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A person dropped into the rectangular room at the end of Hadbury Hall's west corridor would need little time to recognise the room as one intended for a very young boy, one certainly no older than infant school age. The walls alone, with their baby blue paper intermittently obscured by childish pictures drawn in messy crayons and held in place by small green tacks, would confirm it, as would the deep plush shag of the slightly darker blue carpet, which was there to feel comfortable under the bare feet that little ones often ran around their bedroom in, and was like nothing a grown up, or even an older child, would have in their room. Further confirmation was given by the grand old oak toy chest which sat against one of the baby blue walls like a mountain against the sky. The lid of the chest was secured by a large brown buckle, the kind of fastening little children have difficulty with on account of their small hands, and if the person also had the ability to see through the light and dark toned panels of the chest itself they'd have seen a vast collection of boy's toys - wooden trains, balls, guns, and of course, an army of tin soldiers. To the right of the chest, and dwarfed by it, sat a small wooden table and chair set with blue seats and three books neatly stacked on the table, as well as one soldier, dressed in a resplendent red uniform, who'd somehow escaped the confines of the toy chest. On the opposite wall was the door that led into the bedroom's private bathroom, and that was accompanied by a wooden bookcase, overflowing with colourful, childish books. To pick up a book at random would return a title like "Alfred and Tommy go to the Zoo" or "My Big Book of Animals," and many of the books bore the unmistakable marks of excitable crayon scribbles left by previous readers or pages well tattered and torn from being loved and read often. Most of the books were blue, white or green, with almost none of any of the pastel colours that might indicate a girl's bookcase, no pinks, purples, yellows or lavenders, offering even further proof, if needed, of being in a boy's bedroom. In fact, the only thing that might give us visitor pause, and a rather large pause at that, was the room's bed, which ran parallel away from the large window of the back wall, a window that looked out onto Hadbury House's well manicured gardens. It wasn't the bed itself, which like the rest of the room was clearly meant for a small boy, its length and width not even nearly sufficient for an adult and the cream bedding with frilled blue piping far too childish, nor was it the large plush blue headboard that separated the bed from the window and wall behind it which sported a needlework of three white teddies at its heart. Rather, the pause would be created by the size of the bed's occupant, who was laying still under the bedding in the hope, the ridiculous hope, that he might just be left alone for the whole day, and who filled the bed more fully than the occupant of such a room should, his bare feet poking out of the decorative metallic guard that sat at the bed's end. The bed's occupant was Daniel Hadbury, and he'd turned 16 on his last birthday, a birthday that despite only being six weeks previous now felt like a lifetime ago as he tossed and turned in the too small bed in the forlorn hope of making himself more comfortable. How'd he come to be sleeping in the small room of the west corridor, also known as the boy's nursery, was something he himself hadn't quite worked out, especially as he'd been in the hallway's grand bedroom, the one that ran parallel to the corridor itself and was so big it had two entrances, right up until that day he'd turned 16. "Come along master Daniel, it's time to get up." The woman sweeping into the room was Mrs Potts, and she threw open the embroidered curtains, allowing a bolt of sunshine to illuminate the stillness of the bedroom. "I know you're already awake, so let's not have that game again. Your Mother wants everyone at the table by 7.30." Daniel had been assigned Mrs Potts as his "Nanny" only a few days before, a new low in his quick descent from his big comfortable four poster bed to the too small bed of the nursery. It had been deemed necessary after he'd gotten down to breakfast late for four days in a row, as well as being dressed in a manner that Anna found unacceptable. That they were his clothes, his favourite clothes, seemed not to matter. "I don't want to go," Daniel said, his voice muffled by the pillow he'd hidden his face with, "I just want to stay here." "Well I want to be on Newquay beach with a gin and tonic, but we don't always get what we want, do we?" Mrs Potts was a large woman, closer to the "old" end of the middle age spectrum and certainly nowhere near the young, with greying black hair and a bosom that pushed fiercely against the flowery tea dress that the Nannies of Hadbury Hall wore as uniform. She'd been at the house for long enough to have been one of Daniel's Nannies the first time around, so the situation was equally as strange for her. "Come on Daniel. There's no point making a scene again. You know what'll happen if you do." Daniel's climbing out of bed, his pyjamas also baby blue, and with their frilled edges and little pockets on the shirt, would do little ease the confusion of any visitor to the room. For while Daniel was clearly too tall to be the very small boy the room was intended for, he was certainly not tall or big enough to look like a boy who'd celebrated his 16th birthday. In fact, standing at just four foot eight in his bare feet and with an unruly mop of light blond hair that surrounded his small face, it was hard not to see a 9 or 10 year old boy pull his bedsheets up neatly behind him and straighten his pillows. "All done in there?" Mrs Potts asked, a trifle redundantly, as Daniel returned from the adjoining bathroom. "You brushed your teeth?" "Yes," Daniel replied, rolling his eyes in a way that brought a slither of hair into his vision. "Your clothes are on the bed, I'll go and tidy up the bathroom while...." "What are these?" Daniel asked, holding up the small pair of white underpants sitting on top of his clothes. "Don't make a fuss now," Mrs Potts said. She'd known he would though, from the very moment she'd collected the underpants from Edward's old underwear draw. "These aren't mine. Where are my boxer shorts?" Mrs Potts took a deep breath. Like many of the domestic staff she wasn't all that pleased about Daniel's treatment, and like ALL of the domestic staff she knew it'd never have been allowed if Lord Hadbury was still alive, but when the choice came down to doing what Anna asked and not doing what Anna asked, well, there wasn't a choice at all. Daniel had problems, but they were nothing compared to the ones she would face if she didn't have a job. "Your Mother thought those boxer shorts are too tatty now. She also thinks underpants are better under your day shorts." It was hard to argue with the last point. Considering the high leg of the shorts Daniel had been wearing, it didn't make sense to wear long, open boxer shorts underneath. This was especially true when sitting cross legged on the floor, often affording someone sitting at the wrong angle a fuller view than was really necessary, including Mrs Potts herself, or worse still, little Alice. Daniel stared at the underpants for a few moments while Mrs Potts disappeared into the bathroom. He knew his choices were limited. Refusal to put them on would only lead to his Stepmother coming up the nursery and then almost certainly having him over her knee again, after which she'd make him put on the pants anyway. They didn't feel too bad once slipped in place, a tad tight perhaps, and although he knew they were the type of pants smaller boys wore, they didn't look overtly childish, just plain white with a thin waistband. His outer clothes were actually worse, but he'd been dressed in that fashion for quite a few days now and so the teasing had started to abate. Today it was a pair of lime green shorts and a plain white tee-shirt, teemed with a pair of knee high white socks with matching lime green edging and his usual pair of white buckle up shoes in a size 2, his feet just as small as the rest of him, if not smaller. It was, in anyone's parlance, the outfit of a little boy, and when Daniel looked at himself in the mirror he was disgusted to see how well it suited him. "Do you think Anna might give me back my chess board today?" Daniel asked, as Mrs Potts brushed his hair, trying to tame at least some of his curls. "Well she certainly won't if you call her Anna. She's your Mother." "Stepmother," Daniel spat. "Ouch! Be careful with that brush! Anyway, even Anna is too nice. I should call her the Demon, or maybe even Lucifer. She looked a bit like Lucifer yesterday in that horrible red dress she was wearing. Owh! You did it again!" "I wish she'd let you have this hair cut. It's getting harder and harder to manage." "I'm banned from haircuts," Daniel said, "just like I seem to be banned from his chess board. So, what do you think? If I ask her nicely, do you think she'll give it back?" "I think she'll tell you exactly what she told you yesterday. It's at the back of your old cupboard, and too much trouble to fish it out now with all of Harry's stuff on top of it." "What a load of rubbish! I could get it, if she just allowed me in there." Daniel thought it bad enough to be removed from one's own bedroom, but even worse to be banned from going in there! The chess board had played a part in his troubles for sure, although the stupid part was that he hadn't even wanted to play Harry, knowing as he did that he'd beat the boy convincingly. It was Harry himself, as arrogant and full of taunting as ever, who had pestered, "C'mon Daniel. You're just scared that I'll beat you at the one thing in the world you actually think you're good at, apart from building