Sophie Cleverly - The Last Secret

The silence, as you can imagine, didn’t last long.

“Is she being serious?” Scarlet asked, leaning over the table.

“Obviously,” I replied. I was struggling to know what to say. “But maybe it’s nothing. Just some inspections, like she said.”

“But does he really have the power to shut the school, just like that?” my twin replied. “And if he does … couldn’t he just decide to close it down permanently?”

“This is horrible,” Ariadne said. Her face crumpled for a moment, and she looked like she was about to cry, but then recovered herself. “If the school closes … we’ll all be split up! Where will we go? What if I get sent back to Hightower Academy? If they’d even have me back, after I was expelled.”

“We won’t let that happen,” said Scarlet. I raised an eyebrow at her. I didn’t know how she could promise such things.

I stared down at my plate for a moment, trying to gather my thoughts. “I think we have to listen to Mrs Knight. We can’t start panicking when we don’t even know what Henry Bartholomew is going to decide.”

Ariadne made a sort of strangled sound in frustration, and dropped her head into her hands.

I bit my lip. I wasn’t sure how to feel. Rookwood had changed and it meant something different to me. Now it seemed that someone might have the power to take our school away. Not just to ruin its reputation as our old headmistress, Miss Fox, had once tried to do in a wild act of revenge, but perhaps to get rid of it all together. There would be no more secrets for us to find if it was closed down. Nothing left of our mother’s legacy. No more adventures with Ariadne and Rose and the others.

What if we were sent somewhere worse ? Or – and it didn’t bear thinking about – sent back to our stepmother? She had more or less threatened in the past that she would have us both locked up rather than live with her again.

“Let’s not all start worrying about this right now,” Scarlet said, unusually being the voice of reason. “Maybe we should just listen to Mrs Knight. We have bigger things to think about.”

“Bigger things than the school being closed?” Ariadne asked, open-mouthed.

Scarlet poked her with a fork. “Yes, like translating that code! We have to find out what our mother was up to when she wrote that note. It could be important.”

My twin was right. There was nothing we could do about Henry and his plans right now, but we could find out what was in those letters.

Ariadne puffed the air from her cheeks. “All right, of course. I’ll try this evening. But how am I going to hide it from Ebony?”

“Just tell her you’re doing extra arithmetic work,” Scarlet told her. “Nobody would care about that.”

“But I do have extra arithmetic wo—” Ariadne started, before wisely cutting herself off.

I lay in bed that night with my mind racing. I didn’t want to think any more about what would happen to us if the school really were to shut down, so instead I tried to chase the thoughts of our mother. Just when I’d imagined there was nothing left for us to learn about her, we were on the brink of discovering more.

I silently prayed that Ariadne would be able to solve the code, that it wouldn’t be something completely different that she had never encountered before. But it would make sense for our mother to use the same code that the Whispers in the Walls had used, wouldn’t it? Would it reveal more secrets from her time with them?

I couldn’t sleep. I needed to know.

Sitting up, I whispered to my twin, “Are you awake?”

“Ugh. Yes,” she replied.

“I can’t even shut my eyes,” I told her. “I can’t wait to find out what the papers say.”

“Same,” my twin said.

But then there was a knock at the door.

It was well after lights-out. That meant the person at the door was either Matron checking on us, or …

We threw the covers off, jumped up and ran to the door.

“Ariadne!” I exclaimed as I opened it.

She was standing there in her nightgown, with a jumper on top, holding the sheaf of papers. “I translated it,” she whispered. I couldn’t read her expression in the darkness. “All of it. I think you’re going to want to know what it says.”

e ushered Ariadne inside and shut the door as quietly as we could. I went to turn the light on, but Ivy stopped me.

“Don’t!” she cautioned. “If Matron gets up, she’ll see it.”

I didn’t think this was likely, given how Matron usually slept like the dead, and it seemed incredibly late, but I supposed she was right. We shouldn’t risk it.

“Don’t worry,” Ariadne said. “I brought a candle.” She sat down on the floor and pulled out a small holder from her pocket, complete with a tealight. Then a match appeared in her other hand, and she struck it, the bright flame flaring against the wick.

“Where do you keep all this stuff?” I asked her.

“In my suitcases,” she replied. That made sense. She did have far too many suitcases. “I’ve been decoding it non-stop since dinner. It took hours .” She shivered. “I had to tell Ebony I was doing extra-difficult arithmetic for fun.”

We sat down beside her on the patchy carpet, huddling together for warmth. She laid out the pages and her translations.

I peered at them in the flickering glow. “So it was the old code?”

“Yes, thank goodness. That made it easier, but still time-consuming.” She pointed at what she’d written. “Start here.” I began to read it aloud, as quietly as I could.

1

We moved into the cottage today. I never thought that I would be back living so close to Rookwood School. Mortimer has no idea that this is where everything began. He doesn’t even know who I really am. Knowing that Rookwood is just a few squares away on the map … that he may still be there … it brings it all back into focus once more. I thought I could forget, but I cannot. The truth is there and it scares me. After all these years, I remember our old secret code. I think I have to write this down.

2

Things are clearer today. I spent all night torturing myself. I have been running from my past, hiding from it, for too long. It isn’t just my truth that has been covered. My darling Emmie was killed and for all I know her killer is still right there in Rookwood School, facing no consequences. Perhaps I have been thinking about this all wrong. Moving here may be my chance to set her free.

3

I went back to Rookwood village. I persuaded my husband, Mortimer, to take me, told him it would be nice for a visit. I wore gloves in a vain attempt to hide the fact that my hands were shaking. I left him talking to the priest in the churchyard and headed to the shop. I covered my face with my scarf, praying that they wouldn’t recognise me, but nobody seemed to. Speaking to some of the villagers, my worst fear was confirmed. He is indeed still running the school. The lady I spoke to first glanced all around as if he were about to jump at us from the shadows. They are almost as afraid as I am, though they seem not to know why. But they told me the rumours—

Ariadne had stopped there. I glanced up at her. “What happened?”

“She cut herself off,” Ariadne said, handing me another page. Ivy leant over to see it too. “Here you go.”