The tomato soup had been taken away, and a dish of rice pudding had been set down on the table. It was gluggy, and smelled of slightly sour milk. Livia stared at the bowl in front of her and wondered how on earth she was going to eat it.
‘Did you enjoy your dinner, Livia?’
‘Err – yes, thank you, Cousin Karen,’ said Livia, finally realising that the extremely nasty soup had actually been dinner, and that there was to be no main course. She lifted a spoonful of pudding to her mouth and nibbled it. ‘I’m sorry … I think I’m feeling a little bit full.’
‘I’ve made some changes in the kitchens since I came here,’ said Madame in a satisfied voice. ‘It was quite appalling, the waste that went on there. Luckily I’ve found a wonderfully thrifty woman to replace Papa King’s chef. She can make a meal out of almost anything.’
‘Really?’ Livia squished the rice pudding about with her spoon.
Madame nodded and reached for a second helping. There was a curious excitement about her tonight, and she kept looking at the clock. ‘Livia,’ she said solemnly, ‘something very important is going to happen tonight. Something that’s probably going to change the history of Artemisia. The fact is, we have found the key to the Most Secret Room.’
‘The key?’ Livia did her best to look surprised, though inwardly she had begun to shake. ‘What wonderful news. You must be very pleased, Cousin Karen.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t have it yet,’ Madame admitted. ‘But I’m assured it has been found, and the important thing is that it’s going to be brought to me tonight. I thought you might like to be here when it arrives.’
‘But we don’t know where the Most Secret Room is yet,’ said Livia. She could think of nothing but Rosamund and Gibraltar, heading into what was now obviously a trap. ‘Why do you want the key? What are you going to do with it –’
‘That’s none of your business, Livia,’ said Madame sharply. ‘All that matters is that the key will be in my keeping. Goodness me, look at the time. The Claws of Arachnea is about to start. Sit down on the sofa, there’s a good girl, and take your pudding with you. It would never do to waste it.’ She turned on the ancient TV, and a ghostly black-and-white picture slowly came into focus.
In a distant part of the palace, a clock chimed seven …
Inside the bag, bumped, jolted, and thrown around, Emily was starting to feel sick. She had no way of telling what was happening. Once or twice she had peeked out and glimpsed a tall man pushing a stroller through the crowds, but it was hard to see more when she had to stay out of sight. Then Fiona started to run. Emily lost her balance and fell over, and in the process she completely lost track of where they were and who they were following.
The tin of lemonade had spilled and was sloshing about in a sticky puddle on the vinyl base. The dagwood dog smelled greasy and revolting. At last Fiona came to a halt and tipped the shopping bag into an upright position. She flipped back the lid and Emily rose shakily to her feet.
‘Have you lost them?’
‘Not exactly.’ Fiona pointed to what looked like a moveable building. ‘They went in there.’ Emily looked at the shabby door and realised it was the rear entrance to the Minivers House of Mirrors.
‘Help me.’ Emily reached up her arms, and Fiona lifted her out of the shopping trolley. Her legs were so wobbly after being crouched inside that for the first few seconds she could barely stand. But the moment had come. If she was to find Rosamund, Emily knew she had to face whatever was on the other side of that door.
‘I have to go after them,’ she said. ‘Alone. You keep watch here. If anyone comes, try and let me know, but don’t do anything dangerous. At the first sign of trouble, go straight home.’
‘You’re not going in there alone!’ protested Fiona. ‘Titus and Ron will be waiting. They’ll catch you!’
‘And if you come with me, they’ll catch you, too,’ said Emily. ‘I’m small, and I’m used to hiding now. They might overlook me: they won’t miss both of us. You must do as I ask, Fiona. Promise me, as my friend, that you won’t try and follow.’
‘All right,’ said Fiona. ‘I promise. But I still don’t like it. And if they do catch you, I’m not going to let them get away with it. I’ll do something, never mind what. I’ve got a few ideas of my own.’
‘Let’s hope we won’t have to use them,’ said Emily in a shaky voice.
Fiona dropped to her knees and they hugged one another. There was a brilliant flash of light and a loud explosion overhead. Emily started, and looked up.
