Cuckoo Song (5 page)

Nothing happened in her mother’s face. Nothing happened, except that Triss had a feeling that staying expressionless was taking a lot of effort.

Triss was too far away to make out the words on the letter, but she was struck by the whiteness of the paper. It looked clean, crisp and new, in a room where nothing was supposed to be clean,
crisp or new.

Her mother’s hands were shaking. At last she made a sound of utter misery, somewhere between a moan and gulp, and crammed both letter and envelope back with its fellows before forcing the
drawer shut and shakily locking it.

Letters. Sebastian’s desk was full of recently arrived letters. Her mother had gone to see if any new ones had arrived. But why would they appear in Sebastian’s desk? Who would put
them there? And how could they get into the house and sneak themselves into a locked desk?

The scene was like a dream, nonsensical but drenched with ominous and unfathomed meaning, full of the familiar turned alien. All of a sudden the entire world seemed to be the Wrong Kind of
Ill.

Chapter 4

There was something terrible and uncomfortable about hearing her mother sob.

It was a relief when at last Triss’s mother sniffed and rallied, carefully wiping away tears with the very tips of two fingers, so as not to smudge her make-up. She locked the drawer again
and pocketed the key, then stood and left the room, closing the door carefully as if an invalid slept in the empty bed.

Triss remained where she was, listening as her mother’s tread moved away across the landing.

A distant door closed, and from behind it came the dull murmur of voices. At last Triss dared to crawl out from under the bed. The locked drawer taunted her, and she gave its handle a small,
futile tug, but the drawer would not yield.

Taking a deep breath, she softly opened the door and slipped out, closing it behind her. The landing was empty, and Triss uttered a quiet prayer as she slipped across to the door opposite.

Please let it be the right one this time . . .
To her relief, it opened on to a little room that she recognized instantly. Patchwork quilt on the bed, new
Flower Fairies
book
on the bedside table, primrose wallpaper . . . yes, it was her room. It smelt faintly of cod-liver oil and the potpourri in the drawers. An old tongue-shaped cocoa stain that had never entirely
cleaned out of the carpet was a familiar roughness under her foot.

A wave of relief broke over her, then lost its bubbling momentum and drained away, leaving her cold and uncertain. Even this, her own little lair, gave her no sense of comfort or security.

Mother said the letters were from that man, the one they’re worried about. They think he attacked me, so they whisked me home where I’d be safe. But if he left letters in
Sebastian’s desk, then he must have been in the room somehow.

Home isn’t safe. Whoever he is, he can get in.

Her wardrobe loomed at her from the corner of the room. Triss’s imagination instantly crowded it with creeping assassins. When she threw open the door, however, nothing but innocuous
dresses stared back at her.

On impulse, she ran her fingers over lace collars and cotton frocks, trying to tease out her own memories. Her hand paused on a small, cream-coloured blazer, with a straw boater hung over the
same hanger. These did stir a memory, but also a painful briar-tangle of feelings.

Two years ago, Triss had worn this uniform during her brief time at St Bridget’s Preparatory School. She had loved going to the school, but it had made her ill.

Triss had not noticed it making her ill. In fact, she had thought she was getting better, brighter and happier. After spending so much of her life in one house, leaving it each morning filled
her with an almost painful excitement. Her parents had changed, however, seeming discontented and short of temper. Everything had turned wrong and sour, and she sensed deep in her gut that it was
her doing. Often they had felt her brow at breakfast, then decided she was
too
excited and kept her home. Every day they interrogated her about the school, and declared that the teachers
had been negligent in some way that she had missed.

One day Triss was caught gossiping in class and was kept back after school. It was only for ten minutes, but her parents were in uproar. After bitter recriminations the Crescents had taken both
their daughters away from the school. Triss had begged her father to let her stay, which made him more agitated than she had ever seen him before or since. He was doing all of this for
her
. He was defending
her.
Why was she trying to turn her back on her home? She had wept and wept for hours afterwards, until her stomach turned sick and her head ached. Then, of
course, she had realized that she
must
be ill, and that her parents must have been right all along.

