The Last Secret. Sophie Cleverly

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       Chapter Two

       SCARLET

      or the next few days, I couldn’t stop thinking about the present we’d been given. Even on Christmas Day, when we didn’t receive a single gift, it almost didn’t matter. Father had given us something more special than anything you could buy at a fancy department store. He’d given us a piece of the puzzle that was our mother.

      I’d barely noticed our stepmother’s stern looks over Christmas lunch. I hadn’t corrected Father when he accidentally called me “Ivy” twice. I hadn’t even had the urge to punch Joseph and John when they tried to put carrots in my hair.

      I looked at the box and the photographs every chance I got. I almost felt like our mother was going to step out of them, somehow. Ivy and I opened the music box over and over again, watching the ballerina spin until the clockwork ran down and the final notes chimed slowly into the air.

      “I know this tune,” Ivy had said after the first few listens. “It’s from the ballet Swan Lake!” I knew she was right as soon as she said it. I had sometimes heard our ballet teacher, Miss Finch, playing it on her piano.

      But the more we listened, the more something began to stand out to me. It was that tiny jolt in the music. I held my ear close to it, and could hear a little click each time.

      That Christmas evening, sitting on the floor in our dusty old bedroom, I opened it up again. I wondered if it always happened, or only sometimes. Was it just an accident, something that had been put together wrongly in the clockwork? Was I even hearing what I thought I could hear?

      “Do you hear it too?” I asked Ivy, who was peering down at me from her bed.

      “The funny click?” she said.

      I nodded and flipped the lid shut once more. “What do you think it is?”

      She wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps it’s a bit broken?”

      It was possible, I supposed. I picked it up and gently turned it over, hearing the rings inside tumble up into the lid. There wasn’t any damage to it that I could see – in fact it looked pristine.

      Ivy slipped off her bed and sat on the floor next to me. “Wait,” she said, after staring at the box for a few moments. “Open it again.”

      I did as she said, and she pointed into it as the tune played. “Look. The inside isn’t as deep as the outside …”

      Peering more closely, I saw that she was right. There was at least an inch or so on the bottom below where the rings and the pressed rose sat.

      “I don’t know,” Ivy continued. “Perhaps it’s just where the mechanism goes.”

      I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’ve seen one of these opened up before. All of the mechanics are under the ballerina.” I pointed to the miniature wooden stage that she was attached to. “But there could be something else under here.” I began running my fingers round the edges, and sure enough, I thought I could feel a seam in the wood. “Hmm.”

      That was when the idea struck me.

      As the ballerina wound down, I folded her away and then opened the box again. But this time, when I heard the strange click in the tune, I pressed on the side as hard as I could.

      And much to our surprise, a drawer shot out of the bottom of the box.

      “Gosh!” Ivy exclaimed, nearly falling sideways.

      We both stared into the secret drawer. Inside it was a sheaf of folded paper, a little yellowed but mostly untouched by time.

      “Please tell me it’s not diary pages,” Ivy said. “I don’t want to find any more …”

      I poked her indignantly. Those diary pages I’d left her to find had saved me from a horrible fate in an asylum after our evil headmistress sent me there, thank you very much.

      I pulled the papers out and flattened them on the floor. There were several, and they were covered in writing – or, more specifically, in numbers.

      “Oh,” said Ivy as she pored over them. “Isn’t this—”

      “The Whispers’ code!” I interrupted her.

      It was a long story, but we’d discovered last year that our mother had attended Rookwood School, just like we did. And during that time, she’d been in a secret club whose members called themselves the Whispers in the Walls, fighting back against the nasty Mr Bartholomew. We’d found their coded book of accusations against him, and our best friend Ariadne had been able to translate it.

      “We’ll have to take this to Ariadne,” Ivy said, and I nodded. If it was the same code, she would be able to tell us what it said.

      But there was something else. As I leafed through the pages, I saw that there was something written on the back of the last one. I turned it over. It was real writing, not just numbers. The top line read:

      For my husband

      Ivy and I looked at each other in shock. Could this be a letter from our mother? Her last secret? We read on.

      I hope that I am with you now, safe and well, and able to tell this all to you in person. If I am not, then I pray it is not because he has found me. I shouldn’t have got involved again. I see that now. If you can interpret the secrets I have written on these pages, then perhaps you will be able to act where I could not. But I beg you, proceed with the utmost caution. It is a path fraught with danger and corruption.

      I wanted to tell the truth, but if I never do, just know this: I am sorry for what I have hidden. Everything I did has been with the best of intentions. I wanted to expose everything that he has done, to free the past and change the future for the better. Perhaps it is too late for that now.

      My name is Ida Jane Grey. I love you.

      My hands were shaking so much that I almost dropped the paper. Our mother was speaking to us from the past, like a ghost.

      “I pray it is not because he has found me,” Ivy whispered. “Who’s he? Mr Bartholomew?”

      “It must be,” I said, although I had no way to be sure, since we couldn’t read the coded writing. But our mother had spent her life running from him, so it seemed to make sense.

      Ivy put her hand over her mouth. “You don’t СКАЧАТЬ