those stupid planes. I just know I'll beat a baby like you at chess." They'd played in the centre of the room on Daniel's old study desk, with all of the other children, including the girls, crowding around the table and cheering for Harry. It lasted all of ten moves, and even then Daniel had gone easy. "You cheated!" Harry said, throwing the board across the road and sending the remaining pieces crashing against the wall. "Edward, you saw him cheat, didn't you?" Edward nodded as quickly as he could in the face of pressure from his older brother. "Yes, definitely." "Me too," Olivia said, "why do you always cheat Daniel? Is it because you're too much of a little baby to win?" That the children disliked him so was no surprised, as poisoned against him as they'd been over the years by Anna. When Daniel's Father had been alive, this poisoning had taken the form of moaning about how Daniel got special treatment, the bigger room despite being smaller than Harry, and more spent on clothes and books. Now, it was simply how useless he was, or how naughty and disobedient, and what a little baby he acted like most of the time. When word got back to his Stepmother about the game, probably via Olivia, she became livid that Daniel had had the nerve to beat her Harry at anything, cheating or not. She didn't say as much, but actions speak louder than words, and the next day she stormed into Daniel's bedroom as he was reading. "I've decided it's ridiculous that you have this bedroom. It's too big for you and Harry's room is too small for him. You're going to swap." He argued of course, argued until he was blue in the face, but it was no good. While he stood protesting, pulling angrily at the sleeve of her floral print white dress, she had Junior and Frank begin the process of moving Harry's numerous possessions across the hallway and into their new home. "You're just being selfish," she said, while pointing at where each item should go, including the leather recliner seat which had somehow moved from Daniel's Father's lounge to Harry's bedroom. With no fair words left to fight the unfair argument, Daniel resorted to insult. "You're just being a bitch." He'd never seen Anna's face go so red, or her eyes so narrow. "What did you call me?" "A bitch," he repeated sourly, "this is my room, and...." "How dare you!" She grabbed him by the hand with great fury, pulling him across to the newly installed recliner which had been placed under the balcony window, and then forcing his tiny frame over her lap so that his head dangled over one side and his legs the other. For all his squirming and kicking, especially as it dawned on him that he was about to be spanked, her hand pressed strongly against his back was enough to hold him in place. "Boys don't talk to their Mothers that way," she said loudly, as she brought her spare hand down a number of times onto the back of his trousers, reddening his bottom with every smack, after which she stood him in front of her. "Next time, I'll have your trousers down too. Understand?" "Yes," he replied bitterly, rubbing his sore bottom. "Yes what?" "Yes Mother," he said. "And you can forget about playing with this for a while," she said, taking his chess board from the table and throwing it to the back of the cupboard, "perhaps when you stop acting like a spoilt little brat, I might THINK about giving it back." From there things had only gotten worse, to the point where Daniel found himself going down to the breakfast table directly from the nursery in his little boy shorts and t-shirt set, where he found everyone already sat and already starting to eat. This included Anna's friend Josephine, a tall humourless woman who seemed to most of her time at the house. Josephine had been a schoolgirl friend of Stepmother's, or so Daniel had heard. Aside from her, Harry and Edward, already dressed in their crisp white shirts and linen trousers, had taken their customary positions on the right of the table, while Olivia and little Alice were sat at the left, with Anna at the head of the table. "You're late," Anna snapped. "Sorry Mother," Daniel said, not sure he really was. He'd only had a few short months getting to sit at the head of the table, in between Father dying and Anna deciding she couldn't stand the thought of it any longer, although he'd never felt that comfortable there anyway, the seat seeming too big and grand and too warm from Father still. Since then he'd commenced a slide down the table, from sitting to the right of Anna, to sitting between Harry and Edward, to sitting at the end of the table, in what had always been the youngest boy's seat. "Oh no Daniel," Anna said, as he went to take his place, "you're to sit on the other side of the table today. You see, Olivia had the wonderful suggestion that maybe the nursery children should sit side by side. That way the Nannies won't have to walk around the table." "But that's the girl's side of the table," Daniel whimpered. "I wouldn't annoy me this morning Daniel," Anna said, "just sit down there, next to Alice. Good boy." He shot a glare in the direction of Olivia as he sidled around. The girl was only 9, but as well as inheriting Daniel's Father's large frame and Anna's dark brown hair, she'd also taken on some of her Mother's deviousness and spitefulness. It was hard to believe that someone dressed so prettily could be so ugly in nature. "Hello!" Little Alice said happily, as Daniel sat down. Like little children tended to be, especially those still a few weeks shy of their fifth birthday, she was simply excited by this change in the norm, although even she understood that Daniel was really 16, and therefore far too old to be in the nursery like she was. "Do you like how I've dressed Sarah? She's wearing yellow, like me." The girl pressed the blonde ragdoll in Daniel's face. "Leave me alone," he muttered, letting out a sigh. Alice shrugged off the miserable reply and went quickly back to fussing with her ragdoll's dress, which was indeed yellow like the short frock Alice herself was wearing, complimented by a yellow bow atop her shoulder length blonde hair and a pair of white socks with yellow and white frilled edging. It was of general consensus to anyone visiting Hadbury House that Alice was a "little cutie," especially when she fluttered those big blue eyes of hers and lisped her S sounds. Naturally though the little girl idolised her big sister, and so Daniel had been the subject of taunting from even Alice as she copied Olivia. "Daniel, eat your toast now," Anna said, from her far away position at the head of the table. "No," he replied, his appetite diminished completely by this latest humiliation. He only had two saving graces on the horizon. The first and furthest away, by also the biggest, was that he'd become Lord of Hadbury House on his 18th birthday, a fact that even Anna could do little about, ensconced as it was by the law of Father's will. He'd kick Anna out of the house straight away, naturally, closely followed by her bratty children and all of the maids, servants and garden boys who'd laughed at him. Then he'd set about finding himself a wife, one who could past his small frame and feeble strength, and see instead the parts of him that really mattered. His second saving grace was that the children were due to be shipped off to boarding school shortly, even little Alice, and he was sure that Anna would bore of him without the children around to humiliate him in front of. Meanwhile he was finished with boarding school forever - its horrible teachers, bullying students and draughty hallways a thing of the past - and although he hated being in the nursery room, it was 100% better than any St. Christopher's dorm room. "Alice, concentrate on your breakfast please," Anna said, "your dolly can wait until after." "No!" Alice said, replicating how Daniel had said it only moments earlier. "Oh really?" Anna looked over at Mrs Potts and Miss Greaves, Alice's young Nanny. "Yes, I thought this might become a problem. We can't have Daniel being a bad influence on Alice now, can we? Mrs Potts, please make sure your charge knows to answer any question I ask by saying 'Yes Mummy,' like a nursery child should." The other children laughed at this. "How funny!" Olivia said. "I don't even call you Mummy anymore." "Yeah, but Daniel's a baby," Harry added, before Edward parroted much the same sentiment. "Baby Daniel!" Olivia giggled. "He should have a bottle. And a dummy!" "And wear nappies," Harry said, making all the children laugh again, even Alice. "Alright, alright, that's enough teasing," Anna said, smiling herself, tapping her well-manicured red fingernails against the table. As summer start to wind down and the temperature drop, Daniel found himself counting down the days to the children leaving with even more fervour. It would be quiet and peaceful and far less stressful. It would also mean he wouldn't have to sit with Alice, which is all he seemed to do anymore. The girl's nursery sat in the east corridor, and because the hallways were mirrors of each other, it shared the same location and size as the boy's nursery. The difference was in the d?cor and toys. Instead of baby blue wallpaper and a royal blue carpet, there was pink wallpaper and a plush purple carpet, and instead of the toy soldiers and trains there were dolls and miniature horses in the toy chest, as well as a large doll house and a rocking horse just outside the chest. And although the bed was the same size and the bedding mainly white, the girl's bed was a four poster, with soft pink drapes surrounding it from all sides. Until being sent there by Anna, Daniel had never seen inside it, and it had felt somehow illicit. The order had found its way to Mrs Potts after Daniel had repeatedly forgotten to call Anna "Mummy," with the feeling being that maybe Daniel spending more time with Alice would be a good influence on HIM! "Well Alice is far better behaved," Anna said, "and you do