“A plastic cat isn’t romantic, just cheap,” said Emily.
No, it wasn’t! It was a symbol. Not directly a symbol of love, but of happiness, a symbol with a wealth of tradition behind it going back to the famous maneki-neko cult. I’d read that on Wikipedia, and I wondered whether to tell Emily so. But know-it-all that she was, she might have read it on Wikipedia herself, and then she’d know that Hello Kitty had been inspired by the same cult too.
“What did Grayson give you, then, Emily?” asked Mia. Good question.
Emily pointed to her neck. “This lovely pendant.”
“A figure eight lying on its side—the sign for infinity.” The Boker smiled, much moved. “How very pretty.”
The sign for infinity? Had Grayson lost his marbles? I drained my mug of punch in a single draft and tried to dart scornful glances at him.
“Yes, my grandson has a great sense of style.” Mrs. Spencer patted Grayson’s cheek, and he turned slightly pink. “When it comes to his girlfriend too.” With a heavy sigh, she left Grayson alone and placed her hand on Charles’s shoulder. “Would you show Rebecca the garden while it’s still light, Charles dear? Rebecca is so interested in plants. She has a degree in biology. And she plays golf, don’t you, Rebecca dear? Maybe you two could play a round of golf together sometime! But off you go into the garden, now! And do smile, Rebecca, so that Charles can see your beautiful teeth.”
Rebecca managed to come up with a brave smile. I felt really sorry for her. Particularly as Charles didn’t seem a bit interested in her beautiful teeth.
“Mother, it hasn’t been properly light all day,” he said. “And a garden isn’t exactly an attraction in winter. What film have they gone to see?” He looked at me expectantly. “She doesn’t like action films. I hope this Jonathan knows that.”
Punch. Where was the ladle? It did smell delicious. While I was about it, I handed Rebecca a mug of punch too. She gave me a grateful smile.
“Who doesn’t like action films?” asked Mrs. Spencer Senior, adding with a touch of pique, “My garden is worth seeing all the year round.”
“He’s talking about Lottie,” Mia helpfully explained. “But I wouldn’t put it that way. Lottie likes action films just fine when she has someone to hold her hand in the exciting scenes.”
Charles swallowed convulsively. I was feeling sorry for him again. But it was his own fault. He’d had his chance. Now it was Jonathan’s turn. Only, unfortunately Jonathan didn’t exist.
“Oh, we can always see the garden another time,” said Rebecca.
“Lottie? Isn’t that the German nanny’s name?” The Boker’s eyes were wide with astonishment, and she didn’t even notice Rebecca unobtrusively making herself scarce, along with her glass of punch. “What, may I ask, do you think you’re doing associating with your brother’s inamorata’s nanny?”
“First…,” said Charles, looking around for Rebecca, but she was out of earshot, beginning a conversation with Florence and the Admiral. “And secondly…” He took a deep breath. “And thirdly, I’m not letting you tell me who I can like and who I can’t.”
Mrs. Spencer looked as if she might fall down in a faint right away. “Do you mean to say that you like that … that stupid, uneducated German girl?”
Mia indignantly gasped for air. Emily and Grayson were looking shocked as well. I was the only one keeping my cool. It must be because of the punch. Great stuff. I’d have to get the recipe.
Charles nodded. “Yes, I do like Lottie. Not that there’s anything going on between us…”
I warmed to him again at that moment, so I forgave him for not putting Mrs. Spencer right about the words stupid and uneducated.
“Then you’d better make sure it stays that way.” Mrs. Spencer compressed her lips. “It’s bad enough your brother breaking his heart over that Wallis Simpson look-alike, and now my younger son shows a perverse liking for the servant class. I don’t think I’ll survive it.” She was struggling for air. “I can hardly breathe!”
“Because you’re choking on your own nasty nature,” said Mia, not quite as quietly as maybe she thought.
“I could do with a little fresh air myself,” Emily intervened. “And I’d very much like to see around the garden, even in the twilight.” She exchanged a glance with Grayson and took the Boker’s arm. “And my mother wants me to ask what fertilizer you use on your hydrangeas.”
