“Ha, genius,” I say, blushing. “Wouldn’t go that far.”
“I’ve read your work,” Hal says, holding my gaze with his. His eyes are the colour of cornflowers on an August day. Now that’s what I call poetic, Forrest Faulkner. “I think you are incredible.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what to say so I just stand there, clutching at the material of my skirt. “I look like a chicken goujon though.”
Hal Babbage chuckles. “You most certainly don’t,” he says.
“There you are!” Rani appears in the nick of time, before I tell Hal Babbage that his eyes remind me of bubblegum-flavoured ice cream and that I’d like to lick them, or something equally stupid. Her long dress shimmers in the moonlight; she looks like a princess. “You should come back in! People want to talk to you.The Courierwants a photo!”
“I do not want to talk toThe Courierif that’s allowed,” I tell her, suddenly utterly exhausted. “I think I’ve reached my maximum capacity for peopling now.”
“I’m Rani,” Rani says as she introduces herself to Hal. “I’d better take Ava to her room. Getting her out of the lab was a major project and she’s basically still socially feral. Would you mind making excuses for us if anyone asks?”
“I’d be delighted,” Hal says. “Get some rest, Ava. I hope I see you tomorrow at breakfast, perhaps.”
“You smell like summer meadows of freshly cut grass,” I tell him. “It’s my favourite smell.”
“Thank you,” Hal says as if he’s not weirded out at all.
“Is it me, or is that man perfect in every way?” I ask Rani as I hook my arm through hers.
“Every. Single. Way,” she replies.
Chapter Three
“Wow!” Rani looks around my room, impressed by the luxury, and I don’t blame her. It is pretty next-level. Everything at Castle Beaumont is. There are a lot of half-derelict and flat-out ruined castles in this country, but not here. It opens its gardens and part of the castle for the public, for a fee of course. It hosts weddings, balls, throws Christmas extravaganzas and Easter egg hunts, and of course every summer the great and good come to vote on the Beaumont Prize. Possibly the most lucrative aspect is its frequent appearances in TV shows and movies, where it seems to be the go-to stately home from every period drama you can think of. The Beaumont family runs this huge building like a business, and that means they can keep every room in the same swanky style as it has always been.
When I tell you that I’m in a castle, you might imagine a drafty old grey stone thing with battlements and dungeons. Castle Beaumont is nothing like that: It’s Austen, it’s Bridgerton. Its heating bill must be enormous. It’s a glorious symmetrical Georgian mansion set in the middle of beautifully landscaped grounds that are filled with a lake, a maze, and a selection of follies, temples, towers,and mini castles that turn the grounds into a living, breathing fairy tale.
There’s even a village just for the people who work Castle Beaumont to live in, made up of pretty little houses and cottages that look like they should be featured on postcards.
I’d like to be laid-back and cynical about all the beauty and glamour. But the thing is, I grew up in care homes and sometimes a few weeks in a semidetached with foster carers, so thisislike a fairy tale and I’m sort of super smart Cinders. When I was a kid there wasn’t much in the way of comfort. Oh, you know, I got fed, and a bed, and sometimes there would be a trip to holiday camp and someone would force me to rappel off something. At Christmas I’d get gifts that strangers donated for Girl Aged 10 (or whatever age I was that year) but never anything chosen with just me in mind. The places I lived in were safe and clean but never luxuriously beautiful just for the sake of it, never fit for a girl who read about princesses. And there were grown-ups who were kind to me, helped and encouraged me. But nobody lovedme. No one ever cared more about me than they did anyone else in the world. Not until Rani. So even though I know this room existed long before I was ever invited to come to Castle Beaumont, just the fact that I will be sleeping here tonight exactlybecauseof who I am and what I’ve achieved feels almost like a homecoming. Like I’m coming home to all the dreams I never thought would come true and this is the proof that I matter after all.
“I feel a bit like I might get thrown out for trespassing,” I tell Rani.
“You hit the big-time, babe,” Rani says. “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“What’s Kansas got to do with it?” I ask her.
“It’s fromThe Wizard of Oz.”
“Oh. Well, this isn’t Kansas and I get to feel like the heroine in a hot romance novel, and I am here for that. As long as no-one tells me off for trespassing.”
I caught a glimpse of Rani’s room on the way to mine. Her walls are lined with a gorgeous peachy pink silk that’s printed with birds of paradise in various states of flight. Walking into my room feels like walking into a tranquil blue lagoon. It’s decorated in a light silvery turquoise silk, with a softly gleaming silver design printed onto it. My room back at the flat I share with Rani, over her shop, is just the same as it was on the day I moved in. A sort of dingy cream colour with a bed, and all my possessions arranged so I can see them all at once. Rani despairs of my interior design skills, but as much as I love the colour and chic she has unleashed on the rest of our apartment, I feel like I’ve got at least another two years of thinking about how I want my room to look before I commit to a colour scheme.
Maybe I want it to look like my castle room. Maybe my design aesthetic is newly acquired taste for princess stuff.
In the middle of the room is the kind of four-poster bed that looks like Henry VIII might have slept in it, which isn’t totally impossible, as it happens. There’s a dressing table, with one of those princess standard triple mirrors. A wardrobe that could possibly provide a direct route to Narnia, and over the fireplace a portrait of a beautiful young woman, from around the early 1800s, I think, dressed in a blue silk gown. Holding her hand is a toddler with rosy cheeks and blond curls, in a little white lace frock. It’s a touching moment between a mother and child that catches atmy heart. I was a toddler with a mum once, but not for very long. Hence the clean and kind kids’ home and the sense that I never really belong anywhere, but look, I’m not one to dwell. Fine, I do dwell a bit.
“Your bathroom is in a turret!” Rani exclaims, going into the small tower room and switching on the light. “Your bathroom is turret shaped! This is the life, Ava. Can we hatch a plan to move our lives here forever and ever?”
“You’d miss the store,” I tell her. “You know those dresses are as much your family as I am, and Mrs. and Mrs. Shah for that matter.”
“Fair comment,” Rani agrees. “Okay then, we’ll just make best friends with Lord and LadyB, and get them to invite us over for shooting parties, or whatever it is the aristocrats do.”
“I’m not shooting anything,” I tell her. “Ah good, my stuff.”
It’s a relief to see that my bags have been placed at the end of the bed, on a great big carved chest. My laptop, my clock, my soft toy sheep, which yeah, all right, I’m thirty-five, but I’ve slept with it every single night of my life. Flopping down onto the feather-stuffed mattress feels like I imagine it does to be greeted by a long-lost lover would, not that I’ve ever had one of those. Or one whose whereabouts I know of, for that matter.
