Fuchsia heard the tapping of her feet in the corridor. Within a moment she was racing along the passage after her old nurse, whom she hugged violently before running back and floundering with a whirl of her blood-red dress down long flights of stairs and through a series of gloomy halls, until she found herself in the open, and beyond the shadows of the castle walls. She ran on in the evening sunshine. At last, after skirting Pentecost’s orchard and climbing to the edge of a small pine wood she stopped running and in a quick, stumbling manner forced a path through a low decline of ferns to where a lake lay motionless. There were no swans. There were no wild waders. From the reflected trees there came no cries from birds.

Fuchsia fell at full length and began to chew at the grass in front of her. Her eyes as they gazed upon the lake were still inflamed.

‘I hate things! I hate all things! I hate and hate every single tiniest thing, I hate the world’, said Fuchsia aloud, raising herself on her elbows, her face to the sky.

‘I shall live alone. Always alone. In a house, or in a tree.’

Fuchsia started to chew at a fresh grass blade.

‘Someone will come then, if I live alone. Someone from another kind of world – a new world – not from this world, but someone who is different, and he will fall in love with me at once because I live alone and aren’t like the other beastly things in this world, and he’ll enjoy having me because of my pride.’

Another flood of tears came with a rush …

‘He will be tall, taller than Mr Flay, and strong like a lion and with yellow hair like a lion’s, only more curly; and he will have big, strong feet because mine are big, too, but won’t look so big if his are bigger; and he will be cleverer than the Doctor, and he’ll wear a long black cape so that my clothes will look brighter still; and he will say: “Lady Fuchsia”, and I shall say: “What is it?”’

She sat up and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

The lake darkened, and while she sat and stared at the motionless water, Steerpike was beginning his climb of the ivy.