Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

There was something terrible and uncomfortable about hearing her mother sob.

It was a relief when at last Triss’s mother sniffed and rallied, carefully wiping away tears with the very tips of two fingers, so as not to smudge her make-up. She locked the drawer again and pocketed the key, then stood and left the room, closing the door carefully as if an invalid slept in the empty bed.

Triss remained where she was, listening as her mother’s tread moved away across the landing.

A distant door closed, and from behind it came the dull murmur of voices. At last Triss dared to crawl out from under the bed. The locked drawer taunted her, and she gave its handle a small, futile tug, but the drawer would not yield.

Taking a deep breath, she softly opened the door and slipped out, closing it behind her. The landing was empty, and Triss uttered a quiet prayer as she slipped across to the door opposite.

Please let it be the right one this time… To her relief, it opened on to a little room that she recognized instantly. Patchwork quilt on the bed, new Flower Fairies book on the bedside table, primrose wallpaper… yes, it was her room. It smelt faintly of cod-liver oil and the potpourri in the drawers. An old tongue-shaped cocoa stain that had never entirely cleaned out of the carpet was a familiar roughness under her foot.

A wave of relief broke over her, then lost its bubbling momentum and drained away, leaving her cold and uncertain. Even this, her own little lair, gave her no sense of comfort or security.

Mother said the letters were from that man, the one they’re worried about. They think he attacked me, so they whisked me home where I’d be safe. But if he left letters in Sebastian’s desk, then he must have been in the room somehow.

Home isn’t safe. Whoever he is, he can get in.

Her wardrobe loomed at her from the corner of the room. Triss’s imagination instantly crowded it with creeping assassins. When she threw open the door, however, nothing but innocuous dresses stared back at her.

On impulse, she ran her fingers over lace collars and cotton frocks, trying to tease out her own memories. Her hand paused on a small, cream-coloured blazer, with a straw boater hung over the same hanger. These did stir a memory, but also a painful briar-tangle of feelings.

Two years ago, Triss had worn this uniform during her brief time at St Bridget’s Preparatory School. She had loved going to the school, but it had made her ill.

Triss had not noticed it making her ill. In fact, she had thought she was getting better, brighter and happier. After spending so much of her life in one house, leaving it each morning filled her with an almost painful excitement. Her parents had changed, however, seeming discontented and short of temper. Everything had turned wrong and sour, and she sensed deep in her gut that it was her doing. Often they had felt her brow at breakfast, then decided she was too excited and kept her home. Every day they interrogated her about the school, and declared that the teachers had been negligent in some way that she had missed.

One day Triss was caught gossiping in class and was kept back after school. It was only for ten minutes, but her parents were in uproar. After bitter recriminations the Crescents had taken both their daughters away from the school. Triss had begged her father to let her stay, which made him more agitated than she had ever seen him before or since. He was doing all of this for her . He was defending her. Why was she trying to turn her back on her home? She had wept and wept for hours afterwards, until her stomach turned sick and her head ached. Then, of course, she had realized that she must be ill, and that her parents must have been right all along.

Knowing that the uniform no longer fitted filled Triss with a saddened yearning, and a twist of guilt at the feeling. She closed the wardrobe door to block it from sight. Even as she did so, she thought she glimpsed a tiny hint of movement in her peripheral vision. She tensed and stared around the room, senses tingling.

Everything around her was still, but her gaze was returned. From the dresser and side table stared the rag dolls her mother had sewn her, the cherry-mouthed French bébé doll and a china ballerina her father had given her after her first serious fever, almost like a reward. On any other day their presence should have been comforting, but now as Triss looked at them, all she could think of was Angelina’s shattered face.

They were motionless, nothing but dumb, soft, bundles of cloth and china. Or perhaps they were rigid, watching her, waiting for her to look away so that they could move again…

Stop looking at me.

She could not bear the thought that all of them might slowly turn their heads to stare at her, chime out china words or start to scream. Scrambling off the bed, Triss snatched up a pillowcase. She hastily swept all the dolls into it and knotted the top. Looking for somewhere to hide the bundle, she dragged open a drawer, then froze, staring down into it.

Within it she could see the diaries she had kept for years, each with its different leather or fabric cover. Every one lay open, a ravaged paper frill showing where all their pages had been torn out. They had been ripped in just the same way as the diary she had taken on holiday.

This changed everything. One destroyed diary smacked of an act of impulsive spite, the sort of thing that Pen might well do if she had the chance. The destruction of seven diaries in two different places suggested method and planning. Was Pen really that organized?

Perhaps Pen had not done it at all. Perhaps her father’s mysterious enemy had been in Triss’s room and gone through her things.

‘Mummy!’ It was meant to be a call, but it turned into a croak instead as the force left her voice. The next moment Triss felt frightened and embarrassed by the tortured books and shut the drawer quickly, glad that nobody had heard her.

She hurled the pillowcase of dolls into her wardrobe instead, and dived back into her bed. For a long while she stayed perfectly still, listening for any sound from within. There was nothing but silence.

Even in Triss’s quilt-fortress the scents of cooking found her out. Evidently Mrs Basset the cook had been tracked down after all. However hard Triss tried to focus on understanding everything that had happened, her mind was soon a slave of her stomach, and her attention fixed on the yawning emptiness inside her.

When lunch was called, it took all her willpower to walk down the stairs instead of running. Her parents were fortunately distracted and did not appear to notice her meal vanishing almost as soon as it was set in front of her, nor did they catch her stealthily ladling more on to her plate.

Triss could not understand how they could sit so mildly and calmly at the table and talk about boring, ordinary things as if they mattered. Her mother was complaining that Cook had asked for the whole of Tuesday off, in lieu of the break she had been promised.

Once again, Pen did not come down to lunch, and Triss was tortured by the sight of her sister’s food gradually cooling and congealing on the table. Only by clasping her hands tightly together in her lap did she prevent herself snatching at it.

‘She’ll get weak at this rate,’ sighed their mother. ‘Triss – could you be a love and take it up to her room? If she won’t answer, leave it by her door.’

‘Yes!’ Triss struggled to suppress her eagerness while her mother fetched a tray.

Carrying Pen’s lunch up the stairs, Triss managed to wait until she was unobserved before furtively picking at it. Just a potato – she won’t miss one. And… that piece of bacon. And a carrot. It took a lot of self-control to leave it at that, and Triss proceeded to Pen’s room with haste so that she could put the rest of the meal out of temptation’s way.