I eye the wastepaper basket. ‘I don’t think so. She wouldn’t. Would she?’
‘Might have,’ Summer shrugs. ‘She’s so busy lately, she might not have been paying attention. Anyway, forget those stupid letters, Skye, please! I swear, it’s like you’re obsessed! Come downstairs – we’re just about to start Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Mum’s made popcorn …’
I go with her to keep the peace, and in the end we stay up till midnight, our eyes square from too many DVDs, our bellies full of pizza and popcorn. Seconds before the clock strikes twelve we run outside to wish each other a Happy New Year, singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to the sound of Coco on the violin, which is pretty painful but fun all the same. All of us except for Honey, anyway, who has gone to a New Year’s party down in the village and isn’t back yet.
There are fireworks going off in the distance somewhere, and the stars hang above us in a velvet sky as we hug and laugh and pretend that Coco’s playing isn’t hurting our ears.
‘I’m going to practise even more from now on,’ Coco says as we head upstairs to bed. ‘It’s my New Year’s Resolution.’
‘Right,’ Cherry says politely.
‘Great,’ Summer adds through gritted teeth.
‘I might be a famous violinist,’ Coco muses. ‘One day.’
‘Go to bed, titch,’ I sigh. ‘Happy New Year, you lot.’
‘Happy New Year,’ they echo as we part on the landing. ‘Goodnight!’
Summer and I are almost ready for bed when the racket starts up. It sounds like cats being strangled, or fingernails scraping down an old-fashioned blackboard, or the wails of a hundred screeching banshees.
‘Oh no!’ I exclaim. ‘She’s playing that wretched violin!’
‘Sheesh,’ Summer growls. ‘I wish Paddy had never found all that stuff in the attic. Some things are better left alone. There’s you with those creepy dresses, and Coco with a violin that sounds like someone being murdered …’
Summer puts a pillow over her head. ‘It’s painful,’ she says, in a slightly muffled voice. ‘Make it go away!’
But Coco’s violin playing does not go away.
‘Leave her,’ I sigh. ‘Cherry probably can’t hear it like we can, and Honey’s out … when does she ever have a chance to practise, with the B&B guests around? Give her five minutes!’
Summer drops the pillow and slaps her hands over her ears, and my heart slows.
Where the pillows have shifted, I glimpse the corner of a faded blue bundle.
‘Summer!’ I say, my voice unsteady. ‘What’s that under your pillow?’
‘What?’ Summer says, but she blinks at me like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights.
I go over to her bed and yank out a slim stack of envelopes tied up with ribbon, addressed to Clara Travers in a bold, sloping script.
‘The missing letters!’ I say. ‘You told me you hadn’t seen them, but you had them all the time! You lied to me!’
‘Not on purpose!’ Summer protests, but her cheeks are pink with guilt. ‘I was just curious. You’ve been so obsessed with stupid Clara Travers. It’s all you care about these days. It’s weird, Skye, can’t you see? I just read a couple of the letters, but they were so dull …’
‘But you said you didn’t remember seeing them, that they’d probably been thrown away.’
‘I wish they had been,’ Summer says.
‘I don’t get it. Why would you lie?’
Her eyes flash with anger. ‘I was worried, OK?’ she snaps. ‘You’ve changed, since you got those stupid clothes. You know I think they’re creepy, but you don’t seem to care, and now you’ve got that ugly old gramophone it’s even worse! It’s spooky, Skye. Remember that dream you told me about, where you dreamt of Clara and the gypsies and woke up all upset and confused? I took them because I was worried! Your eyes are all faraway and dreamy half the time, like you’ve got a secret. It scares me. We never used to have secrets!’
‘You never used to lie to me either,’ I say coldly.
‘For God’s sake!’ Summer yells, turning away from me. ‘That horrible noise is hurting my head!’ She picks up an old knitted rabbit, a toy we’ve shared since we were toddlers, and chucks it at the door. Coco’s violin practice creaks on anyhow.
‘I mean it, you know,’ Summer says. ‘It’s as if you’re hiding something from me. I can tell!’
