Sophie Cleverly - The Dance in the Dark

Chapter Seven

IVY

That evening, I lay in my lukewarm bath and tried as hard as I possibly could to stop worrying.

It wasn’t working out particularly well. Just being in the bathrooms always reminded me of the first time I’d set foot in there, when I’d been hunting for one of the pieces of Scarlet’s diary. When I’d first come to Rookwood School, I’d truly believed that she was dead, and that the paper trail she’d scattered was all that was left of my sister. It made my toes curl just thinking about it.

And worse – just after I’d found the pages, I’d been ambushed by Penny. Even if we were truly safe from the teachers, Penny was still desperate to give me nothing but trouble.

I shivered as I climbed out of the bath and wrapped myself in a threadbare towel. It was times like these that I really missed my Aunt Phoebe’s house. There was something so comforting about the tin bath in front of the fire, even if you had to fill it yourself with the kettle.

As I changed into my nightgown, I had the idea to write to my aunt. I made sure to do so every now and again, even if her replies often didn’t entirely make sense.

I peered round the corner before I left the bathroom, just in case Penny was lurking. Thankfully, she wasn’t.

Scarlet was already back in our room, practising ballet. There really wasn’t much room, but that didn’t stop her.

“Don’t mind me,” she said.

“I won’t,” I snapped back, dodging round her to get to my bed. I still hadn’t forgiven her for disappearing earlier.

My twin just ignored me and carried on doing plié s. Typical.

I reached under my bed and pulled out my satchel, where I had some sheets of paper and a pencil. At least I could write letters without having to worry about them being intercepted by the teachers any more.

Dear Aunt Phoebe,

I hope this finds you well. I miss you. Thank you for having us to stay at Christmas. If you can’t find the turkey knife, it’s because Scarlet was using it to try and carve a sword out of a branch.

Things seem to be better here at school. Mrs Knight says we’re all safe and I hope that’s true, but some things have happened that are making me worried … Perhaps I’m over-thinking it. I don’t want to scare Scarlet, or make her angry.

Speaking of Scarlet, she’s been

“Are you writing about me?” said my twin suddenly, her face appearing over the top of my paper. I jumped so quickly that I almost crumpled the whole page into a ball.

“Scarlet! Go away! It’s private!”

“Private?” she frowned. “Since when? You’re only writing to Aunt Phoebe.”

I flattened the paper against my nightgown so that she couldn’t read it. “How do you know that?”

“Who else would you be writing to? You already wrote to Ariadne just the other day, so unless you’ve suddenly decided to try and rebuild our relationship with Father, I assume you’re writing to Aunt Phoebe. Come on, let me see—”

“ Scarlet! ” This was exasperating beyond belief. “When you vanish for an hour I’m apparently prying if I want to know where you’ve been, but then you demand to read my letters! How is that fair?”

“Hmmph,” she said, and threw herself down on her bed, unlacing her ballet shoes so hastily I thought she was going to break them. “I just think that sometimes we should share things. Maybe not all the time.” She chucked the shoes at the chair.

I glared at her. I knew exactly what she meant. She meant that we should share everything when it suited her, and not otherwise. “I’m going to sleep,” I said finally.

“Fine. Me too.”

“Brilliant.”

There was a long pause, as both of us lay back on our beds and stared at the ceiling, flooded with anger that neither of us wanted to release.

“Ivy?”

“What?”

“The light’s still on.”

“Oh.”

With a sigh, I climbed up and went over to flick off the light switch. Room thirteen was plunged into darkness. Even the moon wasn’t shining that night, but was buried under grey clouds.

Back in my bed, on my blessedly no longer quite so lumpy mattress, I tried desperately to sleep. Unfortunately, though, sleep is one of those things where trying desperately to achieve it only results in it never happening.

I turned to look at my twin, but I could barely make out her shape, just a lump of blanket. So I stared up at the ceiling instead, until eventually I drifted off into a peculiar dream. One that I’d had a few times in the past month or so, but each time it altered slightly, unnerving me even more.

I was standing on a hill, green grass waving softly around my feet. I could feel the summer heat on my back. The sky was blue, the sun blindingly bright.

There was someone in front of me, sitting in the grass on a threadbare picnic blanket.

It was a woman, and I felt sure, somehow, that it was our mother.

She never turned around. She just sat there, a black silhouette against the sky. I tried to move towards her, to touch her, but I was rooted to the spot. I called her name – Emmeline – but my voice faded to nothing in the breeze. She couldn’t hear me.

Or perhaps – I realised, in the strange way you think in your sleep – it was the wrong name?

She wasn’t Emmeline, was she? Emmeline had died when she was just a girl.

Mother! I called, trying to pull my feet from the ground, but it was as though they had grown into the grass, the roots pulling me down. Mother! I’m here!

Still the figure didn’t turn.

I slept on …

And then, in the middle of the night, I awoke with a start.

Someone was trying our door handle.

I watched, sick with horror, as it turned. Time slowed to a crawl. Scarlet didn’t even stir in the opposite bed.

The door creaked open, just a fraction.

“Who-who’s there?” I whispered, as loudly as I dared.

The door thumped back into place, and the handle sprang up.

And I could have sworn that I heard the jangling of keys in pockets, and the clacking of heels as someone hurried away.

I thought I’d been the one acting strangely that week, but Ivy was really taking the biscuit.

When I woke up on Tuesday morning, she was sitting by our dorm-room door and staring at it as if it were about to sprout legs and walk away.

“What are you doing, you oddball?” I murmured sleepily.

“Nothing,” she said, but she looked guilty about it.

She was quiet and jumpy for the rest of the day. I only had to speak to her and she would flinch as if I’d given her a slap. In biology, Mrs Caulfield asked her to get something from the cupboard and she just started panicking.

“Miss, I can’t, I’m … not feeling well!” she said, and ran out of the classroom.

When lessons were over, I cornered her in the corridor. “What happened last night? Did someone kidnap my sister and replace her with a total wimp?”

She opened her mouth and gawped at me like a stunned fish. For a moment I expected her to start yelling – ever since we’d been reunited, she’d been so much more … well, like me. She’d stand up for herself, argue back.

But now … it was like the old Ivy had reappeared. She looked like she wanted to shrink into the wall. I watched her face carefully.

“I—” she started, then bit her lip. “Actually,” she said, “there was something. I keep having this dream .”