‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ Milly sobbed miserably.
But Pearl was triumphant. ‘But we both did it, didn’t we? We cursed that woman. She’ll die now, for sure.’
‘That’s an awful thing to say,’ Milly protested. Tears and snot ran down to her chin.
Her sister’s expression softened. ‘Is your hand still bleeding? Ah yes, I can see it is. Poor you.’ She smirked. ‘See? That’s proof that you’re in it as much as I am. So shut up!’
Milly wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She had never felt so dreadful. They cleaned themselves up as best they could then crept back to bed. As they passed the grandfather clock in the hall, it struck three. Up in their bedroom, they both put on dry nightdresses before getting into bed.
Unperturbed by the night’s events, Pearl plumped up her pillow and settled down to sleep immediately. Milly lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, desperately trying to get warm. Her silent tears ran down her cheeks and onto her pillow. Those awful words reverberated around in her head.
‘. . . do all in your power to bring pain and death . . .’
They shouldn’t have done it.
‘May this doll bring a thousand curses . . .’
Not one curse but a thousand. The words wouldn’t go away. Restless, Milly turned on her side. Only witches said curses. Did this mean she was a witch? She knew her father’s friend was ill, but what if she died? Would that make it her fault? Was it really possible to curse someone to death? She turned over again but, still engulfed in her own misery, she couldn’t sleep.
‘Pearl,’ she eventually whispered into the darkness, ‘what was that book you made me kiss? You know, the little one?’
‘The Bible, of course,’ said Pearl.
And Milly’s blood ran cold.
A few hundred yards away, Lena pulled the bedcovers over her head again. She wished Pa was here. She had been a bit anxious about moving to the cottage but, apart from the strangeness of being in a house, it had been all right. A nurse cared for Angel and a woman called Nan cooked their food and cleaned up after them. Lena amused herself as best she could, but she was distracted. She worried that her mother might take a long time to get better. One look at her poor skinny body was proof enough of how ill she was. Angel had a bad cough as well. Sometimes she coughed so hard she had blood on her hanky, but no one ever seemed to notice or, if they did, they never said anything. Lena didn’t want to worry her mother, so she didn’t point it out either.
Completely covered by the sheet, Lena wondered what it was like to be dead. Would it be like being asleep? When Granny Roe died, the vicar said she’d gone to heaven, but how did she get there? If Angel ever died, would she go to heaven? Lena hoped so, but there was no guarantee, was there. And if her mother did die, who would look after her? The fairground people were the only family she had, but she wasn’t actually related to any of them. Again, she thought of Pa. Dear, loving Pa. She and her mother adored him, but they weren’t with him all the time. Pa would know what to do. He would look after her – wouldn’t he?
‘Oh Pa,’ she whispered and, burying her face into the pillow, Lena cried herself to sleep.
The next morning, Milly and Pearl woke up late. As soon as Martha bustled into the room, everything seemed to be a mad panic to get ready for school, so Milly didn’t have a chance to talk to her sister about the previous evening’s events.
Once their cases were packed and they had eaten breakfast, Dixon brought the car around to take Pearl to Worthing station. It had been decided that she should set off first because her school was just outside of Brighton. She was to catch the train by herself, but she wouldn’t be alone. She’d be travelling with her school friends.
Milly had to go to Chichester and, being that much younger, she wasn’t allowed to do the journey by herself. As soon as he got back from the station, Dixon would drive her all the way to her school.
Pearl left the house without even saying goodbye. The events of last night didn’t appear to have bothered her. Meanwhile, Milly couldn’t stop thinking about what they’d done. The blood-letting, the curse, and chucking her dolly with the stuck sunken eye to the back of the wood pile played on her mind. Thank goodness it couldn’t talk. How could she live with herself if somebody found out? With a bit of luck, nobody had seen or heard them. There was a moment when she’d fancied she’d seen the curtain move, but it was very dark, so maybe she was mistaken.
She told herself it was all make-believe anyway – kids’ stuff. Yes, it was stupid and cruel, but it was only a game. There was no way Pearl would know how to actually curse someone, but even that thought didn’t make Milly feel any better.
Milly stayed in her bedroom for as long as she could. Her father wasn’t home and she couldn’t face the servants. She feared they’d see in her eyes that something was wrong. Besides, after being out in the pouring rain, she had a headache and a bit of a sore throat coming. If she hung around in the kitchen, Mrs Cunningham might make her stay at home until they’d called the doctor, and Milly was desperate to get away; away from the house and away from the cottage.
