Content Preview

              First published 2023 by Solaris  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,  Riverside House, Osney Mead,  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK  www.solarisbooks.com  ISBN: 978-1-78618-880-9  Copyright © 2023 Adrian Czajkowski  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.        eBook production by Oxford eBooks Ltd.www.oxford-ebooks.com It is said that, long ago, there were many ways into the land of Underhill, but one by one they fell away. Until, search as you would, you might never find your way from the comforting world we all know into that place of magic and adventure. But for James and Jemima, fleeing from the cruel Mr Ragstaff, the entrance was just a path into the woods they had never noticed before, twisting between the gnarled old trees…  The Road to Underhill (1947),  Mary Bodie, Golden Century Press            chapter one  Breaking into television was proving unexpectedly stressful for Harry. Which seemed particularly unfair given that he was on the cusp of forty and had been working in TV for two and a half decades. He’d assumed he’d be in his stride by now, but then he’d made the mistake of swerving out of his lane and suddenly it was this invisible maze of attitude and prejudices, all of which seemed to be personified in Margot Lorne, the semi-beloved presenter of How Even Me?  Margot Lorne was not even slightly beloved of, or by, Harry. Their few days of association had kindled an intense, unspoken dislike between the two of them. By mutual and instant agreement they expressed this by being over-jolly and backslappish, all not-quite-touching hugs and kissing the air past their cheeks, each ringing with distaste for their opposite number.  Margot Lorne had gone to a mid-ranking drama school and landed some roles in The Bill and Casualty. She’d now found her comfortable rut being the pleasant, chatty face of programmes where celebrities got to bare their hearts—usually when they had a book out or a new show on or some other reason to remind the general public of their existence.  Felix ‘Harry’ Bodie, on the other hand, had gone to a different mid-ranking drama school and scored a couple of roles on Eastenders and the early run of Doctors. He’d found his feet presenting children’s programming as one of the revolving cast of hosts on the CBeebies circuit, providing filler segments between the gaily-coloured puppets and cartoon characters.  They had never even met, before Harry’s stint on Margot’s program. Possibly the problem was that, right then, Harry had a huge chip on his shoulder about anyone whose broadcasting career didn’t involve having to work with bloody kids. He had already alienated a fair number of his regular co-hosts for exactly the same reason, because they all seemed to be able to caper and gurn and get through the interminable clapping songs without wanting to drop an F-bomb in front of half a million four-to-seven year olds. Not so he.  And there was the elephant in the room, of course. His other, ersatz claim to fame, that he simultaneously insisted wasn’t important while being secretly resentful that it hadn’t somehow propelled him magically to greater heights of success. The books. Bloody Underhill.  And so, because he was in the midst of one of his sporadic attempts to break into serious drama, he’d agreed to go on How Even Me? and expose his genealogy to the glaring public spotlight that was Margot Lorne’s warm smile and gentle Scots accent. His agent reckoned it would be good PR at just the time when Harry’s resumé turned up on people’s desks. And Margot’s production company had taken him on because his genealogy included one children’s author who was at least vaguely remembered seventy years after her works first came out.  From Margot’s perspective, they were doing Harry a solid. From Harry’s perspective he was slumming it for the sake of a future career where he didn’t have to gurn or caper even a little, save in service of the serious actor’s art. By halfway through the first day of filming, taking a chainsaw to the lesser branches of Harry’s family tree, they loathed each other with a polite and icy passion.  It turned out that Harry’s maternal great-grandfather—hitherto known to the family as a respected captain of industry and Conservative MP hopeful—had been neck-deep in a stock market scandal and had actually done time At Her Majesty’s Pleasure. This was unaccountably something that had never come up at the family dinner table, and Margot’s expression of woeful sympathy had glimmered with gloating triumph. Harry spent that evening on the phone to the production company, insisting that they cut or downplay it. Hide it amongst the… except they had turned up very little else of interest in that part of the family, so the whole white collar crime angle was looking mighty attractive as a crowd-pleaser.  “It’ll be fine,” he told a succession of executives, in tones between a grovel and a growl. “We’re doing the book stuff tomorrow. Magda—Mary—Bodie, my sainted gran. Bury it behind that. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll be better than you imagine. You just wait.”  Because Gran’d had a