Knowing that the uniform no longer fitted filled Triss with a saddened yearning, and a twist of guilt at the feeling. She closed the wardrobe door to block it from sight. Even as she did so, she
thought she glimpsed a tiny hint of movement in her peripheral vision. She tensed and stared around the room, senses tingling.

Everything around her was still, but her gaze was returned. From the dresser and side table stared the rag dolls her mother had sewn her, the cherry-mouthed French
bébé
doll and a china ballerina her father had given her after her first serious fever, almost like a reward. On any other day their presence should have been comforting, but now as Triss looked at
them, all she could think of was Angelina’s shattered face.

They were motionless, nothing but dumb, soft, bundles of cloth and china. Or perhaps they were rigid, watching her, waiting for her to look away so that they could move again . . .

Stop looking at me.

She could not bear the thought that all of them might slowly turn their heads to stare at her, chime out china words or start to scream. Scrambling off the bed, Triss snatched up a pillowcase.
She hastily swept all the dolls into it and knotted the top. Looking for somewhere to hide the bundle, she dragged open a drawer, then froze, staring down into it.

Within it she could see the diaries she had kept for years, each with its different leather or fabric cover. Every one lay open, a ravaged paper frill showing where all their pages had been torn
out. They had been ripped in just the same way as the diary she had taken on holiday.

This changed everything. One destroyed diary smacked of an act of impulsive spite, the sort of thing that Pen might well do if she had the chance. The destruction of seven diaries in two
different places suggested method and planning. Was Pen really that organized?

Perhaps Pen had not done it at all. Perhaps her father’s mysterious enemy had been in Triss’s room and gone through her things.

‘Mummy!’ It was meant to be a call, but it turned into a croak instead as the force left her voice. The next moment Triss felt frightened and embarrassed by the tortured books and
shut the drawer quickly, glad that nobody had heard her.

She hurled the pillowcase of dolls into her wardrobe instead, and dived back into her bed. For a long while she stayed perfectly still, listening for any sound from within. There was nothing but
silence.

Even in Triss’s quilt-fortress the scents of cooking found her out. Evidently Mrs Basset the cook had been tracked down after all. However hard Triss tried to focus on
understanding everything that had happened, her mind was soon a slave of her stomach, and her attention fixed on the yawning emptiness inside her.

When lunch was called, it took all her willpower to walk down the stairs instead of running. Her parents were fortunately distracted and did not appear to notice her meal vanishing almost as
soon as it was set in front of her, nor did they catch her stealthily ladling more on to her plate.

Triss could not understand how they could sit so mildly and calmly at the table and talk about boring, ordinary things as if they mattered. Her mother was complaining that Cook had asked for the
whole of Tuesday off, in lieu of the break she had been promised.

Once again, Pen did not come down to lunch, and Triss was tortured by the sight of her sister’s food gradually cooling and congealing on the table. Only by clasping her hands tightly
together in her lap did she prevent herself snatching at it.

‘She’ll get weak at this rate,’ sighed their mother. ‘Triss – could you be a love and take it up to her room? If she won’t answer, leave it by her
door.’

‘Yes!’ Triss struggled to suppress her eagerness while her mother fetched a tray.

Carrying Pen’s lunch up the stairs, Triss managed to wait until she was unobserved before furtively picking at it.
Just a potato – she won’t miss one. And . . . that piece
of bacon. And a carrot.
It took a lot of self-control to leave it at that, and Triss proceeded to Pen’s room with haste so that she could put the rest of the meal out of
temptation’s way.

‘Pen?’ she called quietly, knocking on what she believed and hoped was Pen’s door. ‘Your lunch is out here!’ There was no response. Triss wondered if Pen was
sitting sullenly within, ignoring her, or whether the younger girl had climbed out of her window and run off in yet another fit of truancy. She laid the tray on the ground. ‘Pen, I’m
leaving it by your door.’

Please come to the door and take the food, Pen. Please – I don’t think I can resist it if you don’t.

No Pen appeared. The scented steam from the plate was in Triss’s nose, and even when she closed her eyes she could still see the golden-crusted pie with its glossy gravy, and the pepper
freckles on the potatoes’ creamy flesh . . .

It was too much for her. With a small, helpless sob, Triss dropped to her knees and snatched up the fork. Pen’s food tasted better than hers had, better than anything. She tried to make
every mouthful last, but could not. She tried to stop, but could not.

