Sophie Cleverly - The Dance in the Dark

I took her arm as we started to walk back to our dorm, steering her through the crowds of uniformed girls. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s about our mother, I … I think. I’m on this hill, and she’s sitting there in front of me, but I can’t see her face. And I can’t get her to turn round.”

I shrugged – as much as you can shrug with your arm through someone else’s. “All right, it sounds weird, I admit. I’ve had some pretty unusual dreams myself recently. That doesn’t seem particularly scary, or anything.” I was thinking of my nightmares with the rooftop and the dark stage, but I swiped the thought away before it could bother me.

We climbed the stairs slowly. “It just … it feels so wrong,” she said. “Like I’m doing something wrong. Because no matter what I do, I can’t get to her. And she won’t hear me.”

“Well, she is dead,” I said, but the look on my twin’s face told me that was not a very tactful thing to say. “Sorry.”

“I know. But I had a realisation – I kept calling her Emmeline. At first I thought that maybe it’s not her, maybe it’s the shadow of someone else.” I shuddered. “But if she wasn’t called Emmeline, then …”

I snapped my fingers, almost right in the face of Ethel Hadlow, who glared at me as she passed. “You don’t know her real name. So that’s why you can’t get her attention!”

“I-I think that might well be it,” Ivy said. “Not that the dream is real, or anything, but …”

“But it made you think, yes?” We reached room thirteen, and I went to turn the door handle. I could’ve sworn Ivy flinched at that too.

“Yes,” she said, after a moment. “There’s got to be a way to—”

“Hello!”

Both of us nearly jumped out of our skin. It was Ariadne.

She was sitting on my bed. Ivy backed up against the wall, gasping.

“Ariadne?” we exclaimed.

“I’m sorry!” she said, hurriedly jumping to her feet. “I didn’t mean to be scary. Was I scary?”

“Only mildly terrifying,” I replied, my heart thumping a little. I hadn’t expected anyone to be there, let alone our absent friend.

“Sorry!” she said again. “Well … hello.” She looked sheepish.

I bounced over to her. “Come on,” I said, “we’ll need a bit more than that. You were expelled ! What are you doing here?”

“I came back,” she said, as if that weren’t evident from her standing right there in the middle of our room.

“But how?” said Ivy, before we both hugged Ariadne.

“Mmf,” Ariadne said, so we stopped squeezing her quite so much and stood back a little to give her some air. “Well,” she said triumphantly, “I persuaded Daddy. Since they found out it was the headmaster who started the fire in the library and not me, the school had no objection to letting me in again.”

“But Mrs Knight said there was no way your father would let you come back. Because he thinks it’s too dangerous for you to go outside, or something.”

“Well, I … might have threatened to tell Mummy that he ran over her prize petunias when he was trying out the new Bentley.” Ariadne carried on staring at her feet, her face red.

Ivy’s eyes widened. “You blackmailed your father?”

“Oh no! I mean, it’s not blackmail, is it? Well, he shouldn’t have done it in the first place. He’s not even supposed to drive a motor car, that’s Horace’s job …” Her mouth kept on flapping uselessly.

“Ariadne, you silly goat!” I shook our friend gently by the shoulders. “It doesn’t matter if you locked him in the basement to get back here. You did it!”

Her face lit up. “I did it! I’m back!”

I ran out into the corridor, nearly tripping over the little trail of suitcases. “Ariadne’s back!” I yelled to no one in particular.

Penny leant out of the doorway of her room and glared at me. “Nobody cares!” she shouted.

But even wicked witch Penny couldn’t dampen my mood. We were a proper team again. This was utterly brilliant . I danced into room thirteen, and spun Ariadne around.

“Bit dizzy now, Scarlet!” she said primly, and I let her go.

Ivy was grinning like a loon. “I can’t believe it,” she kept saying.

I sat down at the dressing table and blew a lock of hair off my face. “So,” I said, “where are they putting you, now that Violet and Rose are roomies?”

“Apparently I’m to go in one of the bigger dorms with the first formers,” Ariadne said. She went out into the corridor and picked up one of her suitcases. “I’m actually rather excited. They’ll love my midnight feasts, don’t you think?”

Ivy laughed. “I’m sure they will,” she said.

“Oh, wonderful ,” said Ariadne, sinking on to the bed in relief. “Anyway,” she said suddenly, “did I interrupt you? You were talking about something …”

Ivy sat down on her bed. “I was thinking about our mother,” she said. “I had this dream about her, and— Oh! You don’t know!”

“Know what?” Ariadne asked.

Ivy gave me a quick glance – neither of us had explained. Nor had we put it in our letters. The truth had seemed too strange and secret to risk the teachers finding out, even the good ones. “After you were expelled, we went looking for the memorial plaque to the girl who drowned in the lake. And we found it, but it wasn’t exactly what we were expecting …” I paused, not wanting to waste a good moment for dramatic effect. “The name on it was our mother’s . Or at least, what we thought was our mother’s.”

“Your mother was a ghost?” exclaimed Ariadne. Her voice was reaching peak squeakiness levels.

“No, no,” Ivy waved her hands desperately. “At least, I don’t think so. We think that Emmeline Adel must not have been her real name.”

“Hmm.” Ariadne wrinkled her nose. She looked utterly baffled. “Well, who was she then?”

“Not the faintest,” I said. “A pupil at this school, I suppose. That’s as much as we know.”

“Oh!” said Ariadne suddenly. “Was she one of the Whispers, do you think?”

That was a good point. Last term, when we’d discovered Rose hiding in the secret room below the library, we’d also uncovered the Whispers in the Walls. They were a top-secret club who, twenty years ago, had vowed to bring down Headmaster Bartholomew and reveal the truth about what he’d done to the pupils of Rookwood – including the murder of the real Emmeline Adel. We’d had their book full of coded writing, but it had been destroyed in the fire, along with the staircase down to the secret room.

“I suppose she might well have been,” Ivy replied. “If only we hadn’t lost that notebook …”

“I might be able to remember some of the names from the wall,” Ariadne said, in between thoughtfully chewing on one of her nails.

Suddenly, an idea flashed brightly in my mind. “We ought to talk to Miss Jones! She went to school here, didn’t she? She might have known our mother!”

Ivy beamed at me. “That’s a brilliant idea!”

“Um, I think she’s away,” said Ariadne. “I went past the library earlier and I didn’t see her in there.”

“She probably needed some time off,” said Ivy. “She was really upset about the library. It was in such a state after the fire.”

I hadn’t been there yet, but Ivy said it still smelt faintly of smoke, and a lot had had to be replaced. Miss Jones had been totally distraught about the loss of her precious books.

I went over and patted Ariadne on the back. “Dinner?” I said.

“Oh! Yes!”

I grinned. If Ariadne had missed Rookwood’s school dinners, there was definitely something wrong with her!

Miss Jones the librarian was indeed away that week, Mrs Knight confirmed at the Richmond dining table. Our inquisition would have to wait.