Page 57 of The Light Between Worlds

I hug Jamie tightly. He’s the only one left now who knows thethings I know, the only one who understands the real reason for Evelyn’s disappearance. When he walks out the door, I have to lean against the wall for support. If anything were to happen to my brother, too, I’m not sure I could go on.

Mum smiles when I step into the kitchen, but it’s a halfhearted expression that fails to touch her eyes. She hands me a cup of tea and we sit in silence. When I can’t take the unspoken things between us any longer, I push my chair back and mumble an excuse. I wish I was braver, not just in this moment, but in all my moments. I wish I could go back and undo the things I’ve done.

Alone in our—my—upstairs bedroom, I get into my pajamas in the dark and lay staring at Evelyn’s empty bed. Light from the streetlamp cuts through the gap in the curtains and divides the bed neatly in half, two swaths of darkness shot through by a single bright patch.

I hope there’s truth in the picture I’m looking at. I hope that even if Jamie and I are left wandering in the dark, that somewhere, Evelyn’s found happiness and light.

After a long time, I get up and cross the room. Gingerly, I lie down on my side in the space my sister’s left behind and hug her pillow to me, breathing in the last faint trace of her scent. I stay and ache and wait until I’m incandescent with longing for a perfect world the like of which I’ve never known.

Where have you gone, Ev?

What have you done?

Kitty’s behind the ticket counter on my second day, looking peaked, but she perks up a bit as I walk in.

“Well, hello again. And how was your first day in the Conversation Department?”

I wrinkle my nose. “Conversation Department?”

“Mm.” Kitty pulls out her hidden mug and sneaks a mouthful of tea. “All the rest of us call it that on account of how much endless talking goes on down there. They must generate a thousand pages of paperwork for every painting they actually clean. And themeetings, my goodness! Of course, they’re all running scared after what happened to Director Clark.”

I frown. “Sorry, I ought to know, but I’ve been a bit preoccupied the last few years.”

Kitty leans closer with a surreptitious look and lowers her voice. “There wassucha scandal, Philippa. You know they hauled all the paintings off during the war? Stuck them in some cave in Wales, but while they were there, the keepers cleaned a good lot of them. You can’t blame them for that, what else is there to do in Wales? But when they were brought back, some people thought they’d been damaged by the restoration work—that the folks in Wales had got a bit carried away. There was a committee investigation and everything, and Director Clark was quietly packed off to Oxford. That’s how Director Hendy came to be here, andthat’swhy the Conversation Department was started.”

“Gracious,” I say mildly, but it’s all coming together now—why Presswick wants a careful assistant, and why there’s so much bloody paperwork to be done.

“Presswick rules the Conversation Department with an iron fist,” Kitty goes on. “If you’re cozy with her, put in a good word for me. She’s got the director’s ear, and I want out from behind thisdesk. I’mdyingto help with acquisitions.”

“It might take some time,” I say. “And I can’t make any promises. But if I ever get a chance to mention you, I will.”

Kitty blows a kiss. “You’re a love. I’m going out dancing with some girls Friday night. Care to join us?”

I should say yes, and I would have done before Evelyn’s disappearance. I’d have set myself the task of adding London to my list of conquests and managed it by September.

But I’m not who I was. I haven’t got the heart for games of wills and words. I just want to be here, to fit in as a little cog in the complex workings of the Gallery. For once, someone else can be the key that turns the gears.

“I’ll let you know,” I tell Kitty. “You’re sweet to offer.”

41

THINGS DO GET BETTER SOMETIMES, USUALLY INthe spring. By our third spring away from the Woodlands, I realize this is how it will be—worse in winter, better at its end. The days lengthen, the world goes green, and my sister comes out of her shell. Every moment she can, she spends lingering in the back field or wandering the woods outside St. Agatha’s. When she’s able to be in the forest, she comes back brighter, more present, almost as she was before. I talk with Max about her, and we come to an agreement. Max will leave a key out for Evelyn, if I’ll watch over her when she’s off school grounds.

So, though I’ve come back to this world, I finally learn to walk the Woodlands way. I learn to be silent in the forest, so that Evelyn will not know I follow along as faithfully as her shadow. When she walks, I walk. When she sits, I sit. When she speaks whispered and wistful remembrances to the trees, I am the one who hears them.

One night, I trail along behind Evelyn to her favorite haunt—a birch ring at the heart of the forest. A sickle moon hangs above us, and the air is soft and sweet. I hang back as Evelyn steps forward, into a pool of moonlight and bluebells. Slowly, with a smile on her silver-litface, she unbraids her hair and shakes out the golden length of it.

She’s bewitching in the woodland night, a creature from another world. When she turns her face to the sky and begins to sing, even the sleeping trees of the English countryside bend closer to listen.

She sings a song we learned once upon a time in a palace by the sea. The birches sway and tremble, as if Evelyn’s clear, high voice pierces them to the quick. It pierces me, and I stand adrift, lost on a spit of grey sand beneath a grey sky,along the shores of a grey sea.

42

SCOTLAND YARD REQUESTS MY PRESENCE, DESPITEJamie’s assurance to the contrary. Accordingly, I squeeze into a little office early one morning with Inspectors Singh and Dawes, trying not to cough in the overpowering haze of cigarette smoke. Part of me wants to be cowed by them—they seem much larger in the tiny windowless cubicle than they did in my parents’ kitchen. Instead I sit straight-backed and calm, hands folded in my lap, acting like I don’t know what questions are coming and like my stomach’s not ruined by nerves.

“Miss Hapwell,” Dawes says briskly. “I know you were reluctant to speak about it in front of family, but I need to ask you more about your sister’s history. You gave the impression that she was a troubled girl.”

Oh, Evelyn.