The Glass Bird Girl Read Online Free Page A

given her with such ceremony was little improvement on her last. She had hoped at the very least Cousin Charles might equip her with some useful gadgets – devices for secretly recording people, or listeningthrough walls – but he had met this suggestion with contempt: Romantic nonsense, Edith. You’ve been watching too many films. I’ve told you, all you’ll need are your eyes and ears . Her mobile didn’t even have a camera.
    Cousin Charles had put Edie’s eyes to the test during the few days they had just spent together in Mayfair. One afternoon he made her face the drawing-room wall and tell him what was in the room. He looked surprised when she listed every piece of furniture.
    â€˜When Babka started going blind I became her second pair of eyes,’ Edie had explained with a hint of pride. ‘She’d ask me what I could see and she always seemed to know if I’d left anything out.’
    â€˜She has trained you well,’ Cousin Charles had said, impressed. By way of contrast he had given Edie no training at all – until this last-minute pep talk.
    â€˜It’s possible that Anastasia is simply imagining that she is being teased. In which case your job is simply to get in there and act like her friend and stop her feeling strange and lonely. Remember, this is a child who’s used to travelling around the world in a private jet and being waited on hand and foot. She’s made a fuss about wanting to manage on her own and she’s not managing.’
    â€˜You don’t think she’s being teased at all?’ asked Edie in a puzzled voice. ‘I thought—’
    â€˜I don’t know if she is being teased,’ said Charles. ‘Nor does her father. We can’t know, as we’re not there. It’s your job to find out.’
    â€˜And if I think she is being teased,’ said Edie, ‘then what do I do about it?’
    â€˜First you have to discover who is doing the teasing. If, for instance, someone really is messing with her possessions, you probably have to catch them in the act.’
    â€˜Without telling anyone what I’m up to?’
    â€˜Exactly. In the end it’s about covering your tracks. To that end you can lie all you like, although it’s best to stick to the same one. Sometimes the only thing you have to go on is the fact of a deception; you have to work backwards from there. Remember everything, Edith, never let anything go: most mysteries are solved by attention to the most trivial-seeming details.’
    Privately Edie thought the whole affair was trivial. Cousin Charles talked as though it were quite natural for a father to send another child into a school to investigate whether or not someone was stealing his daughter’s pencils, but Edie thought it was plain weird. Cousin Charles needn’t worry about her and Anastasia becoming friends: Edie could not imagine liking someone so spoilt.
    â€˜You say she’s always travelling, but where’s Anastasia’s home?’ she asked.
    â€˜Moscow, Paris, the South of France – her father’s got houses everywhere,’ Charles said, sounding bored. ‘And her mother lives in Yorkshire.’
    Edie was intrigued. She wondered if Anastasia ever felt homeless having so many homes to choose from. ‘And does she have a Russian accent?’ she asked.
    â€˜Certainly not,’ Charles replied. ‘I told you, her mother’s English and the prince was at school with me. He sounds more English than the Queen.’
    â€˜You say she’s dreamy, but that she keeps all her things in perfect order and arranges her books alphabetically, and that she never loses anything,’ Edie said, thinking over the information she had been given, ‘but isn’t it the case that dreamy people always lose things?’
    â€˜You have a lot to learn, Edith. People’s characters are not so easy to define.’
    â€˜Babka thinks