“Oh, come on,” I said, slamming down my knife and fork. “Can’t I do anything on my own without you having a panic about it?”
Ivy gave me the look that she’d developed recently: the one that said I thought you were dead, so cut me some slack.
But this time it wasn’t going to work. I was fed up of her using that as an excuse to keep tabs on me. “I was fine,” I said pointedly. “We were just talking about the ballet recital. Nothing happened. This school isn’t dangerous any more!”
Mrs Knight suddenly appeared behind Ivy. “You’re quite right, Scarlet. Rookwood is a safe place for everyone, I will be making sure of that!”
I looked up at her. She’d said that as if she’d been practising in front of a mirror.
“Uh … thank you, Miss?” said Ivy.
It was quite unusual for Mrs Knight to join in our conversations. She seemed to register our surprise. “Yes,” she said, “I think it’s important that everyone knows how different things are these days.”
“You mean now that headteachers aren’t trying to murder us any more?” I asked.
“Scarlet!” She looked affronted. “Well, really!”
Nadia looked up. “She’s not lying though, Miss. At least one of them was a murderer. The other—”
“That’s quite enough,” snapped Mrs Knight. “This is a new Rookwood School, and I won’t hear any more about the past. Let’s all move forwards, please.”
“Yes, Miss,” we chorused. She bustled away, her cheeks red.
We ate our dinner quietly after that. At least Mrs Knight’s interruption had saved me from any further interrogation by Ivy. But how long could I keep my extra ballet lessons a secret? Maybe Mrs Knight wasn’t going to try to kill me, but if Ivy found out I’d been lying to her … it wasn’t going to end well.
That evening, I lay in my lukewarm bath and tried as hard as I possibly could to stop worrying.
It wasn’t working out particularly well. Just being in the bathrooms always reminded me of the first time I’d set foot in there, when I’d been hunting for one of the pieces of Scarlet’s diary. When I’d first come to Rookwood School, I’d truly believed that she was dead, and that the paper trail she’d scattered was all that was left of my sister. It made my toes curl just thinking about it.
And worse – just after I’d found the pages, I’d been ambushed by Penny. Even if we were truly safe from the teachers, Penny was still desperate to give me nothing but trouble.
I shivered as I climbed out of the bath and wrapped myself in a threadbare towel. It was times like these that I really missed my Aunt Phoebe’s house. There was something so comforting about the tin bath in front of the fire, even if you had to fill it yourself with the kettle.
As I changed into my nightgown, I had the idea to write to my aunt. I made sure to do so every now and again, even if her replies often didn’t entirely make sense.
I peered round the corner before I left the bathroom, just in case Penny was lurking. Thankfully, she wasn’t.
Scarlet was already back in our room, practising ballet. There really wasn’t much room, but that didn’t stop her.
“Don’t mind me,” she said.
“I won’t,” I snapped back, dodging round her to get to my bed. I still hadn’t forgiven her for disappearing earlier.
My twin just ignored me and carried on doing pliés. Typical.
I reached under my bed and pulled out my satchel, where I had some sheets of paper and a pencil. At least I could write letters without having to worry about them being intercepted by the teachers any more.
Dear Aunt Phoebe,
I hope this finds you well. I miss you. Thank you for having us to stay at Christmas. If you can’t find the turkey knife, it’s because Scarlet was using it to try and carve a sword out of a branch.
Things seem to be better here at school. Mrs Knight says we’re all safe and I hope that’s true, but some things have happened that are making me worried … Perhaps I’m over-thinking it. I don’t want to scare Scarlet, or make her angry.
Speaking of Scarlet, she’s been
“Are you writing about me?” said my twin suddenly, her face appearing over the top of my paper. I jumped so quickly that I almost crumpled the whole page into a ball.
“Scarlet! Go away! It’s private!”
“Private?” she frowned. “Since when? You’re only writing to Aunt Phoebe.”
I flattened the paper against my nightgown so that she couldn’t read it. “How do you know that?”
“Who else would you be writing to? You already wrote to Ariadne just the other day, so unless you’ve suddenly decided to try and rebuild our relationship with Father, I assume you’re writing to Aunt Phoebe. Come on, let me see—”
“Scarlet!” This was exasperating beyond belief. “When you vanish for an hour I’m apparently prying if I want to know where you’ve been, but then you demand to read my letters! How is that fair?”
“Hmmph,” she said, and threw herself down on her bed, unlacing her ballet shoes so hastily I thought she was going to break them. “I just think that sometimes we should share things. Maybe not all the time.” She chucked the shoes at the chair.
I glared at her. I knew exactly what she meant. She meant that we should share everything when it suited her, and not otherwise. “I’m going to sleep,” I said finally.
“Fine. Me too.”
“Brilliant.”
There was a long pause, as both of us lay back on our beds and stared at the ceiling, flooded with anger that neither of us wanted to release.
“Ivy?”
“What?”
“The light’s still on.”
“Oh.”
With a sigh, I climbed up and went over to flick off the light switch. Room thirteen was plunged into darkness. Even the moon wasn’t shining that night, but was buried under grey clouds.
Back in my bed, on my blessedly no longer quite so lumpy mattress, I tried desperately to sleep. Unfortunately, though, sleep is one of those things where trying desperately to achieve it only results in it never happening.
I turned to look at my twin, but I could barely make out her shape, just a lump of blanket. So I stared up at the ceiling instead, until eventually I drifted off into a peculiar dream. One that I’d had a few times in the past month or so, but each time it altered slightly, unnerving me even more.
I was standing on a hill, green grass waving softly around my feet. I could feel the summer heat on my back. The sky was blue, the sun blindingly bright.
There was someone in front of me, sitting in the grass on a threadbare picnic blanket.