Читать книгу Scarlet and Ivy – The Lost Twin - Sophie Cleverly - Страница 9

he car wove its way through the twisting country lanes. Miss Fox sat bolt upright in the front seat, barely blinking as the wheels bumped through ruts in the road. I fidgeted in the back, thinking it strange that she had chosen to sit up front with the driver.

On a few occasions she turned around to give me a look, and I tried to avoid her eye. Eventually she turned her angry gaze on the passing countryside instead, allowing me back into my own world.

The trouble was that my world was filled with Scarlet. Everything we passed in the familiar landscape reminded me of her. The way she used to hop over wooden stiles, while I dangled my legs over warily. The way she used to pick the green leaves off the bushes and crush them into tiny pieces. The way she used to smile at the blue sky, pointing out the shapes in the clouds that only she could see.

The worst was when I noticed two girls, perhaps sisters, playing together in a garden. I felt the memory flow through me, and as hard as I tried, it wouldn’t stop coming. The day Scarlet left for school …

We were standing there on the lawn, each with our matching suitcases; Scarlet in her uniform, me in a plain pink dress.

Father wanted to send us away. “Time to get an education,” he said. “Time to become proper young ladies,” he said. But Scarlet had won a place, and I hadn’t. So they were sending her to Rookwood School, and me to stay with Aunt Phoebe. Father waved goodbye to us with a glass of whisky in his hand. Our stepmother, wearing a pinafore and a grimace, dismissed us without even a second glance as she fussed over her sons, our stepbrothers.

Maybe Aunt Phoebe was a better alternative to our parents, but she was strange and scatterbrained. You could never tell what she was thinking.

There on the lawn, with the suitcases, I knew what Scarlet was thinking. She wished that we were both going to the school, so she wouldn’t have to go alone. I knew she was thinking that, because I was thinking it too. I started to cry; big, gulping, childish sobs.

Scarlet took my hand. “Don’t worry, Ivy-Pie,” she said bravely. “I’ll write you a letter every week. And you’ll write me one back. And when I’ve finished school I’ll come and get you, and we’ll run away together and become beautiful actresses, or prima ballerinas, only we’ll be even more famous because we’re twins. And we can go to America, and everyone in the whole world will want to be our friend.”

I cried even harder. Because it was ridiculous, and I would miss the ridiculous things that Scarlet came out with. Not only that, but because we both knew that I would never become famous and loved by everyone.

That destiny could only be Scarlet’s.

I wiped away a tear and quietly folded my knees up on the seat, risking further tutting from Miss Fox. But she didn’t notice, so I stayed curled up there, trawling through my memories.

Scarlet making a fortress from blankets, protecting her dolls from the Viking Hordes. (That would be me. I wasn’t much of a horde.)

Scarlet leaving trails of painted Easter eggs around our garden, making me find them with clues and riddles. (Our stepbrothers always tried to smash them.)

Scarlet brushing her hair for a hundred strokes before she would let me plait it.

Scarlet hunched over her diary, scribbling away, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth.

My sister always wrote in her diary. Every little event had to be pinned to the page. I never saw the point of it then, but she always said that if she didn’t write down everything that happened, it would just disappear forever. There would be no one to remember.

I told her that I would remember, always, but she just laughed and took no notice.

I started picking at the stitching of the seat nervously. There was no way that Scarlet would have been afraid in this situation. She would have taken it in her stride, asked all the questions I wanted answers to. But Ivy Grey never asked questions. Well, not difficult ones anyway. I always just did as I was told.

“Stop that, child,” Miss Fox hissed. “And sit properly!”

I looked up from my lap, but she had already turned away.

Scarlet would have answered back. Scarlet would have drummed her feet on the seats. Scarlet would have ripped out every bit of that stupid stitching.

I did as I was told.

Soon the road widened, and more houses slid into view. I saw a dark-haired man digging his garden, wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. His beard and strong features reminded me of Father, and I felt a sudden pang of guilt – I hadn’t even spoken to him for months. He was working in London, I supposed. The economy was still reeling from the Crash and it had left him working all the hours he could.

It wasn’t as if I was close to our father. When we were younger, he had been a fiery man, always shouting. But soon after our stepmother came along, he became different. Scarlet was relieved; she was grateful for the peace, didn’t miss the fire. She could never understand why I would prefer the man who shouted at us to the man who spent long hours withdrawn, blank-faced.