keep saying how bored you are Daniel, without your chess board and your little planes to build. I'm just certain that Alice will keep you occupied." At first Mrs Potts had been told to bring a number of Daniel's toys over to the east corridor, and while Alice excitedly played with her doll-house or coloured in with her pastel-coloured crayons, Daniel sat in the corner of the room staring at the collection of boy's toys in front of him with arms crossed, completely refusing to play with the childish items. He was 16 after all, as he liked to remind the Nannies, and he really should be allowed his chess board and books back. Naturally, word of this soon got back to Anna, who thought the solution quite simple. "Well don't you see Mrs Potts, Miss Greaves? Daniel here just doesn't like BOY'S toys, obviously. Get someone to take them back to the west corridor." She kneeled down in front of the still pouting Daniel. "You want to play with Alice's pretty toys, don't you?" "Of course not!" But Anna had already brought Alice over to Daniel's side of the room, the little girl holding a plastic horse with a large mane in her hand and her lilac frock covered in purple fluff from the carpet, "Alice darling, Daniel really wants to play with all your GIRL toys. I want you to involve him in all your games from now on, and if he says no, you tell a grown up, understood?" "Yes Mummy!" she squeaked excitedly. "Oh, he can play horses with me. I've just started!" Daniel didn't say anything, instead simply deciding that such a thing would never happen, and that no punished doled out could change his mind. Instead, he told Alice to stop being stupid whenever she tried to involve him in one of her silly little girl games, often making her cry. He didn't even care when Anna, with Josephine standing by her side, gave Daniel a smack in the centre of the girl's nursery with his grey shorts pulled down to his ankles and his white underpants on clear view to all watching. Nor did he care the second time when she pulled down his blue shorts to leave his blue underpants in the air and his bottom red, or the third time when his yellow pants were shown. "You just like trouble, don't you?" Mrs Potts said, as she put him to bed one night. "You're stubborn, just like your Father was." "Oh yes, I just love trouble," Daniel replied, "I love being stuck in the boy's nursery while my younger half-brothers are sleeping in the big bedrooms. I love being stuck in the girl's nursery all day with a four year girl blithering on all day about her dollies. I love having to wear little boy shorts and t-shirts, and having a Nanny again. How did you get to be so insightful Mrs Potts? It must have been the three weeks of school you went to. And I'd really prefer it if you didn't mention my Father. You might have picked up his dirty clothes, but you didn't know him." Mrs Potts was used to this kind of rudeness and arrogance from her charges. While looking after Edward he'd called her a "fat old tramp," but she surprised to hear it come from Daniel's mouth, who had more reason than most to be humble. Normally she'd have administered a smack, but it didn't feel right to do that to Daniel. Besides, he had done enough to his poor little bottom. "I'm sorry," he said, as she pulled his bedding up to his neck, "I'm just so annoyed at everything. It's not fair, it's really not. It's not fair that I'm so small, and it's not fair that I've been stuck with that Demon. Just you wait though! She'll see." "I'm sure she will," Mrs Potts said. "Wait, before you go. I wanted to ask you - Harry was teasing me earlier, and he said that Josephine had moved into my Father's old room. It's not true, is it?" "I wouldn't know," Mrs Potts lied. She'd seen the woman in there herself that very morning, having Junior and Frank take a load of Lord Hadbury's things down to the cellar. She'd never really understood why Lord and Lady Hadbury had separate bedrooms anyway, and judging by the four children they'd produced together it was clear they'd spent quite a bit of time in the same bed. "She better not have! That's my Father's room, and it's to be my room when I turn 18. I'll have to try and find out." "I really wouldn't. You know you're not allowed to roam around the castle on your own." "That's a stupid rule. Even Olivia can go where she pleases, and she's a 9 year old girl. I'll find a way." "You'll get me in trouble, and I'll probably lose my job," Mrs Potts said, "is that what you want?" "Why should I care? You don't care about making me live in a little boy's nursery, do you? You're like one of Satan's minions. Don't think I don't see you laughing behind my back." "Think what you like. I've had quite enough of this conversation. Lights out now," Mrs Potts said, "but if you do try to sneak away, I will have you over my knee. That's a promise to you." "Fine," Daniel spat. "Yes, fine indeed." Daniel began planning his "break-away" from the next morning onwards, trying to find a moment or two in the day when one of the Nannies left him alone for just long enough. He was starting to find himself a little enamoured with Miss Greaves, who at 19 was a world away from the gruesome middle agedness of Mrs Potts, and on whose body the flowery tea dress of the Nannies sat a lot more appealingly, showing off her thin waist and long legs. She looked more uncomfortable around Daniel than most, perhaps because she wasn't all that much older than he was, and he often found her staring nervously in his direction while twiddling her long brown hair and chewing her lip nervously, as though not sure whether to say something or not. She hadn't yet though, instead hovering around Alice and tending to the girl's tantrums and mishaps with elegance and patience. Miss Greaves, or Peggy to her friends, was indeed confused and bemused in equal measure by Daniel. She had a younger brother of about his age, and she couldn't for one second believe he'd let himself be subjecting to sitting in a girl's nursery and having dollies put in front of him, even if Daniel didn't play with them. Not that her big, lumbering brother was anything like Daniel of course, in fact he could probably have picked Daniel up with one arm and swung around the room. Why Daniel just didn't run away was beyond her - surely he'd be able to find money from somewhere to live somewhere else? Hell, he could move into one of the shelters if need be, which must have been preferable for a 16 year old boy than living in an infant's room. "He's scared," Mary had told her. Mary was a laundry maid at Hadbury House, and the two of them around the same age and with the same taste in boys, with Lenny, the young muscled-bound garden boy, a firm favourite, "God, wouldn't you be? He's tiny, and Lady Anna is friggin' scary. Does he actually play with the girly toys?" "No, but he does have his shorts pulled down in front of everyone." It was Mary who shared the rumour about Josephine, about how she'd spent time in prison, "you know Ethel in the kitchens? Well her brother works at the big women's prison up on Tuttler's Hill, and apparently that Josephine was in there for three years." "That's just a rumour," Peggy had laughed, "Ethel's a terrible liar. She told me she was related to Charlie Chaplin, for God's sake. And think about it. How did that conversation with her brother go? Oh, we've had this woman arrive at the house called Josephine. She's really tall and has red hair, oh, and her brother says, "oh, I know her." What rubbish." "You're just cranky because Lenny snogged Lydia." "Well I am cranky about that, yes. But I'm still right." And yet Peggy could feel there was something wrong about Josephine, in the way that she moved and in the way she looked around, almost like a cat burglar casing a museum. And she was rude too, calling Peggy "you there" and clicking her fingers at the maids and servants. All in all, Hadbury House was just plain strange, and if it weren't for the fact it paid better than any other job a girl could get in the town, she'd have left some time ago. "Alice, don't break that, there's a good girl," Peggy said, taking the already half broken toy fork out of Alice's small hands and putting it in the pocket of her dress. "We're going to have to do something about this soon," Mrs Potts said, ambling over and then nodding her head in Daniel's direction. As always, he was sitting in the corner of the room with his arms folded, staring straight ahead. "What do you mean?" Peggy whispered. "It's not what Lady Anna wants. She'll fire us both, mark my words. Especially with that Josephine in her ear." "But that's not fair! My job is to look after Alice, and I do that. She can't fire me because Daniel won't bloody play with a doll!" "Life's not fair my girl. I've been thinking about asking if I can just go back to being a maid. The pay's less, but I don't this sodding hassle at my time of life. It's giving me a headache." "Well...." Peggy started, "we could make him play." "He seems pretty against it." "We'll have to go the last resort then. Bribery. When I was looking after my little brothers, I always used to bribe them with clementines or say I'd knit them a new soldier if they did what I asked. Doesn't Daniel want anything?" "His chess board," Mrs Potts replied, "oh, and those planes he builds. And probably his books. I don't think we could get any of them though, Lady Anna is quite...." "It doesn't have to be that chess board, does it?" Peggy said, "for crying out loud, you can pick up an old chess set for a few pennies in a second-hand shop. And we can get some books for him from the library." "But if Lady Anna finds out, we'll definitely be sacked." "And if we don't try it, we'll probably be sacked anyway. You said so yourself." As the days continued to pass, the children ever close to going back to boarding school and Daniel becoming more and more obsessed with finding an opportunity to see whether Josephine had taken his Father's bedroom, Peggy