It was a quiet morning until the call from Jason Bandswitch, the Manor was in uproar. Lady Charlotte had disappeared.

He was waiting outside for me as I made it to the end of the drive (newly gravelled thankfully, the rain’s been back in force, and the previous surface was a mud pit), his face creased with worry.

He started talking before I was even fully out of the car. “There’s a book, I think she’s in it, but I can’t find her, and I don’t even know if I’m right.”

It all came spilling out, a mysterious parcel, with no ‘from’ address, him opening it to find a delightfully illustrated book of fairy tales.

He twisted his hands into the hem of his jumper. “I stupidly left it open when I went to get a coffee, and I can’t help but feel she was pulled into it.”

He led me through the house as I asked. “Has she entered picture books before?”

“I don’t think I have any illustrated books, other than coding diagrams.” Jason looked even more distressed. “I usually read thrillers, and they’re not exactly stories you want to have pictures of.”

“What did Lady Charlotte think about your coding things?”

We reached the office, and he opened the door for me as he replied. “She said they weren’t pictures and that they looked like gibberish.”

Given Lady Charlotte was married (and therefore painted) in the late 1870s, I’m fairly sure computer science was never going to be her forte. Ada Lovelace had died a few years before her birth, and the Manor had been used as a hospital during the war, so she would have overlooked the activities of nurses, rather than code breakers.

“Can she move to pictures that aren’t visible?”

Jason stopped where he was, still in the doorway. “No. No, she can’t but they don’t have to be shown for long, if there’s a pull.”

Clearly they’d been experimenting. The last part of his sentence intrigued me. “What do you mean by ‘pull’?”

“Charlotte says some paintings are more welcoming than others. We’ve yet to work out a pattern for them, but apparently there are some that are so eager for her to join them, it feels like being pulled into a water current.”

That sounded like something which needed further investigation. A strong enough current can overpower even the best swimmer after a while.

He headed for the desk, where a large, brightly coloured book sat open, just in front of his neon-lit computer keyboard. How he could type on that thing I’ll never know.

He put a hand on the page, expression anguished. “When I came back with my coffee, I didn’t realise there might have been a problem. Charlotte normally likes to take a look at what the gardeners are up to mid-morning, so I assumed she’d moved to the Rossetti reproduction in the upstairs sitting room – it has the best view.”

“But now you think she might have been in the book?”

“Yes. And I was skimming through the pages, so she could be in any of the pictures, with no way of letting me know.”

I nodded, thinking. “Especially if this current you mentioned keeps pulling her from picture to picture, before she can call out.”

He was looking so guilty and woebegone, I had to pat his shoulder. “Don’t worry. Between us and her, we’ll get her back. There’s no way Lady Charlotte is going to allow herself to get lost in a book when she has the renovation of the Manor and its grounds to oversee.”

“But how?”

I picked up the book and held it open, with the pages facing down. I have to admit, I did force the covers up and back, fanning the paper out as much as I could, then called out. “Lady Charlotte! If you can hear me, please do your best to move to the picture of the…” I peered up at the pages and found a nice, two-page illustration, “castle gardens with the rose hedges.”

I then shook the book, so the pages ruffled and waved, every picture briefly seeing the light of day.

This could take a while, if she was a long way from the chosen picture, but, equally, if the pull was as strong as Jason thought, it might be hard for her to stay there.

I put the tips of my thumbs on each side of the image I was after and flipped the book, exposing just that picture. Nothing. Jason groaned.

“We’ll keep trying.”

I upended the book and shook it again, several times, then flipped it back. This time, there was a young woman in front of the hedges. I clamped down on either side of the book. Making sure none of the other pages saw light.

Lady Charlotte looked dishevelled and exhausted. “Thank goodness. It’s been simply awful. Please get me to one of my paintings.”

I held the book up to the Art Nouveau style watercolour in the middle of one wall of the office and a second later, Lady Charlotte appeared in it. I slammed the book shut.

Jason was beside me in an instant, hand resting on the painted hand before him. “What happened? It was all my fault. I’m so sorry.”

Lady Charlotte held enough of her spark to laugh. “We’ll make an Englishman of you yet, apologising for everything.” Her painted hand turned, so their palms met.

She looked at me. “Thank you, that was awful, I’ve never felt so seasick in my life.”

Jason glared at the book in my hands. “I’ll get rid of that thing immediately. No more picture books.”

I looked up at Lady Charlotte and said. “Maybe not books, unless they’re being very slowly and carefully read. But postcards might be fun.”

Lady Charlotte frowned. Normally she’d have picked up on the idea immediately. The whirlpool trip through the fairy stories had clearly left her in need of rest.

I prompted. “A single, small print, something portable.”

Charlotte gasped. “We could go out!”

Jason scowled. “Not until you’ve recovered. And we’re not going to bookshops or art galleries.”

I left them alternately fussing and planning. I really needed to find a way to get the poor girl out of paintings entirely, they made such a sweet couple.

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