by Joanna Rees
‘Claudia! Clau!’ Romy shouted.
No response. It was as if she was in a trance. Romy growled with exertion, pulling Claudia off the bed and hauling her towards the door.
Fox had started making a horrible gurgling sound and Romy was choking too now, as the smoke grew thicker. A sudden whoosh of flames behind her. A crackling of varnish burning on wood.
Romy pushed Claudia through the door, into the deserted dormitory beyond, just in the nick of time. She turned to see flames and smoke engulfing the room.
The fire alarm rang out as Romy hurried down the stairs, half-carrying Claudia now, determined that she would not leave her behind. She could hear men’s voices shouting below. Any minute now and the guards would be here. If she and Claudia carried on this way, then they’d run straight into them.
Halfway down the stairs a small window was set into the landing wall. Romy stood back and kicked straight through it, before stamping out the remaining shards of glass. Icy wind blew in at her. The darkness beckoned outside. Cover. A chance to escape.
‘We have to get out and up onto the roof,’ she said. ‘Now,’ she told Claudia, pushing her towards the small opening. ‘Please, Claudia. Or we’re dead . . . ’
Finally Claudia seemed to break free from her trance. She stared into Romy’s eyes, then nodded and began squeezing herself through the tiny windowframe and sideways onto the thin window ledge.
Romy edged out after her. Before them was a sheer drop into a deep ventilation shaft, thirty foot deep. Fall down it and they’d most likely break their necks.
Claudia began shaking uncontrollably, as the thick snow swarmed furiously all around. Romy took off her jacket and gave it to her friend. But as she did so, the folder inside slipped and fell. The photographs got caught up in the flurry of snow, black on white, disappearing into the night.
But Romy had no time to worry about that now. Even over the wind, she heard the thunder of footsteps in the stairwell behind them.
‘We have to get across,’ she told Claudia, focusing on the flat roof ahead, four feet away, across the shaft. ‘I’ll go first.’
She didn’t give herself time to think about it. She didn’t look down. Kicking off the ledge, she launched herself across the gap and made it – just – hooking her shoulders over the far roof lip, before quickly hauling herself up.
Claudia hadn’t moved. The ledge glistened in the moonlight beneath her bare feet. Romy cursed herself. She should have given Claudia her boots too.
Shouts. Louder. Closer.
‘Now!’ she screamed to Claudia. Any second and she’d be seen.
Another shout, this time right behind her, finally spurred Claudia into flight.
One second she was just standing there, quaking, and the next she’d thrown herself forward and was flailing mid-air, desperately reaching out for the lip of the roof.
She missed. But Romy didn’t. Coiled and ready, she seized Claudia’s wrist as the older girl’s body slammed into the wall where Romy now stood. The weight of most children of Claudia’s age would have been sufficient to drag Romy down into a pile of broken bones at the bottom of the shaft. But Claudia was light – little more than a bag of bones herself. Romy would not let her go. She hauled Claudia up and got her onto the roof beside her.
They ran across the roof of the refectory, slipping and sliding all the way to the end. Then down the metal ladder onto the roof of the laundry office to its edge.
‘Now! Jump!’ Romy said, taking Claudia’s hand this time and not giving her time to think. They plummeted down onto the laundry van in the yard. Its canvas roof shrieked and gave way with a giant rip. They landed with a thump on the bare metal bottom of the truck, a pile of snow cascading down around them.
‘I can’t go on,’ Claudia cried, but Romy was already scrambling up.
Blood was running down the inside of Claudia’s legs. Her nightdress was soaked, translucent.
‘Here, take my boots,’ she told Claudia, unlacing them and hurriedly jamming them onto her friend’s feet. Romy pulled her jacket tighter around Claudia’s shoulder, tenderly brushing the sweat-soaked hair from her friend’s face.
‘Stay with me,’ she said. ‘We can do it.’
