The Queen and I Read Free

people will be their own figurehead, all fifty-seven million of them.”
    “Hard to photograph fifty-seven million people,” said the Queen. She opened and then snapped shut her handbag. Jack noticed that it was empty, apart from a white lace handkerchief.
    “Do I have your permission to leave?” she said.
    “Certainly,” said Jack, with a small incline of the head.
    The Queen left the room and walked along the corridors. As she did so, she read the list of things she could take with her and the specifications of her new home.

9 HELLEBORE CLOSE
FLOWERS ESTATE

GENERAL INFORMATION: This two-bedroomed, semi-detached, pre-war property situated in the area of the Flowers Estate, has been recently redecorated throughout and briefly comprises: Front Entrance, Entrance Hall, Lounge, Kitchen, Bathroom, Landing, Two Bedrooms, Boxroom and Separate W.C. To the outside, driveway and front and rear garden.

ACCOMMODATION:

Ground Floor

Front Entrance: with door to entrance hall:
Entrance Hall: with stairs to first floor, storage cupboard.
Lounge: 14' 10" x 12' 7" with gas fire point.
Kitchen: 9' 6" x 9' 9" requiring fitments but including sink, gas cooker point and door to rear.
Bathroom: with two-piece suite comprising: cast iron bath, wash hand basin, partly tiled walls, frosted window and boiler.

First Floor

Landing: with access to loft space.
Bedroom 1: 13' 1" x 10' 1"
Bedroom 2: 9' 5" x 9' 2"
Boxroom: 6' x 6'
Separate W.C.: with low level W.C. and frosted window.

OUTSIDE: The property is approached by pathway with garden and path to side entrance, together with garden to rear.

PLEASE NOTE: We can give no warranty as to whether or not any boiler or heating/water system to the property is operational.
    3 Never So Humble
    It was dusk when the furniture van drew up outside Number Nine Hellebore Close. The Queen looked stonily at her new home. The house looked grimly back through the gloom, as though it bore a grudge. Its windows were boarded. Somebody violent and strong had driven in six-inch nails and connected hardboard panels to the window frames. A small sycamore tree was growing from the upstairs guttering.
    The Queen adjusted her headscarf and straightened her back. She looked at the mean front door: our furniture will never fit through, she thought, and we will have to share a wall – what was the technical term? Something celebratory. A party wall, that was it! The door of Number Eleven opened and a man in a tee shirt and overalls came out and stood on his concrete step. A woman joined him, blonde and fleshy, wearing clothes a size too small and red fluffy mules. The fluff waved about in the evening breeze, looking like creatures on the sea bed searching for plankton.
    The man and the woman were husband and wife – Beverley and Tony Threadgold – the Queen’s new neighbours. They gawped at the removal van, not bothering to disguise their curiosity. The house next door to them had been empty for over a year so the Threadgolds had enjoyed the luxury of comparative privacy. They’d shouted, banged doors and made love without vocal restraint, and now it was over. It was a sad day for them. They hoped their new neighbours would be reasonably, but not too, respectable.
    The driver of the removal van went round and opened the door for the Queen. She climbed down, grateful for the volume of material in her tweed skirt.
    “Come on, Philip,” she encouraged, but Philip sat on, in the front of the van, clutching his briefcase to him, as though it were a hot water bottle and he were a hypothermia victim.
    “Philip, this gentleman has a family to go home to.”
    The driver was pleased to be called a gentleman by the Queen.
    “No ’urry,” he said, graciously.
    But in truth he couldn’t wait to get back to his own council house, to tell his wife about the journey up the M1. About how he and the Queen had talked of homeopathic medicine and dogs and the problems of adolescent children.
    “I’ll give you an ’and in with