The Last Secret

Chapter One

IVY

But the first surprise had been Father inviting us back for the holidays. Last time we’d been home, our stepmother had told us in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want us setting foot in their cottage ever again. But that chilly December, Father had telephoned our new headmistress at Rookwood School and told her that he would be picking us up instead of his sister – our Aunt Phoebe.

My twin, Scarlet, and I clambered out of Father’s motor car, taking in the sight of our home as we breathed frosty plumes into the air like dragons. I was trying to remember it all in case we were forbidden from returning once more.

It was a large cottage that could have come straight from a fairy tale, all bright stone with a perfectly thatched roof. Whereas Aunt Phoebe’s house was a working cottage – mud on the floors and dusty coats hung up on hooks – this place seemed to exist only to look pretty. As I gazed at it, I felt nothing but cold, inside and out. There was an iron gate that opened on to the pristine lawn where we had once sat with our suitcases, Scarlet waiting to go to Rookwood and me to Aunt Phoebe’s – it seemed like a lifetime ago. The roses clambering up the stone walls could have been beautiful, tinged with white frost, but they were beginning to brown and wither, and the thorns looked sharp.

It was funny how quickly the seasons could change from one to the other. It seemed only moments ago that we’d suffered an ordeal on All Hallows’ Eve, and shuffled through autumn leaves to the bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night. Now there were only two days left before Christmas, and here we were, at a place I thought we’d never see again.

Father walked up to the front door with our luggage, humming to himself. Scarlet and I followed, sharing a nervous glance as we crunched our way up the path. What were we going to find inside? I was sure our stepmother wouldn’t be pleased that Father had ignored her wishes and invited us back to the house.

But as the door was unlocked and we were led inside, we found the place cold and quiet – as if no one else was there.

“Where’s Edith?” Scarlet asked.

Father dropped our luggage and leant back against the door. He seemed a little out of breath. “Oh. Hmm. Probably out shopping, I expect.”

That didn’t quite make sense. There were no shops for miles around, and we’d been in the motor car, so how would she have got there? Unless Father had dropped her off and forgotten about it, but that seemed unlikely.

I peered into the sitting room and the kitchen, but both were empty, nothing but ashes in the fireplaces. A Christmas tree stood in a corner, with a few sad-looking baubles drooping from it and some boxes wrapped up underneath. There were stockings hanging on the mantelpiece, but from a glance I could see that there were only three, with our stepbrothers’ names – Harry, Joseph and John – sewed on.

“What about the boys?” I added, half expecting them to ambush us and start throwing things. “Where are they?”

Father put his hand over his eyes. He looked a little unwell, I thought. There was a strange tinge to his skin. “Probably … Probably playing outside. Yes.” He nodded, and then wandered off, leaving us standing there in the hallway.

It was most odd. We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in our old bedroom, wearing as many of our clothes as possible to try to keep warm.

Scarlet was doing star jumps and blowing on her hands. “Do you think there’s any chance we’ll get some good presents this year?”

I shook my head. “Probably socks again.”

My twin looked down at her feet. “Right now,” she said, “I’d be happy with an extra pair of socks.”

As the evening began to draw in, we heard a crash and a stampede of footsteps downstairs that probably signalled the arrival of our stepmother and her boys. I looked up from the book I was reading and saw Scarlet’s expression – she was clearly dreading our first interaction with them as much as I was.

After a while, I heard Harry shout up the stairs: “Twins! Dinner!”

Scarlet stomped out of our room. “We have names, you know!” she shouted back. Reluctantly, I put my book down and followed her downstairs. I braced myself for the impending confrontation. Surely our stepmother would throw us out as soon as she saw us?

But to my surprise, she barely acknowledged us as we walked in. I saw her eyes narrow, but she said nothing – just handed us two plates with fairly reasonable helpings of pie and mash on them. “Go on, then,” she said, waving us towards the table and turning away.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps things wouldn’t be as bad as we’d thought. The fire was roaring in the kitchen, and things began to feel a little warmer.

We ate in silence, almost afraid to speak in case we broke whatever spell had caused our stepmother not to throw us out immediately. The boys nattered with their mouths open, which was enough to fill the air with noise (and, in some cases, food). Father eventually came in, and Edith jumped up to give him his plate.

“Here you go, dear,” she said in the voice she only used when talking to him. “This one is yours. Thank you for dropping us off earlier.”

“Oh,” he said again, looking at it in a strange sort of confusion. “Yes. Thank you.” He took it to the table and began to dig in.

I started to wonder if he was becoming even more absent-minded than usual, like Aunt Phoebe. It seemed to be getting worse. He hadn’t remembered that he’d dropped them off anywhere – unless our stepmother was lying about that for some reason. But I filed the thought away and tried to enjoy having a half-decent meal.

We finished dinner, and the boys quickly ran away. I could hear them pulling on the Christmas tree in the next room, and rattling the presents.

