Hello, Cruel Heart by Maureen Johnson

Author:Maureen Johnson [Johnson, Maureen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2021-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Estella hurried back to the Lair and made herself presentable, which required trying on six outfits and doing her makeup four times. She made an attempt to clean up the Lair, which mostly involved shooing the bolder mice back into the openings in the wainscot and strategically placing books in front of the most gaping holes. She paced back and forth, arranging the suit on a table, then on her bed, then finally back on the mannequin.

She left the Lair a full hour early to get to the tube station, which was only a few minutes’ walk away, just over the Regent’s Canal and down the Camden High Street. Camden was not as well-heeled as Chelsea, where Magda and Richard lived. The street was lined with greengrocers and some cheaper clothing shops, along with plenty of stalls of secondhand tat. But it was a bright, vibrant day, and everything looked better bathed in sunlight.

Peter came out of the tube station entrance, a bit late but looking better than she had ever seen him. He was dressed in a simple white shirt and light brown trousers, nothing special. (She would fix all that.) She could see the musician in him, in his stride and stance: his arms had a wide, natural swing, his fingers were long, and there was a rhythm to his movements, like he was listening to the beat of his surroundings and walking in time.

“Hello again,” he said.

“Hi.” There was a pause as they took each other in, and then Peter’s face broke into the lopsided grin that made Estella’s heart skip a beat.

“Shall we?” he said.

They began to walk, Estella leading Peter back up the Camden High Street, over the canal. “So are you ready to do the show?” she asked.

“Getting there,” he said. “We get to play two songs. We’re definitely doing ‘Everybody’s Sun’ since it’s the single. We don’t know yet which other song to do. But the album is selling well. It’s in all the shops. I heard John Lennon listened to it and liked it a lot. Don’t know if that’s true…”

“Of course it’s true,” she assured him. “It’s a good album.”

“Well, as long as you like it,” he said with a sidelong grin.

A few minutes later, they stopped by a fence that surrounded a vacant lot.

“Well, this is it,” Estella announced.

Peter looked around. “What’s it?”

“Where I live.”

Most homes had doors. That fact was taken for granted. The Lair didn’t have a door, because the Lair was not a house, nor an address. The Lair was a place, a hideout, a refuge. As such, it had no number and no doorbell. And no front.

“This is a fence,” he pointed out.

“We have to go through it,” Estella explained, peeling back one of the loose boards. “Head down. Watch your shirt. There are some sharp bits.”

“I admit,” Peter said as he bent low to squeeze through the opening, “this was not quite what I was expecting.”

“If you liked that,” Estella said, “then you’ll love this.”

She

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