She forced her way through the hatch into the driver’s cabin and leant in. Through the windscreen and the dancing snow beyond was the service gate. If only she knew how to drive, she could start up this truck, ram right through those gates and drive them both to safety. But she couldn’t drive. In fact, it was only now, staring at the gates, that she realized she knew nothing of the outside world. Nothing but the views she’d glimpsed from the roof. Even if she did make it out of here, what chance did she really have of surviving?
But just as these doubts threatened to overwhelm her, she remembered something else. Another view from the roof. The woods. Just there outside the orphanage. Get as far as the woods in this storm, and she and Claudia might just give their pursuers the slip.
She grabbed Claudia’s hand and shuffled to the back of the van, then jumped down into the yard. She held out her arms to help Claudia.
She could hear alarms ringing out all around now. Flames licked out into the darkness from the top of the building. The lights inside the orphanage were all coming on. Dark silhouettes were appearing in the windows, the faces of orphans pressed up against the grubby glass panes, peering out into the blizzard to try and see what was going on.
Romy couldn’t think about the children now. They knew the fire drill, she reassured herself. They’d all be out here soon. And so would Lemcke and the guards.
Lemcke. The very word rang out like a whip-crack in her mind. She’d rather die trying to escape than let him get hold of her.
Hauling Claudia, who stumbled after her across the concrete, leaving drops of blood in their footprints in the snow, they reached the gates and started to climb. Romy’s sodden socks slipped on the ice-cold metal bars. But she kept going and soon reached the top.
The single-track road ahead was a tapestry of black ice and snow.
She and Claudia dropped down onto it. Romy pulled Claudia with her over into the trees. They fell into a ditch, landing thigh-deep in snow, and fought their way through it and out the other side.
‘Our only chance is to disappear into the woods,’ Romy said, cold gripping her feet like a vice.
They ran on, the orphanage alarms still ringing out behind them. Romy delved in her pocket and clicked on her torch, desperate not to get caught in another drift. She immediately saw that to the left the woods were thicker and the snow less deep, as the land dipped sharply towards what looked like a river valley below.
Behind them, she heard a shout. She looked back. Through the trees she glimpsed a flicker of torches at the orphanage gates. Boots clattered on the icy road. She thought she heard Ulrich’s voice and his whistle blowing, and then the sound she’d most feared. The dogs.
A howl went up. Another. Snarling. A yelp. The creatures were desperate to be let off the leash.
Then silence.
‘Run!’ Romy said, but it was already too late.
A hiss of barrelling motion. Of muscle crashing past bushes and trees.
Then the dogs were upon them. Two Alsatians. Ulrich’s pride and joy. Both of them drawn by the scent of Claudia’s blood.
Claudia screamed as the dogs piled into her and knocked her to the ground.
Romy snatched up a heavy branch and swung it hard, two-fisted, down onto the nearest beast’s spine. It yelped, twisting to one side, but then only tore back all the more fiercely into Claudia, who’d now curled up in a tight ball.
A lattice of torch beams criss-crossed through the trees. The guards had realized where they were.
Romy brought the branch crashing down on the dog again. This time she struck the creature hard across its brow. It slumped sideways in the snow and did not move again.
But the second dog now had its jaws locked around Claudia’s neck.
Claudia stared wide-eyed up at
Romy. Her cheek was torn open. Her back was arched, her whole body stretched, as if at any second she might actually snap.
‘Go,’ she mouthed at Romy.
And this time Romy knew she had no choice. She turned and fled into the dark, just as Ulrich burst triumphantly into the clearing and stared down at Claudia’s bloodied body in the snow.
But Romy was already gone. Stumbling deeper into the dark wood, with tears pouring down her face, Romy was running for her life.
CHAPTER FIVE
June 1984
On the hotly anticipated day that Griffin Maddox was destined to tie the knot with Storm Haileux-Maitlin the New England sky was a cloudless aquamarine blue and the rolling lawns of the Little Elms estate shone emerald in the sunshine.
Inside the house Thea picked up the net-fluffed skirts of her baby-pink bridesmaid’s dress and tiptoed over the brand-new carpet, careful not to trip over the photographer’s lighting cables, which snaked across her path.
