Page 45 of The Secret Christmas Library

‘Okay,’ said Jamie, taking out the locket, his hands trembling slightly.

‘I’m still not sure about your lemur hypothesis,’ said Esme. ‘What if it’s a badger or something?’

‘I don’t know what you want me to do with that information,’ said Jamie. ‘Seeing as your contribution so far has mostly been “please buy me some shoes”.’

Esme tutted. ‘Isn’t getting to the centre . . . doesn’t it start with a right?’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ said Jamie. ‘Yeah, it definitely does. I remember that much. Okay,’ he said. ‘One right, two left.’

‘What’s in the middle?’ asked Mirren.

‘A fountain,’ said Jamie. ‘Well, there was. I don’t think it’s working any more.’

‘You wouldn’t hide a book out here, surely,’ said Mirren.

‘Oh, God,’ said Theo. ‘If this is another nine clues . . . ’ He jumped up and down to get warm. ‘Seriously, I don’t know how long I can stay up here. Cool as it is to miss a family Christmas, obviously.’

Jamie looked down and set off, and, for want of a better idea, they all followed him.

They trudged on, her head down, all feeling the cold now. The snow which had not formed an icy crust reached over the top of Mirren’s boots and slipped in, and even two pairs of socks couldn’t keep her toes dry; her feet started to get wet and then numb, which meant she felt absolutely dreadful.

The scale of the maze was insane. She couldn’t see above the high hedges, piled with snow, just the threatening sky above, and wetness underfoot. The fun of the snow had gone. Esme was still needling Jamie about whether they were actually doing anything useful.

Mirren turned her head as they did indeed walk past the centre of the maze.

She stopped for just a second to take it in: there was a fountain there, and it was frozen.

It was an extraordinary-looking thing, the water cascading down, clear and hard, and then just stopping, piled on top of itself, over and over on its way to nowhere.

It looked like a strange alien, bulbous and unexpected.

Jamie watched her looking at it. ‘Weird, eh?’

‘So weird. I want to touch it. But I also really don’t. It’s like we’re in the upside-down.’

‘Where strange things happen.’

‘Where angels fear to tread,’ she said, and he looked at her curiously, and suddenly she felt it, just as she had before, getting dressed, or looking at her own reflection in the window: that the gossamer-thin line of present reality shimmered, between times and between old worlds and new, and that normal rules did not necessarily apply, down here in the very depths of the year.

He smiled. ‘You can tread, I think,’ he said. ‘Just don’t lick it.’

She broke out laughing, her reverie broken. ‘Okay!’ she said, and laughed, her cheeks pink, her eyes sparkling.

He screwed his eyes up, staring at the locket. ‘We’re not done,’ he said.

‘I reckon we’re going round in circles,’ hollered Esme. ‘And I’m getting frostbite.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jamie, not sounding very sure of himself. ‘Come on, then.’

They marched on, but the one reassuring thing was that they didn’t end up in any more cul-de-sacs; they never quite stopped, even though Esme insisted they were going nowhere.

Mirren’s toes were freezing now; they were sore to the point of pain. She was getting seriously worried they’d never find their way out. She was, she realised, indeed marking well in Jamie’s footsteps, just like the song.

Finally, he came to a stop, up against a leafy corner, snow heaped high. Mirren was distracted and stumbled into him.

‘Whoa there,’ he said, holding her up. Then he looked at her closely. ‘You’re freezing, aren’t you?’

She nodded, miserably.

‘Oh, lord,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. Worst Christmas Eve ever.’ He cast around for the best thing to do. ‘Let me see your hands.’

She looked at him, but he seemed entirely serious. She held out her hands and he took the mittens off, as well as his own.

‘Yes, they’re wet,’ he said, frowning, then rubbed her pale white hands, trying to get the life back into them, then put her hands into his own warm gloves and squeezed them tight.

Mirren looked at him. The warmth of his hands on hers felt so good, even if it hurt a little as the blood pulsed them back to life; his gloves were far better than hers.

‘Thank you,’ she said, looking at him, and suddenly the fact that they were lost in a freezing, spooky old maze in the middle of nowhere didn’t seem to matter so much. It didn’t matter at all.

She was about to boldly ask for a hug, to step forward, ask for more than just his hands; ask for his arms, his long, lean, warm body – suddenly she wanted this more than anything, anything in the world. She craved it.

‘Come on!’ yelled Esme. ‘It’s completely freezing!!’

‘And I want to be sick again,’ said Theo, unnecessarily.

Esme marched forward, kicking her way through the snow, and they meekly broke apart and followed.

‘One more right,’ said Jamie. They were, as far as Mirren could tell, far away from the centre now, closer to the northeast edge, trees looming up ahead of her, making everything even darker.

