“Ten to,” Florence replied.
Ten minutes.
She stretched her arms out and tried to roll on top of him. He pushed her away gently and eased himself up on to his elbows. The bed creaked under the shifting weight of his body.
“Go home.”
Eight minutes.
The man dropped his legs out of the covers and perched on the edge of the bed; his head held in his hands, palms covering his eyes. His nails were bitten to the quick, the skin at the edges rough and red, peeling away from their flattened nail plates. After a moment he stood. He walked in the dark to the door, a sliver of light peeking in under the threshold illuminated the floor by his feet. More scars twinkled white against his tan. The light flooded the room as he opened the door.
“Please, Florence. Go home.”
Four minutes.
Florence gathered up her clothes and slipped into them without a word.
One minute.
She stepped out of the dark room and didn’t look back.
Midnight.
Florence barely noticed the loud chirruping from her phone as she ran down the stairs of the small cottage. Sure footed with practise she reached the bottom before taking it out of her pocket and checking. Heart pounding, she looked down at the illuminated screen. Midnight exactly. Her mum was right on cue.
It’s past your curfew. Get home before I tell your father.
Pleasantly surprised at the lack of threat or swearing, Florence’s felt like the elastic band around her chest had snapped. She figured her mum was only in the early stages of drunkenness. Either that or she was typing with her left hand, unwilling to relinquish her glass long enough to type a more worthy message. Florence stuck her middle finger up at her phone and pocketed it as quickly as she could. She was perhaps less dead than she had been fearing. She hoped when she got home the wrath of her mother wouldn’t descend upon her in all its glory.; even at eighteen it still scared her.
She stood still for a moment as her heart returned to a resting rate. The bedroom floor creaked above her head and she heard the door slide open, so she tiptoed quickly to the hallway and found her flip flops by the front door. The air outside was thick with heat despite the sun being long gone. Sweat started to prickle on her back with the change in temperature from the cool of the thick-walled old cottage.
She took the long way home. Walking along a small footpath that led through woods choked with oaks and sycamores, their leaves dense with midsummer fullness. Bramble bushes lined the pathway, threatening to catch at Florence’s feet and legs. Without a falter in her step, Florence’s hand reached out and stroked the tree where Emily was found hanging by her neck. She whispered a few words as she passed: not stopping, not looking. Despite the heat of the night, Florence felt her skin raise with goose bumps, a cold shiver ran up her neck and into her scalp like icy fingers stroking away under her thick auburn hair. Florence kept her eyes ahead, not looking back. She knew if she turned, she would see Emily swinging slowly in the night. Instead, she quickened her pace.
The moon was full, but the canopy of trees kept the path under a blanket of darkness. Luckily, Florence knew the route well. She came to the front of the large stately building she called home in less than twelve minutes. There would be no point climbing the stone stairs to the ornately carved heavy front door as it would be locked up tight, protecting all those who lay beyond it. Instead, Florence crept around the side to one of the service doors, lifted the latch, and slid inside. With the door closed behind her she slipped out of her shoes and tiptoed silently down a servant’s corridor to the front door of the wing her family called home. They occupied the west wing of the old Georgian building which, for the last hundred years, had been home to Foxton’s School for Girls.
The house was still and quiet, the lights out. A smile threatened to lift Florence’s cheeks as she snuck past the closed door to her left; the dining room lay behind it, and behind that her father’s study. He would be busy with work, his door nearly always locked. The door to her right led to the kitchen. Slightly ajar, she could see her mother slumped over the island sound asleep, drink still in hand. Florence thought she looked like the stereotypical American mum, coiffed fake blonde hair, hourglass figure, pinny wrapped around her dress. Except this was rural Norfolk, sunny England, and this was real life, which was anything but stereotypical.
Just past the door to the kitchen were the stairs. Almost grinning now, Florence climbed them, looking forward to getting into her own bed safe and sound and free from a thrashing. Perhaps tonight she wouldn’t be dead at all.
“Good evening, Miss Haversham.”
Florence recognised the quietly powerful voice of her head teacher and screwed up her face, inches away from her door and her bed. She turned to face the man who towered over her.
“Hi, Dad,” she whispered.
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Corn Dolls Page 18