are you doing in here?” our stepmother demanded. “Aren’t you supposed to be cleaning up?”
Scarlet stared at her for a moment, her face as scarlet as her name, speechless with anger. And then it all came pouring out in a raging torrent. “Who do you think you are? You can’t order us around like servants! You can’t treat us like dirt to be swept under the carpet! You … you can’t take our only birthday presents for yourself!”
Edith dragged herself off the bed and stalked over to Scarlet, the familiar grimace (and a smidge of cocoa) back on her face. “I’m your mother now, and I can do what I want, you insolent little brat!”
“YOU’RE NOT OUR MOTHER AND YOU NEVER WILL BE!” Scarlet shouted.
There was a breath, an instant of heavy silence. And then Edith swung out and slapped Scarlet round the face.
I gasped, and dragged my twin backwards. There was a mark across her cheek, a ghost of our stepmother’s hand.
“Girls?” Father’s voice drifted up the stairs. “Keep it down, will you! I’m trying to work.” There was the sound of the study door pulling shut again.
Edith just stood there, her chest heaving, her face flushed, wiry hair sticking up from its usual careful curls.
Scarlet broke away from me, tears flashing in her eyes, and ran across the landing. Even school had to be better than this.
I looked up at our stepmother, watching her expression turn triumphant. It made me feel sick. “She’s right,” I said quietly. “You won’t ever be our mother. Our mother was worth ten of you.”
And with that, I turned and went after my twin.
I put my arm round Scarlet and comforted her until she’d calmed down just enough to simply be angry, and then we stayed in our room for most of the day. I didn’t particularly want Scarlet and Edith anywhere near each other again, and Scarlet wasn’t exactly keen to face up to her either.
I wasn’t quite as disappointed as Scarlet about the awfulness of our birthday. It was never a particularly joyous occasion, so why would this year be any different? I thought that, deep down, Scarlet felt that the world ought to treat her better than it did. She could never understand why it didn’t happen. I, however, had much lower expectations.
Of course it goes without saying that Father didn’t come upstairs to see if we were all right. If our stepmother had told him anything about what had just happened, it would have been that Scarlet had attacked her for no reason. She always painted herself as the victim and Father always believed her.
As we wallowed in our misery, I finished reading my book. Then I unpacked and repacked my bag about three times until it was neater than neat. As horrible as Rookwood School could be, I found myself wanting to go back, which was certainly a surprise. I missed our friends – Ariadne and Rose – and the other girls too. Rookwood had improved a lot since its former headmistress and headmaster had been taken off in a police van – even with the grey porridge, the cold and the bullies, it could still be a good place sometimes.
Around lunchtime, there was a click from the doorway. Curious, I wandered over and tried the handle, only to find I couldn’t pull it open.
Scarlet sat up straight on her bed. “Did someone just lock us in?”
I nodded. “Looks like it.” Scarlet had always had a habit of kicking doors (and walls, and furniture) that I had never understood, but at that moment I was tempted to try it. Instead, I bent down and peered through the keyhole. I could see right through it – so she’d taken the key away again. No chance of pushing it out to free ourselves.
My twin put her head in her hands. “Could it be any worse?” she asked.
I heard the sound of the door unlocking just before dinner time. It opened to reveal Edith with her familiar scowl.
“Your father’s asking where you are,” she said, in a voice that implied she couldn’t be less interested and was hoping she could forget about us forever. “I said you were messing around up here. I suppose you’d better come down.”
Scarlet went over to the door and stared up at her defiantly, though I could see her hands were shaking. “You locked us in,” she said.
Edith put her nose in the air. “And? That’s beside the point. Get down there and see your father.”
I went over to stand beside Scarlet. For a moment I thought she was just going to do as she was told, but no – she was Scarlet. That wasn’t how she worked.
“He’s going to see through you one day,” she said quietly. “He’s going to 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,”