This end of the maze was neglected; presumably people made it to the centre then went back out again the same way, or bumbled about the beginning half.

This was a distant corner, which presumably would look beautiful and symmetrical from above but was even more neglected than the rest. Piles of dark, rotting leaves were submerged in snowy corners, forming sinister outlines in the dirt.

Mirren’s mood changed. She didn’t like it, suddenly.

Being so lost. So far away from home. They were incredibly far away from the house, even; what had felt like a nice walk on that nice sunny morning now felt like a horrible trek back.

And she was hungry, despite their good breakfast. They’d missed lunch completely, she’d had no dinner the night before, and all the exercise had given her a huge appetite.

She wanted to be somewhere cosy, in front of the fire, with Jamie telling her things or, even better, both of them curled up with a book. Peace and quiet, and cosiness.

‘Come ON!’ said Esme again.

They turned the corner all together and found themselves at a dead end: the very farthest corner, Mirren thought, of the maze. Like the one they’d come in next to but on the opposite corner of the diamond. It, too, had a small statue in a little grotto.

‘Is this it?’ said Esme, suspiciously.

‘Well, there are no more instructions in the locket,’ said Jamie, looking relieved. ‘So it obviously brought us somewhere.’

‘If this is one of those things where you have to wait for the sun to hit a certain point . . . ’ started Esme, ‘or, like, an eclipse or something, I’m going to kill you.’

But Jamie knelt down and cleared away some of the muck and ice from the statue. It wasn’t a gryphon this time, but instead, of all things, a stone carving of a pineapple. It was weather-worn and chipped, but unmistakably a pineapple.

‘Why on earth is there a pineapple here?’ said Mirren, startled.

‘Oh, they’re quite common in Scotland,’ said Theo, and Esme shot him a withering glance.

‘It’s true,’ said Jamie, wincing slightly.

‘Why? You can’t grow pineapples here.’

‘No,’ said Esme. ‘But you can grow them in the Caribbean, thicko.’

‘Oh,’ said Mirren. Then, ‘Oh.’

‘Quite,’ said Jamie, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘They are a symbol of national shame. There aren’t many still left.’

Mirren stared at it.

‘You know . . . ’ she said slowly, screwing up her eyes. ‘You know, if I’d lived all my life up here, and someone showed me a pineapple – a golden yellow pineapple, with fronds coming out of the top . . . ’

The others stared at her.

‘A crown of gold?’ said Jamie. ‘Do you think?’

‘It’s the colour of gold and it looks like a crown,’ said Mirren, obstinately.

They all stared at it.

Jamie tried to heave it up, but it wouldn’t budge. There was nothing around it, just a stone plinth on the paving stones beneath their feet. Together the two boys tried to shift it, but nothing doing.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Esme and gave it a good boot with her foot. Nothing happened, except she hurt her foot and swore in a way you presumably only learned how to do at either really posh boarding schools or at sea in the nineteenth century.

‘Bollocks,’ said Jamie, looking around. ‘There’s nothing else here! Nothing!’

Theo started searching the heavy hedges, which helped not at all, except he managed to scratch his face. Esme was still hopping. Jamie started exploring the ground, pushing leaves aside with his feet, the back of his neck going red. It got even darker overhead.

Mirren stepped forward, holding up the torch, and examined the statue closely.

She took her newly warmed hands out of the first set of mittens, keeping on the liner gloves, and knelt down.

The pineapple stood about a metre high on its plinth; its stone was green and covered in moss and bird droppings, and worn away on its north and east side, where the winds swept down.

The lines of the rind had been etched into it with a chisel; it was fine work, or had been, once upon a time.

Each had a dot in the centre or raised stone, just like the fruit, and its leaves, slightly broken now, made a profusion at the top.

For an instant Mirren wondered what it must have been like, to live in the depths of the Scottish winter and taste a pineapple for the very first time.

It must have been unimaginably exotic and extraordinary.

She thought, too, of the awfulness of the trade that went to the Caribbean; that built this beautiful house and its grounds.

No wonder its inhabitants had felt themselves cursed, at one time or another, down the years. No wonder.

Experimentally, she pushed one of the pineapple’s buttons.

Nothing happened, of course. But as she looked across the surface she saw one that did not look like the others.

It almost did; but as she peered at it closely she could see it was not stone but metal, painted to look like stone, but slightly worn on one side, where the metal gleamed through.

She looked up. Esme and Theo were arguing about something.

Jamie was just looking lost. Bending her head in an act of supplication that did not seem out of place, Mirren scratched away the ice until it was clear, then pressed the button hard.

And the top of the pineapple made a heavy grinding noise, and the leaves began to move.