dolls’ tea-sets. Sally was a little touched. Fenella had, in a way, put away childish things too. She no longer played with dolls, even if she could not bear to throw them away. There was a piece of paper on top. “Poem,” it said, “by Fenella Melford.”
I have three ugly sisters They really should he misters They shout and scream and play the piano I can never do anything I want.
The poem had been written at school. The teacher had written underneath, “A poem should be about your deeper feelings, Fenella.” And Fenella had written under that: “This is.”
Nothing here, Sally said. She came out of the bureau and floated face down at floor level, staring at the worn-out pattern of the rug. It looked like Oliver’s tufty coat, except that the pattern was in orange triangles. Imogen hated that rug. She said it offended her. Fenella called it the Rude Rug after that. There must be a letter. Sally was now quite sure there had been. She began floating to more her usual height, and stopped, with her torch-beam attention fixed on the wastepaper basket beside the bureau. It was stuffed and mounded with papers.
Ah! said Sally.
She dived towards it like a swimmer in her eagerness. And there, sticking sideways out of the top, was a sheet of blue writing paper with round, ragged writing on it which could well be hers.
“Dear Parents,” she read. “When you find this I shall be far away from here.”
There was no more, nothing but a doodled drawing of a face. Sally guessed she must have drawn it while she was thinking what else to say. Then of course she could not use that paper. The real letter must be elsewhere.
But where was I going? What was I doing? she wondered frantically.
Desperately, she pressed her face down among the other papers. Thank goodness! Here was another, on paper decorated with roses this time.
“Dear Parents, This is to inform you that I have taken …” Taken what? Sally wondered: the family jewels, a short holiday, leave of her senses? She had no idea. But here was more rosy paper.
“Dear Parents, Let me break this to you gently. I have decided, after much thought, that life here has little to offer me. I have …”
I think I was going to run away from home, Sally said. But I don’t think I had anywhere to go. Both grannies would send me hack at once. Why didn’t I say more? Oh, here’s another one.
“Dear Parents, My life is in ruins and also in danger. I must warn …”
Shaken, Sally withdrew her face from the basket and hovered like a swimmer treading water, staring at the papers. So there had been clanger. That matched her feelings of an accident, though not her feeling that something had gone wrong. But what danger, and where from? And now she came to look, the whole top of the waste basket was packed with the same rosy writing paper. She must have used the whole packet, trying to explain whatever it was to Phyllis and Himself. Perhaps if she read every single one, together they would tell her what had happened. She plunged her face among the papers again.
But it was impossible; they were packed in so tightly, some sideways and some upside down, some rolled into balls, some torn in half, and all so mixed up with old drawings and things Cart had thrown out, that Sally’s bodiless eyes could pick out hardly any of it. The ones she did see were only variations on the first four. And it got darker – too dark to read – more than four packed layers down. It was the merest luck that, when Sally was about to emerge from the basket and give up, her sight came up against a larger paper wedged upright against the side of the basket. At the top was her own writing – the now-familiar “Dear Parents” – but the next line was, to Sally’s wonder, in writing that had to be Cart’s. Cart’s writing was neat and unmistakable.
“We think Sally has come to a sticky end.”
Underneath that, the spiny writing with the angrily crossed Ts was surely Imogen’s. Sally brought her face up, backed away, and drove in again, right through the basket and the papers, so that her non-eyes were right up against the paper. It was dim, yellowish gloom, nearly too dark to see.
“Her bed has not been slept in and we have not seen her since—” Imogen had written. It was too dark to see any more. All Sally could gather was that Cart’s writing and Imogen’s alternated, line by line, all down the page, from yellowish brown gloom to night black. Horribly frustrated, Sally backed out and hovered.
I am going to see that letter!
There was a deal of noise downstairs. Imogen had seemed calmed by Cart, but, in the irritating way it had, her grieving now sprang up again like a forest fire, loud and wild, in a new place.
“But don’t you see, I may be using these difficulties as an excuse to hide the truth from myself! I’m hiding away behind them! I know I am!”
“Now Imogen,” Cart said soothingly. “I think that’s just tormenting yourself.”
Oh shut up! Sally called out. Imogen enjoys grieving. She doesn’t need sympathy, she needs shaking. It’s me that needs the sympathy!
Furiously, she threw herself at the heaped wastepaper basket. She went right through, and found herself looking at the wallpaper beyond. But she was so determined that she backed away and threw herself forward again, and again, and again. She still went right through, but, ever so slightly, the basket rocked. The papers rattled and crunkled. Oh good! said Sally. She threw herself at it once more. There was such a rustling that Oliver started to growl again. But Sally knew she was making some impression. If I try hard, she said. Trying does it. I am made of something after all. I’m not quite nothing. I’m probably made of the life stuff that was all round the boys. I shall think of myself like that. Bash, slide, crunkle. Sally thought of herself as strong, crackling, flexible, forceful, and bashed forward again. Bash, crunkle, crunkle.
She had done it. Instead of going into the basket, she was bounced off from it. The basket, already swaying, swung sideways, tipped and fell heavily, sending a slither of paper out across the Rude Rug. Oliver’s growls rose to sound like a small motorbike.
Imogen’s voice, bloated and throaty with crying, said, “What was that?”
“There must be a mouse in the bedroom again,” said Cart.
“Ugh!” said Imogen. “Send Oliver up.”
“He won’t go,” said Cart. “Besides, he just makes friends with mice.”
Sally was hovering, hovering, over the scattered papers. She had done it wrong. The vital letter was still in the basket, packed in by other papers, lying against the floor. And now she found she could not get in to read it. She had made herself so forceful that she kept bouncing off. She could get no further than the letter on top. Wait a minute! This top letter was in Fenella’s writing.
“Dear Parents, We have killed Sally and disposed of the body. We thought you ought to know. You are neckst of kin. Love, Fenella.”
What! said Sally. They haven’t. They didn’t. They can’t. So I did come back for revenge!
Downstairs, Fenella herself had come in. “Oh, is Imogen still grieving? I nicked four buns for tea.”
“You needn’t have
