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There was a brief silence in which they all gaped at me as if I were a little green man from Planet Zog.
“Good morning, child,” said Lady Arista. “I hope you slept well.”
“Fine, thank you. I was very tired.”
“I’m sure it was all rather too much for you,” said Aunt Glenda patronizingly.
But she was right—it had been. I sat down in my usual place opposite Charlotte, who obviously hadn’t touched her toast. She looked as if the sight of me had spoilt her appetite.
Mum and Nick were smiling at me in a conspiratorial way, and Caroline pushed a bowl of cornflakes and milk over to me. At the other end of the table, Great-aunt Maddy waved to me. “My little angel! I’m so glad to see you! You’ll cast some light on all this confusion. What with all the shouting yesterday evening, no one could get a clear idea of anything. Glenda was digging up ancient history from back when our Lucy ran off with that handsome de Villiers boy. I never did understand why everyone kicked up such a fuss because Grace let them stay with her for a few days. You’d think that would have been forgotten long ago. But no, no sooner has a little grass grown over it than some clumsy camel comes along and rakes it all up again.”
Caroline giggled. She was probably imagining Aunt Glenda as a camel.
“This is not a TV series, Maddy,” said Lady Arista sharply.
“Thank goodness, no, it isn’t,” said Great-aunt Maddy. “If it were, I’d have lost track of the plot ages ago.”
“It’s perfectly simple,” said Charlotte in a chilly voice. “Everyone thought I’d have the gene, but Gwyneth has it instead.” She pushed her plate away from her and stood up. “So now she’ll just have to see if she can manage.”
“Charlotte, wait!” But Aunt Glenda was not in time to keep Charlotte from storming out of the room. Before she followed her, she gave Mum a nasty look. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Grace!”
“She’s in a dangerous mood,” said Nick.
Lady Arista heaved a deep sigh.
Mum sighed as well. “I have to go to work now. Gwyneth, I agreed with Mr. George that he will pick you up from school today. You’ll be sent to elapse to the year 1956, in a nice safe cellar where you can get on with your homework in peace.”
“Bummer!” said Nick.
I was thinking just the same.
“And after that, you will come straight home,” said Lady Arista.
“But the day will be over by then,” I said. Was this going to be my routine from now on? Going to the Temple to elapse after school, sitting about in a boring cellar doing homework, then going home to dinner? What a nightmare!
Great-aunt Maddy swore under her breath because the sleeve of her dressing gown had landed in the marmalade on her toast. “This is no time of day to be up and about, that’s what I always say.”
“So you do,” said Nick.
Mum kissed him, Caroline, and me good-bye, like every morning. Then she put a hand on my shoulder and said quietly, “If by any chance you happen to see my dad, give him a kiss from me.”
Lady Arista jumped slightly at these words. She sipped her tea in silence, then looked at her watch and said, “You must hurry if you’re going to be at school on time.”
* * *
“I’M DEFINITELY GOING to open a detective agency someday,” said Lesley. We were bunking off geography with Mrs. Counter and had squeezed into one of the cubicles in the girls’ toilets. Lesley was sitting on the loo lid with a fat folder on her knees. I was leaning against the door, which was scribbled all over in ballpoint and color pen. JENNY LOVES ADAM, MALCOLM IS AN ASS, LIFE IS CRAP, and other, similar remarks.
“Investigating mysteries must be in my blood,” said Lesley. “Maybe I’ll study history too and specialize in old myths and ancient writings. And then I’ll be like Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code. I’ll look better, of course, and I’ll hire a really hot guy to be my assistant.”
“You do that,” I said. “Sounds exciting. Whereas I’m going to spend the rest of my life hanging about in a cellar without any windows in the year 1956.”
“Only for three hours a day,” said Lesley. I’d brought her right up to date, and it looked as if she had a much better grasp of all these complications than I did. She’d heard it all, up to my story about the men in the park and my guilty conscience. “Better to fight back than get sliced up like a cake yourself” was her comment on that. Oddly enough, that made me feel better than any of Mr. George’s or Gideon’s reassurances.
Telekinesis was the word Lesley used for the count’s ability to strangle me even from several yards away. Through telekinesis, she said, you could also communicate with other people without opening your mouth. She promised to find out more about it this afternoon.
She’d spent the day yesterday and half the night searching the Internet for Count Saint-Germain and all the other stuff I’d passed on to her. She dismissed my gratitude, saying it was all terrific fun.
“Anyway, this Count Saint-Germain is a rather enigmatic historical character. Even his date of birth isn’t known for certain. Much mystery surrounds his origins,” she said, and her face was positively glowing with enthusiasm. “Apparently he didn’t age. Some people put that down to magic, others to a balanced diet.”