I can’t meet her eyes. I guess I am hiding a lot from Summer – more than I ever would have done before. The fact I am falling for Finch, a boy who may or may not be a ghost; Alfie, with his secret crush; my worries about Millie; and the way I am feeling overshadowed by my twin.
I just don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want to share Finch because he is something that is mine alone, something special, and I couldn’t bear it if Summer freaked out at the idea of me crushing on a ghost boy. As for Alfie, I promised to keep his secret – I can’t go back on that. And how do I explain how I’m feeling about Millie when Summer is actually part of the problem?
Tears sting my eyes, but I won’t, can’t let them fall.
‘Taking the letters … it was stupid, I know,’ she admits. ‘It’s just … you’re more interested in this stupid Clara Travers than in me, lately. I feel like I’m losing you, sometimes. You’re always with Cherry or that annoying Alfie Anderson, or else you’re mooning about over the gramophone or the dresses, thinking about some girl who’s been dead for almost a century. I hate it! You used to listen to me, you used to need me …’
Sudden anger flares up inside me. For as long as I can remember, it has always been about what Summer wants, what Summer needs. She cannot possibly be jealous that I am spending time with Cherry, my own stepsister, or Alfie, because she doesn’t even like him. Summer has no shortage of friends herself. She has even collected Millie up … my best friend.
To start with, a part of me really did believe that Alfie Anderson might like me, and even though I’d rather have a dream boy than a clown, it still hurt to know that even he prefers my sister to me. I am just good old Skye, who wears funny clothes, who is a loyal friend and a good listener and once mummified her Barbie doll with toilet roll. Which twin would you choose, if you were Alfie?
Resentment curls inside me, a feeling I am not proud of. If I’m honest, it’s not just resentment but envy too. Summer is the talented one, the one who shines.
Across the landing, the violin screeches out a jarring, unearthly soundtrack to our argument. The last person to play that violin may well have been Clara Travers, and I shiver at the thought.
‘I just have a bad feeling about all this,’ Summer says. ‘The spooky story, the letters, the clothes. And I had a dream too, like the ones you had. A really weird dream …’
The anger melts away and my heart stills. ‘You did?’ I whisper. ‘What kind of dream?’
If twins can think the same thoughts, feel the same feelings, then maybe they can dream the same dreams too?
But Summer’s eyes brim with tears.
‘It wasn’t a dream exactly,’ she says. ‘More of a nightmare. I know it wasn’t real, but it felt that way … I can’t explain …’
‘A nightmare?’
She bites her lip. ‘It was horrible,’ she tells me. ‘I was dreaming about Clara Travers, and she was wearing the green dress and the coat from the trunk. She was running through the woods, looking for someone … crying … and when she turned to look at me, I realized it wasn’t Clara Travers at all. It was you. And then everything changed and you were underwater, struggling, drowning, and I was calling your name but you couldn’t hear. It was horrible, Skye, you have to believe me …’
My scalp prickles and a shiver runs down my spine. A dream like that would be enough to frighten anyone.
‘I do believe you,’ I whisper. ‘But it’s not real, Summer. Just a nightmare.’
‘It felt real!’ she argues. ‘It felt like a warning! I know it’s crazy, but what if there really is a ghost, and she’s angry at you fo
r wearing her dresses? What if she actually died in that green dress, and now she’s trying to make you do the same things she did?’
I’ve wondered whether the dreams could be some kind of echo from the past, evidence that Clara was reaching out to me, pulling me into her story, but the idea of that has never scared me before. Now I can’t help wondering if Summer is right, if I am losing myself in it all.
Could Clara actually be angry that I am wearing her velvet flapper dresses, falling for her gypsy boy? Will my dreams end in nightmares of drowning, death? No wonder my twin hates the old clothes, the gramophone.
‘Hey,’ I say, moving across to sit beside her. ‘Clara didn’t die in the green dress, or the coat … they wouldn’t be here if she had, would they? Her body was never found.’
‘I suppose …’
‘And we don’t believe in ghosts, remember? We’ve just scared ourselves, that’s all. Mum and Paddy found the trunk on Halloween, just after we’d been telling that ghost story. Face it, Summer, you and I both have very strong imagination. That’s not always a good thing!’