became more and more convinced that striking a deal with Daniel was best for all concerned, and continued to tell Mrs Potts so. "I found a very cheap chess board," Peggy told the older woman as she dressed Alice for bed, the little girl looking adorable in a short pink nightie with a large bow on the back. "I think we should talk to him tonight. Where is he now, actually?" "In bed," Mrs Potts replied, "Lady Anna made me put him to bed at 6.30 for being naughty. It was still light outside. Don't worry, the door of the nursery gets locked, he can't get out." "Then maybe we should talk to him in the morning," Peggy said, "early, before anyone else is about." The women found a dishevelled and slightly confused Daniel sitting up in his bed very early the next day, the calls of the birds outside the only thing punctuating the pre-dawn air. "I've slept for 9 hours and it's still 4am," he croaked, his blond hair falling messily around his face and the collar of his pyjamas half up and down. "What's she doing here?" he asked, looking at Peggy. "We've come to talk to you," Mrs Potts said, "but let us talk before you say anything." It was Mrs Potts who pitched the idea, and Daniel did say silent as she spoke, only rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and yawning. "No way," he said eventually, "I'm not going to play like some little girl. Did you silly women really think the promise of a chess board would make me?" "Well," Mrs Potts stammered, "we thought..." "Then you're both more stupid than you look. Please, don't worry your silly little heads in future. I know what I'm doing and...." "Oh yes, you really know what you're doing," Peggy said, her interruption startling both Mrs Potts and Daniel. "You listen to me now, Daniel. We're not going to lose our jobs over some spoilt brat like you." "Spoilt brat?" Daniel said. "Yes, spoilt brat. We've tried being nice and we've tried making a deal, but nothing works. So we'll go to plan C." "What's that?" Daniel asked. "Yes, what's that?" Mrs Potts asked. Peggy looked at them both and then shrugged her shoulders. "We'll make you do it. And with this plan, I'm going to make sure Alice plays all of her most girly, frilly little games with you. There's going to be tea-parties and pushing your prams around the garden where all the boys can see you, and you're going to colour in so many fairy pictures it's going to make your head spin." "You can't make me do anything." "I can." "And how do you think...." "Because if you don't do exactly what I ask, I'll tell Lady Anna and Josephine that you'll be more likely to play with Alice if you were a little nursery GIRL rather than a nursery boy, and that maybe if we put you in some pretty little frocks and make your hair all nice you won't be so embarrassed about playing with dollies." Daniel stared at the young Nanny for quite a few seconds, his face reddening at the mere thought of what had just been suggested. "You wouldn't dare do such a thing." "Why not? If you don't care what happens to us, why should we care what happens to you?" Looking at the small boy staring out at them, his blue eyes trying to convey confidence but showing the tell-tale signs of worry, Peggy considered how much the world was a matter of pot luck. Daniel could have been born with the body of Lenny, the gardener boy, and then it was likely none of this would have been happening, at least because he'd never have allowed himself to be taken over the knee by a bunch of women. Like everyone she knew, she prayed to God. But it seemed that God did have an awfully strange sense of humour. "OK, we can make a deal," Daniel said, his voice sounding smaller now, and dripping with the uncertainty of a little boy, "but I want more than the chessboard. I want you to take me to the grand corridor so I can see if Josephine has taken my Father's room." Peggy already knew this to be true, but didn't let on. "We can do that. But we'll want something extra from you. You have to call your Stepmother Mummy like you've been told to do, and Josephine 'Aunt Josie,' like Alice does." "But Anna didn't even ask for that!" "Who's Anna? Try it again Daniel. You need the practice," Peggy said, sitting herself down next to Daniel on the bed. She was feeling more confident now. Daniel felt stupidly aroused as the young Nanny sat herself close enough that he could smell her faint perfume. He could see through a gap in the buttons of her dress too, all the way into a flash of lace on her white bra. "Fine. 'Mummy' didn't ask me to call Josephine that, so why should I?" "Because we'll get extra credit," Peggy replied. "Do we have a deal?" Daniel gave himself a moment to think once more. Father had taught him to do that. It was a pity, he thought, that Father didn't teach him how to deal with these demented women. Eventually, it was thinking about his two saving graces, that he'd be 18 soon enough and the children were about to bugger off to school, that made his mind up. "But when do you take me to Josephine's...." "Ah ah," Peggy said. Daniel shook his head. "Yes, yes. When do you take me to Aunt Josie's room?" "When you've made us happy enough," Peggy replied, not disliking her new found feeling of power and wondering, as Daniel pulled his sad little body out of bed, if this was how it felt to be the Lady of the house. The move from Harry's room to the nursery had been via Edward's bedroom, and had been quick. Of all the children, Edward had always been Daniel's favourite, and when they were alone together, free of Anna's poison, they got on quite well together, with the two of them often joining forces to glue together one of Daniel's new model planes. Edward wasn't a big or imposing as Harry had been at 10 or 11, but he was still a few inches taller than Daniel already, meaning Daniel looked like the younger brother as they sat together, with Daniel using his smaller hands to glue together the fiddly bits while Edward talked about his new favourite toys, or the goal he had scored at school. Never one to miss an opportunity, Daniel had awoken one morning to find a pair of Edward's belted shorts and check shirts sitting at the bottom of his bed to wear. Thinking it a mistake, he had taken them to the grand hall, where he'd found Anna having her hair brushed by Josephine, the women talking quickly amongst themselves. "I've been given the wrong clothes by the maids," Daniel said. He'd pulled a dressing gown over his white silk pyjamas before heading across the hall, but he still felt underdressed as he stood in front of the women. "No, it's not a mistake little Daniel," Anna laughed. "Josie and I thought it'd be cute if you boys were dressed alike. You've been playing together, after all." Josephine leant down and whispered something into Anna's ear. "Oh yes, we're going to be going to the beach after church today, so wear your swim shorts under your trousers and we'll get changed there." Daniel hated the beach even more than he hated going to church. "You don't normally want me to come to the beach. You say I just mope around." "Yes, well. I'm going to making some changes around here. You've been getting too much special treatment." Daniel did indeed mope for the rest of the morning, sitting through church with his feet pressed against the pew in front and stewing over being dressed much the same as Edward, a fact not unnoticed by the other children, especially Harry, who started to call them "my little brothers." Even little Alice, dressed in her white church frock with a pink fold down collar and white tights, asked why Daniel and Edward were dressed the same. "Because those clothes fit Daniel better," Anna whispered to a fidgety Alice. "Now stop fussing!" But what really annoyed Daniel happened after the service, when Harry proudly announced that he was driving home with Frank, as he was "too old for the beach now." Daniel was momentarily speechless, which turned to anger when he looked over at Anna and Josephine smirking under their large hats, clearly both pleased with themselves. The car they'd take to the beach would be driven by Junior, who guided Olivia into the back seat by taking hold of one the girl's white glove covered hands as she made the steep step up. Edward clambered in next, needing less help than his little sister, followed by Miss Greaves, who was carrying Alice. Daniel knew he had little choice but to climb into the car too, but shot an angry glance at Anna as he walked over to it, hoping to convey that he wouldn't forget such an embarrassment. Olivia giggled as Daniel struggled with the step up, eventually having Junior push him up by the backside before falling onto the backseat next to the still giggling Olivia, the layered skirt of her lilac frock draping over his linen trousers. His embarrassments continued throughout the day. While Olivia and Alice headed into the girl's beach-hut with Miss Greaves, the two of them emerging in knee length one piece swim suits, Olivia's pink with light frills on the arms and Alice's yellow but with a frilled cover up around the waist that made the one-piece look like a little dress, Daniel found himself shunted into the boy's beach-hut with Edward, where he looked on nervously as Edward stripped down to just his grey knee length swim shorts. "Hurry up Daniel," Edward said. "we could go swimming." What Edward didn't know, and what Daniel wasn't about to tell him, was that Daniel couldn't swim. Worse than that, he was scared of water full stop, a fact he was sure Anna knew. And while he had good reason to be as scared of the water as he was, he knew how shameful it would look. "I don't want to get changed," Daniel said. "I'll stay as I am. I'm not feeling too well, actually." He followed Edward out of the beach hut but it was only a few steps before his little brother ran off toward the browny-gold beach, which was full and bustling on the warm summer's afternoon. "Why haven't you changed?" Anna asked, as Daniel reached the area