Free A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper

petroleum industry, which decreased the demand for whale products. 10
    3. Spending a lot of money on rifles, cannons, military uniforms, etc (The Great War, 1914–1918). 11 and most importantly,
    4. The Stock Market Crash, 1929. 12
    I don’t think I’ll do footnotes any more, it took me half an hour to look up those ones. Also, reading back over this, I realise I make it sound as though we are poor. Which of course we aren’t, not the way that orphans in Dickens are poor. Well, I suppose we are orphans (at least Toby, Henry and I are, and Veronica might as well be for all the use her parents are), but it’s not as though we’re starving, or wearing rags, or forced to pick-pocket or worse on the streets. Not that there are any streets in Montmaray. (As I wrote that last bit, Henry wandered through the kitchen wearing an ancient jersey of Toby’s that is more holes than wool, but that’s because she idolises Toby, not because she is a Dickensian beggar child.)
    Money, then – it would be nice to have more, so Veronica doesn’t have to worry about it all the time, but we have enough at the moment, as long as Aunt Charlotte keeps paying Toby’s school fees. Although I must say, I think it’s quite unfair the way interest works at the bank – that the more money one has, the more one earns. The bank ought to give more to people without much money in their savings accounts, they’d appreciate it far more than rich people. And I’ve just had another thought! I wonder if there’s anything valuable left in the Solar that Simon could sell? Just a moment...
    Well, no, as it turns out, unless one counts two very tarnished silver photograph frames, a broken music box and a moth-ravaged hat, all of which I found under the bed. I must say it’s rather creepy in here – not in a lovely, shivery way as it is inside the Blue Room when the ghost strokes her fingers down one’s neck and whistles in one’s ear, but in a sad, dusty and abandoned way. Still, at least it’s quieter than the gatehouse (Henry and Jimmy are having sword fights along the top of the curtain wall) and the edge of the bedframe is quite comfortable now that I’ve padded it with the folded-up dustsheet.
    I suppose I’d better describe where I am. If one were to climb the tower stairs from the kitchen and emerge at the top of the gallery, one would see ... actually, one wouldn’t see much of anything, because the walls and floor and ceiling are black granite, two feet thick at the narrowest bits, and there are no windows in the gallery and hardly ever any oil to spare for the lamps hanging on the walls. The blackness swallows up the light of a candle, so if all the doors are closed, one has to grope along the wall, counting steps.
    But let’s suppose one had a good strong torch. Then one would see, on the right, the door to the bedroom Veronica and I share. Our room connects to the bathroom, which connects to the Solar (where I am currently sitting and in which Montmaravian Kings and Queens have slept for hundreds of years, until Uncle John started refusing to come upstairs). On the left side of the gallery, across from Veronica’s and my room, is Rebecca’s room, which connects to Henry’s room, which connects to the nursery. Next to that is the Blue Room, and then Toby’s room, which connects to the Gold Room. Most of the gold has flaked off its walls now, but Rebecca usually puts guests in there (on the rare occasion we have any), on account of the Blue Room being haunted.
    As for the Solar, it used to be quite grand when Isabella lived here. She was constantly redecorating it according to the latest craze. She never got rid of the old stuff though, so the room ended up a fascinating, exotic muddle, with an antique kimono draped across one wall, Persian rugs, a Tutankhamen-inspired frieze, bedcurtains made out of Indian silk, Parisian etchings propped on the chimneypiece and a pair of Art Deco figurines holding up glass spheres. Even now,