“The funny click?” she said.
I nodded and flipped the lid shut once more. “What do you think it is?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps it’s a bit broken?”
It was possible, I supposed. I picked it up and gently turned it over, hearing the rings inside tumble up into the lid. There wasn’t any damage to it that I could see – in fact it looked pristine.
Ivy slipped off her bed and sat on the floor next to me. “Wait,” she said, after staring at the box for a few moments. “Open it again.”
I did as she said, and she pointed into it as the tune played. “Look. The inside isn’t as deep as the outside …”
Peering more closely, I saw that she was right. There was at least an inch or so on the bottom below where the rings and the pressed rose sat.
“I don’t know,” Ivy continued. “Perhaps it’s just where the mechanism goes.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’ve seen one of these opened up before. All of the mechanics are under the ballerina.” I pointed to the miniature wooden stage that she was attached to. “But there could be something else under here.” I began running my fingers round the edges, and sure enough, I thought I could feel a seam in the wood. “Hmm.”
That was when the idea struck me.
As the ballerina wound down, I folded her away and then opened the box again. But this time, when I heard the strange click in the tune, I pressed on the side as hard as I could.
And much to our surprise, a drawer shot out of the bottom of the box.
“Gosh!” Ivy exclaimed, nearly falling sideways.
We both stared into the secret drawer. Inside it was a sheaf of folded paper, a little yellowed but mostly untouched by time.
“Please tell me it’s not diary pages,” Ivy said. “I don’t want to find any more …”
I poked her indignantly. Those diary pages I’d left her to find had saved me from a horrible fate in an asylum after our evil headmistress sent me there, thank you very much.
I pulled the papers out and flattened them on the floor. There were several, and they were covered in writing – or, more specifically, in numbers.
“Oh,” said Ivy as she pored over them. “Isn’t this—”
“The Whispers’ code!” I interrupted her.
It was a long story, but we’d discovered last year that our mother had attended Rookwood School, just like we did. And during that time, she’d been in a secret club whose members called themselves the Whispers in the Walls, fighting back against the nasty Mr Bartholomew. We’d found their coded book of accusations against him, and our best friend Ariadne had been able to translate it.
“We’ll have to take this to Ariadne,” Ivy said, and I nodded. If it was the same code, she would be able to tell us what it said.
But there was something else. As I leafed through the pages, I saw that there was something written on the back of the last one. I turned it over. It was real writing, not just numbers. The top line read:
For my husband
Ivy and I looked at each other in shock. Could this be a letter from our mother? Her last secret? We read on.
I hope that I am with you now, safe and well, and able to tell this all to you in person. If I am not, then I pray it is not because he has found me. I shouldn’t have got involved again. I see that now. If you can interpret the secrets I have written on these pages, then perhaps you will be able to act where I could not. But I beg you, proceed with the utmost caution. It is a path fraught with danger and corruption.
I wanted to tell the truth, but if I never do, just know this: I am sorry for what I have hidden. Everything I did has been with the best of intentions. I wanted to expose everything that he has done, to free the past and change the future for the better. Perhaps it is too late for that now.
My name is Ida Jane Grey. I love you.
My hands were shaking so much that I almost dropped the paper. Our mother was speaking to us from the past, like a ghost.
“I pray it is not because he has found me,” Ivy whispered. “Who’s he? Mr Bartholomew?”
“It must be,” I said, although I had no way to be sure, since we couldn’t read the coded writing. But our mother had spent her life running from him, so it seemed to make sense.
Ivy put her hand over her mouth. “You don’t think … he did something to her?”
I thought about it for a moment, but then I shook my head with certainty. “Our mother died in childbirth, didn’t she? I don’t see how the headmaster could have had anything to do with that. And whatever this says …” I turned the pages over in my hands, “… nobody’s got their hands on it for years. I don’t think Father had any idea these were in here.”
“We’re the first to see these since she hid them,” Ivy said, staring down in awe. I handed them to her and watched as she ran her fingers over the words.
“I need to know what it says!” I declared, jumping up. I wished we were seeing Ariadne sooner, but there was still over a week to go before we were due back at school. How was I supposed to bear having to wait that long? “It could be more information about the Whispers, more accusations!”
“Well …” Ivy replied hesitantly. “It might all be meaningless now. We got Mr Bartholomew thrown in jail. We exposed what he did to our mother’s friend. What else could there be?”
I sank back down on the bed, the spark from the new secret beginning to fizzle out. “Hmmph. You’re probably right.”
But I still felt a tingle in my fingertips from where I’d held the pages. Whatever was written there, whether it was important now or not – it had been important to our mother when she wrote it. That was what mattered. We’d never known her, but now we had something she’d left behind, that only we had seen. It was something special that could never be taken away.
Father, on the other hand, seemed to be getting stranger by the day. He spent most of his time in his office, and then sometimes wandered around the house with no apparent purpose. He looked a little off-colour too, and wasn’t eating very much. But he seemed happy enough, in his own way. I wondered if he was still thinking about Mother.
We didn’t show him the papers that we’d found – Scarlet wasn’t sure if we could trust him, and we definitely didn’t want to leave them anywhere Edith might come across them. I just wanted to find out what they said first.
When the New Year arrived and the day finally came for us to go back to Rookwood School, we were practically buzzing with excitement. It seemed so strange to feel that way, given how horrible the school had been for us most of the time. But now it was full of friends, noise and chatter. It was alive, while