The Minivers

by Natalie Jane Prior

  ‘I think so,’ Emily nodded. ‘They’ve got tape or something covering up the number plate.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ said Ron. ‘The van’s a common type. It won’t be easy to trace.’

  ‘That’s the police’s job, surely,’ said Millamant sharply. ‘Which reminds me: neither Emily nor I have been interviewed yet. I would have thought that should happen as soon as possible.’

  ‘I’ll ask the detective in charge what he wants to do,’ said Ron. For a moment, Emily thought he looked annoyed. ‘I’m keeping him fully informed, of course. My own team’s already searching the house and grounds; anything they find will be passed on. As for being interviewed, I can send a member of my own team around to take a statement. What about Primrose?’

  ‘I want to speak to a detective,’ said Emily. ‘Primrose is only a security guard. Besides, it’s not just a matter of making a statement. I want to offer a reward for Rosamund’s safe return.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Ron. ‘I’ll see what I can arrange. Meanwhile, stay indoors and don’t speak to anybody. The entire security team’s been placed on high alert.’

  He took his tape and went, leaving Emily with the distinct impression that something very important had been left unsaid.

  ‘That was strange,’ she said, furrowing her brow. ‘For a moment there, he was really cross. I wonder why? Of course I need to speak to the police. I want to know what they’re doing, and besides, I might be able to help them.’

  ‘If you ask me, there’s a lot going on that’s peculiar,’ said Millamant, darkly. ‘Emmie, I have to show you something. I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you, because it’s not very nice, but I suppose it can’t be kept hidden forever.’

  She picked up the bundle of newspapers she had put on the table and laid them on Emily’s lap. The word MINIVER leapt off the front page of the top paper in huge black type, followed by MADNESS. For a moment, Emily stared at the words, unable to make sense of them. She unfolded the paper. Her eyes focussed on the photograph below the headline and she gasped aloud.

  It was a photograph of Rosamund, probably the worst one Emily had ever seen. Her eyes were shut, her mouth was open, and she was running hysterically out of the ballroom of the Artemisia Hotel. Quickly, Emily flicked through the pile of papers. The same photo was on every one, though the headlines were different. Rosie Lets Rip, read one. Has This Miniver Gone Too Far? said another.

  Feeling sick and scared, Emily refolded the papers. ‘How on earth did this happen?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Millamant twisted her hands. ‘I’ve tried to ring the Miniver Press Office several times, but there’s nobody there. It’s as if the whole place has just closed down overnight. Emmie, I don’t understand. The papers have never published articles like this about you and Rosamund. Papa King doesn’t permit it. It just isn’t done.’

  ‘No,’ said Emily, shaken. ‘No, it isn’t.’

  She put the papers down. Of course, bad or embarrassing things occasionally happened to the Minivers, like the day Emily had slipped through a grating and had to be fished out of a smelly drain, or the time the Minivers Make-up Giveaway made girls all over Artemisia come out in blotches. But generally, Papa King made sure the newspapers turned a blind eye to these incidents. Emily had never seen anything as horrible as this before.

  ‘They’re all saying Rosamund is a spoiled brat,’ said Millamant. ‘There’s something else, too. Have you noticed?’ She took a newspaper from the pile and let it drop open nearly down to her toes.

  Emily pointed to Rosamund’s picture. ‘The photo is the same on every one,’ she said. ‘I noticed that, straight away. That means somebody has done this deliberately. Somebody has sent that photograph to the papers and told them exactly what story to write.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Millamant. ‘A person who wants people to think badly of Rosamund, just at the time she needs help most. Someone in a position of power, who can order the papers to publish something Papa King would never permit if he were well. A woman who hates you and Rosamund and thinks of you as a threat –’

  ‘Madame.’ Emily could barely say the name. ‘Oh, Milly, Rosamund was so rude to her at the party. Do you really think …’ Her voice trailed off. She was aware that many years ago Madame had done something truly terrible. Nobody seemed to know exactly what it was, but she had been sent away from Artemisia by her father, Papa King, never to return. Then Papa King had suffered his stroke, and Madame had come creeping home and moved back into the palace. Ever since her return, all sorts of strange and unsettling things had been happening. Most of them were so small that Emily could not quite put her finger on them. But in recent months the number of newspaper and magazine articles about the Minivers had definitely shrunk, and the people at the palace had become less friendly. It had grown harder, too, for Emily and Rosamund to get news of Papa King, let alone to visit him. Until now, though, it had not occurred to Emily that Madame was behind all of this. In a dim recess of her mind she wondered what would happen if Papa King died. The more she thought about the possibility of Madame becoming queen, the more frightened Emily felt.