And as she was shakily licking the plate, she heard the faint sound of a voice in her father’s study, the study that should have been empty.

Triss set down the empty plate on the tray, then gingerly drew closer to the study. When she put her ear to the door she heard what sounded a good deal like Pen, talking in a low, steady,
furtive tone. Peering in through the keyhole, Triss could indeed see Pen. The younger girl was facing away, but Triss could still see exactly what she was doing. She was making free with that most
august and sacrosanct of objects, the family phone. Triss felt her eyebrows rise. She could not have been much more surprised if she had caught Pen borrowing the family car.

It was a tall black candlestick telephone and was fixed to the wall for ease of use, so that you only needed one hand to use it instead of two. It was placed at a height convenient for
Triss’s father, but Pen was standing on tiptoe on a chair to bring her face level with the mouthpiece. Her right hand held the little conical earpiece to her ear.

Triss could not make out her sister’s murmured words. Pen looked absurd perched there, like a tiny child playing at being the parent in a game of make-believe. Only Pen’s hushed
tones made the matter seem more serious.

As Triss watched, Pen hung the little earpiece back on its hook and stepped down. Triss straightened up, and a few seconds later Pen opened the study door. Finding herself face to face with
Triss, Pen froze, her face a mask of guilty terror.

‘Who were you talking to, Pen?’ asked Triss.

Pen took a deep breath, but found no words. Her face reddened and twitched, and Triss could almost see her sister hastily auditioning a range of lies and denials to see whether any of them would
do. Then Pen’s eye fell on the empty plate by her door, and when her gaze returned to Triss’s face the terror had been replaced by outrage and disbelief.

‘You ate my lunch!’ Her voice was so shrill it was almost a squeak. ‘You did, didn’t you? You ate it! You stole my lunch!’

‘You didn’t come down for it!’ Triss protested, feeling her hackles rise defensively. ‘I knocked – I tried to give it to you—’

‘I . . . I’m going to tell Mother and Father . . .’ Pen was gasping in angry breaths as if she might explode at any moment.

‘They won’t believe you.’ Triss had not meant to say it. She had been thinking it, but she had never intended the words to leave her head. It was true though, and Triss could
see the same knowledge reflected in the frustration and rage on Pen’s face.

‘You think you can do anything you like, don’t you?’ snapped Pen, in a tight, bitter little voice. ‘You think you’ve won already. But you haven’t.’

‘Pen –’ Triss struggled to undo the damage – ‘I’m sorry I ate your lunch. I’ll . . .’ She steeled herself to promise Pen part of her own dinner,
but knew this was a promise she could not keep. ‘I’ll make it up to you. Please, can’t we just stop this? Why do you hate me so much?’ All at once Triss felt that she could
not bear Pen’s relentless animosity on top of everything else.

‘Who do you think you’re kidding?’ Pen’s face was a map of disbelief. She leaned forward to peer into Triss’s eyes, her own gaze pit-bull fierce. ‘
I know
about you.
I know what you are. I saw you when you climbed out of the Grimmer.
I was there
.’

‘You were there?’ Triss took a step forward, only to see her sister flinch back. ‘Pen, you have to tell me everything you saw! Did you see me fall in? What happened?’

‘Oh, stop it!’ snapped Pen. ‘You think you’re really clever, don’t you?’ She swallowed hard, and clenched her jaw as if there was nothing she wanted more than
to bite somebody. ‘You know what? You’re not as clever as you think. You’re getting everything just a bit wrong. Everything. All the time. And sooner or later they’ll
notice. They’ll see.’

In Pen’s face Triss could see nothing but a declaration of war. The younger girl’s incomprehensible words boiled and seethed in Triss’s mind like a shoal of piranhas, and
Triss’s desperation was swiftly replaced by a flood of frustration and resentment. She had wanted to be sorry about eating Pen’s lunch, had wanted to talk it out with her, but all of
these feelings were now swallowed up by bitterness and a stinging sense of unfairness. It was always this way, she remembered that now. She would try to reach out, only to be knocked back by
Pen’s ingenious and relentless hatred.