Her diplomacy worked. Mrs. Spencer let herself be led away. “You’re an angel, Emily,” we heard her saying, and even if I wouldn’t necessarily have agreed, I had to say that for once Emily was doing something sensible.
“Can I borrow your iPhone?” Mia had already taken it out of Grayson’s pocket. “I have to Google ‘inamorata.’ And find out about this Simpson woman. And then I must read up on crimes of passion.”
She was so angry she’d gone pale all over. I’d probably have felt the same if the punch hadn’t made me feel nice and woozy.
“I’m thirty-nine years old, and I really don’t need my mother telling me what to do anymore,” Charles exploded, if a little late in the day.
“Lottie isn’t stupid, and she’s not after anyone’s money either,” hissed Mia at him, while her fingers flew over the display.
“I know that,” said Charles.
“She’s clever and beautiful—why would she want anything to do with a dentist? I mean, she could have anyone!”
“I know that,” Charles repeated.
“Would you like some of the hot punch, Mia?” asked Grayson. “I think it would do you good.”
“Are you crazy? She’s only thirteen.” I snatched the ladle from his hand. “Do you want her dancing on the tables? It’s enough for one of us to be drunk. I feel sort of muzzy. I can’t be responsible for my actions.”
“You can’t?” Grayson was grinning. “Very interesting.”
“I never usually drink alcohol,” I defended myself. “But your grandmother is really … and if I’m supposed to be singing the national anthem … oh, help, am I slurring my words already?”
“No!” Grayson was laughing uproariously now. “Liv, there isn’t any alcohol at all in that punch—it’s just hot orange juice with spices.”
“What?” Wasn’t I drunk after all? Not even a little tipsy? But then why had they made such a fuss about this famous punch? Famous! I ask you! But okay, that explained why you couldn’t taste the alcohol in it.
“And as for the national anthem, I was only joking,” Grayson went on, sounding pleased with himself. “No one has any intention of singing, I assure you. Either drunk or sober. And do you see any portrait of the Queen around here?”
I stared at him. “You made it up? You were just tricking us?” Reluctantly, I had to admit that he’d done it pretty well. “I’d never have expected you to show so much imagination and abject cunning,” I said with an appreciative grin.
“Well, you underestimate me.” Grayson took the ladle away from me again. “Now you know that it won’t get you drunk and you don’t have to sing, would you like a little more?”
“No, it wouldn’t be any fun now.” I looked thoughtfully at Grayson. With the expression on his face at the moment, I could imagine what he had looked like as a little boy, cheerful and perfectly happy with himself, nothing to worry about. “Did you really give Emily a symbol of infinity?”
Grayson’s smile turned several degrees cooler.
“I mean, do you know how long infinity lasts?” I asked. “Longer than a lifetime.”
He didn’t answer.
“Bad news!” Mia handed Grayson’s iPhone back. “If you want to get away with a crime of passion, you have to be quick about it!”
“Who are you telling?” muttered Charles.
“This time, the Boker won’t get off scot-free,” said Mia. “This time we must defend Mom’s honor. And Lottie’s. And our own. We can’t put up with this kind of thing any longer.”
Grayson raised his eyebrows. “What on earth,” he asked, “is a Boker?”
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9
LATER, WE ARGUED over who had thought it up. Mia insisted that it was her idea. But one thing is certain: on the way home from the tea party, we were racking our brains for ways to teach the Boker a lesson. This afternoon had been the last straw, and we wanted to hit her where it would hurt. And what occurred to us—or as Mia insisted, to her—was that clipped topiary bird standing in her front garden, Mr. Snuggles, whom no one was allowed to touch except Mrs. Spencer herself. It was obvious that she loved that box tree more than anything else in the world.
Yes, Mr. Snuggles was her vulnerable point. And on educational grounds, we had to strike that vulnerable point. Or rather clip it. Mr. Snuggles’s hours as a peacock were numbered.