It was only when Mrs Cunningham called up the stairs to say that Dixon had returned from the station and was ready to go that Milly suddenly remembered her shoes. Her stomach did a somersault. Her mother had gone off to London and she still hadn’t bought her a new pair. Her father had left the house the day before on business. What on earth was she going to do? Would the servants have enough money and the time to buy shoes? She hoped they would. Her father would pay them back for sure.
‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ said Mrs Cunningham, when Milly asked if Dixon could take her into town, ‘but there’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t take on a responsibility like that. You’ll just have to take your old shoes.’
‘But they hurt my toes,’ Milly protested as Cook tried to squeeze Milly’s feet inside them.
‘They do seem a bit tight,’ Mrs Cunningham remarked.
‘Here, give them to me,’ said Dixon and, taking a very sharp knife, he cut away the front. When he’d finished, Milly put them on. Her toes stuck out a long way beyond the sole of her shoes and they looked pretty awful, but at least she could walk without pain. Milly could only imagine what the other girls at school would say, and now that Dixon had cut them, there was no going back. It was so embarrassing she burst into tears.
‘There, there, my dear,’ said Mrs Cunningham, putting her arm around Milly’s shoulders. ‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see. You just tell your teacher that your mother didn’t have time to take you to buy a new pair. She’ll understand. They know you’re a good little girl.’
‘And at least they won’t cramp your feet any more,’ Dixon said chirpily, ‘not with your toes flapping in the wind like that.’
Mrs Cunningham gave him a hefty nudge in the ribs.
A few minutes later, Milly climbed into the back seat of the car. She didn’t wave goodbye, even though Mrs Cunningham and Martha stood on the steps for her. She felt too miserable. She stared down at her feet again. She was going to be a laughing stock in the dorm, but maybe she deserved it. Mrs Cunningham thought she was a good girl, but she wasn’t, was she? Good girls, nice girls, didn’t go about casting curses over sick people. God must be very angry with her. Perhaps this was her punishment for what she and Pearl had done.
Over in the cottage, Lena woke up to the smell of toast, so she knew Nan was already in the kitchen. After a wash, she got dressed and hurried to her mother’s bedroom, but the nurse had barred the door with a chair.
‘Come back in a minute, lovey,’ she called as Lena tried the handle. ‘We won’t be long.’
Lena knew better than to argue. The nurse would be giving Angel a wash, then changing her bed sheets and putting on a clean nightie. They didn’t want Lena in the room. ‘Sick people don’t like anyone popping in when they’re getting dressed,’ Nan had said kindly when Lena first arrived in the cottage. ‘Your mum will call you when she’s ready.’
In the kitchen, Nan and her husband, Cyril, who acted as a general handyman, sat at the table with serious faces. Nan rose to her feet as Lena walked in.
‘Ready for your breakfast, dear?’ She was a cheerful woman, as round as she was tall. From what Lena could gather, she and Cyril had no children of their own but they treated her very well. They spent all day in the cottage, and one or the other of them stayed all night, even though they had their own place at the opposite end of the village near the bottom of Bost Hill. Cyril had promised to take her up the hill to see the windmill at the top of High Salvington.
Nan bustled around the kitchen and eventually put a plate of bacon and eggs with fried bread in front of Lena. A cup of strong tea followed. Lena ate everything but she struggled a little. She didn’t like to ask about her mother’s condition, but she knew something had changed. There was a new atmosphere in the house, one which made her feel anxious.
When she’d finished her meal, the nurse still wasn’t done, so Lena put on her coat and went outside. It was still damp after all the rain the previous evening, but the sun was making a valiant effort to dry everything up. She thought again about last night. Had she really heard the Fairies or had she imagined it? Surely the Sussex Fairies weren’t real. They were just a part of local folklore, weren’t they? Plus, when she had looked out of the window, she had definitely seen human children. As she pondered this, she wandered around to the wood pile under the window of the boxroom which served as her bedroom.
She saw the footprints first. A few clear prints and a large number of squishy mud slides by the recess, so now she knew for sure she hadn’t heard the Sussex Fairies. Whoever had made these marks was definitely human. There was a candle stuck in the mud and, right at the back of the log pile, she saw a dolly. Its legs were sticking up. It took a little effort to reach it because she had to be careful not to let the logs tumble, but eventually Lena managed to pull the dolly out. It looked a sorry sight. Its face was caked in mud and one eye had sunk right into its head. The doll’s hair stuck up all over the place, as if someone had given it a very bad haircut, but it did have a very pretty floral dress, so it must have been loved once. Lena recalled a voice crying out, ‘Give
her back. She’s my dolly.’ Perhaps she should try and find the little girl who owned the doll. It would have been very hard to see it right at the back of the wood pile in the dark, and she did sound upset about it, but why did she put it there in the first place?