Summer nods, taking a deep breath in.
‘Skye … you’re not still having dreams about Clara, are you?’ she asks.
I am, of course. Every night now, the dreams come, marshmallow sweet and softer than reality, dreams where I can’t figure out if I am Skye Tanberry or Clara Travers. Does Summer need to know that?
‘No,’ I lie to my twin. ‘No more dreams.’
Out on the landing we hear a creak of footsteps. Honey, home from her party, bangs on Coco’s bedroom door and yells at her to stop the racket, and at last the violin’s wails fade and die.
I wipe Summer’s tears away. ‘C’mon. It’s a whole new year,’ I whisper. ‘Let’s not fight.’
‘No,’ Summer sighs. ‘That’s the last thing I want.’
I bite my lip and hope the New Year will wipe out the tensions and resentments. A fresh start – that’s exactly what me and my sister need.
24
Much later, once Summer is asleep, I switch on my bedside lamp and read through the letters. There have to be some answers to the mystery here. Who is Finch? Did Clara fall in love with him? What happened between them, at the end? And why do I seem to be reliving it all in my dreams?
I think briefly about what Summer said, about me being obsessed. She’s right, I know. My dream world is soft and sweet and comforting, like the taste of marshmallows … but it’s sticky too, and just as addictive. I can’t seem to find my way out of it, and even I find that slightly worrying. I’m pretty sure that the only way I can stop the dreams is to find some answers …
But the letters are not from Finch, of course. A Romany traveller boy who’d probably never even been to school … he wouldn’t be big on writing, I guess. No, the letters are from Harry, the stern-faced man in the locket photograph. They are love letters, old-fashioned and formal and achingly dull.
Slowly I piece together a picture. Harry and Clara met in London, at the house of family friends. He drove down to see her, taking her out for a drive in his Austin Twenty motor car, and after that there were dinners and house parties and theatre trips and presents. A locket, a powder compact with butterflies on the lid, a tame linnet in a cage.
I blink. Could it be? Across the room, the vintage powder-blue birdcage hangs in the darkness, a few curling tendrils from the climbing plant inside it silhouetted in the moonlight. The birdcage … that was Clara’s too. Summer can’t have bothered to read that far. How would she feel if she knew?
I read on.
The last present of all is an engagement ring, and soon after that, wedding plans and talk of how Clara would come to live in London, and how there wouldn’t be quite so many theatre trips and parties then because of course there would be budgets to keep and a household to run and children to consider.
I shiver. Did Clara ever look at the tame linnet in its pretty powder-blue cage and feel every bit as trapped? I am not sure what a linnet is, exactly, but from the letters I gather it is a wild bird, a songbird, small and bright and beautiful. I don’t think many people would want to keep a wild bird captive, these days, but perhaps things were different back then. Perhaps it was just the way things were, like girls getting married at seventeen because it was expected of them?
I don’t know Clara’s reasons for saying yes to her fiancé, but as I read I can feel the prison walls closing in around her. Did she feel it too? Was that why she fell for a gypsy boy and the promise of a life on the road?
I fold the letters, tie them up again with ribbon, switch off the lamp. I think maybe my sister is right, and I am getting a little too hung up on a sad story from the past, tangled up in shadows from long ago. Summer’s nightmare worries me – not because I think it means anything sinister, but because it shows how skewed things are becoming.
I am spending way too much time thinking about Clara, wearing her clothes, imagining her life, her story, the boy she loved, the man she didn’t. Dreaming her dreams.
I wanted to find the letters so much because I thought they would help … but they’ve just deepened the mystery. I need to find out who Finch is and why he is haunting my dreams because, until I know, I am not going to be able to let go of him.
25
January feels like the longest month since time began. The weather is grey and cold and endlessly wet and even the teachers are depressed and grumpy, except for Mr Wolfe, who pins a lifesize Dr Who poster up on the classroom door and starts dressing the part too, wearing a bow tie to class. It’s not a good look.
Interestingly, though, he has graduated from everyone’s favourite teacher to torment to everyone’s favourite teacher, full stop. ‘He’s a dude,’ Alfie shrugs, which may be partly because the two of them bonded over the whole flying rucksack incident, or maybe because Alfie is a big fan of Dr Who.
