Henry was waiting in this kind of panelled hall, standing with his back to a roaring fire.
He was alone except for a couple of lazy Labradors, who were dozing on the hearthrug.
I was quite relieved that clearly I wasn’t expected to meet his parents straight away, and relaxed a bit. Everything about my host and the room was welcoming, his smile as warm as the fire, his gold hair glinting. Henry was wearing a long-sleeved rugby top and these sort of red-coloured jeans. He was not exactly more handsome than he was at school – he was probably the only pupil at STAGS who actually looked good in the black Tudor coat – but different. More … grown-up. He suited the room though, just as he suited STAGS.
The room wasn’t half as forbidding as I’d expected Longcross to be. There were rows of wellies and walking sticks and fishing rods and an old wetsuit propped around the walls – it was quite cluttered really. There were yellowing sporting prints of old-fashioned people doing old-fashioned sports hanging from the panelling, including huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ of course. And above Henry’s head, the inevitable stags’ heads gazed down with their glassy eyes.
Henry saw me. ‘Greer!’ he said. He came halfway to meet me, and kissed me once on each cheek; not those stupid air-kisses that posh people usually do, but proper kisses, lips to skin. The greeting threw me a bit, since he’d never before made any contact with me beyond that touch on the arm.
‘Where are the others?’ I asked.
‘Changing. Come and get warm. Sorry it’s so beastly cold.’ He rubbed his hands together briskly. ‘Good for the huntin’ though.’ He turned to his headkeeper, who was looming respectfully behind me.
‘Ah, Perfect. I see you conveyed Miss MacDonald safely.’
Perfect – for that, unbelievably, was his name – took off the tweed cap, which was apparently not glued to his head, and curtly nodded his balding, greying dome.
Henry smiled at me. ‘Did he talk your head off, Greer?’
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to this, but thankfully I wasn’t required to give an answer; Henry then turned to the gamekeeper himself. ‘Perfect, did you talk Miss MacDonald’s head off?’
The headkeeper scratched his chin. ‘’Appen.’
Henry threw back his head and laughed, showing all his white teeth, and even Perfect looked like he might, for his master, almost have broken into a smile. It was obviously an acknowledged joke between them.
‘All right. Check the gun room for tomorrow, would you, Perfect?’
Perfect nodded again and disappeared. Henry turned to me. ‘Listen, you’d better go straight up if you’re not to be late. I hope you don’t mind dressing for dinner.’
I wasn’t quite sure what the alternative was. To come down to dinner naked? So I just said, ‘Not at all.’
‘Good. We gather for drinks in the drawing room at seven thirty, and dinner is in the Great Hall at eight.’
I turned around on the spot. ‘Isn’t this the Great Hall?’
‘God, no,’ he said. ‘This is the Boot Room.’
As I was processing the fact that the boots at Longcross enjoyed better accommodation than my dad and I did in Manchester, he touched a bell, Gosford Park style, and a middle-aged woman appeared.
‘Betty, show Miss MacDonald to her room. Where did you put her?’
‘Lowther, sir.’ The maid had the same accent as Perfect.
‘Lowther. Is the fire lit?’
‘Oh yes, sir. Is that everyone now, sir?’
‘That’s everyone. Would you like a cup of tea, Greer?’
‘I could murder one,’ I said thankfully.
His smile stiffened a little, and I wondered if I hadn’t been quite genteel enough. ‘Tea up to the room, Betty.’ I noticed that he didn’t say please or thank you.
But the maid didn’t seem to mind. ‘Very good, sir.’ She sort of stood back and put her hand out to show the way – apparently I was to go first, even though I didn’t know the way; some sort of pecking order, I suppose.
I went to pick up my case, but Henry put out his hand. ‘Leave that,’ he said. ‘I’ll have someone bring it up.’
Apparently posh people don’t carry their own stuff. I began to enjoy myself, especially when Henry took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Sincerely. I’m so glad you’re here.’
My room – I suppose I should call it Lowther – was gorgeous. And massive. It was like the best hotel suite in the best hotel you could possibly imagine. I walked all the way around it, which took some time.
There was an enormous dark wood four-poster bed, with heavy rose-coloured curtains and bedclothes. On the walls there seemed to be material instead of wallpaper, with very faint gold leaves sort of stencilled on it. There were rugs out of Aladdin on the floor. The windows had clear panes at the bottom, stained glass at the top. There was one of those fireplaces which is so old it has a date on it. (This one said 1590.) And, get this: it had a roaring little fire already burning in it. There was no TV in the room, as there would have been in a hotel; in fact I never saw a telly the whole time I was at Longcross.
Actually nothing in the room was new, when you looked closely. The rugs were a bit threadbare and the gold leaves on the walls had thinned and faded, and one of the panes in the window had a silvery crack right across it. But the room screamed heritage and class and quality, and as such it had the inevitable hallmark of all those things – a stag’s head on the wall above the fireplace, his dark glass eyes flickering in the firelight as if he still lived. And here’s something you wouldn’t get in a hotel room. On the bed, almost camouflaged, lay a dress. It was the same colour as the rest of the room, a dark rose. As I picked it up it sort of slithered, and it was heavy. Quality again. I wondered, irrelevantly, what Henry’s room was like.