With three boys to spoil, our stepmother swiftly decided it was too much for her to keep looking after us as well. That was when she suggested that he ship us off to boarding school.

If only he hadn’t sent us away. If only we’d stayed together.

If only …

The car slid through a pair of enormous gates. Beside them were pillars topped with stone rooks in flight, their wings spread wide and claws grasping at the air.

A long drive snaked its way up to the school, through a cloak of trees and past what looked like a lake shimmering in the distance. We came to a halt and I heard the driver’s feet hit the gravel as he climbed out.

“Watch your step, miss,” he said, pulling open the door.

I smiled up at him as best I could as I clambered out with my bag.

Rookwood School loomed over me, huge and imposing. The bright green trees that lined the drive looked lost in the gloom of the building. The walls were stone – the highest parts blackened by years of chimney smoke. Dark pillars stretched towards the sky in front of me, and crenellations framed the vast slate roof.

It looked like a castle. Or a prison.

It took all my strength not to turn and run back down the length of the drive. Of course, even if I had, I would surely have been caught and punished.

Rooks flew past overhead, their loud caws mixing with the distant shrieks of girls playing hockey.

“Don’t just stand there gaping, girl.” Miss Fox was looking at me like I was an unexpected slug on the sole of her shoe. “Follow me, unless you think you have something better to do.”

“Yes, Miss … no, Miss.”

She turned around, muttering something that I couldn’t hear.

I followed her up the front steps, her sharp shoes clacking and pockets jangling. The front doors were huge, and despite being ancient they swung open without even the smallest creak when she pushed through them. Inside there was a double-height room with a gallery running all the way around. It smelt strongly of floor polish.

In the middle sat an oak desk and a somewhat lost-looking secretary. She was shuffling papers in what I thought was an attempt to look busier than she actually was.

Miss Fox approached the desk and leant on it with both hands.

“Good afternoon, madam,” the secretary said quietly, as Miss Fox’s shadow fell across her.

“Some would say so,” replied Miss Fox, glowering. “I have a child here. Scarlet Grey.” I started to correct her, but she waved an uncaring hand in my face and carried on speaking. “She will begin attending classes tomorrow. Sign her in on the register, please.”

Miss Fox must have been the only person who could pronounce the word ‘please’ like it actually meant ‘RIGHT NOW’.

“D-do you want me to escort her to her room, madam?” asked the secretary.

Miss Fox blinked. “No, I am going to take her to my office to … fill her in. Get her signed up.”

She strode away towards the corridor and I hurried after her. I risked a backward glance at the secretary, who stared at me with wide eyes.

We went past rows of doors, each with a little window revealing the class studying inside. The girls were sat in rows, silent and serious. I was used to a quiet school, but in here there was an air of … wrongness. Like it was too quiet, somehow.

The only sounds were our footsteps and the ever-present jangling from Miss Fox’s pockets. When we reached her office, she pulled out a silver key from one of them and unlocked the door.

The room was dimly lit and smelt of old books. There was a single desk with a couple of high-backed chairs and some tall shelves. That was pretty normal, but that wasn’t all there was.

The walls were covered in dogs.

Big dogs, small dogs, strange foreign dogs – their blank sepia faces stared down from faded photographs, each in a brown frame. In one corner of the room there was a stuffed beagle in a glass case, its droopy ears and patchy fur serving to make it look even more depressed than beagles do when they’re alive.

The most bizarre sight was a dachshund, stretched out in front of the small window at the back of the office. It appeared to be being used as a draught excluder.

Strange, I thought, that someone with a name like Fox would like dogs so much.

“Stuffed dogs, Miss?” I wondered aloud.

“Can’t stand the things. I like to see them dead,” replied Miss Fox.

She pointed a long finger at a nearby chair until I got the hint and sat down on it.

“Now, Scarlet—”

“Ivy,” I corrected automatically.

She loomed over me like an angry black cloud. “I think you have misunderstood, Miss Grey. Did you not read my letter?”

Her letter? “I-I thought it was from the headmaster.”

She shook her head. “Mr Bartholomew has taken a leave of absence, and I am in charge while he’s away. Now, answer the question. Did you read it?”

“Yes. It said I was to take a place at the school … my sister’s place.”

Miss Fox walked around me and sat down in the leather chair that accompanied her desk. “Precisely. You will replace her.”

Something in the way she said it made me pause. “What do you mean, replace her, Miss?”

“I mean what I say,” she said. “You will replace her. You will become her.”