of the beach where the women had set up a wind breaker and their loungers, two glasses of gin nestled on the beach table beside them and Alice sitting at the end of Anna's lounger with a full dressed Miss Greaves, building a sand-castle. Like Edward, Olivia had headed straight for the sea. "I don't want to," Daniel said, sitting down on the rope mat to the right of Josephine's chair. "I didn't even want to come here! And why did I have to, when Harry got to go home!" "You don't know how to swim, do you?" Josephine said suddenly, not lifting her head as she sunned herself, large sunglasses hiding her dark eyes. "Of course I do!" "Josie here could teach you," Anna said. "She was the girls under 16 Norfolk champion at breaststroke, you know." "I know how to swim!" "Nonsense," Anna said, "if you knew how to swim you'd have run in to the sea with all the other children. Why don't you go and play football with those boys over there instead?" She pointed at the gathering of noisy little boys a few hundred feet away, who had organised a disorganised game of football. "No thanks." "Well I don't know Daniel. You don't want to go for a swim and you don't want to play football." She sat up and reached into her bag, producing a thin, bright book. "Here, you can read this then. Olivia bought it to read in-case she got bored." "This is a girl's book!" he said, looking at the picture of the young blonde girl on the front in a pair of blue dungarees. "Of course it's a girl's book silly. It's Olivia's book, and she's a girl." Still stewing, but with little else to do, Daniel began to read under duress. The book was called Thimble Summer, and was the story of a nine year old girl called Garnet, who lived on a farm in the USA, and who finds a thimble on a riverbed that she thinks turns the families bad fortune around. Soon he'd read a good chunk of the book, losing himself in the world of words as he found he always could, as he lay on his front, knees digging into the sand. He was at the point where Garnet got stuck in a Ferris Wheel, something which seemed quite terrifying to Daniel himself with his dislike for high places, when Anna decreed it was time to go. "Hey, who said you could read my book?" Olivia said, looming large over him very suddenly with water dripping down onto his shirt from her long hair. "That's mine. Give it back." "But I've nearly finished it!" Daniel moaned, as Olivia grabbed the book clean from his hands. "Tough, it's mine," Olivia said. "That's so ridiculous, just give...." "I thought it was a girl's book?" Anna said. "Well, it is, but...." "Ha ha, Daniel's likes girl's books!" Olivia said, repeating it two or three times before Anna told her to hush. Daniel didn't push the request any harder, as keen as he was to find out the book's ending. He did however notice the embarrassed look in Edward's eyes, after the boy had caught Olivia's taunting. Edward would never have been caught dead reading a "girls" book, that was for sure. This seemed to manifest itself the following day when Daniel said hello, to which they boy ignored him completely, as he headed out to play football with Harry. It really came to a head a few days later though. Daniel had asked Edward if he wanted to build some planes together, at which point the younger boy had launched into a tirade the like of which Daniel had never seen from the normally placed Edward. "Building planes is for little children," he shouted. "And I don't want to play with you anyway. You're a little baby, and you read girl's books." For some reason, perhaps because it was delivered in Edward's otherwise placid voice, Daniel found himself more annoyed than ever. "Stop being stupid," he stormed. "It was just there to read. You're the one being a baby, not me." "I'm not a baby! I'm taller and more grown up than you, even Harry says so. And he says I should have the bigger bedroom, and you should have my room because you're the little boy of the family, not me." "I'm 16 and you're 10!" Daniel said. "You should remember that! You're still the littlest boy of the family." "No, you're the little boy!" Then Edward did something quite shocking. With his normally docile eyes now a pit of anger, he flew across the room and hauled Daniel out of the chair, using all his strength to pin a shellshocked Daniel to the ground. "Admit it," he said, pulling Daniel's arm behind his back. "Admit that you're the little baby boy of the family." "I won't!" Daniel shouted, as he desperately tried to free himself from Edward's grasp, kicking and thrashing as wildly as he could. Edward pulled Daniel's arm more tightly. "Say it!" He was out of breath himself, and clearly struggling to contain his older brother. Daniel, summoning very ounce of strength in his little body, kicked out heavily against Edward's shins, causing him to flail backwards in pain, before Daniel landed a punch squarely in Edward's midriff. This winded the boy for a brief second, before he came back again with a punch and a kick of his own, until the two of them were rolling around the floor, sending furniture scattering as they went. The noise brought Harry into the room, just as Daniel landed a perfectly time kick on Edward's shins, sending the boy falling to the ground in tears. With a speed and strength that eluded either of them, he pulled Daniel away from the crying Edward and then pinned Daniel the ground himself, so that his large frame was looming over him. "What the hell were you doing?" "He was teasing me," Edward sobbed. "He was calling me a little boy, and he kicked me!" "He started it," Daniel yelled, squirming under Harry's grasp. "You took a cheap shot," Harry said. "I saw it myself, kicking Eddie like that. You need to learn a lesson. Eddie, give him a shot in the ribs." "No!" Daniel shouted, before crying out as Eddie landed a firm punch right into his side, leaving him in tears. "Say you're the little boy," Edward shouted. "You better Daniel, or I'll let him punch you again." "Fine, fine," Daniel shouted. "I'm the little boy, OK?" "And Edward is your big brother, right?" "Yes," Daniel said, angrily and still in tears. "And you like reading girl's books don't you?" Edward said, more bullish now. "The same stupid girly books Olivia reads." "Yes, fine," Daniel said. He'd come to learn to recognise when he was beaten. "I like reading girl's books. Just get off me." Naturally, Anna heard about the fight in no time at all, and even more unsurprisingly drew all the wrong conclusions from it, shouting at Daniel for picking on Edward and saying how shameful it was that he'd bully such a sweet and caring 10 year old boy, and that it showed just how immature he really was. She made him stand with her, holding his hand, as Junior and Frank started the process of moving Daniel into Edward's small bedroom, and vice-versa. "Leave the planes in there for Edward to play with," Anna told Junior. "Daniel will have to make do with Edward's old toys." She kneeled down to Daniel's eye level as she prepared to leave him in his new bedroom, which was half the size of his old room at best. "Make no mistake Daniel, Harry was right. In my eyes now, you are the little boy of the family. You've been acting like it for months, so it's really much farer this way. And if Edward's older than you now and he's 10, that must be you're 9, like Olivia in fact. Actually no, Olivia is far more mature than you as well. Let's say you're 8." "8?" Daniel whimpered. "Yes. From now, you can expect to be treated like any normal 8 year old boy. You'll go to bed at the same time as Olivia and you'll wear Edward's old clothes. Olivia and Edward will be pleased when I tell them they have a new little brother." "I don't know what I ever did to you to deserve this," Daniel said, as he looked around his new room, a room clearly decorated for a pre- teenage boy. Olivia's teasing upon finding out the news was b, but was bad enough, but worse still was how she started to act as though she really was Daniel's big sister, grabbing him by the hand as they crossed the road towards church and telling him off when she thought he was being naughty. This was the same Olivia that Daniel remembered being brought home in Anna's arms and wrapped in a tiny pink knitted shawl, the same Olivia who used to run around the corridors in her fairy costumes waving her sparkly wand, the same Olivia who'd still been in the nursery when Daniel started upper school. But now, somehow, that little girl was now his "older" sibling, and she revelled in it. Daniel fought back in the only way he could - to remind Olivia that she was only a girl, and that despite his own regressions and embarrassments he was still a boy, and that it made him more important than her. "Yes, but I'm the heir of the estate," he told her one afternoon, as Olivia chirped on for the hundredth time about how she was now "older" than Daniel. "And when I become Lord in two years, you'll still just be a silly, stupid insignificant little girl who no- one cares about. And then you'll become a silly, stupid insignificant wife who no-one cares about." "No," Olivia said. "I'm going to be a vet. And my house is going to have the biggest stables around, and we'll have winning racehorses." "Yes, of course," Daniel laughed. "As if a girl could be a good vet. And you better marry someone rich if you want those big stables, because once I turn 18 you're all out of here and I won't be paying a penny to help any of you." The final west corridor descent was a prosaic one, taking place without any significant misbehaviour from Daniel or run-in with any of the other children. What did happen on the day of the move is that Daniel woke to find Josephine standing at the end the bed in the half light of the morning, with her arms behind her back and an indecipherable look upon her face. Josephine was unlike any woman Daniel had met before, both in her mannerisms and appearance. At the breakfast table she took a copy of the Times and read it