The Whispers in the Walls. Sophie Cleverly

my name. I have a tiny room, like a cell, with bars on the windows. It’s painted this horrible shade of mint green that makes me want to vomit. But I’ve spent so much time staring at the walls now that I could draw you a picture of every crack and every paint bubble and every tiny strand of spiderweb.

      I have to see Doctor Abraham at noon on weekdays. He says I have a “mental disease”, but honestly he seems to think being a girl is enough of a mental disease on its own. For the first few appointments I just screamed at him and knocked his papers off his desk, demanding he let me out, and all he would say was, “You’re being hysterical, Charlotte”.

      Hysterical! I’d like to see how he’d react if he were locked up in here and people tried to act like it was for his own good. “SCARLET!” I yelled back at him. “My name is “Scarlet!” It didn’t seem to help.

      I no longer have a diary. My old one, the lovely leather-bound book with SG scored on the cover, is now in pieces around Rookwood, where I prayed my twin Ivy would find it. Once upon a time Ivy had one the same, only with her initials, but she was always too busy with her nose in other people’s books to write down her own story.

      I begged and begged the nurses for a notebook to write in, and finally Sister Agnes gave in and brought me this one that she’d only used a few pages of. It was just grocery lists and dull things like “must send that package to Aunt Marie in Dover”, so I tore out the pages and made them into tiny paper planes, which passed a good half hour in this place, where the days are long and empty.

      I wish I knew how long I’d been here. Until today I had no way to count the days. I tried scratching marks into the paint, but it had been done by so many inmates before me that I couldn’t keep track of my marks.

      But … I’m not like them. Some of them are truly disturbed, they cry and shriek all the time, and I don’t.

      It’s just … sometimes, I think perhaps, just maybe, the doctor is right. Why would I be in an asylum if I was perfectly sane? Maybe I just made up the whole thing.

      I dreamt that I had a twin who would always be there. I dreamt that I was my father’s little girl, that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. I dreamt that there was a girl named Violet who disappeared into thin air.

      The only way that I’ll know if it was all real is if Ivy finds me. But it’s been so long now … it could be too late. The trail I left could have been destroyed; Miss Fox could have found it and tossed it into a fire.

      I must have hope. Ivy will find me. She’ll come.

      I know it.

      I watched the tears roll down Ivy’s face.

      “You did it,” I said. “You found me!”

      She tossed the tatty notebook aside and swept me into a bone-crushing hug.

      “I’m never losing you again,” she promised.

      

      It’s not easy having to tell your father that, despite him believing the opposite, you’re not dead. But looking on the bright side: at least I was alive to tell him that.

      Ivy and I knocked on the door of our childhood home the day after that first telephone call from the asylum (a lot of silence followed by a lot of shouting). Miss Finch had managed to get the school to pay for a room in a boarding house while everything was sorted out and Father made his way back from London.

      It was a cold day at the beginning of November, and we stood shivering on the steps of the cottage.

      The door was opened by a hideous she-troll.

      “Oh. There’s two of you again,” she sneered.

      “How nice to see you, dear stepmother,” I replied, pushing past her.

      She huffed indignantly at me as Ivy followed me in. “Scarlet, if you think you can walk around like you own the place just because of what happened, then you’ve got another thi—”

      She froze mid-sentence at the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. Suddenly she put on a different expression like a mask, and pulled us into her arms. “Oh, girls,” she simpered. “I’m just so glad to have you home safe.”

      Father stepped down into the hall. When his eyes met mine, he took a deep breath and adjusted his tie.

      “Scarlet,” he said.

      “Father.”

      “I just … I can’t believe it. You’re here.” His normally cold exterior was showing some cracks – tears glinted in his eyes. I broke free of my stepmother, ran over and embraced him. He wrapped his arms around the back of my head, not quite touching me, but it was closer than we’d been in years.

      Ivy hung back. “We need to tell you everything,” she said. “Rookwood isn’t just awful, it’s dangerous. And what Miss Fox did—”

      Our stepmother snorted. “It’s all over now, isn’t it? This Miss Fox has run away. There’s no need to trouble your father with such things.”

      Father straightened up and looked at his wife. “No, Ivy’s right,” he said. “I want to understand how this happened. Let’s go to the study.”

      He led us away from her, and I couldn’t help feeling a little amused by how horrified she looked at being left out of the conversation. Why did she want to avoid the subject of what had happened, anyway?

      We walked through the house, past familiar doors and fireplaces and furniture. The landscape of my childhood. Harry, one of my young stepbrothers, peered round a door and stuck his tongue out at me. What a way to welcome your sister back from the dead! I reached over to give him a slap, but Ivy grabbed my wrist and pulled me past.

      Father’s study was still dull and sparsely furnished, with a mahogany writing desk, a chair and some filing cabinets. Ivy and I sat down on the floor, beside the fire that half-heartedly smouldered in the hearth.

      Father sat in the chair and began polishing his glasses.

      “I don’t know where to start,” Ivy said.

      “I do,” I replied.

      I told him everything that had happened. I told him about Vile Violet, my roommate who had bossed me around and spied on me and stolen my things. I told him about wicked Miss Fox, who had taken Violet away after she threatened to reveal a dark secret up on the rooftops. I told him how I’d tried to confront Miss Fox, only for her to smuggle me out of school and have me locked up in the asylum.

      Father stared intently at the wall above my head, but I could tell he was listening from the sharp intake of breath every time I got to a shocking moment.

      Ivy chimed in towards the end, telling him what had happened at Rookwood in the meantime. I’d heard more of her story in the boarding house and on the train. How Miss Fox had hidden me away to save her own skin, to stop anyone finding out that she had an illegitimate daughter. Not to mention that she was funding her lifestyle with the money paid by parents as school fees (perhaps explaining why the only thing on the dining hall menu was stew).

      “It was a nightmare, Father,” I finished, “and I’m just so glad to be home. So can we stay?”

      He looked at me. “No.”

      “Why?” I gaped at him.

      He took off his glasses and put them down on the desk. “Scarlet, you know why. You’ve got to go back to school.”

      I felt a wave of unease wash over me.

      “But Father, someone from that school put Scarlet in an asylum and pretended she was dead,” said my twin. “You can’t send us back there!”