Star Quality [antikvár]

LONDON MARCH 2002 The ancient woman held the heavy blue envelope, franked with the Royal "E II R" cipher, by the tips of her arthritic fingers. She studied it carefully for several minutes, then slit it open and removed the card with the Queen's coat of arms printed at the head. Her lips moving slowly, she read the message: I am pleased to know that you are celebrating your one-hundredth birthday. I send my congratulations and best wishes to you on such a special occasion. Visions of the past hundred years passed before her eyes, each image more tormenting than the last. Her grip tightened on the card before she tore it into pieces and, with all the force of her frail arm, threw them into the fire, watching as the flames consumed Her Majesty's words. She glanced around the kitchen, where she had spent the best part of the past eighty-five years. It was now a dank, cavernous place, which no longer echoed to the laughter and chatter of the housemaids, menservants, and butlers who had worked and lived in this Eaton Square mansion so long ago. Now she was the only one of them left, an old woman left to molder beside the fireplace, having relinquished the tending of the household to a young Asian couple who barely spoke English, let alone spoke to her. She sipped at her soothing glass of gin, then picked up the morning tabloid, for the hundredth time, to stare in