remember seeing my own dream door. Henry might well be mad about that. On the other hand, I’d also waited outside his door and never seen anything of him. You couldn’t agree precisely when you’d meet in a dream—I mean, who dreams a detailed timetable?
He’d given me one of those Japanese lucky beckoning cats for Christmas. Which would have been fine if I hadn’t spent about a thousand hours laboriously making him a music box that played “Dream a Little Dream of Me” and had a photo of me stuck inside the lid. It was star-shaped. Maybe that had been a bad idea. The music box was as good as shouting I love you! while I wasn’t so sure what a battery-driven souvenir costing six pounds ninety from the Asia shop said.