Drama and Danger The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries

As the carriage pulled up the hill towards Hampstead Heath, the clouds began to clear and a few rays of sun pushed their way through the gaps in the grey, shining in great straight beams that cast a pale yellow light on the house and the fields that stretched out green and wonderful around it. Here and there, people strolled arm in arm in twos and threes - not a care among them, it seemed. The trees shimmered, their shining wet leaves vibrant against the sky. The air smelled fresh and clean, hopeful with the gentle fragrance of summer grass. What was it about the Heath that momentarily pushed troubled thoughts aside and overwhelmed you instead with the undeniable beauty of its ancient trees, its wide hills, it’s emerald ponds, it’s waving grasses? As though, whatever was happening out there, on the streets of London, here, in this place, one could always find space, life, breath, peace.

Maybe it was the way the fog seemed to swim around us in the indigo darkness of the night. Or the way my dread pushed pushed down on me like a weight of water from above. But as we made our way back through the silent streets to the theatre, I felt as though I were sinking into a deep, dark ocean. I longed to kick up towards the surface for air, but with no light in sight, I had no idea which direction to turn.

Maybe the mark of true friendship was its ability to withstand the whole spectrum of feelings. Maybe it was not just how you behaved towards one another when you were feeling the sunrise colours that counted; when you were bathed in the rosy glow of early friendship but how you treated each other when sunshine yellow turned green, when green drifted in to blue, when blue sank into indigo, when indigo bled into a deep, painful violet.

My mother says that until the lions have their own storytellers, the story of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.