The recently refurbished top floor had the frenzied backstage panic of a catwalk show, as Mimi, the wedding planner from New York, shouted into a walkie-talkie about a time-check, marching out of the adjacent bedroom where Storm was being dressed in a cloud of cream taffeta by a coterie of hangers-on.
Thea scooted out of the way and looked through the round picture window down to the gardens at the back of the house, where the yew-tree walk had been made into an outdoor chapel, complete with a white wrought-iron altar and canopy.
As well as many New York acquaintances and Griffin Maddox’s business associates, the glamorous rich set that Thea had met at Crofters were all jetting in for the wedding. Storm had spared no expense in her effort to impress them. It was as if she were some kind of blushing virgin bride and not a twice-married divorcee. Thea fought down her sense of injustice. She’d always imagined that a wedding at Little Elms like this would be hers – in time – not Storm’s.
Now Thea saw a familiar figure placing the fancy, embossed order-of-service booklets out on the velvet chairs and she knocked on the window, but Michael was so far below her he couldn’t possible hear.
Even though she was thirteen and he was nearly fifteen, Thea had noticed how much older he seemed these days. He’d grown tall and had started shaving the fluffy moustache she’d teased him about. His face was tanned and his honey-blond hair was slicked back, making it seem darker and his face more handsome. He was wearing a navy tuxedo and Thea saw how the tie constricted his neck, how the whole outfit made him look as if he wanted to burst free and ride with the wind in his hair.
She pictured them together as they had been yesterday, riding for miles in the early morning. How, when they’d stopped, he’d told her to be brave about today. She knew he’d meant it in the kindest possible way. After all, Thea had offloaded to him countless times in these last few months of wedding planning. About how she couldn’t shake the feeling that Storm didn’t like her. About how upsetting it was that Storm always promised shopping days and spa trips, but always cancelled right at the last moment. About how she didn’t trust Brett and how he intimidated her. Her lists of doubts had gone on and on. Michael had listened, soothing and agreeing with her.
But now the day was here and she was in this dress, and Thea felt nervous about the wedding for an altogether different reason. There would be dancing later and she’d be able to be in Michael’s arms. Just as she’d daydreamed.
She stood back and gazed at her reflection in one of the three full-length white mirrors set up by the doorway. What would he think when he saw her? she wondered. She hardly recognized herself in all the eyeliner and mascara, her blonde hair sprayed up away from her forehead and plaited with ribbons at the back. Did she look like one of those ghastly pageant queens? Or beautiful, as the make-up girl had said? She couldn’t be sure.
She went over to the table to pick up her pink posy of roses and eyed the door, waiting for the opportunity to present itself for her to sneak away and see her father. She’d be able to tell how she looked from his reaction. She could always see from his eyes whether he was pleased with what he saw.
But there was another reason too. She wanted to know whether getting married brought back painful memories of her mother. Somehow, hearing him say just a few words to acknowledge the past seemed so important today.
But just as she reached the door, Storm called out to her from the bedroom. Thea turned and walked towards her. From the coos of the dressers, who were standing back to admire the vision before them, it was clear that Storm was finally ready.
Storm’s much fussed-over designer dress was similar to the wedding Barbie that Thea had played with as a child: layers upon layers of frills nipped in to show off Storm’s formidably small waist. Storm, with her never-ending desire for the theatrical, had made no secret of the fact that she’d drawn inspiration for the design from the wedding dress Princess Diana had worn three years earlier, although thankfully she’d ditched the twenty-five-foot train, Thea thought. But even without it, the dress was a big enough number to make Thea wonder whether she’d fit down the aisle outside.
‘Wow,’ Thea breathed. ‘You look amazing.’ Up close, she saw that the jewel-encrusted bodice of Storm’s dress led to puffy sleeves, which complemented the shape of the neckline perfectly and framed a dazzling diamond necklace.
‘Thank you,’ Storm said, as if genuinely touched. Then she waved for the others to go. ‘Give us a minute, will you?’
Storm watched them leave the room, her hands clasped in front of her, as regal as a queen. Sunlight poured in through the window, making the diamond necklace and the jewels in her hair light up the walls of the room with sparkling dots.