‘It’s the firework display,’ explained Fiona. ‘It must be seven o’clock. They always have one here at that time on a Saturday.’
‘Good,’ said Emily. ‘It will be a distraction.’ She let Fiona go, climbed the steps to the door, and slipped inside.
As Fiona had guessed, the Minivers House of Mirrors was a sort of maze filled with black curtains and trick mirrors. The moment the door closed behind her, Emily slid behind the nearest curtain and waited to see if there was anyone around. Luckily, her arrival seemed to have gone unnoticed. When her eyes had grown accustomed to the poor light, she pulled the curtain aside and peeped out. The Minivers House of Mirrors was closed for the night, but somebody had left lights burning: dim, red lamps, that cast a creepy glow over the expanses of wavy glass and black material. Emily shivered. A false step now could end everything.
Emily stepped out from behind the curtain. She felt as if eyes were watching her from behind every drape, and she had barely gone half a dozen steps when something moved in the darkness in front of her. Emily almost screamed, but realised just in time she had simply glimpsed her own reflection in one of the mirrors. It would have made a normal-sized person look like a Miniver, but Emily was so small that her reflection was no bigger than a cat’s.
Step by step, ducking behind curtains at the slightest sound, Emily made her way into the maze’s heart. The space was not big, but it was designed to be confusing, with curtains doubling back in dead ends, and giant cardboard cut-outs of chairs and other furniture hanging from the ceiling, Emily guessed, to give ordinary people some idea of what it was like to be Miniver-sized. The mirrors reflected back hideous images of herself: first fat, then thin, then stretched to almost normal size. But the creepiest things of all were the waxworks. At almost every turn stood life-sized models of Rosamund and herself, dressed in copies of their own clothes and posed on wooden pedestals. The wax faces were doll-like, with grinning mouths and exaggerated make-up. The eyes, which were made of glass, seemed to glitter as Emily passed.
And then, as she tiptoed around yet another length of curtain, she saw something in the shadows up ahead. Emily’s heart began to pound. A baby’s stroller, exactly like the one she and Fiona had followed, stood parked in a swathe of curtain. The canopy was down, but there was a small person sitting in the seat, and a single lock of long black hair flowed over its shoulder and down the stroller’s back.
‘Rosamund?’ Emily risked a whisper. There was no reply. At once she knew something was wrong. In four quick steps Emily reached the stroller and jerked back the canopy. A wax model of Rosamund smiled stupidly up at her. And then a voice Emily knew spoke close behind her.
‘Hello, Emily. Nice to see you.’
Livia sat in agony on the sofa. The rice pudding congealed like concrete in her stomach and further down, the tomato soup was gurgling through her intestine. Worst of all, The Claws of Arachnea was one of the most terrible movies she had ever seen. Its main character was a woman with black lipstick and a bathing cap covered with plastic spider webs. Her henchman wore eyeliner and a raincoat. They lived in a palace made of silver-painted cereal boxes and were holding the world to ransom with radioactive rubber spiders. Livia knew she had to get away.
She cleared her throat. ‘Cousin Karen,’ she whispered through the darkness. ‘Do – do you think I could use your toilet?’
‘Shhh’ hissed Madame. ‘You’re spoiling the best bit!’ She grabbed Livia’s arm
. Arachnea’s henchman released the spiders on an unsuspecting world.
Livia thought of Rosamund and Gibraltar, and tears of helplessness and terror rolled down her cheeks.
‘Titus,’ said Emily.
Titus smiled. ‘Hello, Emily. I knew you’d be here, sooner or later.’
He stepped out from behind the curtains. In the red glow of the downlight, the cut on his forehead showed as a puckered scab, the sort that would leave a permanent scar. Emily took a step closer to the stroller containing the fake Rosamund and clutched its frame. For the first time she saw that she was at the very end of the maze. Beyond Titus, a swing door made of thin black rubber led out into the real world. It might as well have been made of solid steel.
Titus followed her gaze. ‘The door’s guarded,’ he said. ‘Just in case you’re thinking of running off. But I don’t think you’d try that, Emily. You’re clever enough to understand how thoroughly I work now. Besides, Rosamund is probably on her way here. There’s no way you’ll leave while there’s a chance of finding her.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ whispered Emily.
