The Lost Twin

by Sophie Cleverly

  The nurse made me rinse it with the cold tap, but I could tell she didn’t believe me when I said that Violet had done it. The brat is such a goody-goody in front of the teachers. They all feel sorry for her, I think. They don’t know her like I do. And besides, why don’t they feel sorry for ME? I’ve lost people too.

  I had to get away from her somehow – so I wandered around the school, and you know what I found? There’s this hatch that goes out on to the rooftops. There’s steps up to it and you can push it open and climb out. Whoever last used it must have forgotten to lock it.

  I climbed up, of course. Who wouldn’t? There’s a flat bit of roof with tiles sloping around it. I nestled in amongst the chimney stacks and watched the sky. Swallows dived around my head and clouds drifted slowly past. It was beautiful and cold and, most importantly, there was not a soul around but me. I stayed there until the sun dipped below the horizon and I started to shiver so much that I had to go back inside.

  It’s my secret place now. Violet was already in bed when I got back, fast asleep. At last I have something that she hasn’t. She can’t take this away from me.

  I smiled weakly. At least Scarlet had found some sanctuary at Rookwood. “I wonder if we can get up there? On the roof?” I asked Ariadne.

  She yawned. “Mmmaybe.”

  Holding my breath, I turned the page over and, sure enough, there was something else written there.

  It said simply, Look for number one.

  “It says ‘Look for number one’.”

  “Hmm, numbers,” she mumbled. “Or a metaphor … or something.”

  I was delighted to have the next clue, but my eyelids suddenly felt unbearably heavy and I couldn’t help yawning. “Let’s investigate some more tomorrow. And … Ariadne?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Thank you. For still being my friend.”

  I couldn’t see her smile in the darkness, but I could almost feel it beaming off her. And it wasn’t long before we were both fast asleep.

  I woke up in a panic. Where were the diary pages?

  I leapt out of bed and frantically searched the sheets, only to find them crumpled up in one corner. I clutched them to my chest with relief. I really had to be more careful.

  Ariadne was staring at me from her bed. “Do you always hide those?” she asked.

  “Oh yes,” I said earnestly. “Don’t forget, no one can know about this. No one at all.”

  “Of course,” said Ariadne. She pretended to sew her mouth shut.

  I got down under my bed and reached for the hole in the mattress. The little leather-bound book fell out in my hands. I placed the latest pages inside it gently. If only there were a way to put it all back together again.

  Ariadne sat up. “Can I look at it?” she said.

  I handed it to her, watched her run her fingers over the letters on the cover. It felt so strange, seeing someone else hold the diary. But it seemed right, somehow. Ariadne was a true friend, I was sure of it.

  I expected her to open up the book, to read the letters that Scarlet had written to me. But instead she just held it out, reverently, and then placed it back in my hands.

  For once, luck seemed to be on my side.

  That was, until we went down to breakfast, and all hell broke loose.

  ILENCE!” screamed Miss Fox. She slammed her cane down hard on a nearby table. “I will have silence, or none of you will be getting a single bite!”

  Ariadne and I shared a fearful look as we sat down.

  The rabble of the dining hall dissolved into uncomfortable quiet.

  “Someone,” Miss Fox said, pausing to glare at everyone, “broke into the kitchens last night. This morning the door was found unlocked and there were candles and saucepans spilled all over the floor.”

  Blood rushed to my face. I felt as though the words ‘IT WAS ME’ were engraved into my forehead. I tried desperately to think of something else, something innocent. Kittens. Fluffy bunnies. Dainty embroidery.

  “The culprit has gone through all the cupboards. So which one of you was it, hmm? Which one of you thought it was acceptable to break the rules in MY school?”

  She started pacing around the hall, up and down the tables.

  “There is to be NO leaving your rooms after lights out, do you hear me? If you need the lavatory, it can wait until morning. I will be making sure everyone stays in their beds, is that clear?”

  I heard the swish of her cane as she walked behind me. Oh no, oh no …

  And then she slammed her hands down on our table.

