Page 64 of The Light Between Worlds

“Yes, Philippa,” Ev answers meekly. She’s trembling from the cold, but when she glances up at me, her eyes are clear.

“And what happened to your feet?” I sigh. “Did you walk through a snowbank barefoot? Or—don’t tell me. You left the window open all night because Georgie’s away.”

Evelyn gives me a sarcastic look. “Really, Phil. The things you think of. My shoes are too small.”

I’m so relieved to be met with such a mundane answer, I laugh out loud, and then stop abruptly as the laughter turns to nausea.

“Are you alright?” Ev asks.

I let out a slow breath and smile. “Of course I am. Now come on, we’ve got books to send out.”

But later, after lights-out, I creep across the hall to Evelyn’s room and silently open the door, just a crack.

She sits on the edge of the bed. Untouched on the desk is a parcel from my parents, shaped suspiciously like a shoe box. I watch as Evelyn pulls off her shoes and socks, a sharp hiss escaping her as she does so.

The backs of her feet aren’t blistered. They might have been, once, but they’re beyond that now. Instead, round suppurating patches mark her heels, an angry and raw red against her pale skin. I slump against the wall and swallow. I’ll have to bully Ev into the nurse’s office tomorrow, though I hate to do it. Any time I’m forced to allowothers into my sister’s secret world, it’s a danger to her. Who knows when someone might take it into their head that she’d be better off in an institution? And that, I know, would kill us both.

I lean my head back, praying this winter will be short, and soon melt into the relief of spring.

47

I HAVEN’T GOT THE COURAGE TO TELL MUM AND DADwhat I’m planning, so I leave them a note on Friday morning before heading to the Gallery. Once there, I’m so distracted that Presswick casts murderous glances in my direction and sends me off an hour early.

At Charing Cross, which is impersonal and crowded and unfamiliar, I buy a ticket for a train that’s just leaving and have to run to catch it. I slide into a carriage that’s empty except for a traveling businessman, and rebuff his attempts at conversation with frigid, one-word answers. After that I’m left to my own thoughts, and the passing late-winter countryside.

The leafless beeches wave to me, and at noon an attendant brings a cart round with stale ham and cheese sandwiches. My companion has two, but I couldn’t eat a bite if I tried. Instead, I drink coffee, and try to think of what I’ll say to Max, to Georgie, to the Curmudgeon, if my nerve doesn’t fail and I don’t go straight home on the next London-bound train.

All too soon they call out the stop at Hardwick.

The little open-air platform seems to have shrunk since the last time I stood on it, and Hardwick itself seems smaller and faded, too. No one’s expecting me, so I walk the two miles out to St. Agatha’s, passing by St. Joseph’s on my way. The wind is icy, so I tuck my chin into the collar of my coat and keep my head down. I climb a rise in the road and St. Agatha’s appears below like magic, set against the grey and dreaming wood and warmed by the last long rays of the setting sun. It looks as if it’s grown out of the forest itself, like the sort of place where fairy stories might begin, rather than end, and I can’t decide if I love or hate it.

But there’s no turning back now, and the necklace that is Evelyn’s last gift to me rests cold against my skin. I clutch my overnight bag and hurry down the slope.

Classes have let out for the day, and the girls are going to clubs. Groups of them race across the quad, not wanting to stay out in the cold longer than they must. A smell of tough, boiled beef wafts out from the kitchen, mingling with the scent of wood smoke and melting snow. I glance across the quad to the dorm, but I’m not ready for that yet. Instead, I duck into the refectory where I once held court.

The girls inside look so frightfully young. I see faces I know, but they’re bright and open and untouched by trouble. Not wanting to dim that brightness, I keep to the edges of the vast dining room and slip down a hallway unrecognized. At every turn I’m met with memories of Ev, but I pass through them like mist until I reach a back stairwell.

The door at the top is shut. I knock and let myself in before an answer comes.

Max stands with her back to me, staring out a window at the nearby forest, arms crossed in front of her.

“What happened to my sister, Max?” I can’t keep the desperation from my voice.

She turns, and at the sight of me is across the room in a moment.

“Oh, Philippa,” Max murmurs with her arms around me. “I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”

“Please. I need to know.”

Max seems to shrink, to retreat inside herself. “It was nothing you hadn’t seen before. I stopped leaving her the key, for fear she’d wander off and not come back, but she found ways out. Then the evening of the winter concert she recited, and did it brilliantly, and I thought perhaps she’d take a turn for the better. But in the crowd afterward, she vanished.”

“I want to see her room.”

Max nods. “The Yard took all her things away, you know. In case she’d left something behind, to indicate her state of mind.”

“And Jamie says there was a boy,” I add. “I need to speak with him.”

“You can’t.” Max’s mouth tucks in at the edges. “He’s gone home to Yorkshire, for at least the rest of term.”