  ‘If it really is Madame,’ she said, in a small voice, ‘I don’t see how we can stop her. The Miniver Press Office reports direct to the palace. And so –’ she swallowed, and dropped her voice to a whisper ‘– so does Ron.’

  It was a horrible moment. Millamant’s face had been very grave: it now turned white. ‘It would certainly explain why Ron didn’t want you to speak to the police,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘He really didn’t want me to be interviewed, did he?’ said Emily. ‘Oh, Milly, I hope I’m wrong. Ron knows everything about Rosamund and me. I’ve always trusted him. Do you really think he could have sold us out?’

  ‘There’s one way to know for sure,’ said Millamant. She went over to the phone, lifted the receiver, and dialled out.

  Several seconds passed. Emily sat on the sofa with her legs curled under her, large-eyed with anxious anticipation. Then Millamant spoke.

  ‘Who is this, please? What switchboard? Why wasn’t my call put through? That’s ridiculous: how can the emergency services number be busy? I want to speak to the police, right now. No, I don’t want someone to call me back.’ She pushed her finger on the speaker-phone button so Emily could hear.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ a woman’s voice was saying. ‘The number you have dialled is currently unavailable. Perhaps you might like to try again later.’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Millamant hung up. She turned to Emily. ‘Ever heard of the Emergency Services number being out of order?’ she asked. ‘This is serious, Emmie. Do you realise what this means?’

  Emily nodded. All her life, she had known she was small, but she had never before felt helpless. ‘It means we’re prisoners, just as much as Rosamund,’ she said. ‘Only Rosamund’s on her own. She’s been kidnapped, and no one’s even looking for her. By now, she could be anywhere.’

  ‘I am a Miniver,’ Rosamund Miniver told herself, as the van she was travelling in jolted over what seemed to be one speed bump after another. ‘Minivers are important people. Minivers do not cry. Mess with a Miniver, my friend, and you’ll answer for it.

  ‘Do you know who I am? I’m Rosamund Miniver, that’s who. Rosamund Miniver. I’m beautiful. Everybody says I’m the last word in style and elegance. I have a recording contract and my own line of cosmetics. I’m the star of my own TV show. People name their babies after me. I get over two hundred fan letters every day.

  ‘We Minivers might be small,’ asserted Rosamund, ‘but we’re tough.’ She had been saying this over and over since her capture, but she no longer believed it. Suddenly Rosamund started to cry. She had been tied up in a sack for over twelve hours, and now shut into a suitcase. It was hard to be brave when you couldn’t breathe, when every bone and muscle in your body screamed with pain, when your hands were tied, your mouth was gagged; and you were hungry and thirsty and needed to go to the toilet so badly you thought you were going
to burst.

  ‘Oh, Emmie, I need you. Where are you, Emmie? Where are you, where are you, where are you?’

  4

  At Woodlands Station

  On the edge of the city, where the suburbs gave out and there were only a few small tumbledown houses and struggling farms, was a forest. Not a real forest. It was more a scrubby wasteland, where local boys went to ride their trail bikes when their parents weren’t around. Most of the time, the only life to be seen was birds and insects. At night it was eerie and abandoned.

  About midnight on the night after Rosamund Miniver was kidnapped, a van drove into the scrub with its headlights dimmed. The driver killed the engine. Lit only by its parking lamps, the van coasted rapidly down an almost invisible dirt track and stopped in a clearing at the bottom. The door opened and the driver hopped out. He was young and reasonably tall, but it was hard to see much more, for though it was a warm night, he was wearing dark jeans and a black sweatshirt, with a balaclava covering most of his face.