  “I said IS THAT CLEAR, Miss Winchester?”

  I clutched at my chest, convinced I was having a heart attack.

  Penny looked up, the colour draining from her face. “Yes Miss,” she muttered.

  “Do you have something you’d like to share with the whole school? Because it must have been important if you felt the need to say it while I was talking about a Very Serious Matter.”

  Penny’s eyes had gone wide. “It was nothing,” she protested. “We were just … wondering who could have done it. That’s all.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t you, Miss Winchester?” hissed Miss Fox, pulling Penny up by the sleeve of her dress. “Were you confessing to your little friends, perhaps?”

  Penny shook her head frantically. She looked like she was about to choke. Nadia and Josephine immediately looked the other way.

  Miss Fox simply stood there for a moment, not saying a word, before gently lowering Penny back down to her chair. “Well,” she said, “perhaps you can continue your wondering during your lunch hour, which you will spend in my office. Fifty lines of ‘I will not talk while my betters are talking’, I think. Understood?”

  “Yes,” Penny whispered.

  “EXCUSE ME?”

  “Yes, Miss!”

  “That’s better.” The Fox turned to face the whole room once again. “You may continue with breakfast, but I hope you have all been listening carefully. Stay in your beds at night, or you will face the consequences.”

  “Yes, Miss Fox,” we said in unison. I stared at my knife and fork, determined not to act suspiciously. Ariadne grabbed my hand under the table and squeezed it gently.

  What were we going to do now? If Miss Fox was going to be patrolling the corridors every night, well …

  We’d been so stupid, not tidying up and locking the door behind us. Not to mention that our actions had got Penny into trouble. I almost felt bad about it.

  Almost.

  I sat in biology with my head in my hands. My emotions were scattered all over the place. Just when things seemed to be looking up, everything had come crashing down again. Quite literally, in fact.

  Our biology teacher’s name was Mrs Caulfield. She kept it written at the top of the blackboard at all times, which was a great help to me. I’m not sure if it was much use to anyone else, unless they were unusually forgetful.

  “Today we’ll be learning about anatomy,” she said. “Please open your textbooks at page seventy-two.”

  Mrs Caulfield had handed out thick red books with the words ‘Anatomy of the Human Body’ on the cover. There was a picture of a happy-looking skull just underneath. How cheerful.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” said Mrs Caulfield. She was a white-haired woman who looked a little like a baby owl. “I’ll just go and get Wilhelmina.”

  She disappeared into the cupboard at the front of the room.

  I glanced over at Ariadne, who was a few seats away from me. “Who?” I mouthed.

  Ariadne shrugged and looked as puzzled as I felt. It was a relief to not have to pretend that I knew what was going on.

  Moments later, Mrs Caulfield returned, wheeling a skeleton behind her. The thing was grinning at me, much like the skull on the front of my book.

  How awful!

  Mrs Caulfield picked up the skeleton’s arm and made it do a mock wave. “Say hello to Wilhelmina, class. She has been helping me teach anatomy for many years.”

  About half t
he class joined in with greeting Wilhelmina. The other half, including me, just stared in shock.

  “Now, as you can see from the height,” continued Mrs Caulfield, “Wilhelmina was a young girl. In fact, she was a fellow pupil of yours who wished to donate her bones to the school. Aren’t we lucky?”

  Oh goodness. I thought I was going to be sick.

  “There are two hundred and six bones in the human body. From the toes –” she leant down to point at the poor deceased girl’s feet – “to the skull.” It seemed to take her an age to bend back up again. “And someone has handily put a little catch in here …”

  She flipped a metal catch and lifted the top of the skull.

  I couldn’t take it a moment longer. I ran out of the classroom and sank down outside the door, my heartbeat pounding in my head. I tried to stare out of the window and think about something else, but it was no use.

  Scarlet, I thought. Scarlet’s going to be nothing more than bones.

  Tears ran down my face. I couldn’t stop picturing skeletons and coffins and graves. All those dark things I’d tried so hard to keep from entering my mind.