Father looked up from the last of his food. “Girls,” he said, and I jumped a little, not expecting the attention. “I found something I wanted to show you.” He put his knife and fork down and stood up. “Come on.”

We followed him, and I saw Edith frowning even harder as we left our plates behind. I had to smile a little at that. I knew from experience that she had probably been about to order us to do the washing-up.

“What do you think this is about?” Scarlet whispered to me as we headed down the hallway towards Father’s office.

“No idea,” I replied.

The fire inside his office had been lit too, and we felt the warmth as he held the door open for us. For a moment he stopped there, as if uncertain of what he was doing.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “I was going to show you something, wasn’t I?”

Scarlet looked at me, and I gave her a confused glance in return.

Father went over to his desk and sat down on the chair. “I’ve been thinking a lot about your mother lately,” he said.

My mouth dropped open. I’m not sure I could have been more surprised if he’d said, “I’m planning a trip to the moon.”

Our mother had died when we were born, and Father never talked about it, especially not since he’d married Edith. The thought of our mother seemed to be so painful for him that he often avoided thinking about us too. And now here he was, suddenly initiating a conversation about her.

“What?” Scarlet exclaimed.

He didn’t seem to notice our surprise. “I still have some things of hers, you know,” he said. He wasn’t even talking to us, more to the frost on the windows that was shrinking back from the heat of the fire. “I’ve been keeping them locked away. But after your theatre performance – after I met your aunt for the first time, and what she told me about her …”

He started coughing and then trailed off. It took me a moment to recall what he was talking about, but I realised he meant our Aunt Sara. We had tracked her down when we discovered our mother’s true identity: that her maiden name had been Ida Jane Smith, not Emmeline Adel as we had been told. She had taken the name of her friend who was killed by Rookwood’s former headmaster, Mr Bartholomew, in a punishment that had gone horribly wrong. When Aunt Sara had met Father, she had told him all this, or at least some of it.

Scarlet leant forward and waved a hand at him. “Yes?” she said.

He blinked at her, and then carried on. “I only locked them up because I had a lot to think about. I found myself wondering if I had ever really known her. But then I thought …” He sighed, picked up his pipe between his fingers and twirled it. “No. It’s no matter. She was my Emmeline, and yours. I think perhaps I was giving the past too much weight. It was a lot to bear.”

Now it was my turn to be unable to meet his eye. It just seemed so strange for Father to be speaking to us like this – or even to be speaking to us at all.

“I decided to go through her things last week,” he said. “And I thought you girls should have this.” He reached down and opened the bottom drawer of his desk, pulling out a gift-wrapped parcel tied with a red bow. He handed it to Scarlet, who was nearest. “Merry Christmas and all that,” he said.

I nodded with wide eyes at Scarlet, and she immediately began tearing off the wrapping. Father wasn’t even watching us now, just staring out of the window again.

Inside was a brown cardboard box that Scarlet pulled open. And inside the box …

Firstly, there were two photographs. Scarlet pulled them out. In one, our mother and father’s faces gazed back at us. They stood together in front of a draped wall. Our mother clad in a beautiful white lace gown and headdress, and Father in a suit with a flower in the buttonhole. They were wearing the slightly serious faces of people who had to stay still for a photograph, but their happiness shone from their eyes.

“Your wedding picture,” I breathed. Why had Father never shown us this before? My glance lingered on it, taking in the details. I smiled at the sight of the familiar pearl necklace I’d inherited – a few dots of white round our mother’s neck – and at the bunch of white roses in her hand. Her arm was linked with Father’s. Things that perhaps meant nothing to anyone else, but meant everything to me and Scarlet.

Scarlet was smiling too. She put the photograph aside gently, taking great care not to damage it.

The one below was just as special. It was the two of them together again, but a little more recently. The picture was taken at a lake, with trees in the background. I wondered where it was, but it was nowhere I recognised – a strange reminder that our parents had had a whole life before us. This time our mother was wearing a dark-coloured cloche hat and a silky looking dress, and Father’s arm was round her. The bump under her dress gave away the fact that she was clearly several months pregnant.

I felt a lump rising in my throat.

Beneath the pictures, there was a fairly large carved wooden box, shiny with polish. Scarlet lifted it out and held it up to the light. Tiny silhouettes of ballerinas danced round the outside. Hesitantly, she lifted the catch on the front.

A familiar tune began to play, and a tiny ballerina in a white dress popped up from inside the box. She spun around in a never-ending pirouette, dancing in the firelight. Occasionally the tinny music gave a little jolt, and she would tilt slightly before carrying on.

We peered inside. There were a few trinkets in the bottom – some old rings and a pressed white rose that I realised was probably left over from their wedding.

Scarlet put the box down on the desk and threw her arms round Father, who looked shocked. “Thank you!” she exclaimed. “This is the best present ever!”

When she let go, he smiled softly for a moment. “Don’t mention it,” he said. Then his eyes slipped over us, and he went back to staring out of the window again. The moment melted away like the frost.

