park. I watched until the flash of red resolved into a woman in a scarlet cloak and hood. Then I realised it was not a hooded cloak but a wild mass of red hair. I could not see her face, for she looked down at a great shaggy beast that walked beside her. A dog it must be, yet my first impression had been that it was a bear. She went along the other side of the line of ghost trees and then passed out of view. I wrapped my shawl tighter and flew along to Rose’s old room, which offered a view from one of its windows of the road and the nether end of the park, but there was no sign of the woman.
Deciding I had probably dreamed her, I returned to my room to bathe and dress and went down to breakfast. I had told cook not to come in early, for my stepfather ate almost nothing and I liked to break my fast very lightly and only when I was hungry. But being awake so long had given me an appetite, and I decided to make pancakes the way they had been made in the country of my birth. Once the batter was resting, I melted butter and opened a bottle of preserved cherries. The smell of them was sweet and rich and red and made me think of Mama who had supervised the cooks as they boiled them in sugar syrup, sweat shining on her forehead and making little golden curls riot about her pink cheeks. She had sung as she worked, and I had sat listening to her, rocking Rose in her cradle and waiting for her to spoon a taste into my mouth.
The door bell rang and I heard my stepfather’s voice. A few moments later he entered, accompanied by the policeman I had been thinking of earlier. He guided my stepfather gently, and nodded to me in his characteristic grave, courteous way. I dropped an awkward curtsey, conscious that I was red-faced with the heat and had a splodge of cherry juice on the bib of my apron.
‘Inspector Grey has a question,’ my stepfather said, then he sniffed the air and sorrow washed the slight colour from his face. His dark eyes clouded and he stooped, as if he were under an intolerable burden, and ran a long-fingered hand over his face and left it smudged with a bruise-like weariness.
‘I have made pancakes for breakfast,’ I stammered.
My stepfather flinched, as if I had tried to strike him a blow from behind, then he turned and made his way to the door, hands outstretched, saying not a word as he closed the door behind him.
‘They smell very good,’ said the policeman kindly.
‘Would you like some? I am afraid I have made too much for one and I find that I have no appetite.’ I gulped out the words, striving to control myself. Then I sank gracelessly into the chair my stepfather had grasped, my face streaming with tears.
‘You must eat,’ said the policeman. ‘You must keep up your strength, for hope is the hardest work.’
‘Hope?’ I wondered incredulously if he mocked me. ‘Hope will not save Rose.’ Then I told him my dream, adding, ‘So you see, it is a prince who is needed.’
‘There is truth of a sort in dreams, and in tales as well, but when it comes to life, if there are no princes, well, we must make do,’ said the policeman.
I looked at him, half marvelling. ‘It is surprising to hear a policeman speak in such a poetic way,’ I said.
‘Perhaps it is not as uncommon as you think. We are men as well as policemen, and once we were children. A good policeman must keep his mind open.’
He began dishing out the pancakes efficiently, adding melted butter and warmed cherries, then pouring the coffee I had made into fine china mugs and fetching cream and sugar from the cool closet and pantry. Finally he brought us knives and forks. He seemed to have an unerring instinct for the whereabouts of things and he smiled a little when he caught the expression on my face. ‘I do not have a wife and so I am accustomed to cook for myself. Contrary to popular belief, I am a man who likes to cook and all good cooks have similar habits. So as well as being a policeman and a man who was once a boy, I am also a cook.’