Page 44 of The Secret Christmas Library

‘This is amazing,’ breathed Mirren.

‘It’s just like The Shining,’ said Theo, looking concerned. ‘Oh, my God – it has icicles and everything.’

‘Who looks after it?’ Esme looked at Jamie. ‘You?’

‘No, I . . . well, I try and keep it trimmed.’

‘So you’ll know it back to front?’

‘I don’t,’ said Jamie. ‘I just trim the outside, keep my fingers crossed for inside.’

The blue sky was clouding over and the temperature dropping by the minute. Now that she was no longer whizzing round the ice, Mirren started to feel cold, and found herself wishing profoundly that her hand were still in Jamie’s.

Jamie tried the gate; it was locked.

‘You lock the maze?’

Both the McKinnons looked faintly embarrassed.

‘Have you got the key?’ Esme said to Jamie.

Jamie pulled out the ring of jingling keys he’d had before but it was obvious none was nearly big enough for the large gate. ‘Nope,’ he said.

The hedge walls around the gate were far too high to climb, and Mirren started to feel like the prince in Sleeping Beauty, expected to fight his way through one hundred years of growing brambles.

‘Huh,’ said Esme. She pushed at the rusty old gate, but, although it made a creaking noise, it didn’t give.

‘There must be a way in,’ said Theo, starting to push his thin torso against the hedge walls. ‘There must be a gap.’

They followed the perimeter round. The square of the hedge reminded Mirren of the maze of the house itself, with its four points and long corridors.

Finally, two-thirds of the way round, they halted when Roger vanished, disappeared and then could be heard, barking furiously, from the inside.

‘Roger!’ shouted Jamie.

‘Yeah, Roger, open the gate,’ shouted Esme, then, to the others, ‘What?’

‘How did he get in?’ Jamie felt along the hedge until, almost imperceptibly, he came across a small gap in the hedge at the bottom. ‘Well,’ he said, ducking down and disappearing. Two seconds later he threw his hat in the air from the inside. ‘Yeah, that works!’

‘Why is there a gate, though?’ asked Mirren, as Theo got down on his hands and knees and pushed his way through.

‘Don’t spew again, Theo . . . ’ Esme was calling, and then, to Mirren, ‘Oh, we tried at one point to charge admission. You can imagine how well that went down with the locals.’

‘So badly that they made a tunnel into it?’

Esme smiled tightly. ‘Jamie has really been trying, I think. When the National Trust didn’t want it, and the hotel groups didn’t want it and the army didn’t want it . . . he has tried. To save the place. That’s why you’re here.’

Mirren glanced back at the big house. ‘Do you want to save it?’

Esme didn’t answer, but instead ducked down and, as elegantly as she did everything else, shimmied through the hole.

Mirren looked at the grey clouds gathering on the horizon – surely not more snow – and shivered, pulling the huge coat closer round herself.

Then she, too, crouched and squeezed herself through the narrow hole in the hedge wall, thinking, not for the first time, that this was quite the oddest Christmas she’d ever known.

‘First problem,’ Jamie was saying. ‘We’re already lost.’

Inside the maze it felt cold and gloomy; there was snow that hadn’t iced over because the hedges were too thick, and the sky really felt grey now.

It wasn’t pleasant at all. Long passages ran in both directions, the hedge a dark green with a topping of white.

In the summer, Mirren thought, it must be magical.

But now, with the sky darkening, it felt threatening.

Not a sound could be heard that wasn’t the crackling of snow and ice beneath them.

‘What do you mean? Isn’t this your maze?’ said Theo.

‘Yeah, explain to me how your phone works,’ said Jamie. He glanced around. ‘The thing is, if we have to follow the locket’s instructions that means we have to start from the entrance, and I’m not sure . . . ’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mirren. ‘It’s over this way.’

And she set off confidently back in the direction of the loch, only to find herself, two seconds later, in a cul-de-sac which contained a mildewed stone statue of a gryphon. She came back and went the other way, with the same results.

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

‘My great-great-great-something designed it,’ said Jamie. ‘There was a fashion for mazes, the more complicated the better. They were like the rollercoasters of their day.’

Mirren stomped back crossly. ‘There is an incredibly big streak of nonsense in your family tree.’

‘When I was small,’ said Esme, with an uncharacteristically romantic cast to her voice, ‘I used to come here and think the maze went on forever. I used to think I would pop out at school, or in London.’

‘That would be cool,’ said Theo, and for once he didn’t sound as though he was just agreeing to agree. ‘Isn’t the answer “always go left”, or something?’ he added.

‘At Hampton Court it is,’ said Jamie. ‘This is much bigger.’

‘Can’t we just smash through the hedges?’ said Esme. ‘It’s our bloody maze.’

They looked at her, appalled.

‘You sound like Mum,’ said Jamie.

‘That would be terrible,’ said Mirren. ‘We just have to keep heading east. Someone keep in charge of where east is.’

‘Where is it?’ said Theo.

‘Where the sea is,’ said Mirren impatiently, shivering, even in her big jacket.

By popping his head over the hedge like a friendly otter, Theo managed to steer them more or less in the direction of the starting gate, and when they were only one hedge away they crawled underneath it as best they could, and stood, wiping the snow off themselves.

Everyone was mucky. But they were on the right side of the gate. Now, maybe, they could begin.