  I sat and sobbed into my arms, until I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Mrs Caulfield sent me to see if you were all right,” Ariadne said gently.

  I wiped my cheeks with my sleeve. “Oh, Ariadne,” I said, tapping my fist against my forehead. “I’m supposed to be acting as normal as possible. But how can I, when nothing about this whole thing is normal?”

  She blinked at me.

  I sighed deeply. “I’ve made myself look crazy again, haven’t I?”

  “Was it the skeleton?” she asked gently.

  “Yes,” I replied. “It was just so creepy, you know …” I gave Ariadne a meaningful look, hoping she would realise what I was saying.

  Ariadne nodded and her kind eyes sparkled with understanding. I felt like hugging her.

  “We’ll find out what happened to Scarlet,” she whispered, as she helped me stand up. “I promise.”

  I managed a weak smile. Peering through the small window back into the biology classroom, I saw that Mrs Caulfield was using a ruler to point at various parts of the skeleton. Just breathe, I reminded myself. It’s no different to looking at a picture in a textbook. And I went back into the room, with Ariadne following behind me.

  I was thoroughly relieved when our biology lesson ended and I could say goodbye to Wilhelmina. I’d been so caught up in everything that I’d almost forgotten I had ballet class after lunch. I felt relieved to be going there next. Apart from Ariadne, Miss Finch seemed to be the only person at Rookwood who cared.

  I was the first to arrive.

  “Good afternoon, Scarlet,” Miss Finch said, curtseying.

  I mirrored her actions. “Good afternoon,” I echoed.

  “Have you had any more late-night excursions?” she asked in a mock whisper.

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Of course not.” She smiled at me. Had she heard about the kitchen incident? I supposed she must have done. Miss Fox had shouted about it loudly enough for the whole school to hear.

  Footfalls thudded down the basement stairs – the rest of the class were arriving.

  Miss Finch began playing some music on the piano. It was a beautiful, lilting melody that seemed to wash away all my upset from earlier. I stood and listened to it in a daze, letting the tune flow through me.

  That was until Josephine pinched me on the shoulder. “Wake up, Scarlet!” she hissed.

  To my surprise, Miss Finch actually noticed this and stopped playing. “Miss Wilcox, keep your hands to yourself, please.”

  Josephine pulled a face at me and walked off.

  We went through our usual ballet class routine. But when we got to allegro, Miss Finch said, “I think you girls are ready for something a little more advanced, don’t you? I want to see who can perfect a grand jeté. And I mean perfect. Your legs should form an exact straight line, a one hundred and eighty degree angle. Come on –” she clapped her hands – “let’s see what you can do.”

  We lined up at the side of the room as Miss Finch began to play some simple music. “One at a time, please,” she said.

  A petite blonde girl went first, darting across the space and leaping through the air.

  “Wonderful, Margaret,” said Miss Finch. “But watch your back leg, it’s trailing a little.”

  A few more girls followed, none of them managing the perfect angle, but all good efforts. Then it was Nadia’s turn.

  Her grand jeté was good – her turnout just right, the height was perfect. When she’d finished, she gave us all a smug smile.

  “Well,” said Miss Finch, “you’re very nearly there, Nadia. But your movements are too mechanical. You need to be more fluid. Do it with passion!”

  The smugness melted from Nadia’s face and she said, tartly, “Why don’t you show us yourself then, Miss?”

  Everyone gasped. We all knew you should never talk to a teacher so disrespectfully.

  Miss Finch stood up, slowly. Then she said, “I believe you all know that I can’t.” She calmly pointed to her crippled leg. “I can demonstrate simple things, certainly. But a grand jeté is beyond me.”

  “Then why are you teaching us?”

  Miss Finch looked as though she’d been slapped. Her cheeks flushed pink and tears shone in her eyes. Her mouth moved silently.

  The old Ivy wouldn’t have stepped into this situation. She would’ve tried to fade into the background, avoided the conflict. But I knew one thing for sure – that Scarlet would never stand for it.

  I stepped forward. “Leave Miss Finch alone, Nadia.”