while drinking a black coffee, and dinner was accompanied by a small glass of ale rather than the sparkling wines Anna drank. Rather than dresses she wore dark polyester trousers and plain blouses, even to church when all women wore frocks, and her black hair was cut short and unfussily, and she rarely wore any jewellery. And while Daniel couldn't be sure how tall she was, he guessed her to be at least six foot, if only because when she stood next to the fireplace in the main hall the top of her head just about reached the bottom of the family portrait hanging above the fire, just like Father's head had always done. Yet despite these masculine traits, and her despite her economy of words and sharp, pointed nose and uncoloured nails, she was still quite obviously a woman, and didn't seem to hide the fact. Her bosom was more than apparent under her blouses, and she did things a man would never do, like buy Olivia a set of sparkly necklaces and bracelets for her birthday, or go dress shopping with Anna, or read the low-brow romance novels that women went mad for, the type with a muscle-bound soldier or farm-boy on the front, with his arm around a sultry, fluttering damsel. Not that Daniel was thinking about any of this as he woke to find her staring at him. "Josephine?" he croaked, his blood running cold. A crooked half-smile appeared at the corner of her small, round mouth. "You're just as cute as a little button," she said, her voice low and cool. "God really got it wrong with you, didn't he?" "What are doing in here?" "You remind me quite a lot of my little brother," she continued, arms still behind her back. "He was a wimp like you. Not as incredibly short or childish though, but just as soft and scared. I used to challenge him to wrestling matches when we were younger, before I was banned from doing it, and I would always win. He'd cry and moan like a little infant as I sat on top of him. He used to tease me for being a girl, just like you teased Olivia the other day." "How do you know about that?" Daniel said, desperately trying to wake himself up more fully. "I'd reply by calling him 'Little William.' God, he hated that. Sometimes 'Little Willie' too, which he hated even more. His face used to go all red and blotchy, just like yours does." "You shouldn't be in here. I don't like it." "We're going to talk more 'Little Daniel.' I'll be back to see you again." That afternoon Anna appeared in the doorway, with Olivia, in her blue denim dungarees, on one side, and a Nanny Daniel recognised on the other. To escape his boredom, Daniel had taken to reading one of Edward's books, a terribly childish story about a young boy who becomes the village spy to solve a load of silly mysteries, and he barely noticed their appearance at first, until Anna coughed. "You're to move in to the nursery," Anna said, with a chilling matter of fact-ness. "Wait, what?" "We're not going to discuss it, save to say that your behaviour has not been of the standard I'd expect from an 8 year old boy, and that I don't trust you to be alone in the house anymore. From now on, Mrs Potts here will be your Nanny." "This is ridiculous! I absolutely won't go to the nursery! Only infants sleep in the nursery! Alice sleeps in the nursery, for crying out loud." "Yes, and Olivia quite maturely pointed out to me yesterday, you're far close to Alice's level of maturity than you are to hers. I mean, look at how you spilt that drink everywhere at breakfast yesterday." "That wasn't my fault! Edward kept nudging me as I tried to drink!" Daniel shouted. "This isn't fair. I'm 16 years old!" "And what about last Sunday when you tried to go to church with your hair in a state, and I had to brush it for you?" "Well maybe if you let me get it cut," Daniel spat. "Or when you fell over in the garden and cut your knee?" "I was running away from Harry, he was...." "No, no, this is much better. Mrs Potts will look after you. She'll make sure your hair is always washed and brushed, and that you don't get yourself in trouble." Daniel found himself crying as he was led to the end room of the hallway, with Anna holding one hand and a beaming Olivia holding the other. He'd slept in the nursery room before of course, but that had been over 10 years ago, back when everyone had assumed his shortness was a phase, and that he'd grow to be as tall as his Father. Back when the smell of his Mother, his real Mother, could still be detected in the hallways and bedrooms. Before Edward, Olivia and Alice were even thought of, never mind born. The room was soft and still as they entered, with the faintness whiff of bleach wafting through from the adjoining bathroom. "He's even crying like Alice does," Olivia said. "You're such a baby, Daniel." Peggy's room was in the downstairs hallway of the house, reached via a door at the back of the kitchens, and far from the sight of the sensitive eyes of her social betters above. It was a room she shared with Mary, their beds on either side of the small, boxy space, only a few personal effects brightening the dank walls that had once been white but which now looked a tired shade of yellow. A remnant of previous occupants who had smoked, along with the small burns in the carpets. "You have to tell me more about it," Mary said. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, rifling through her make-up bag. "I can't believe you didn't say anything yesterday." "I fell asleep before you got back," Peggy replied. "Anyway, that's not a whole lot to tell. Josephine appeared in the morning..." "Oh, she's been really creepy recently." "...yeah, well she appeared at about 9ish just as we were about to take Alice and Daniel out to the gardens, and says that there's been a change of plans. She says that we're going to in to Oakley, and to that sports centre, you know the one by the roundabout?" "Yeah, I know it. My Father used to drink in the pub next door." "She says that she's taking the children for a swimming lesson there." "Children? Including Daniel?" "Yes." "Daniel can't swim already?" "Apparently not." "Jesus, what's wrong with that boy?" "You haven't heard the half of it Mary." The house had been a hive of activity over the last few days, with final preparations being made for the children to go back to school. For the first time this had meant work for Peggy too, giving that Alice was starting her first year. This meant fitting her for her uniform, an impossibly small little red pinafore dress, the same as Olivia wore to school, as well as preparing all the sundries that came with sending a child off to school - making sure she had the right books in the right bags, and that her personal clothes and belongings were packed. Sending a little girl off to boarding school a few weeks before her 5th birthday seemed terribly cruel to Peggy, and she really didn't think Alice was ready, but she kept her mouth shut, knowing her place. Amongst all this she now had Daniel to worry about. Incredibly he had kept his end of the deal and really had started to play with Alice, a sight that never failed to amuse and confuse Peggy in equal measure. He'd walk around the large dollhouse with her, him in his little brightly coloured shorts and her in her day dress, playing out a game with Alice's endless dolls. Daniel would normally play the part of the "boy" dolls, the Dad, the Brother, the Boyfriend, something he did quite sweetly, only occasionally drawing Alice's ire for not playing properly. And it didn't stop there. He took control of two of the stuffed toys when Alice wanted to arrange a tea party, and sat quietly next to the little girl while Alice read them a fairy tale. Often Daniel would try to steer the games to something less mortifying, like hide and seek or snap. Sometimes this worked, not that it made Daniel looked any more grown up to be playing "you're it" while running around the nursery, dodging the rocking horse, and sometimes Alice would screw her tiny nose up. "Those are BOY'S games. I want to play girl's games." The others teased Daniel something terribly of course, especially Harry and Edward, while Olivia often joined in the "girl" games and then made sure Daniel had the most girly role, like pretending to be the princess in their little role-plays or the little girl doll at the tea party. Most of the time she chastised Daniel for doing something wrong by calling him a "silly boy," but sometimes, in the midst of a game when Daniel was playing the role of a female character, she'd call him a "silly girl," just like she did Alice. It hadn't been easy to get Daniel playing, even after the deal had been made. For the first couple of mornings he joined in with Alice but in a half-hearted way, sighing often and making Alice cry by pretending a doll or stuffed toy had died in a terrible accident. She'd remedied this by reminding Daniel that the deal was a luxury as far as she was concerned, and that she was quite happy to suggest to Anna that he'd play much better in a pretty little frock, like the ones Alice wore. This threat was backed by tutorials for Daniel before bed on how to play "properly," when Mrs Potts and her would make him host his very own tea party with stuffed animals smuggled over from the girl's nursery, correcting him every time he didn't play like Alice might have done. Anna and Josephine were delighted with these developments, as they were with Daniel calling them "Mummy" and "Aunt Josie" respectively, which always brought giggles from the other children. Even Peggy thought he sounded so terribly sweet and cute when he did so, certainly more cute and sweet than Peggy remembered any of her younger brother's being. "So what happened next?" Mary asked, becoming impatient. "Well Daniel didn't want to go, naturally. He stomped around and shouted about it not being fair for about ten minutes while I changed Alice in to her swimsuit, he really does pout like a little boy sometimes." "Incredible," Mary said, looking in the vanity mirror