It took me a few more weeks to get well. When I came downstairs for the first time, I realised that life had been going on without me. The Professor, Mrs Morcom, Judith and Daniel and SP were there, wearing paper hats and tinsel crowns. Toasts were being drunk. There was hugging and kissing and laughing all round.
“What is going on?” I asked.
“Daniel has proposed to Judith and she’s accepted,” said SP. “They are planning–”
“Well, I have plans too,” Mrs Morcom interrupted, thumping her glass of Madeira down so hard that the wine splashed the tablecloth. “This place bores me to tears.”
“Thank you, Almeria, and same to you,” said the Professor.
She glared at him. “Not Mulberry Hill, Saddy. England. So I have decided to travel to Australia on another painting tour.”
Suddenly, they were all talking at once. Australia. Somewhere new, somewhere fresh. Somewhere a young man like Daniel Opie could make his mark.
“It’s a young country,” said Judith. “Here, everyone is judged by their pedigree, as if we were prize cows. But in Australia, no one cares who your great-grandfather was.”
“No one dares tell,” said Mrs Morcom, dryly. “Half of them were convicts.”
“It just so happens,” said the Professor, “that I was approached by a firm of lawyers today. A firm of lawyers from Halifax in Yorkshire. The improbably named Bustard, Hawk and Chaffinch. They have a client who wants the Confidential Agents to follow up a complex matter both here in London and in Australia. It could be a start for you, Daniel.”
“Father!” protested SP, taking off his crown and throwing it at the mantelpiece. “Am I to be left out?”
“You may go, my boy, if that’s what you want,” said the Professor. “Do you good to have a change.” He slapped his son on the shoulder, and SP grinned.
“But what about you, Professor?” I asked. “You’ll be all alone here.”
“Not at all,” he said, sounding almost pleased. “I have my club, and the SIPP, and plenty of friends, and of course, my research–”
“Waste of time,” commented Mrs Morcom.
“Happy endings all round,” said the Professor.
“No, happy beginnings,” said SP. “After all, it’s nearly 1879.” He turned to me and took my hand very gently, as if aware that I was not part of this excitement. They’d all been very careful of me, like I was a china doll, since I’d been sick. “What are your New Year’s plans, Verity?”
In the last year I’d been a milliner’s apprentice, and then an assistant confidential inquiry agent, and now the rich Mr Savinov’s long-lost daughter. I’d been stalked and nearly murdered. I’d thought I was a seventh star, and I’d found out I wasn’t. I’d discovered who my real parents were, which made me love Ma and Pa all the more. My itchy fingers had led me to lost objects and dead people, and helped me to find the truth about myself. As I looked around the table – at the Professor and SP, at Judith and Daniel in a glow of new love, and at Mrs Morcom in her pink paper hat, I felt a little lost. Lost and left out.
I dearly loved Papa Savinov, but somehow the Plushes had become my family. The Professor must have known what I was feeling, for he said, “You may always come and stay here with me, Verity. Whenever you wish.”
SP bounced to his feet. His eyes were sparkling. “Why don’t you, Verity?” he said, taking my hand.
“Why don’t I what?”
“Why don’t you come to Australia with us? Why not?”
My Parker Pork fortune was to be held in trust for me until I was twenty-five, but I was to have a generous allowance, and Papa Savinov wanted me to come and live with him.
“But not here,” he said. I was spending the day with him in his apartments at the Hotel Excalibur. “We will need a house somewhere very nice. Park Lane, Mayfair – too fashionable. Perhaps one of those so English leafy squares, Grosvenor or Chester,” he mused.
“What about St John’s Wood?” Then I could be near Mulberry Hill as well.
“No.” He frowned. “That is not at all respectable for a young English lady such as you will be. And we will need room for a chaperone or a companion, and a lady’s maid–”
“A chaperone? A companion? Whatever for?”
“I am away so often, in Paris or Moscow or Prague, and for months at a time, my dear. Of course you will need someone.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
“Sometimes, perhaps.”
I thought about what he’d said all day. I thought about it and thought about it, and eventually I knew what I must do.
“Papa Savinov,” I said. We were sitting together in front of the fire. The hotel waiter had just brought us afternoon tea, and a stand with three tiers of little sandwiches and iced cakes stood on the table between us. He looked so contented, drinking Assam tea and planning a London house and a country place and a companion and a piano teacher and riding lessons and the rest of it – and here I was about to spoil it.
“Yes, Veroschka?”
“I told you that Mrs Morcom and Daniel and Judith and SP are all going to Australia, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“I want to go to Australia too.”
“Ah.” He looked at me, long and sad, and gave a great big sigh.
I felt my heart would break for him, and quickly I said, “I’m sorry, Papa Savinov. If you really don’t wish it, I won’t go.”
“You don’t think you can be happy with me?”
“It isn’t that. You’re kind and good and I know I will have everything I want, but – but I don’t like doing nothing, Papa. I can’t be a lady. I can’t sit around and pay calls and buy hats and embroider doilies.”
“But I’d like you to be a lady, Veroschka. A real English lady. And who knows, one day perhaps to marry a gentleman. Imagine yourself – Lady Vera! Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I’ll never be a lady, Papa. Don’t you see? It’s like Miss Judith says, they’ve all got pedigrees like prize cows. They won’t want me.”
“But with your Parker Pork inheritance, chérie.”
“Pooh to that,” I said, snapping my fingers. “I know all about fortune hunters. Cook told us. I don’t want someone to marry me just for my money. Papa, do you understand?”
He thought for a while, and finally said, “Yes. I do. There’s nothing tame about you, Veroschka. I think you are rather like me. Always seeking adventures. You know, I have businesses and investments all over the world, but none in Australia.” His eyes began to sparkle.
“You mean …?”
He nodded. “I would like very much to see this land so faraway and strange.”
I gasped with delight and took his hands.
“You do not mind your old Papa coming along?”
“Of course I don’t,” I kissed his grey lion’s head.
Then he handed me Mrs Vic’s lucky piece. “You’d better have this,” he said. “Somehow I think you might need it.”