The Glass Bird Girl (2 page)

Blood Families

S
everal hundred miles away from Folly Farm the golden October sun was slanting into the drawing room of a tall Mayfair town house, dappling an interior of gilt, marble and chintz. Here stood Charles Rodriguez, one of the city's richest and most secretive art dealers, welcoming one of the richest and most secretive of his clients.

‘Thirsty?'

‘Parched,' Prince Stolonov sighed, sinking into an armchair. He watched silently, his foot drumming restlessly on the floor, as his friend mixed the drinks.

Charles threw him a questioning glance: ‘Something tells me you haven't come to buy a picture.'

‘Quite right,' replied the prince. ‘I've come to you as a friend, Charles, in need of help.'

Charles inclined his head. ‘I have long thought of my friends as my family, on account of my blood family being so thoroughly unsatisfactory.'

‘I didn't know you had any blood family.'

‘Everyone has blood family. I just choose not to play with mine.'

‘Of course, you have no children,' the prince murmured.

‘None that I know about.' Charles smiled.

‘I wish, sometimes, that I was in your position.'

Charles raised an eyebrow. ‘I hope that your enchanting little Anastasia has not been giving you trouble?'

‘Not trouble, exactly. But . . . well, you know what it's like, Charles, it's her first time away from home without a bodyguard and one can't help worrying.'

‘
You
can't help worrying, Stolly. The British tradition is to send your children to boarding school then forget all about them.'

The prince shook his head. ‘This country is barbaric. I wish I'd never agreed to let Ansti go away to school.'

‘I thought she wanted to go.'

‘She didn't want to live at home with her stepfather. And her mother didn't want her roaming the world with me. Boarding was the compromise and Venetia insisted it should be her old school, even though she never liked it there herself. Why are English people so attached to places where they have been unhappy?'

‘I had a letter from Anastasia a couple of weeks ago and she sounded quite cheerful,' Charles said. Anastasia was his god-daughter.

‘That must have been before the problems started.'

‘Problems?'

‘I spoke to her on the telephone yesterday and she was in quite a rattled state. I'm afraid she's being teased, Charles.
Horribly teased
.' The prince gave the words the weight of torture.

Charles looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Go on.'

‘Well, it might not amount to anything of course, but Anastasia's reported things going missing – nothing valuable, just pens, homework, a diary, but it seems to go and on. It's . . . Oh, syrup and pancakes, Charles. I know it sounds nonsense, and it probably is. But she's usually so meticulous about her things – at home she even keeps her books in alphabetical order. You know what she's like, dreamy in some ways, but well ordered in others. So it does seem odd she should suddenly start losing everything. And if it is a question of her being teased, then—'

‘You want to cap the knees of whoever's doing it,' Charles concluded, smiling.

‘It might strike you I'm being over-protective. But she is my only child and I reserve the right to protect her. For God's sake, what else are parents for?'

Charles opened his mouth as though to answer this question, then seemed to think better of it. The prince was mid-flow.

‘It's not easy to judge the situation. I tell you, Charles, this English school is quite absurdly old-fashioned, even by your standards. It's run on some modish principle of keeping children cosseted from the outside world. No
computers or mobile telephones . . . letters home every Sunday . . . no television . . . even the school uniform looks as if it belongs to the nineteen-fifties – you should see the brown tunics they wear.'

‘You probably didn't choose it for the uniform,' Charles said.

‘I didn't choose it full stop,' the prince replied. ‘It's like a prison. This business about not being allowed mobile telephones is grotesque. They have to ring from a call box in a freezing corridor at a prescribed time, and most nights the bell rings for bed before Ansti can get to the front of the queue. The older years get to barge in front of the younger ones. Always, my little Ansti is shunted to the back of the queue!

‘But yesterday we managed to talk, and I could hear the unhappiness in her voice. She was trying not to cry – and she wouldn't tell me exactly what was wrong. You see, Charles, she wants to prove to her fusspot papa that she can manage on her own. She made such a song and dance about not having a personal protection officer and wanting to live as a “normal” schoolgirl, and now she's determined to prove she can cope, even when—'

‘When the evidence suggests otherwise,' Charles concluded.

‘
Exactement!
' the prince replied.

‘Have you spoken to the school?' Charles asked.

‘Yes, I talked to the dragon headmistress, a Miss Fotheringay, and she promised she'd look into it. But when I called again a week later she gave me some spiel about school matters being best left to the school. My
fear is that they will do nothing at all.' The prince turned his drink in his hands. ‘I think, Charles, that I am going to have to follow this up myself.'

‘What do you plan to do – turn up and search everyone's drawers?' Charles asked, looking amused.

‘Don't be an idiot,' the prince replied impatiently. ‘This is a job for a professional. My first thought was to approach a member of staff and pay them to keep a special eye on Ansti. But I have become rather nervous of the dragon finding me out. Or Venetia. So now I have a much better idea. We import a child to be her special friend and protector.'

