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o;Well, now I can imagine how you felt at the time. And I suddenly understand why you wished you were dead.”
“How stupid could I get! You sat with me the whole time telling me Max wasn’t worth another thought, not after the way he’d behaved. And you told me to brush my teeth—”
“Yes, and we were listening to Abba’s ‘The Winner Takes It All’ played in an endless loop.”
“I can play that song for you,” offered Lesley, “if it’d make you feel any better.”
“It wouldn’t. But you can hand me the Japanese vegetable knife. Then I can commit hara-kiri.” I let myself drop on my bed, and closed my eyes.
“Girls always have to be so dramatic!” said Xemerius. “The boy’s in a bad temper, looks grouchy because someone hit him on the head, and you think it’s the end of the world.”
“It’s because he doesn’t love me,” I said despairingly.
“You can’t know that,” said Lesley. “With Max, unfortunately, I did know, because half an hour after he dumped me, he was seen snogging in the cinema with that Anna. You can’t accuse Gideon of doing a thing like that. He’s rather … changeable, that’s all.”
“But why? You should have seen the way he looked at me! Kind of repelled. As if I was a … a woodlouse! I can’t bear it.”
“A moment ago, you said you were a chair.” Lesley shook her head. “Come on, pull yourself together. Mr. George is right: love comes in at the window and common sense flies out. Listen, we’re on the point of making a tremendous breakthrough!”
Earlier that morning, when she had just arrived and we were sitting comfortably on my bed together, Mr. Bernard had knocked at my bedroom door—something he never usually did—and put a tea tray down on my desk.
“A little refreshment for you young ladies,” he had said.
I’d looked at him in astonishment. I couldn’t remember ever having seen him up on this floor of the house before.
“Since you were asking about it recently, I took the liberty of searching in the library,” Mr. Bernard had gone on, studying us gravely with his owlish eyes above the rim of his glasses. “And as I expected, I found what I wanted.”
“What is it?” I’d asked.
Mr. Bernard had lifted the napkin on the tray to reveal a book lying there. “The Green Rider,” he had said. “If I remember correctly, this is what you were looking for.”
Lesley had jumped to her feet and picked up the book. “Oh, but I’ve already looked at this in the public library,” she said. “It’s nothing special.”
Mr. Bernard had smiled indulgently. “The reason you say that, I think, is that the copy you found in the public library was never the property of Lord Montrose. However, this one may interest you.” Then he left the room, with a little bow, and Lesley and I had fallen on the book at once. A piece of paper on which someone had written masses of numbers in tiny handwriting had fluttered to the floor. Lesley’s cheeks had turned red with excitement.
“Oh, my God, it’s a code!” she had exclaimed. “How absolutely wonderful! I always wanted to find something like this. Now all we have to do is find out what it means.”
“Right,” said Xemerius, who was dangling from my curtain rail. “I’ve heard that before. I think it fits the category of famous last words.…”
But it hadn’t taken Lesley five minutes to crack the code and work out that the figures related to separate letters in the text. “The first number is always the page, the second is the line, the third is the word, the fourth is the letter, get it? Fourteen, twenty-two, six, three—that’s page fourteen, line twenty-two, word six, and the third letter in that word.” She shook her head. “What a cheap trick! People use this code in every other kids’ book, as far as I remember. Never mind, that means the first letter is an f.”
Impressed, Xemerius had nodded. “Listen to your friend.”
“Don’t forget, this is a matter of life and death,” said Lesley. “You think I want to lose my best friend just because she couldn’t think straight after a bit of snogging?”
“My own opinion exactly!” That was Xemerius.
“This is important. You must stop crying and find out what Lucy and Paul discovered instead,” Lesley went on forcefully. “If you get sent to elapse to 1956 again today—and you’ll only have to ask Mr. George to fix that—you must insist on a private talk with your grandfather! What a crackpot idea to go out to a café! And this time you must write down all he tells you, every last little detail, understand?” She sighed. “Are you sure he said Florentine Alliance? I couldn’t find anything useful online about that. We just have to get a look at those secret writings left to the Guardians by Count Saint-Germain. If only Xemerius could move objects, he could search the archives—he’d simply have to go through the wall and read everything.”
“That’s right, so I’m useless. Go ahead and rub it in, why don’t you?” said Xemerius, offended. “It’s only taken me seven centuries to get used to not even being able to turn the pages of a book.”
There was a knock at my door, and Caroline looked into the room. “Lunch is ready! Gwenny, you and Charlotte are being collected in an hour’s time.”
I groaned. “Charlotte as well?”
“Yes, that’s what Aunt Glenda said. They’re imposing on poor Charlotte, she said, making her coach people with no talent at all. Or something like that.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