Chapter Two

SCARLET

I’d barely noticed our stepmother’s stern looks over Christmas lunch. I hadn’t corrected Father when he accidentally called me “Ivy” twice. I hadn’t even had the urge to punch Joseph and John when they tried to put carrots in my hair.

I looked at the box and the photographs every chance I got. I almost felt like our mother was going to step out of them, somehow. Ivy and I opened the music box over and over again, watching the ballerina spin until the clockwork ran down and the final notes chimed slowly into the air.

“I know this tune,” Ivy had said after the first few listens. “It’s from the ballet Swan Lake!” I knew she was right as soon as she said it. I had sometimes heard our ballet teacher, Miss Finch, playing it on her piano.

But the more we listened, the more something began to stand out to me. It was that tiny jolt in the music. I held my ear close to it, and could hear a little click each time.

That Christmas evening, sitting on the floor in our dusty old bedroom, I opened it up again. I wondered if it always happened, or only sometimes. Was it just an accident, something that had been put together wrongly in the clockwork? Was I even hearing what I thought I could hear?

“Do you hear it too?” I asked Ivy, who was peering down at me from her bed.

“The funny click?” she said.

I nodded and flipped the lid shut once more. “What do you think it is?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps it’s a bit broken?”

It was possible, I supposed. I picked it up and gently turned it over, hearing the rings inside tumble up into the lid. There wasn’t any damage to it that I could see – in fact it looked pristine.

Ivy slipped off her bed and sat on the floor next to me. “Wait,” she said, after staring at the box for a few moments. “Open it again.”

I did as she said, and she pointed into it as the tune played. “Look. The inside isn’t as deep as the outside …”

Peering more closely, I saw that she was right. There was at least an inch or so on the bottom below where the rings and the pressed rose sat.

“I don’t know,” Ivy continued. “Perhaps it’s just where the mechanism goes.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’ve seen one of these opened up before. All of the mechanics are under the ballerina.” I pointed to the miniature wooden stage that she was attached to. “But there could be something else under here.” I began running my fingers round the edges, and sure enough, I thought I could feel a seam in the wood. “Hmm.”

That was when the idea struck me.

As the ballerina wound down, I folded her away and then opened the box again. But this time, when I heard the strange click in the tune, I pressed on the side as hard as I could.

And much to our surprise, a drawer shot out of the bottom of the box.

“Gosh!” Ivy exclaimed, nearly falling sideways.

We both stared into the secret drawer. Inside it was a sheaf of folded paper, a little yellowed but mostly untouched by time.

“Please tell me it’s not diary pages,” Ivy said. “I don’t want to find any more …”

I poked her indignantly. Those diary pages I’d left her to find had saved me from a horrible fate in an asylum after our evil headmistress sent me there, thank you very much.

I pulled the papers out and flattened them on the floor. There were several, and they were covered in writing – or, more specifically, in numbers.

“Oh,” said Ivy as she pored over them. “Isn’t this—”

“The Whispers’ code!” I interrupted her.

It was a long story, but we’d discovered last year that our mother had attended Rookwood School, just like we did. And during that time, she’d been in a secret club whose members called themselves the Whispers in the Walls, fighting back against the nasty Mr Bartholomew. We’d found their coded book of accusations against him, and our best friend Ariadne had been able to translate it.

“We’ll have to take this to Ariadne,” Ivy said, and I nodded. If it was the same code, she would be able to tell us what it said.

But there was something else. As I leafed through the pages, I saw that there was something written on the back of the last one. I turned it over. It was real writing, not just numbers. The top line read:

For my husband

Ivy and I looked at each other in shock. Could this be a letter from our mother? Her last secret? We read on.

I hope that I am with you now, safe and well, and able to tell this all to you in person. If I am not, then I pray it is not because he has found me. I shouldn’t have got involved again. I see that now. If you can interpret the secrets I have written on these pages, then perhaps you will be able to act where I could not. But I beg you, proceed with the utmost caution. It is a path fraught with danger and corruption.

I wanted to tell the truth, but if I never do, just know this: I am sorry for what I have hidden. Everything I did has been with the best of intentions. I wanted to expose everything that he has done, to free the past and change the future for the better. Perhaps it is too late for that now.

My name is Ida Jane Grey. I love you.

My hands were shaking so much that I almost dropped the paper. Our mother was speaking to us from the past, like a ghost.

“I pray it is not because he has found me,” Ivy whispered. “Who’s he? Mr Bartholomew?”

“It must be,” I said, although I had no way to be sure, since we couldn’t read the coded writing. But our mother had spent her life running from him, so it seemed to make sense.

Ivy put her hand over her mouth. “You don’t think … he did something to her?”

I thought about it for a moment, but then I shook my head with certainty. “Our mother died in childbirth, didn’t she? I don’t see how the headmaster could have had anything to do with that. And whatever this says …” I turned the pages over in my hands, “… nobody’s got their hands on it for years. I don’t think Father had any idea these were in here.”