‘
We?
' said Charles. ‘
We
import a
child
?'

‘Correct. I want to plant a child in the school to watch the other girls day and night and find out what the devil's going on. It shouldn't take a clever urchin more than a few weeks to get to the bottom of it. It could be Ansti's just being careless, but if I can get proof that someone's persecuting her, then—'

‘You don't think an urchin would stick out rather, among the rich girls of Knight's Haddon?'

‘Not a clever one. Anyone with brains can fit in anywhere. You surely don't need me to tell you that.'

‘Mmm,' Charles replied.

‘And I take it you don't want Anastasia's mother to find out?'

‘For heaven's sake, Charles, what kind of fool do you take me for? You know Venetia's mental health is fragile at the best of times. Any anxiety over Anastasia could tip her over the edge.'

‘I'm sorry,' Charles said quietly. ‘I thought she was better.'

‘So did I. But her brute of a husband has sent her back into the arms of her doctors. Ansti knows better than to trouble her with this, and so do I. Besides, she's convinced Ansti's safe there. After all, it was
her
old school, and she loves the fact it's hidden away in the middle of a huge park, miles from anywhere.'

‘Aren't you reassured by that too?'

‘Yes and no. I would prefer to have my own people on the premises. And to set my own rules around my daughter's freedom. So, my friend, are you going to help me in this matter? Find a suitable waif to be playmate and protector for your favourite god-daughter?'

‘My dear Stolly,' Charles protested, ‘you're surely not serious? You seem to forget I am an art dealer, not a child recruitment officer. What you propose is quite outlandish, and perhaps even outside the law.'

‘Nonsense,' said Stolly. ‘You find the child, I offer to educate her – at least for a term or two. Lemon squeezy. Ansti told me there was a spare bed in her dormitory. I want it filled before I return to Russia.'

‘But, Stolly—'

‘No, Charles. I have to know if my daughter is being persecuted at school. You've helped me out of more awkward spots before now,' the prince reminded him gently, ‘and I don't believe I've ever given you cause to regret it.'

Charles Rodriguez inclined his head. Friendship didn't come into it. He was one of nature's fixers, and
the prince was his paymaster.

‘All you have to do is find me a smart eleven-year-old girl capable of keeping a secret. Surely, Charles, one of those can't be so hard to find?'

A Chance Encounter

I
t was dark by the time Edie passed the church and started along the road that led to the small country station. The warm lights of the village soon paled behind her; ahead there was only the weak beam of her torch dancing on the tarmac.

Edie wished she had brought a stronger torch. She had never known darkness like this – in London the streetlights beneath her bedroom window had glowed all night, and she had always fallen asleep to the hum of voices and music drifting from the pavement below.

But here there was nothing, no sound, no light. Even the moon had retreated behind a cloud.

The station had seemed near when they had made the journey in Aunt Sophia's car, but now the road stretched on for ever, in a tunnel of black. She kept her eyes fixed
on the flickering torchlight, and tried to think ahead – to the flat in Queensway . . . to the key hidden under the cracked stone pig by the door.

Her back was aching under the weight of her rucksack, and she could feel the straps cutting like wire into her shoulders. She decided to stop and put on some extra layers, thinking it would make her load lighter. She slid the rucksack from her back, then knelt down on the thin grass verge beside the hedgerow and started tugging out a jumble of hastily packed clothes.

But then she heard a low humming noise, which rose swiftly to a roar, and suddenly found herself blinded by the headlights of a car. Edie screamed, stumbling back into the hedge in terror. She heard the engine stop, and when she removed her hands from her face the lights had dimmed to a soft yellow. She looked up and saw a man standing over her, reaching out a hand. His face was hidden by shadow, but she felt the softness of his overcoat as he bent down to help her to her feet.

‘I'm relieved to see I didn't hit you,' he observed calmly.

Edie just stared.

‘I take it that belongs to you?' the man enquired, pointing to her rucksack.

Edie nodded, and watched as he picked it up and retrieved the bits of clothing from the grass.

‘Aren't you rather young to be out at this time?' he said, handing them back to her.

Edie shrugged. She wondered if he was going to start probing, but his next question took her unawares:

‘I'm trying to find Folly Farm. I've been there before, but I think I must have taken a wrong turn out of the village. Do you know it?'

‘I'm sorry, I've never heard of it, I'm not from round here,' Edie said, the lies tripping from her tongue. ‘I'm camping with some friends up the lane. I'd better get back or they'll wonder what's happened to me.'

As she spoke she stuffed her clothes into her rucksack and swung it onto her back. Then she picked up her torch and marched on in the direction of the station. Only when she heard the engine start into life behind her, and the car drive off towards the village, did she clench her fist in a little mime of triumph.

