Tragic Magic [boyxboy]

Chapter Two

Tristan drove like I imagine a blind guy with a death wish and only a vague understanding of the art of motoring would drive. He spent only a small fraction of the journey actually looking at the road, keeping up a steady stream of conversation with Anabelle – who got to sit in the front, by the way, while I was in the back seat with my duffle bag, even though I’m sure it’s illegal in England for kids to sit in the passenger seat under the age of ten – and at one point, I’m pretty sure, taking both hands off the wheel to rummage around under his seat. I craned my neck to try and see but his hands were back in plain view before I could get a good look.

                Still, even though he dodged traffic like he was on a motorcycle rather than a car (and driving on the wrong side of the road I might add) we didn’t even come close to having an accident. It was like the car knew what to do without any prompting from him, and we arrived in Notting Hill safe and sound, unless you count my heart palpitations from fear.

                I’ll die in this country.

                The house, of course, was huge. I already knew from their fancy car, their names, their accent, and the fact that they needed an au pair that these people had to be wealthy, and I wasn’t wrong. While the house wasn’t a sprawling mansion with miles and miles of land in every direction, it wasn’t your typical two-storey semi-detached either. It was Victorian, about four floors high, with a whimsical garden full off weeping willows and pretty flowers and trickling natural-looking water features, and climbing ivy stretched across one half of the front exterior.

                I had to admit, in the beauty stakes it pretty much surpassed any modern tourist apartment I might have lived in in France.

                ‘You’re upstairs,’ Tristan said shortly when we got inside. I wasn’t sure what that meant, seeing as there were so many floors, but he continued, ‘Right at the top. Anabelle will show you.’ And with that he disappeared further into the house. I got the feeling he didn’t like me very much. But then, Tristan seemed like the kind of boy who didn’t really like anybody very much. I thought that if I hadn’t seen him with Anabelle, I would have figured him for a complete asshat.

                ‘Come with me,’ Anabelle said, with all the solemnity of a six year old given a great responsibility, and I followed her up the stairs, listening as she pointed out what was where. ‘There’s a bathroom in your room,’ she explained, ‘so except for looking after me and eating you don’t really have to leave it. If you don’t want to.’

I thought this was a weird thing to say. Did she not like me either? Did they want me to stay in my room when I wasn’t working? Maybe I should have tried harder not to seem so grumpy when they met me at the airport. I cringed inwardly. This was where my childishness had gotten me.

‘That’s my room,’ she said, and I looked at the door she was pointing at, expecting to see it covered with posters and stickers like the sign she’d made with my name on it, like the doors of my friends’ little brothers and sisters, but there was nothing. It was just a door, like all the other doors in the house so far.

‘And that’s Tristan’s room,’ she continued, when we were on the third floor. The door was half-open, and I peered inside as surreptitiously as I could. It was dark, like I’d expected it to be, the walls painted black, with a black and white bedspread. He didn’t have any posters or pictures that I could see, but I only had a few seconds to be nosy before Anabelle led me up the last flight of stairs.

At the top there was only one door, and I realised that my room was the only room on the top floor. She opened it, and I was surprised when I went in to see it was an attic room. The beams holding up the roof were displayed and the floor uncarpeted, but it was clean and airy. There was a porthole window over my bed and a large window on the other wall, looking out into the back garden, which was just as pretty and fairytale-like as the one in the front.