Titus rubbed his hand along the frame of one of the nearby mirrors. His reflection showed in it, distorted, looming. ‘You might find this hard to believe, but I’m doing it because it’s fun.’
‘Fun?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. It’s like a game, you see. The best game in the world. You tell people lies and they believe them. You trick them and trap them into doing things, and they don’t have a clue how it happened. Think of Brenda, for instance. You’ve no idea how much fun it was persuading her to kidnap your sister. Then, there’s you. I tricked you into thinking I was a Minivers fan. I’m sorry, Emily. I’m afraid I’ve always thought you and Rosamund were rather boring little people. You can’t sing very well, or dance particularly gracefully. In fact, I’ll tell you a secret. If you weren’t the size you are, nobody would ever give either of you a second glance.’
‘For somebody that boring, you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to catch me,’ said Emily. Her mouth was dry, and she was clutching the stroller so hard her hand hurt.
Titus shook his head. ‘Not at all. That’s what’s been so much fun. If Holly and I had caught you and Rosamund that night at the railway station, we would have handed you straight over to Madame and that would have been the end of it. But you surprised us. You ran away, and all of a sudden everything got really interesting. Have you and Rosamund ever played hide-and-seek, Emily? Isn’t it the best feeling, when you’re trying to work out which cupboard the other person’s hidden in? You have to put yourself inside that person’s head, and think of where you would hide if you were them. Sometimes you pretend to go away, and they’ll even come out of hiding. That’s what this is all about, you know. A game. But tonight, I win. You thought tonight’s trap was for Rosamund, but all along it was really for you.’
Emily’s heart skipped a beat. ‘For me? Why me?’
‘Because you have Papa King’s key,’ said Titus. ‘I need it. I know you have it. Give it to me now, and I will let both you and Rosamund go.’
‘You might have tricked me once; I’m not silly enough to let it happen again,’ said Emily. ‘Anyway, the key was given to Rosamund, not me. I don’t even have it.’
‘Oh, come on, Emily,’ said Titus, and for the first time, Emily thought he sounded annoyed. ‘Don’t mess me about. We’ve searched Miniver House from top to bottom and the key wasn’t there. It wasn’t on Rosamund when she was kidnapped, and Millamant claims to have no idea where it is. That means there is only one person who can have it. You.’
‘I don’t have it,’ repeated Emily. ‘But I’ll make a deal with you – on my terms, not yours. Let me and Rosamund leave Artemisia completely. As soon as we’re safely over the border, I’ll tell you where the key is hidden.’
‘Nice try, Emily,’ said Titus. He started walking towards her. Emily retreated behind the stroller. ‘But there’s something you’re forgetting. You’re a Miniver. You’re small. You’re weak, you’re fragile, and I happen to know you’re lying. Hand the key over now. If you don’t, I’m going to make you, and we both know that won’t be pleasant –’
‘You can’t make me do anything!’ Emily screamed at the top of her lungs and with all her strength she shoved the stroller forward. It hit Titus square in the shins and with a furious cry he tangled and tripped, bringing it down on top of him. Emily dropped her head and ran. The swing door opened ahead of her; she saw coloured lights and heard snatches of music. Two men rushed towards her, but they were coming into darkness and she was already upon them. Emily shot between their legs like a bull through a matador’s cape.
‘Fiona! Help! Help me!’
The rubber spiders were breeding in a deserted graveyard. Arachnea and her henchman were going to take over the world. Madame was sitting on the edge of her seat, when the telephone rang. ‘What a nuisance!’ she exclaimed. ‘Excuse me, Livvy, please.’
Madame got up and went into the next room. The phone stopped ringing and Livia heard her talking angrily to someone called Ron. It was now, or never. Livia jumped to her feet, grabbed her handbag, and ran.
Fiona was nowhere to be seen. Emily had left her at the back of the building and come out at the front where there was no help, only straggling crowds of funfair visitors. A narrow gap led between the Minivers House of Mirrors and the adjacent chair-o-plane to the alley at the back. Emily ran down it, yelling Fiona’s name, but before she had gone more than a few paces another guard leapt over the chair-o-plane’s fence. It was Primrose, in a purple shirt and jeans. She had a peculiar-looking gun in her hand and she lifted it and took aim.
