was no alternative, it seemed, but to quickly bind it up in braids.
When she emerged, she found Richard all suited up in what appeared to be the same suit and tie he had on the day before.
“Hope you were all right in there,” he said apologetically. “I don’t have a shower.”
He’d probably heard her sloshing around all the way in the kitchen.
Richard started opening cabinet doors and pointing out things that might be considered breakfast-worthy. He was clearly unprepared for her visit, as the best he could offer was a bit of leftover bread, a little jar of brown stuff called Marmite, an apple, and “whatever is in the refrigerator.”
“I’ve got some Ribena here, if you want that,” he added, taking a bottle of some kind of grape juice and setting it in front of Ginny as well. He excused himself for a moment. Ginny got a glass and poured herself some of the juice. It was warm and incredibly thick. She took a sip and gagged slightly as the intense, overly sweet syrup coated her throat.
“You’re…” Richard was in the kitchen doorway now, watching this with an embarrassed expression. “You’re supposed to mix that with water. I should have told you.”
“Oh,” Ginny said, swallowing hard.
“I’ve got to be off now,” he said. “I’m sorry…there’s been no time to talk at all. Why don’t you meet me at Harrods for lunch? Let’s meet at Mo’s Diner at noon. If you ever get locked out, I leave a spare key wedged in the crack in the step.”
He carefully walked her through the tube journey from the house to Harrods and made her repeat it back to him, then walked her through all the bus options, which was just a big jumble of numbers. Then he was gone, and Ginny was at the table alone, with her glass of syrup. She gazed at it sourly, still stung by the expression on Richard’s face when he’d seen her drinking it. She picked up the bottle and examined it to see if there was any warning, any indication that it was anything but normal juice, anything that would make her behavior less freakish.
To her relief, there was nothing on the bottle that could have helped her. It said that it was something called “blackcurrant squash.” It was “only 89p!” It was made in the United Kingdom. Which is where she was. She was in a kingdom far, far from home.
And who was this Richard, anyway, aside from a guy in a suit who worked in a big store? Looking around his kitchen, she decided he was definitely single. There were relatively few groceries—just things like this warm instant juice stuff. There were some clothes on the chairs nearest to the wall and a few scattered crumbs and coffee granules on the table.
Whoever he was, he’d let Aunt Peg stay long enough to decorate an entire room. It must have taken time to make the collage and sew the bedspread. She had to have been here for months.
She got up and retrieved the package. After brushing a spot clean, she laid the envelopes out on the table. She looked over each of the eleven unopened ones. Most had been decorated with some kind of picture as well as a number. The front of the next one had been painted in watercolors in the style of a Monopoly Community Chest card. Aunt Peg had created her own version of the little man in the top hat with the monocle, with a very fat and round plane going by the background. She’d even managed to sketch out letters that looked like the Monopoly typescript. They read: TO BE OPENED THE MORNING AFTER THE SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF ENVELOPE #2.
That required her to find out what Richard had sold the queen and getting to an ATM. She needed money anyway. All she had left was a handful of strangely shaped coins, which she hoped would be enough to get her back to Harrods.
Ginny snatched up the directions that Richard had written for her minutes before, dumped the offending juice down the sink, and headed for the door.
A red bus was coming down the street in Ginny’s direction. The sign on the front listed several famous-sounding destinations, including Knightsbridge, and the number matched one of the bus numbers Richard had given her. There was a small bus shelter a few feet away, and it looked like the bus planned on stopping there.
Two black poles with illuminated yellow globes on top of them marked the opening of the pedestrian crossing. Ginny ran to these, glanced to make sure the coast was clear, and started to run across the road.
Sudden honking. A big black cab whizzed past her. As Ginny jumped back, she saw something written on the road. LOOK LEFT.
“It’s like they know me,” she mumbled to herself.
She managed to get across the road and tried to ignore the fact that everyone on one side of the bus had just witnessed her near-death experience. She had no idea what to pay the driver. Ginny helplessly held out her little bit of remaining money and he took one of the fat coins. She went up the narrow spiral staircase in the middle of the bus. There were many seats available, and Ginny took one at the very front. The bus started to move.
It felt like she was floating. From her perspective, it looked like the bus was running over countless pedestrians and bicyclists, squashing them into oblivion. She pushed herself farther back into the seat and tried not to pay any attention to this. (Except they had to have just killed that guy on the cell phone. Ginny waited to feel the bump as the bus rolled over his body, but it never came.)
She looked around at the imposing facades of the stately buildings around her. The sky went from cloudy to gray in the space of a moment, and rain started hammering the wide windows in front of her. Now it looked like they were mowing down huge crowds of umbrella carriers.
She looked down at her smattering of remaining coins.
Aside from the 4th Noodle Penthouse, there was one other thing about Aunt Peg’s life that had been completely consistent—she was broke. Always. Ginny had known this even when she was very small and wasn’t supposed to know things about her relatives’ finances. Her parents somehow made this fact apparent without ever coming out and saying it.
Still, it never seemed like Aunt Peg was wanting for anything. She always seemed to have enough money to take Ginny for frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, or to buy her piles of art supplies, or to make her elaborate Halloween costumes, or to get that jar of really good caviar she bought once just because she thought Ginny should taste it. (“If you’re going to do fish eggs once, do it right,” she had said. It was still gross.)
Ginny wasn’t sure if she believed that there was any more money waiting for her in an ATM. Maybe it would be there since it wasn’t going to be real money—it was going to be pounds. Pounds seemed possible. Pounds sounded like they should come in the form of tiny burlap bags tied in rough string, filled with little bits of metal or shiny objects. Aunt Peg could have that kind of money.
It took a few tries on the escalators and a few consultations of the Harrods map to find Mo’s Diner. Richard had gotten there first and was waiting in a booth. He ordered a steak, and she got the “big American-style burger!”
“I’m supposed to ask you what you sold to the queen,” she said.
He smiled and dabbed some ketchup onto his steak. Ginny tried not to wince.
“My job is to take care of special orders and customers,” he said, not noticing her distress