  The driver crunched over stones and twigs to the back door of the van and opened it. He pulled out a jerry can and unscrewed the lid, then splashed liquid over the van’s sides and bonnet, in the back, and in the cabin. A strong smell of petrol filled the clearing. The driver tossed the empty jerry can into the back of the van and walked away with a bottle in his hand.

  At the edge of the clearing he took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and lit a wick that was sticking out of the top of the bottle. With one clean, swinging movement, he lobbed it at the van. It hit the side with a satisfying explosion of glass and flame. Whoomph! Whooosh! Fire ran over the grass and shot up around the van in fantastic colours of purple, gold and green. There was a crackle and a rush of heat that made the watcher’s face glow bright.

  The young man watched for a moment, smiling, then turned and started walking away swiftly, back up the hill. He had just reached the road when there was a loud explosion. The ground shook and flames leapt above the trees. Soon, it would all be ablaze and the fire brigade would come to put it out.

  By then, there would be nothing left for them to find.

  ‘Really,’ said Rosamund severely, ‘this won’t do. This won’t do at all.’

  She looked at the woman who was standing sheepishly in front of her. The kidnapper’s hands were full of miniature outfits: evening dresses made of gold lamé, ski-pants and jumpers, even a riding outfit. Rosamund folded her arms across her red silk pyjamas. Her mouth was still extremely sore from being gagged, and she was feeling cranky and slightly belligerent. Rosamund did not care. She had just been through the most terrifying twenty-four hours of her life. Being cross helped her feel less frightened and more in control of what was happening to her.

  ‘Dolls’ clothes,’ Rosamund went on, ‘are for dolls. They are made of cheap, nasty material with no proper fastenings. I am not a doll, and I refuse to wear them. So. What are you going to do about that?’

  The kidnapper looked mournfully at the clothes and said nothing. Rosamund gave an exaggerated sigh. The woman’s name was Brenda, and in a way, it had been a relief to find that she was just a nutty fan. Rosamund had been afraid – really afraid – that her kidnapper had been Madame. That said, Brenda was definitely one of the weirdest people she had ever met. Her house was weird, too. Wherever Rosamund looked, she saw either her own or Emily’s face. The walls were plastered with Miniver posters, and the floor was stacked with teetering piles of magazines such as Miniver Matters and Minivers Monthly. There was even dirty Minivers crockery on the table. Rosamund was not very impressed by the standard of Brenda’s housekeeping. Millamant would not have put up with it for a moment.

  Brenda’s daughter, Fiona, sat watching from the sofa under the window. She was a mousy girl of about Emily’s age and had so far kept out of Rosamund’s way. The third kidnapper had gone out soon after their arrival. Her name was Holly. Rosamund liked her the least of the three, partly because she sensed Holly was not a Minivers fan, and partly because she was the person who had stuffed her into the suitcase.

  ‘Honestly, Brenda,’ said Rosamund, ‘the best thing you can do is take me home. You’re going to get into a lot of trouble, you know. Oh, for goodness sake, take those awful things away.’ As Brenda jumbled the dolls clothes into a cardboard box, Rosamund’s eye fell on a set of display shelves. They were filled with life-size Miniver dolls, including, Rosamund noticed with some annoyance, the really ugly one with the beehive hairdo she had always hated.

  She looked them over carefully, then pointed. ‘There.’ Standing in pride of place was a limited edition Rosamund doll in a zip-fronted blue velvet pants-suit. ‘That looks more comfortable. I’ll wear that one.’

  ‘Oh!’ On the sofa, Fiona went white and sat up.

  For the first time Brenda showed some sign of emotion. ‘But it’s never been out of the box! There were only three hundred ever made. It’ll halve its value!’

  Rosamund lifted her eyebrows haughtily. ‘So?’

  Miserably, Brenda shook her head. ‘I’ll get some scissors.’

  ‘Good. And while you’re at it, you can make me a cup of tea.’ Rosamund felt a little surge of confidence. ‘Milk and two sugars. With a biscuit, if you have one. I’m very hungry.’

  ‘It says in Minivers Monthly you have milk with one,’ remarked Fiona, as her mother left the room. ‘I didn’t realise you liked your tea with two.’

  ‘We don’t tell Minivers Monthly everything, you know,’ Rosamund snapped. She looked at Fiona more carefully. ‘Do I know you? I’m sure I’ve seen you before, but I can’t work out where. Have we met?’