Edie felt bolder having survived this challenge. A careless word would have given her away, but the stranger had clearly fallen for her story. Even so, the fact that he was on his way to Folly Farm made her even more anxious to reach the station. She looked at her watch and saw she had less than twelve minutes until the London train. The next one was an hour later and by then Aunt Sophia would have noticed she had gone. If a visitor told her that he'd seen a child hurrying through the night with a rucksack she would be straight on her trail.

She pointed her torch into the darkness and hurried on. Finally she came to a small cluster of cottages, then the lane turned and she saw the lights of the station up ahead. A surge of excitement shot through her – then alarm when she saw the train already at the platform. She bent her back under the weight of the rucksack and
started to run.

She heard the slamming of train doors – but not the footsteps gaining quietly on the road behind her. It was only at the sound of a familiar menacing laugh that she turned to see three thin, feral faces leering at her in the torchlight.

‘Gotcha!' said Lyle.

Before Edie could scream his hand closed over her mouth, and she heard the shrill of a whistle as the train slid away into the night.

The front door at Folly Farm was never locked. It opened into the long, low kitchen, where Sophia Fairlight, Edie's aunt, was huddled by the wood-burning stove, clutching a telephone and a glass of gin. ‘Oh, Lyle darling, is that you – and have you found her?' she called out as she heard a door slam. ‘Please say yes.'

‘No,' came the reply. ‘And no.'

Sophia, recognising the voice, stood up with an expression of languid delight. ‘Cousin Charles! What a treat, do you know I had completely forgotten you were coming.'

‘How flattering,' replied the tall, velvet-collared man.

‘But I remember now,' Sophia went on, draping her arms around his neck. ‘You had a funeral nearby?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Oh, darling, you're always so mysterious,' she sighed.

‘Good,' Charles said. ‘I would hate to think I had lost my touch. Where are all your ghastly menfolk?'

‘Tony's away, leaving me to cope all on my own,'
Sophia replied in a tone of theatrical self-pity.

‘What a treat.'

‘Don't be unpleasant, you've never seen the point of him.'

‘I'm sorry, my dear, but you can't expect me to like the man who took away the one cousin whose company I could bear and buried her in the middle of the dank countryside. Why couldn't you have found yourself a banker and stayed in London?'

Sophia did not rise to this familiar bait. ‘Are you spending the night?'

‘Certainly not. I've booked a hotel in Chagford. But I'll stay for dinner.'

‘Oh God, darling, I wonder if there is any—'

‘Where are your horrible sons? Can't we eat them?'

Sophia grimaced. ‘Eugh! You'd have to chew them for ever they'd be so tough. They really are horrible. They've been so vile to Edie that she's run away and now they're out looking for her.'

‘Who's Edie?'

‘Charles, darling, don't be dim, it doesn't suit you. Edith Wilson, my little orphaned niece – and your cousin, though I know you've never held our family in much store.'

‘What's she doing here? I thought you hardly saw her.'

‘She's come to live with us. It's a complete nightmare – she hates it here and is furious all the time and the boys hate her, but . . .' Sophia shrugged. ‘Oh, darling, what can I do? The long and short of it is that I'm her guardian and this is her new home.'

‘How old is she?'

‘Eleven,' Sophia replied.

‘And aren't you worried about her?'

‘Not really. She's bound to have made for the station.'

‘I'd better go after her,' Charles said, putting down his glass. ‘I think I saw her on the road.'

‘Oh, don't bother, darling. The boys will hunt her down—'

‘Why didn't you go?'

‘
Me?
' Sophia sounded amazed by the suggestion. ‘I don't really feel this drama is anything to do with me. You wouldn't understand, Charles, you're not a parent, but children have to sort these things out by themselves. There's no point in
us
getting involved. I told the boys they had to promise to be nice to Edie from now on. But the trouble is, they're wild.'

‘That, my dear, is because no one has tamed them,' Charles replied. ‘Is this them now?' he added, hearing scuffling in the hall.

A moment later the door blew open and through it appeared the child he had met earlier that night, with Lyle and the twins dragging her by the arms like gaolers.

Charles looked at her, intrigued. He saw what had prompted his flash of recognition by the roadside: she had her mother's eyes, the same intense yet furtive stare. But it was the change in her appearance that struck him most. In the car headlights her thin, ivory face had been lit with adventure, but now it was sallow and streaked with tears.

Charles did not move. ‘Let her go,' he said.

The boys released her and Edie pulled away, rubbing her arms where their hands had gripped her and thanking Charles with a sullen stare.

‘We caught her by the station,' Jason said proudly. ‘We got there just in time. She was going to get the train to London.'

‘Bet she wishes she had,' Lyle sneered.

‘Oh, boys, do try and be a bit nicer,' Aunt Sophia said feebly, as Edie stormed upstairs.

Charles looked at the slammed door, and something in him stirred. It was not so much pity that he felt as an agreeable inkling that he might be in luck. This was a child, he calculated silently, in need of a new master.