Emily heard something buzz past her left ear and ping off a metal hoarding. Instinctively, she dropped flat. She rolled under the chair-o-plane’s chain fence, and fled beneath the flying feet of the people on the ride. Joined by the two men from the Minivers House of Mirrors, Primrose leapt back over the fence in pursuit. As the three of them scattered around the ride, Primrose fired her gun a second time. A woman bystander gave a strangled cry and collapsed in a heap, with what looked like a dart in her arm.
Emily ducked under another set of railings. She plunged beneath the canvas sides of a knock-down stall and blundered into a basket of coloured balls. A woman screamed and a man tried to grab her shirt. Emily evaded their clutching fingers, and somehow squirmed under more canvas into the next booth. She ran from one stall to the next, tripping over struts and tables and dodging grasping hands. Then she reached the end of the row of attractions, and there was nowhere else to go.
‘She’s here!’ shouted a voice. Emily ran for the nearest clump of people. They were lining up for the Big Wheel, and as she burrowed into the crowd, hoping to hide from her pursuers, the ride stopped and the queue began to move. Emily was carried along with it, up some steps and onto a metal platform. As Emily emerged from the crush at the end of the line, an empty car swept down to the platform.
‘There she is! Stop her!’ Titus and the guards were running up the exit stairs on the other side. Emily dodged between the attendants’ legs and jumped into the empty car. The safety gate slammed automatically shut behind her and she swung away gracefully into the air.
There was shouting on the platform below her. Emily looked down. Ignoring the shouts of the attendants and the screams of the other passengers, Titus jumped onto the struts of the wheel and began climbing determinedly in Emily’s direction.
Step by step, strut by strut, Titus’s black-clad figure moved towards her. Emily could hear people screaming, though whether because of her, or Titus, it was hard to know. The wheel turned slowly to nine o’clock, then ten, then eleven. Titus was about two cars below her. Emily ran from one side of the car to the other, like a fly trapped in a bottle. The car rocked dangerously on its pivot. A hand appeared on the footplate, followed by another. Emily screamed. A pale blond head bobbed up, and with a last, powerful heave Titus was standing on the footplate and struggling with the gate.
>
The latch was on the inside. Emily punched at his hands with her little fists, but there was no stopping him. The door swung open and Titus was in the car. The cut on his forehead had opened up again. It was bleeding, and his face was savage.
Emily shrank back against the safety bars in the opposite corner. The car had reached the top and was starting to go down again, but there was still a long way to travel. Titus took a step towards her. He was staring at her throat, where Papa King’s key had worked its way out of her shirt and was dangling on its string. Emily glanced hopelessly at the ground. A crowd had gathered at the foot of the wheel and people were shouting, pointing upward. They looked tiny, but as the wheel swung down they grew larger and larger, until suddenly a bald man swam into focus. He was pushing a pram and scattering the crowd in front of him. Emily heard a shrill, familiar scream and saw Rosamund stand up in the pram, her great dark eyes staring upwards in horror.
‘Emily! Jump! Jump! Gibraltar will catch you!’
Titus lunged. There was a sharp snap as the string holding the key gave way, and Emily saw the key in his fingers. A moment was all she had. She jerked up the catch. The gate opened and Emily swung out with it into space and fell.
Lights whirled and streaked in the darkness; there was a rush of air and speed. It was nothing like flying, only sheer and utter terror. Emily closed her eyes and tensed and then, like a cricket ball into the hands of an expert keeper, she landed with a heavy smack in someone’s arms.
‘The street!’ yelled Rosamund. ‘Gibraltar, you’ve got to get out of here! Head for the street!’
Emily opened her mouth to draw breath and was thrust, roughly and unceremoniously into the pram beside her sister. The man who had caught her wrenched the pram around and sprinted for the Wharf Street gate. It bounced and jolted over the uneven ground, and Emily and Rosamund grabbed hold of each other and clung on for dear life.
The Minivers Page 13