We spent the rest of the evening planning our coup, unobtrusively collecting all the equipment we’d need, and waiting for everyone else in the house to go to sleep at last. Just after midnight, we slunk out of the house. I’d have liked to go by bike, but the garage door squealed so badly that we’d have woken everyone. Anyway, it took us only ten minutes to walk to the Boker’s house, and we passed the time by arguing over what creature we were going to turn the peacock into. Mia wanted it to be a penguin; I was in favor of a skunk, because for a skunk we wouldn’t have to sacrifice the entire peacock tail—we could reuse parts of it.
However, the fact was that we’d greatly overestimated our ability to clip a box bush. Even in easier conditions—and it was dark, it was cold, we were in a hurry, and we hadn’t been able to get hold of suitable tools on the spur of the moment—it probably would have been difficult to give the peacock a completely different shape. What was more, we set about it with different ideas in mind—“A penguin!” “No, a skunk!”—and Mia was working on Mr. Snuggles from the front with Ernest’s handsaw, while I was clipping his rear end with the big household scissors.
At least no one disturbed us. We hadn’t met anyone on the way here (and this was supposed to be a big city!), and everyone in Elms Walk seemed to be sleeping peacefully too. Although the moon was full. The snip-snap of my scissors and the critch-cratch of Mia’s saw were the only sounds to be heard. Apart from our hissed curses.
“These scissors will only cut thin twigs,” I complained. “If I carry on at this rate, the skunk won’t be finished until Christmas next year!”
“And this saw will only get through what it’s not supposed to! This is where a night-vision aid would really come in useful. Oops!” Mia held her breath for a moment. “There goes his beak.”
“Never mind, skunks don’t have beaks.… Come on, let’s change places. Heavy engineering is what we need back here.”
At this point, we really knew that we wouldn’t manage to give Mr. Snuggles a new identity—as either a penguin or a skunk. All the same, we went on sawing and snipping. When we finally stepped back and looked at our handiwork in the moonlight, we had to admit that what was left of the peacock didn’t resemble any known form of life. Or any form at all, to be honest. It was just a heap of leaves and shredded branches.
Mia was the first to begin again. “Well, if we’d managed a suspiciously perfect penguin, I suppose the Boker might even have been pleased.”
“Exactly, and that’s not the point,” I agreed. “Still, we could try clipping what’s left of his midriff into a frog.…”
“There’s a car coming.” Mia pushed me down into the flower bed, and as the car drove past and turned into an entrance a few houses farther on, she said, “Forget the frog, we’ll never do it, anyway. Let’s get out of here.”
She was right—we were hopeless gardeners, but all the same, we’d carried out our mission. So we’d better clear off before anyone saw us.
But there was no need to worry. Nothing moved in the streets on the way back either. Only a cat crossed our path, and a cat couldn’t tell on us. Drunk with our victory, we crept into the house, where I took the saw back to Ernest’s workshop—after cleaning off any give-away box leaves—while Mia hung the scissors up in their usual place in the kitchen. No one saw us except Buttercup, and good dog that she was she didn’t bark, but followed us upstairs wagging her tail.
“That was fun,” whispered Mia outside her room, and I had to agree. I felt a little like Zorro, avenger of the weak and disinherited, and with that sense of elation, I fell asleep.
I don’t know why I didn’t dream of anything nice, only of a man with a slouch hat and a huge knife in his hand chasing me through the deserted streets of Hampstead. Something seemed to be wrong with my feet; I could hardly raise them from the ground. And the man with the knife kept coming closer. I wanted to call for help, but no sound came out. Instead my leaden feet stumbled toward the nearest house. I might be able to get help there. When I saw the mint-green front door, I knew I was only dreaming. Of course. Hopefully, Henry was waiting on the other side of it.
Relieved, I turned to face my pursuer.
“I’ll carve a Z into your forehead,” he cried. It was Charles, and he wasn’t wearing a slouch hat, but his trapper’s cap. I looked at him, baffled. What was my unconscious mind trying to tell me this time?
“When I come out, I hope you’ll be gone,” I said. Then I cautiously opened the door.
“About time too.” Henry looked around it. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” I said, trying to shoo Charles away with a gesture. “Just let me … er … tidy up a little first.”
