realise how you treat us and –” she took a deep breath – “and what you did.”
Edith stepped closer, looming over Scarlet. “Did? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
I knew, and I knew she knew. We were almost certain that Edith had accepted a bribe from the old headmistress, Miss Fox, to pretend that Scarlet was dead. Scarlet had found out Miss Fox’s deepest secret, and went to terrible lengths to keep it.
Scarlet just glared at our stepmother, her arms folded tightly.
Edith glared back. “Fine. Be like that. But here’s a warning for you.” She leant forward, coming face to face with us. “You’re going back to that school soon, and this time you’re staying there for good. Your father isn’t going to rescue you and neither are your crazy aunts. You’re going to get an education and learn some respect, and you’re not going to bother us again.”
I frowned. I had to speak up. “What do you mean by ‘for good’?”
“I mean,” she said, holding a calloused finger up to my face, “that I don’t want you back here. You think your life is a misery now? Just you wait.” She straightened up and stalked back to the hallway. “Just you wait,” she repeated, only now there was a flicker of glee in her mud-brown eyes. “Downstairs. NOW.”
We ate dinner in silence. I watched as Scarlet stabbed every one of her scraps of meat much harder than was necessary. I knew that she wanted to shout and scream in frustration, but it wouldn’t do any good. We just had to put up with the rest of this miserable day.
Father had looked at Edith with a sort of blank, distracted happiness when she’d handed him his dinner. I wondered if he even saw her at all. Sometimes I imagined that his mind had painted the memory of our mother over Edith, and he never quite noticed that it didn’t fit.
As soon as dinner was over, Scarlet and I headed up the stairs, brushed our teeth and went to bed early. “This birthday can’t be over soon enough,” Scarlet said.
I agreed.
Tomorrow would be the first of September. A new year at Rookwood. As I lay under the dusty sheets and stared up at the dappled ceiling, I tried to forget about everything that had just happened and imagined what it would be like being a third year. New lessons, new teachers, new students to make friends with. We’d had so many new starts, but maybe this would be the one that went right …
I smiled up into the dark, and my eyes slipped shut.
We avoided saying goodbye to Edith the next morning. (She had disappeared. I didn’t know where to, but Scarlet was sure she was up to something.) Father was going to be the one driving us back to Rookwood. The boys were playing football in the garden. I tried waving goodbye to them, only to be met with jeers.
“Boys,” Scarlet said simply, rolling her eyes.
We climbed into the back of Father’s motor car with our bags, breathing in that familiar smell of leather and petrol.
I watched sadly as the cottage faded from view. It had been our home once, after all. But Edith had made it very clear that we were no longer welcome there.
“Bye, house,” Scarlet called out of the window. “It was nice knowing you.”
“You’ll be back soon enough,” Father said, his hands loose on the wheel.
I shared a look with my twin. “I’m not so sure,” I said warily.
He tapped his fingers. “It’s only school, girls. They let you out sometimes.” He sighed as he stared out at the village. “Thirteen years old, eh? Where does the time go?”
“We’re fourteen, Father,” Scarlet said.
He just blinked. “Fourteen, really? Hmm.”
My twin rolled her eyes. I didn’t blame her. Father seemed to be paying less attention to our lives than ever. We were lucky, I supposed – lucky to have Rookwood to go to; who’d have thought I’d be saying that? It wasn’t as though we had a choice anyway – our stepmother didn’t want us there, and she didn’t want us living with our aunts either (not that they really had the room). I just had to hope that we could stay out of trouble for as long as possible. If Rookwood found any reason to expel us, well … where would we go?
The journey passed in a blur of silver skies, green leaves and grey tarmac. The route was familiar to me now, but I still remembered how strange it felt that first time, with Miss Fox and her driver. The thought made me take Scarlet’s hand and squeeze it tight.
She was writing in her diary again – a new paper journal with a green jacket that she’d found at school. Her initials, SG, were written proudly on the cover. She also seemed to have acquired a new fountain pen, which was unusual since we normally used pens you had to dip in ink. I decided it was better not to ask where she had got it from.
“Don’t jog me,” she teased, poking me in the leg. “It’s hard enough to write in this bumpy old thing as it is.”
“It’s always good to see you writing in there,” I said.
“Well,” my twin replied. “You never know when a diary might come in handy …”
As we climbed out with our bags, I saw a familiar car arriving behind us. It came so close to ours that it almost hit the bumper, and then a familiar man who looked like a bespectacled owl got out. “Sorry!” he said.
I dropped my bag on the floor and ran over to the car, just as the door swung open and our best friend appeared behind the man. “ARIADNE!” I yelled, and jumped on her.
“Oof!” she said. “Steady on, Scarlet.”
I stepped back and grinned. “Never!”
Ivy came up beside me and gave Ariadne a hug. “We missed you so much.”
“Good morning, Sally and Irene,” Ariadne’s father said, tipping his hat at us.
“Morning, Mr Flitworth,” I replied. There was no point in correcting him now. It was what he’d always called us. We’d have to be Sally and Irene forever.
We