as she applied her lipstick. "Yes, well listen to this then. Josephine has been standing very still the whole time, but suddenly she turns and leaves. Well Agnes and me don't know what's happening. We've got Alice running around excitedly, wanting to go swimming, and Daniel shouting bloody murder about how he won't go. Then Josephine comes back, and not saying a word, just picks Daniel up and starts to undress him. All the way. And then, she starts rolling something up his legs. Daniel's screaming and shouting, but she doesn't care. It's only when she lifts him upright that all of us can see why he's so upset. He's wearing a girl's swimsuit..." "Wait, what?" "Probably one of Olivia's. I think I've seen her in it. It's pink, with all these pretty little frills on the arms and bows on the legs." "Wow. I bet he was having a fit!" "Of course. But the funny thing was, it suited and fitted him so perfectly. You couldn't even see his little thing, because the suit is padded there I suppose, and his hair is so long now that he just looked like a little girl with curly blonde hair in a pink swimsuit." "You went with them? To the pool?" "I did. Junior drove, and Josephine kept Daniel on her lap the whole way, wrapped in a towel. He was kicking and yelling at her, but he just looked like a small child arguing with his Mother. So anyway, we didn't realise that Josephine had rented the pool out, so there was no one else around which must have Daniel a bit happier, although he probably wasn't too happy about being brought into the women's changing rooms with us. I tell you Mary, when she put those pink armbands on him, just like the ones Alice was wearing, I could have died." "What did Alice think about all this? About Daniel wearing Olivia's swimsuit?" "Oh, I'd nearly forgotten about that. Yes, she kept asking why Daniel was dressed like a girl until Josephine told her that this swimming pool was for women and girls only, so Daniel was going to have to pretend to be a girl for the day. She made Alice promise not to tell anyone he was a boy. She even gave him a name." "No!" "Yes. Dani. She called him it from the moment we stepped out of the changing rooms. Dani and Alice, can you believe it? But "Dani" wouldn't get in the water no matter what. I felt a bit sorry for him actually, especially when Josephine just lifted him in and then held him by the waist in the water. He cried non-stop the whole time. She managed to get Alice to lay flat in the water and kick her legs out, but Daniel just wouldn't. She gave up in the end, said we've have to try again. He only stopped crying once Josephine finally let him out of the water." "I feel sorry for the poor thing," Mary said. "I don't understand why Anna needs to be so cruel to him. OK, I know he's not her child, but I don't think that's a good enough reason. She could just ignore him. She doesn't have to humiliate him." "I don't know either," Peggy replied. "That did seem particularly nasty yesterday, especially making him wear that little girl swimsuit. I mean, he's almost a grown man. And he really did look terrified of the water, the poor thing." "What happened when you got back?" "He was just very quiet. The other children found out about it of course, so they gave him a hard time. They're all calling him Dani now and calling him a baby for being frightened of water. I'm glad for his sake that they're all going back to school tomorrow." "I'm not looking forward to today though," Mary said," there's going to be so much laundry to deal with and..." They were interrupted by a very red faced and worried looking Mrs Potts, who burst into the room without knocking. "you have to come," she panted. "Quickly. It's Daniel. He's gone!" Peggy and Mary exchanged a quick glance before both springing to their feet. "What do you mean? Gone?" Peggy said. "I went to get him up and the bed was empty," she cried. "I've been looking all over. The east corridor, the west corridor, the gardens, even the stables...." "Alright calm down," Peggy said, worried the old woman might bring on a heart attack. "He can't have gone far." Mrs Potts put a hand over her eyes. "I knew they pushed him too far yesterday. That wasn't right! Oh God Peggy, I'm going to be in so much trouble." "Where could he have gone? He can't have left the grounds, the gatekeepers would never have let him. He could have gone over the back fence I suppose..." "Oh no!" Mrs Potts wailed. "He's not tall enough," Mary said. "He might just be hiding in one of the rooms." "You looked in around Josephine's room, didn't you?" Peggy asked. "He has been talking more and more about that." "I got as close as I could, but what excuse would I have had if anyone had seen me?" "Alright, alright. He's got to be here somewhere. I'll search the east corridor again and you take the west," Peggy said. "I've only got half an hour before I have to get Alice up though." "Oh thank you," Mrs Potts said. "I'll search the gardens," Mary said. "I don't need to be in the laundry for a while yet." The women searched frantically for the next half an hour, Peggy going in to every room she could while trying to avoid Anna or any of Anna's maids, who would have surely asked what she was doing there. She couldn't shrug the nagging feeling that maybe Daniel really had run away, and found herself worrying for his wellbeing more than the security of Mrs Potts, or her own job. Eventually they all met again in the maid's quarters, all out of breath and all having drawn a blank. "There's not much else to do," Mrs Potts said. "I'm going to have to go to Anna's room and tell her the truth. She'll be able to get Junior and Frank to drive in to town, or some of the garden boys to search the grounds more thoroughly." "He hasn't left the grounds," Peggy opined once more. "He's in his pyjamas, and I don't think he's brave enough to go running around the village on his own. He's here somewhere." Peggy was right, Daniel was in the house. And there was a good reason why Mrs Potts knock on Anna's door a few moments later, the old woman as nervous and terrified as she'd ever been, went unanswered. It was because Anna wasn't in her room, and hadn't been for an hour. In fact, she was in Josephine's room. With Daniel. Daniel had been less surprised to wake up and find Josephine at the foot of his bed again, but he was surprised to find Anna with her, the two women standing perfectly still in the dark, their outlines only just visible and almost ghostlike. Both were already dressed, and they were whispering to each other. "What are you doing now?" Daniel said, sleepily. It felt like he'd only gone to sleep moments before - it had been hard to drift off after such an embarrassing day - and he still felt groggy as Josephine pulled back his bedsheet and pulled him clean into the air, cradling him in front of her body with one arm under his legs and one his chest. To muffle the yells they knew he'd make, Anna tied a piece of cloth around his mouth and tied it tightly around the back, in a way that was impossible for Daniel to reach. "Don't worry, you're not in trouble," Josephine said. "And I'm not going to hurt you." She carried him all the way to her room, or what had been Daniel's Father's room, and placed him on an old leather chair, tying his arms and legs to the chair legs with two lengths of rope. "What are you doing!" Daniel yelled, as Josephine removed the cloth from around his mouth. "Let me up this minute!" "Just be quiet, or I'll put the gag back in," Josephine said. "We want to talk to you, that's all. Well, give you a choice, actually." Pulling up a chair so that she was sitting directly in front of him, Anna, already dressed for the day in a green dress and with her hair in a high bun, began. "Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. I just don't know what to do with you. None of us do." "What do you mean?" he said. "What are you talking about?" She let out a dramatic sigh. "Josephine and I have been talking about it a lot over the last few weeks. What, with the children going back to school tomorrow it's just going to be the three of us here. And as much fun as I've had with you recently, it's clear there's no point keeping you in that nursery once the children have left. And like you say, you're 16 now, so you really aren't a child at all." "Yeah," Daniel said slowly, his mind whirring desperately as he tried to guess where the conversation was going. "So, both Josephine and I think the answer is quite obvious. You need a trade. Something to occupy your time and make you useful. Luckily for you, Josephine knows Mr. Abicare, an accountant in the village. He's agreed to take you on as an apprentice, starting tomorrow." "What's this really all about?" Daniel asked, still no surer about what was happening. "It's about exactly that. You're going to work with Mr. Abicare in his office. He's going to teach you to be an accountant. Then, when you're trained, you'll start your own business perhaps. Or maybe come back here and help with the estate's books." "No, I'm still confused. How can I become an apprentice? I'm going to take over the estate when I'm 18. And I don't want to be some dogsbody of an apprentice! I know Mr. Abicare's office in the village. It's tiny! And I've seen him around too - he looks like an old miser. No. That doesn't sound like a good idea at all." "You looked so cute in that swimsuit yesterday," Josephine said suddenly, from her position standing by the fireplace. "You really should have seen him Anna, floundering around in the water in his pink frilly swimming costume. He looked about as far from being the Lord of a house as anyone could ever be. Little Alice looked a more likely bet." "And who asked you?" Daniel spat. "What are you even doing here? Who are you? And what the hell are you doing in my Father's bedroom!" He could feel himself getting angrier. "You've got no right to be in here! I can see how you moved all his stuff around. You should