She walked towards the fireplace, making the dots jump.
‘Griff and I were going to give this to you later, but I think now is the right moment,’ Storm said, taking a duck-egg-blue box with a white ribbon from the mantelpiece. She turned with the box and smiled at Thea. ‘Open it.’
Thea didn’t move for a second. If this was a gift from Storm and her father, then why wasn’t he here, giving it to her as well? But she took the box and slipped off the ribbon.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said, pulling out the silver Tiffany locket. She meant it. It was exactly the kind of thing her mother would have worn, and she guessed that her father must have picked it out, not Storm.
‘I want you to wear it today,’ Storm said, coming forward and helping Thea with the clasp. Then she put her hands on Thea’s shoulders and looked right into her eyes. ‘I know this is hard for you, hon,’ she said in her husky southern drawl, ‘being a teenager was never easy for anyone. But you and I . . . we’ll have something so special. You’ll see,’ Storm said, fastening the locket behind Thea’s neck and kissing her cheek.
And right at that moment she remembered Storm’s very first promise: that she intended to be more of a fairy godmother than an evil stepmother. Now, in that dress, dazzling with jewels, her beautiful face soft with affection, Storm really did look as if she was going to finally come good on her word.
Thea felt something inside her shift. She put her fingers around the cool silver heart and smiled back at Storm. Maybe she’d seen her father’s marriage in the wrong light . . . because she’d been jealous, she thought.
Well, she would change, she vowed. She’d reach out back to Storm. She’d be her perfect stepdaughter. She would. She wouldn’t let any doubts get in the way of her father’s happiness. Not ever again.
‘Let’s go, people,’ Mimi, the wedding organizer said, marching in and breaking the moment. ‘The press photographers can’t wait any more.’
Thea slipped out of the door onto the landing and tiptoed down what had once been the nursery stairs to the first floor. A lighting rig for the grand photos on the sweeping staircase had transformed her home into a film set. The whole interior of the hall was filled with the heady perfume of close on 2,000 roses.
She stopped for a moment to take in the scene, but Mimi pushed her out of the way, scooti
ng past her down the stairs in a flurry of panic.
Griffin Maddox was coming out of the door of his room, wearing a grey-striped morning suit, and he was whistling, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
‘How’s it going up there?’ he asked, a baffled smile on his face as he watched Mimi. Then he winked at Thea and nodded up the stairs, and she knew that she couldn’t ask about her mother. Not today. He simply looked too happy to be reminded of any pain.
‘It’s crazy,’ Thea said honestly, stepping forward to straighten the cream rose in his buttonhole.
‘Look at you,’ he said, with an impressed whistle.
Thea did a little curtsey in her pink dress, feeling a flush of satisfaction. He really did think she looked great.
‘Oh? She gave it to you already?’ he asked, reaching out to touch the locket. She noticed a hint of disappointment in his voice.
‘It’s lovely,’ Thea said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Did you read the engraving? Here.’
He opened it so that she could read the tiny engraved writing inside. ‘To Thea, with all our love from Mom and Dad,’ he said.
Mom? He and Storm had chosen those words for Thea? But . . . but she already had a mom. No matter how nice Storm was being, she couldn’t just step into her mom’s shoes . . .
But before Thea could say anything, Mimi’s shrill voice and accompanying finger-clicking made her look down to where a line of photographers was snaking up the stairs, pointing their cameras towards them.
‘Nervous?’ her father asked, patting her hand in the crook of his arm. She looked down and noticed his bare hand and wondered what he’d done with the wedding ring he’d worn when her mother was alive. She hoped he’d saved it for her. She hoped he hadn’t thrown it away.
Behind them, she noticed her father’s bedroom door opening. Justin Ennestein, the family lawyer, was coming out, straightening papers in a leather folder. He was small and rotund, with brown hair that Thea saw was already flecked with grey. He adjusted his heavy-framed glasses on his beaked nose and looked directly at Thea. He looked caught out, or maybe he was just embarrassed, Thea thought, that her father was still working today of all days. He turned quickly away.