“No need.” With a soft laugh, Henry closed the door. “Why are you so late? I thought you were never coming.”
“Mia and I had something to do first. A little cosmetic alteration to Mrs. Spencer’s front garden. She’d been saying horrible things about Lottie and Mom again today. So we chopped down her silly peacock.”
“Mr. Snuggles?”
“You mean you know him too?”
Henry laughed. “Everyone knows Mr. Snuggles. You mean you and your sister really…?”
“Chopped him up like matchwood, yup,” I said proudly. “I’d like to be there when she looks out of her window in the morning.”
Henry looked around, shivering. He rubbed his arms. As usual, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and it was winter in my dream. “How about going somewhere else, let’s say the London Eye?” And before I could answer, we were already in a glazed capsule high up on the giant wheel above the bank of the Thames, with London by night at our feet.
“You did that!” I said. I couldn’t have imagined it in such detail myself, because while Ernest had brought us here on our sightseeing tour last September, the line of people waiting to ride on the Eye had been so long that we abandoned the idea.
“Yes, I did.” Henry put his arm around my waist and pulled me close. “Romantic, eh?”
He was right. There was no one else in the capsule, and it wasn’t moving. Glazed all around, it offered a fantastic view. Only, the green door didn’t quite fit into this futuristic scene. I put my head back and looked up at the sky through the glass. The stars were sparkling so splendidly that Henry had probably given them an extra boost, but that made no difference.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“You’re beautiful,” Henry whispered back, sounding perfectly serious, and for a moment I forgot the stars and everything else. What in the world could be more important than kissing Henry under a glass dome high above the sea of lights that was London? Warmth spread through me, and Henry gave a little groan as I nestled closer to him. He kissed me harder, burying his hand in my hair.
Something hit the glass above us hard, and I jumped. There it was again. And again. It bounced off our capsule and fell to the depths below.
“What did that?” There were more and more of them. Clonk. Clunk.
“Not me this time,” said Henry.
“Me neither,” I assured him.
Henry stared up. “Too big for hailstones. They look more like … lucky cats?”
Now I saw them too. Beckoning Japanese cats made of plastic really were raining down from the sky and bouncing off the glass
roof. A red-and-white one had just landed above us, and as it slowly slid over the domed roof and downward, it seemed to be looking straight into our eyes.
Henry let go of me. “Well, if you’re not doing it on purpose, Liv, I’m afraid your unconscious mind is trying to tell us something.”
I knew he was right: this was still my dream. I’d made it rain beckoning cats. Or rather, my worried unconscious mind was warning me not to go on kissing Henry but talk to him instead.
“Sorry,” I said, dropping onto the seat in the capsule. The odd hail of cats had stopped falling.
“Didn’t you like the cat?” Henry sat down at the other end of the seat, and I was glad of the distance between us. For the first time since he’d come through the door, I looked at him properly. He was even paler than usual, and there were dark shadows under his gray eyes.
“Has Amy given you her tummy bug?”
Henry raised an eyebrow. “You want to talk about stomach infections?” Was I wrong, or did I really hear a touch of annoyance in his voice?
“No, I only wanted to know how you are.”
“Fine, thanks. I’ve drunk chamomile tea and taken a tablet, and right now I’m lying comfortably in my bed. With a bucket beside it just in case. So that the rug doesn’t suffer a second time.” He smiled a little wryly. “What’s the matter, Liv?”
“Why haven’t I ever been to your home? I don’t even know what your room looks like.”
“Well, we can easily change that,” said Henry, and instead of sitting on the seat in a capsule on the big wheel I was perched on the edge of a bed. Henry was opposite me, sitting on a chair at a desk and grinning at me. “Voilà—my room. I just left out the bucket and tidied up a bit.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said, but all the same, I looked around with interest. There wasn’t a lot of furniture. Just the broad bed, the desk, and its chair. I expected that his clothes were in the built-in wardrobe behind two white-painted slatted doors. My own green dream door beside them didn’t quite fit into the red, white, and dark-blue color scheme.