He cannot resist the occasional tease, of course. Old habits die hard. ‘What’s the time, Mr Wolfe?’ is Alfie’s favourite greeting to our history teacher these days, reminding me of the playground game we had at Kitnor Primary. I think he is waiting for Mr Wolfe to say, ‘Dinner time!’
A couple of weeks into the new term, Mr Wolfe brandishes his new sonic screwdriver at the class and announces we are having a surprise history quiz. There are groans of dismay because nobody has revised, but Mr Wolfe says that the questions are random, some based on things we’ve been studying and some not.
There is a prize, a huge bar of chocolate, and Mr Wolfe says we can use any method we like to find the answers providing we stay inside the classroom.
‘This quiz is to show you that history can be fun,’ Mr Wolfe says. ‘I want you to be time travellers. We may not have time machines or sonic screwdrivers in real life, but we can find other ways to unlock the secrets of the past. Books, letters, photos, paintings, objects … all of those things can help. Be time detectives – use any evidence you can find to piece together the answers.’
I blink. That’s what I need to be – a time detective, solving the mystery of Clara and Finch. It’s like Mr Wolfe says, it’s just a case of finding the evidence and piecing it together. And now I know the letters can’t help me, I need to find some more clues.
There is a scramble for the three classroom computers, and the place goes into meltdown as pupils ransack the stock cupboard, leafing wildly through books and sorting through the topic boxes. ‘Can we use mobiles, Sir?’ Alfie asks, and Mr Wolfe says yes, but not to wave them about too much in case Mr King comes in, as we are not actually supposed to have them switched on in school.
‘Cool,’ Alfie says, taking out an iPhone to google for the answers while other kids try ringing home for help.
I scan through the quiz, my mind elsewhere.
Which British leader abolished Christmas?
Who was Hereward the Wake?
What is a palaeontologist?
Mr Wolfe is a teacher who believes in time travel, who thinks that all of us can be history detectives. If anyone could
help me sort facts from fiction on the Clara story, it would be him. I abandon my quiz and wander over to his desk.
‘Everything OK, Skye?’ he asks, smiling at me over half-moon spectacles. ‘Not finished already, surely?’
‘Um … yes, Sir,’ I say.
All around me, my classmates are showing a real feeling for history too. Millie is wearing a papier-mâché Viking helmet rescued from the stock cupboard and Summer is twirling about the room in a red cloak and a crown taken from the ‘Kings & Queens’ topic box. Kids are sitting on tabletops, talking on mobiles, leafing through textbooks, gathered round the computers, some of them wearing chain mail or top hats.
‘It was Cromwell, trust me,’ someone is saying. ‘My dad mentioned it over the holidays …’
‘What’s a wake, anyway?’
‘Hang on, hang on, I’m googling it …’
‘It’s the study of birds, isn’t it?’
‘No, no, that’s ornithology. That’s got nothing to do with history …’
If Mr King were to stick his head round the door, it would look like chaos, but I think it is a good kind of chaos.
Mr Wolfe raises an eyebrow. ‘So, Skye? Can I help?’
I swallow. ‘I haven’t finished the quiz yet, Sir, but … I wanted to ask you something …’
‘Ask away,’ he says.
I look around, but nobody is listening. ‘Do you believe in ghosts, Sir?’
Mr Wolfe raises an eyebrow. ‘That’s a loaded question,’ he says. ‘I haven’t actually seen any myself, Skye. But then again, I wouldn’t rule anything out. History can leave a long shadow on the present day, I know that much. Who knows? Why? Have you seen something?’
A blush creeps into my cheeks. I haven’t, of course, not really. A dream is very different from a ghostly figure in white who glides through walls and makes the temperature plummet down below zero. And wasn’t I the one telling Summer a few weeks ago that ghosts don’t exist?
‘No, no, of course not,’ I say, backtracking. ‘It’s just that there’s a ghost story in our family I would like to investigate. I’d like to find out more of the details, but I don’t know where to look … or who to ask. I mean, there might not be any information out there …’
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