The Dance in the Dark. Sophie Cleverly

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СКАЧАТЬ come on,” I said. “I’m fed up with all the secrecy.” Hypocrite, my mind said. Yes, well, I told myself. You can’t tell her about Penny, for her own good. “What’s going on? Why are you so cross all of a sudden?”

      Ariadne peered around me. “What’s up, Scarlet?” she asked a bit more diplomatically. “Are you still ill? In your ballet clothes?”

      Scarlet finally seemed to give in. “All right,” she snapped. “But promise you won’t tell anyone? I don’t want Penny the Slug hearing about this.”

      “Promise,” said Ariadne eagerly.

      “Miss Finch was supposed to give me extra ballet lessons, okay?” She looked really embarrassed.

      “Why?” I asked. Scarlet had always been so wonderful at ballet, I didn’t think she needed extra help.

      “Because I didn’t think I was good enough,” she mumbled at the carpet.

      I frowned and sat on my bed. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

      “I didn’t want anyone knowing,” she snapped. “But that’s not the problem.”

      “Then what is?” Ariadne asked, plaiting her damp hair with fumbling fingers. It always made her nervous when Scarlet was angry.

      “After I pretended to be sick – sorry – I went down to the ballet studio. All that effort and Miss Finch wasn’t even there!” She punched her mattress. “I can’t believe she’s let me down. I waited and waited. She obviously doesn’t care.”

      “I’m sure she didn’t mean to let you down,” said Ariadne, trying to be cheerful.

      I agreed. “Something important probably came up. Perhaps she had a meeting or a doctor’s appointment.”

      “Hmmph,” said Scarlet. “She should’ve told me.”

      “It wasn’t a proper lesson, though,” Ariadne pointed out. “And if she came to tell you, wouldn’t that mean everyone would know she was tutoring you?” Ariadne was always the wise one.

      “I suppose,” said Scarlet.

      “Let’s just forget about it and … and … read a nice book or something,” my friend said with a smile. “I’m sure she’ll explain what happened the next time you see her.”

      But something about this wasn’t sitting right with me. I didn’t know if it was the mysterious things I’d been noticing, or the dark dreams, but I had this gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. “There wasn’t anything … unusual, was there? In the studio, I mean?”

      Scarlet sighed, picking at her bedsheets. “Well, her stool was knocked over. And her stick was on the floor. I thought perhaps she’d hurt herself and gone into the office to sit down, but I knocked and there was no one there.”

      I wrinkled my nose. “Scarlet, she can’t … she can’t get up the stairs without her stick, can she? And if she wasn’t down there …”

      Ariadne’s face paled. “Do you think something’s happened to her?”

      I didn’t want to say what was on my mind. “We need to tell someone, just in case. This doesn’t feel right.”

      “No, said Scarlet. “We can’t, we …”

      “We have to,” said Ariadne, suddenly taking charge. She puffed out her chest. “Let’s find Mrs Knight.”

      Scarlet looked distraught. “I can’t say why I was meeting her! Nobody can know about it!”

      “Scarlet, this isn’t the time to worry about saving your own skin,” I said angrily.

      “Ssh!” said Ariadne, waving a finger at me. “Ssh ssh ssh! No more arguing. If we can’t tell Mrs Knight about Scarlet’s extra lessons, we’ll have to tell her something else. Why don’t we tell her we were all supposed to be meeting Miss Finch, to, um … talk about the ballet? We’ll say we were going to paint the scenery or something.”

      I bit my lip. None of us had an ounce of set-painting talent, but Mrs Knight didn’t know that.

      “But I already told her I was sick,” said Scarlet. She certainly looked sick now.

      “We’ll say Ivy and I were the ones looking for her,” Ariadne explained. “And you just came back to your room for a rest, and now you feel better. Anyway, won’t she be more concerned about what’s happened to Miss Finch?”

      Of course, that was the important thing. My twin and I would have to put our differences behind us.

      “Right,” I said, and got shakily back to my feet. “Let’s go.”

      I just hoped we weren’t too late.

      

       Chapter Ten

       SCARLET

      We were too late.

      By the time we got down to her office, Mrs Knight must have already gone home. She lived in accommodation near the school, but I couldn’t say where.

      I kicked the door and just about restrained myself from cursing.

      “What are we going to do now?” Ariadne wailed.

      “We could call the police,” I said.

      Ivy gave me a look that said she thought I was being ridiculous. “How exactly are we going to call them? The offices are locked. And even if we could get to a telephone, what would we say? A teacher’s been missing for an hour? They’ll laugh at us!”

      She was right, and I hated it. Our only hope was to talk to the teachers. But most of them had gone home, with the exception of the few staff that stayed overnight. I swallowed. In the past, that had included Miss Finch, when she’d had nowhere else to go. I tried my hardest not to picture her walking stick lying there in the middle of the floor.

      “We can try and tell Matron,” I said finally. “But I doubt she’ll be any use.”

      We went to the door of Matron’s room, only for her to bustle straight into us in her housecoat.

      “Oof! Girls,” she said, narrowing her neatly plucked eyebrows. “You’re supposed to be getting ready for bed. It’s lights-out soon, you know!”

      “We know, Miss,” said Ivy. “We’ve got a … problem …”

      “If you’re here to tell me that Josephine Wilcox has been running laps of the corridor in her swimsuit, I already know. That’s СКАЧАТЬ