  Nadia turned to face me, her arms folded and eyes dark under her long lashes. “Why, Scarlet? If she can’t dance properly, she cannot teach, can she?”

  “Of course she can. Maybe you just weren’t paying enough attention?” And I instinctively prodded her in the chest.

  “Hey, get away from me!” She raised an arm, and I ducked, expecting a blow.

  “Girls, enough,” said Miss Finch. “Enough!”

  I backed away from Nadia, her eyes still glaring at me.

  “Nadia, I want you to leave my studio, right away. Write an apology to me or I will send you to Miss Fox. You can come back when you are ready to take your lessons seriously.”

  Nadia started to protest, but Miss Finch looked stern. The girl dropped her arms to her sides with an exasperated sigh, and then stormed out of the room.

  Silence followed. None of us dared to speak.

  “I’ll do it,” I said, suddenly. “The grand jeté, I mean. I’ll show you what I’ve learnt.”

  Miss Finch nodded, and she started to smile again. “Go ahead.”

  I was nervous, but perhaps my late-night practising had done me some good. I danced across the room and, as I jumped, I tried my hardest to get everything right. I thought I even heard my legs click as they flew into the splits.

  As I reached the mirrors on the other side, relief washed over me. I turned around and saw that Miss Finch was clapping gently. “A very noble effort, Scarlet,” she said. “You haven’t quite got the height yet, but you’ve got the passion. And your turnout was perfect.”

  She turned back to the other girls. “Next, please!”

  ’ve been thinking about the diary,” said Ariadne without looking up.

  It was evening, and after another unsatisfying dinner and lukewarm bath I’d returned to our dorm room with a towel wrapped around my damp hair. My friend was sitting on top of her perfectly made bed sheets, chewing a pencil and balancing an open exercise book on her lap.

  I shut the door quickly behind me. “Careful!” I replied. “You never know who might be lurking.”

  “Oops!” Ariadne went wide-eyed. “Sorry. I didn’t think.”

  I smiled at her and went to sit down at the dressing table. “It’s all right. So, did you have an idea?”

  “Well, sort of. Maybe. A bit. More of a quest
ion.”

  I sat for a minute, waiting for Ariadne’s brain to untangle itself. The page she was writing on was covered with scribbles and doodles.

  “We’re looking for the number one of something, right? So that could be anything that there’s more than one of …”

  I glanced at my reflection in the dressing-table mirror, watching my twin’s image staring back at me. I almost couldn’t believe that Scarlet had been clever enough to come up with this whole thing. Then I felt guilty at that thought and brushed it out of my mind. I shouldn’t think so lowly of my sister. After all, I was the one who’d blown the entrance exam. “There’s usually method in her madness. Maybe something that has numbers written on it.”

  Ariadne paused, gripping her pencil tightly. “Um … um … stables. No, we’ve had stables. Dorms. Office drawers.” And then suddenly she cried, “Lockers!”

  The pencil snapped in half. She looked at it with a baffled expression, as if not sure how it had happened, and then back at me. “Lockers have numbers on. Now, where are there lockers?”

  I thought about it, as Ariadne began to write more things down with the pencil stub.

  The changing rooms by the gymnasium.

  The ones by the pool.

  There might some in the staffroom … and so on.

  Wait, not the staffroom. I was pretty sure Scarlet wouldn’t have hidden a top-secret diary page in the staffroom. She wasn’t that stupid.

  “The gym and the swimming pool,” I said.

  Ariadne nodded and clapped her hands together with glee, before realising that was perhaps a bit much. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. And … thank you, Ariadne. For your help.”

  “It’s no problem,” she replied. “Oh, I do love mysteries!”

  As the bell signalled the end of classes the next day, Ariadne and I headed for the gymnasium. It was three o’clock and there were still plenty of girls milling about the corridors.

  I hadn’t been in these changing rooms before. They were through a pair of double doors to the right of the gym, and as we walked inside they appeared much the same as the swimming pool ones, all wooden benches and coat hooks. The room smelt of sweat and shoe polish.