move it back, right now." "Oh really?" Josephine smirked. "Yes really," Daniel replied. "And you can both hear this right now. You're not pushing me off to some miserable old accountant's office in the village." "Calm down," Anna said. "I hadn't even finished yet." She picked up a pile of papers from the table next to her. "Not only are you going to take that apprenticeship Daniel, you're also going to sign these. Mr Treyhorn Lineker has drawn them up. They're a statement of abdication, confirming that you wish to relinquish your right to take over Hadbury House on your 18th birthday." "You've gone mad," Daniel said, both angry and amused. "I would never sign that. Never in a million years! What made you even think I would!" Anna continued. "They pass the inheritance on to Harry. He'll take on the title of Lord on his 18th birthday, as well as control of the estate's finances." She shook her head. "You surely didn't think I was going to let you take control of this house, did you? I mean, quite aside from the fact that you're a selfish, rude little boy, a boy so unlikeable that even his own Father wasn't that fond of him, you must know that you're not capable of running an estate this large? I mean, how could someone of your limited intellectual and physical stature ever possible manage all that needs to be managed? It was difficult for your Father, and he was a brilliant man. Imagine how impossible it would be for a sickly little cry baby like you." "You don't even deserve to talk about Father," Daniel said, tearing up. "And he did like me. He loved me. He was never embarrassed by me. What did he, or I, ever do that made you hate us all so much?" "Oh boo hoo," she laughed. "Now, there's four copies to sign. One for my records, one for Mr Treyhorn Lineker, one for the estate records and one for the registry. Here's the thing we haven't said, sign them now and you don't have to go back to the nursery today. In fact, Frank will drive you to Mr. Abicare's office straight away, he has all of your belongings in the boot of the car, including your chess set and all your planes. You'll be staying in the flat above Mr. Abicare's office, which I'll be kind enough to rent for you until your apprenticeship is over." She leaned in close still. "Surely that's better than going back to play dollies with Alice and Olivia?" "I will never sign that," Daniel said. "And I really can't believe you thought I would. Is that what yesterday, at the swimming pool, was all about? Did you really think that humiliating me like that would be some kind of tipping point? You really don't know me too well at all. I've been humiliated and made fun of all my life. You can both go to hell." Anna turned to look at Josephine and they both smiled. "Very well," Anna said. "So let's talk about the alternative. If you won't sign it, that means you'll be staying here with Josephine and I. In that case, things are going to be very different. And if you think you're going to get to go back to your nice big room and your chess set and your planes and books, you're sadly mistaken. Josephine has come up with something far better." "So you're going to keep me in the bloody nursery?" Daniel said. "What a surprise. I knew you'd probab....'" "In the nursery yes," Anna said. "We both think that refusing the apprenticeship merely confirms what we've always suspected - that you're far better suited to being in the nursery than anywhere else. So if you haven't signed these papers by the time the children leave for school in oh," she looked at the grandfather clock on the wall, "four hours, then you're going to become our very cute and VERY obedient three year old, and we're going to treat you exactly like all the other children were treated when they were three. Oh, and I almost forgot. Seeing as you've failed so miserably at being a man, or even a boy, you're going to become our three year old GIRL." "What?" Daniel said, his head spinning. "That's right. Alice is off to school, so you'll take her place in the east nursery. Make no mistake about this Daniel, if you don't sign these papers you really are going to become the new little girl of Hadbury House. Josephine and I have every worked out. You're going to be Dani, my youngest daughter. You're going to wear pretty dresses and play with your dollies and everything else that comes with being an adorable little toddler girl, all while your big brothers and sisters are off at boarding school. And when you refuse, Josephine here will simply make you comply. No deals. No trades. What we want to happen will happen." "You can't...." Daniel murmured. "I mean, you wouldn't....." "I think he needs proof," Anna said, turning to Josephine. "Shall we try to persuade him?" "Gladly," Josephine replied. With a deft touch and overwhelming strength combined, she lifted Daniel out of the chair and onto the bed, where she pinned him down and began to take off his clothes again, just like she'd done the previous day. Then with Daniel's desperate struggling in vain, she took the pair of pink ruffled knickers from Anna and snapped them firmly in place around his middle, before taking a pair of white tights and sliding those into place too. "Enough proof yet?" Anna asked. "Please stop this," Daniel sobbed. "It's not fair!" "Look at you, already crying like the cute little toddler you are. Want to sign the papers yet?" "No, I'll never sign those," he shouted. "I'm quite pleased actually," Anna said, "because I'm dying to see how you'll look in this." She handed the dress to Josephine who slipped it over Daniel's head and then stood him down on the ground so that the women could pull it in to place. Anna was delighted with the result. The dress was pink tulle, with a floppy bow at the back and a bed of netting under the skirt that made it point outwards ever so adorably. It was just the right length too, barely long enough to hide the top of his tights and the frilled knickers below, just like the comfortable play dresses they put Alice in. She could barely believe how small his arms and legs looked, or how the dress made his childish face look even more infantile. "Look at you," Anna said, tying the bow at the back of the dress as Josephine buttoned up the back. "You look so very pretty. What a big girl you're getting to be Dani. Want to see?" Daniel tried not look in the mirror but in end found it impossible not to. The reflection, of a little blonde girl dressed in a pink frock, tears falling down her face so hard that the top of the dress was starting to dampen, made his stomach turn. Obviously he don't look three, more like an older girl dressed up to look like a younger girl, but he definitely didn't look like any kind of boy. At all. "Shall we give Dani her birthday present?" Josephine asked, as they twirled Daniel around. "Good idea!" She produced a small present from under the bed, wrapped in fairy print paper. "Here you Dani. It is your third birthday today, after all. Well, aren't you going to open it?" Daniel took the box from her and then threw it across the room, where it bounced against one of Father's portraits, one of him standing with Daniel beside him, with a deep thud. "Silly girl," Anna said. "You know something? I know I said there'd be no deals or threats, but maybe we should make one. You see Daniel, I have all of your Mother's jewellery in my room. Her lockets, her necklaces, her bracelets. I also have the letter she wrote to you. Did you even know that existed?" "What? No. Where is it?" Daniel felt his stomach twist violently. "You better give me it." "No no. It says you can't open it until you're 18. Your Father kept it hidden from you. Seems your Mother always had this sense that she wouldn't see you grow up, and so the letter was her way of talking to you on your 18th birthday." "You're lying! What a thing to lie about?" And yet somehow he knew she wasn't. From what he knew of his Mother it sounded like exactly the kind of thing she might do. She believed in fate and spirits and the after-life and all that nonsense, and he'd heard from some of the maids that she didn't believe she was going to live very long. "The letter's safe, don't worry. And if you sign the papers it's yours. You can open it today if you want. But if you don't the sign the papers before you're 18, and if you don't behave in a manner becoming of the three year old you're choosing to be instead, I will burn it. And not only will I burn it," she patted down the front of the dress, "I'll read it first and then I'll burn it. So, let's try it again," she said, as Josephine handed him the box. "Are you going to open your present Dani?" He simply didn't know how to react. If the letter was real, there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to read it. But he couldn't sign those papers, he just couldn't. To do so would make the letter completely worthless, because he couldn't face reading it being the boy who'd given away Hadbury House. The only solution he could come up with was one of time. One that let him consider another option - an option that would beat them all. "Good girl!" Anna said, as he began to unwrap the present. "See, it's your very own ragdoll, just like the one Alice owns. Now, you're to keep this with you at all times, understood? You're going to love it just like Alice loves hers, or Olivia loved hers. And I've already picked out a name for it. How does Florence sound?" "That's my Mother's name," Daniel hissed. "What a coincidence. Maybe it'll help you remember to keep it with you. Florence is a bit of a tricky name for a toddler to say though, so you can call it Flo. Now, one final time. Are you absolutely sure you won't sign these papers?" "Never," Daniel said, the ragdoll pressed against his chest. "Very well," Anna said. "The children will be gone soon, so we'll bring you down to the nursery. In the meantime, Josephine and I'll do some more work on you to make you look exactly like the toddler girl you really are."