The Castle by Sophia Bennett

where the air smelled cool and musty, like old stone. Two people were arguing nearby and their voices echoed off the walls. They were quarrelling, I eventually realised, about how they were going to carry the trunk up several flights of stairs and down several corridors. They never really agreed how to do it, and kept up the argument all the way. But luckily it never occurred to them to open the wardrobe door and see what was inside to make it so heavy. Instead, they bumped and swayed me for several minutes, until finally, a female voice gave an order, and they put me down and there was silence.
    After counting to two hundred in my head, I risked opening the wardrobe door a crack and peeped round the yellow dress. All I could see was painted roses and a high ceiling. I opened the door some more. Nobody screamed or called for security. I was alone.
    Off the boat. On dry land. Scared. Strangely excited.
    I pushed the trunk door fully open and tipped myself out. Once again, I landed on the floor with a thud and a crunch. Sitting painfully upright, I looked around.
    Another bedroom. I’d landed next to the clothes rail and on top of one of the shopping bags, near a huge four-poster bed that was hung with white lace and scattered with dozens of cushions. Beyond the bed, a tall, open window, framed by rose-pink shutters, looked out on to the bright blue sky. Way above me, the ceiling was painted with flying cherubs and hung with a crystal chandelier. On a desk in one corner, a rose-pink iPod sat on a speaker, next to a matching tablet and desktop monitor. Even the air smelled of roses.
    This is the bit where Julie Andrews comes in and tells you you’re the Princess of Marvalia.
    In a MOVIE, Peta. Right now, what would probably happen would be some hulking great delivery man would appear with another load of shopping bags, find me sitting here and hand me over to Muscle Man. Or, just as bad, Yasmin would arrive – I guessed this was her room – and wonder what this smelly, dirty schoolgirl was doing here. (I hadn’t dared wash on the yacht in case they noticed the messy towels.)
    But they weren’t here yet. I’d got this far. I just had work out how to stay ahead.
    Stretching my sore muscles, I straightened out the shopping bag I’d landed on (Chanel, enormous), grabbed my backpack and ran for the window, which was framed with real roses, growing up the wall outside. Looking out, I tried to work out exactly where I was.
    And it was heaven.
    It just was heaven. The castle was very high up, at one endof the Isola Sirena. It wasn’t a large island – just the castle, on a hill, and down to the right the jetty where I’d landed, some scrubland dotted with blue and yellow wildflowers, a few ruins and an abandoned shack. You could probably explore it in a day. Ahead, the sea glittered under the blazing sun. Boats dotted the water, all tiny compared with the massive Princess Nazia , the size of a small island herself, moored a short way out to sea. Further away over to the left was a strip of land that looked like the mainland. Close enough to see, but much too far away to swim.
    I looked down to where a series of neat green lawns led down to an infinity pool. Everything within the castle grounds was fresh and immaculate, apart from the wing to my left, where building works were going on. Opposite them, a tower on the right wing soared towards the sky, topped off with picture-perfect ramparts and parapets, just like the ones from my storybooks.
    A gull flew by and I watched it land on the tower. As it did so, a security guard in bulky black body armour emerged from a door in the ramparts, pulling his black baseball cap low over his eyes to protect them from the sun. It was only as he turned away that I noticed the gun tucked into a holster on his belt.
    So that was nice.
    Heaven was patrolled by armed guards. Real guards with real guns. This so wasn’t a movie with Julie Andrews. I wanted my