  Fiona went bright red. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I don’t go out very often. Please, can I tell you something important? Don’t be too hard on my mum. None of this was her idea. She actually thinks – well, other people have persuaded her – that she’s doing this to help you.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Yes.’ Fiona nodded. ‘You see, Mum believes she’s psychically linked to you. She says she can tell when you’re happy and when you’re sad. You remember when we had that really bad storm and the big tree fell on Miniver House? Mum says you appeared to her in a dream and told her you and Emily were all right.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes. Well, Mum thinks you did. For a while now, she’s been convinced that you’re unhappy. She says she can feel you want to get away from everything. I know it’s just in her imagination, but Mum believes in it, and it makes her awfully easy to trick.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it would,’ said Rosamund faintly. She hoped the psychic link was not as strong as it seemed, because at that moment she was thinking the best place for Brenda was the mental hospital. On the other hand, Fiona seemed sympathetic and relatively normal. Rosamund decided to take a gamble. ‘Fiona, can we be honest? I understand what you’re saying about your mother, and I’m not holding it against her, but I need to get out of here. Could you leave me alone, just for a moment? Go and tell your mother I want an extra biscuit or something? If you do, I promise I won’t tell anyone she was involved.’

  Fiona looked Rosamund straight in the eye. With a jolt, Rosamund realised where she had seen her before. Fiona was the girl who had spoken to her at her birthday party, the one whose embarrassing remark had been the start of everything.

  I’ll get in awful trouble, Fiona’s eyes said to Rosamund. It’s not just my mother. It’s the other people you don’t know about.

  But if I stay, who knows what will happen to me? Rosamund answered silently. You know it was wrong to bring me here. I’m in terrible danger, I must get back to my sister.

  There was a strange moment of mutual understanding, and then Fiona said, ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Rosamund pressed her hands gratefully together. As soon as she was sure Fiona had gone, she ran to the sofa under the window and vaulted onto it. She had noticed that there was a large hole in the flyscreen, and from the sofa armrest it was easy to cl
imb onto the window sill. Rosamund pushed her head and shoulders through the hole. She pulled herself out onto the outside sill, took a deep breath, and half jumped, half tumbled into the dark, weed-filled garden bed below.

  ‘Oooff!’ For a moment, Rosamund lay on her back and stared dizzily up at the eaves of the house. Fortunately, the garden bed was soft and damp from the previous night’s rain, and she was only momentarily winded. As soon as she recovered, she picked herself up, brushed off her damp pyjamas and, hugging the wall, crept along the side of the house. At the corner, Rosamund paused and looked across the lawn. A dark blue station wagon was turning into the driveway on the other side of the house.

  The car was unfamiliar, but Rosamund caught a glimpse of Holly in the front passenger seat and knew it was now or never. As the car disappeared down the driveway, she bolted across the lawn towards the low chain-wire fence at the front of the property. The front gate creaked slightly as she opened it, and then she was running along the footpath for her life.

  A long line of wooden houses stretched away in front of her. They were the sort of houses Rosamund had only ever seen on television, with unkempt gardens and old cars, and junk mail poking out of the letterboxes. Rosamund kept as close as possible to the fences, for there was no other cover. Her heart was beating so fast she could almost hear it; she knew that at any moment the door of Brenda’s house would open and the pursuit would begin. But though she knew she had to find somewhere to hide, all the gates were closed and the residents fast asleep. There was not a tree on the footpath, and every other garden had a dog that barked ferociously as she passed. Rosamund heard the sound of a car starting up behind her. It screeched out of a driveway and drove off, and she heard angry voices and saw torches flashing over the footpath. Her disappearance had been discovered. The hunt was on.

  Too frightened to even think what she was doing, Rosamund dived through a gap in a nearby hedge and flung herself under a parked car. Green eyes flashed like mirrors in the confined space and a cat ran off and jumped over the gate. Rosamund lay as still and quiet as her panting breath would let her. She heard running footsteps and dropped her face into her hands. But the searchers had already gone past. Rosamund waited a moment longer to make sure they weren’t coming back, then cautiously crawled out from under the car.