The maid left me to get the tea, which she brought in, just as I’d imagined, on a silver tray. A young bloke about my age followed her with my suitcase, which he deposited in the middle of the rug. And then a third person entered the room: tall, blonde and beautiful. It was Charlotte Lachlan-Young, the second siren.
Charlotte was wearing a beautiful frock – no, you couldn’t really call it a frock; it was definitely a gown. She skipped forward and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Greer, isn’t it.’ It was a statement, not a question, as if she was telling me my name. I took a step back when she released me. If Henry’s kisses were surprising, hers were definitely an over-the-top greeting since she’d never directly spoken to me before. ‘It’s so great you could come. Welcome to Longcross.’ She said it as if it was her house, and then I remembered that I’d heard at STAGS that she was some sort of cousin of Henry’s. I suppose she thought that gave her the right to act as hostess. It was weird though – I would’ve thought it was for his mum to greet me this way. But I supposed I would meet her at dinner. Charlotte went on. ‘Lowther is the sweetest room; you’ll get such a view in the morning.’
And that first sentence told me exactly how Charlotte differed from the other Medieval girls. She spoke as if everything she said was in italics. She was perpetually enthusiastic and gave everything a special emphasis. I could see how it would quickly get on your nerves. The maid poured the tea into little pointless china cups, through this tiny little silver sieve, a world away from the big hand-warmer mugs my dad and I used, filled with dark reddish builder’s tea. While she poured, Charlotte sat cosily on the bed, flipping her hair from one parting to the other as Esme had done. It too fell perfectly. ‘Oh, is this your dress for tonight? Gosh. It’s perfect. That colour with your dark hair. Yum.’
I noted that the maid handed Charlotte her cup of tea first, and me second. ‘Betty, you are a darling. Tea!’ She turned to me, wide-eyed, as if the drink had just, that moment, been invented especially for her. ‘Just what I needed. How was the journey? Who drove you?’
The tea tasted weird and weak, like washing-up water, and the cup was really thin. I felt that if I closed my teeth on it suddenly, I would take a bite out of it. ‘Perfect picked me up.’
‘Oh, the headkeeper. He’s an absolute poppet.’
That was exactly what Esme had said. I could only imagine that poppet was Medieval-speak for miserable bastard. ‘Yes, he was a prince,’ I said ironically. ‘Really put me at my ease. You know Taxi Driver? Well, he was like Robert De Niro in that. Except a bit less chatty.’
Charlotte widened her eyes at me and jerked her head towards the maid, who was pressing her thin lips together. I wasn’t sure what she was signalling, so just kept quiet. At that moment, though, the clock on the mantel – Cogsworth from Beauty and the Beast – chimed and Charlotte screeched. ‘God, look at the time!’ Now you’ve had your tea –’ I’d had one sip – ‘you should think about getting changed. Drinks at seven thirty in the Drawing Room.’
Regretfully I set down my china cup.
Charlotte held up the dress and shook it, as if she was a matador and I was a bull. ‘Cinderella time.’
Neither she nor Betty showed any sign of leaving, so I had no option but to strip down to my undies with them standing there. Perhaps this was how rich people rolled. Perhaps it was Savage to mind undressing in front of others. I wriggled into the dress with their help – at that point I had to admit I was grateful they were there. That was when I remembered seeing the film Elizabeth and watching Cate Blanchett as the queen just standing there with her arms out and letting her ladies dress her, frock, rings, everything. That was why rich people didn’t get dressed alone. The clothes were so tricky they needed help.
Once I was dressed, my helpers sat me down in front of the mirror to do my hair. On a good day, my black hair falls straight and shiny as a bell, heavy fringe tickling my eyelashes, blunt edges grazing my shoulders. Today was not a particularly good day, because the rain had made it a bit crinkly, but it seemed I didn’t need to worry about that. Charlotte had quite different ideas for me. ‘Betty does hair beautifully.’ And over the next twenty minutes I have to admit that Betty did work some magic. She tonged my hair into ringlets, swept my fringe to one side, twisted the sidepieces back and secured them with tiny sprays of rosebuds the same colour as the dress.
I did wonder if Betty was going to do my make-up too, but apparently that was all me. The maid left, no doubt to tend to someone else, and Charlotte wandered to the window to look out at the night, and started fiddling with the catch. ‘By the way, you should know that Betty’s married to Perfect. It’s really worth remembering that you should never gossip in front of the servants.’
That was not, I felt, a rule I was ever going to need to observe outside of this house. I felt a bit bad about what I’d said, but if that poor cow was married to the headkeeper, I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. Trying to style it out I said, ‘Well, all I can say is, she’s one lucky, lucky lady.’
I picked up my usual black eyeliner, then paused with it hovering in the air. Somehow it didn’t seem right for this dress.
Charlotte walked over, laid a cool hand over mine and made me set the pencil down. ‘Less,’ she said. She held up a nude creamy colour. ‘How about this?’
So I sat back and let her do it all for me. Ten minutes later, when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognise myself.
Charlotte had been right about the old-rose colour of the dress – it made my cheeks glow. My grey eyes were accentuated by the creamy shimmer on the lids, and my lips shone with a little coral gloss.
I’d been transformed.
Emo to prom queen.
Savage to Medieval.
Charlotte clasped her hands to her chest. ‘Oh My God,’ she said. (She’d never OMG; she was a Medieval.) ‘You look divine.’
It was the fricking Princess Diaries.