He paused, looked up and caught my eye. He said nothing, made no gesture, hesitated for less than a breath. I knew where he was going. Robert was ever the showman, even at a time like this, on his white charger as he rode to the Princess Elizabeth’s side. This was his moment, his time at last. Now his ambition would be unleashed.

I closed the casement silently and sat down.

Let it begin.

19

Lizzie: Present Day

The house looked even worse in the daylight, like a nightmare version of Dickens crossed with an explosion in an upmarket hotel. Every surface was thick with dust. Ivy and Virginia creeper clawed at the windows, cutting out what natural daylight there was. Cobwebs hung as thick as curtains from the chandeliers. Lizzie groaned and stuffed her head under the pillow. Then she realised that the reason she had woken in the first place was because she could hear someone knocking at the door.

Jules had gone home the previous night when Lizzie had insisted she didn’t need anyone to babysit her. She was desperate to have her own space, which was odd when she had been isolated for so long, but it was how she felt. Jules had grumbled that she needed someone to keep an eye on her but to Lizzie this felt like a watershed. She’d come back to The High to make a fresh start and she was doing that on her own. She’d had a hot shower, drunk some tea and eaten some toast that Jules had whisked up and had fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep, much to her own surprise.

She struggled out from underneath what appeared to be an ancient eiderdown. She vaguely remembered Jules putting her to bed in her grandmother’s room and assuring her that the sheets at least were clean. She wasn’t complaining; she would have slept on a clothesline if needs be. The air was cold and smelled stale; reaching for the huge fur-lined coat she had found in the wardrobe the night before, she dragged it on over her pyjamas and stumbled downstairs.

The knocking sounded again. Lizzie felt disoriented. There couldn’t be anyone at the door because they couldn’t get past the huge gates and even if they had, she shouldn’t open up because it was probably some paps who had discovered where she was—she didn’t want a photograph taken with her hair as tangled as the cobwebs and her make-up all over her face. LIZZIE KINGDOM IN MELTDOWN would be the inevitable headline.

The knocking was coming from the kitchen. She peered around the open door and saw a face staring back at her through the window. It was an old lady, a very old lady with curly white hair and sharp, bright eyes, her head tilted like an inquisitive blackbird. When she saw Lizzie, she smiled and knocked even more vigorously. Lizzie felt a huge rush of warmth and affection.

She struggled across the kitchen, stubbing her toe on the table leg and repressing a curse. The woman at the window was gesturing and pointing, by which Lizzie, who couldn’t hear her through the triple glazing, assumed she meant she would go to the back door. This led to another confusing five minutes whilst she tried to find which door led out to the porch and where the keys might be.