Back in the kitchen, Lena tried to wash the mud from the doll’s face, but it was difficult because she didn’t want to let too much water get into the doll’s eye socket. It came as almost a relief when she heard the nurse calling her name. ‘Your mum wants to see you, dear,’ the nurse said, but as Lena reached the door, the woman tugged at her arm. ‘Try not to tire her, dear. She’s had a very bad night.’
As she entered her mother’s bedroom, Lena turned and saw Nan giving her an encouraging smile but, before that, she’d caught a glimpse of the expression on her face. Nan was red-eyed and upset, and Lena had a feeling that – even though she and the nurse were smiling – something was very wrong.
Chapter 6
Milly opened her eyes slowly and frowned. Everything was swimming and she was very hot. Her head hurt too. Where was she? And how did she get here? She was in bed but she wasn’t in her bedroom at home. Everything seemed to be white. The walls were white. The sheets were white. She tried to move but her whole body ached.
‘Oh, there you are,’ said a voice. ‘You’re awake.’ And someone in a nurse’s uniform appeared above her, starched cap bobbing on her head. The nurse squeezed out a flannel that she had dipped in a bowl of water on the locker beside the bed, and wiped it over Milly’s burning face. Oooh, that was so refreshing.
Milly passed her tongue over her dry lips.
‘Let me give you a little drink,’ said the nurse, slipping her hand under Milly’s head and bringing a glass of water to her lips. The water felt wonderfully cool on her swollen and parched tongue. Milly drank greedily. ‘Steady now,’ she said. ‘Not too much, too quickly, or you’ll be sick.’
As the nurse helped Milly lie back down, her patient tried to make sense of what was happening. Was she dreaming? No, her thumping headache told her this was real enough. A more thorough glance around at her surroundings told her she was in the school sick bay and the nurse was in fact Matron. But why was she here?
Matron stuffed a thermometer into her mouth and held her wrist as she looked at her fob watch. Milly closed her eyes again until she heard Matron say, ‘That’s better.’
‘Have I been ill?’ Milly’s voice was croaky and she sounded really bunged up.
‘You most certainly have. You gave us quite a fright,’ said Matron, scribbling something onto a clipboard at the end of the bed. ‘But not to worry. You seem to be on the mend now.’ She paused for a second before adding, ‘Your father is on his way.’
‘Daddy?’ Milly gasped incredulously. Her thoughts took off at a hundred miles an hour. Parents weren’t allowed to come in term time – not unless something was very wrong, like when Katie Stewart’s granny died. Had something happened to Mummy? She caught her breath. Or maybe he had found out about the terrible thing she and Pearl had done at the cottage. Her eyes grew wide with fear. Oh no! Don’t say the curse had worked. That woman . . . she wasn’t dead, was she?
‘My dear girl, you’ve gone as white as a sheet,’ said Matron, patting her hand gently. ‘It’s all right. Nobody is cross with you. You can’t help being poorly. Your father is coming to take you home.’
Milly relaxed against the pillows.
‘Now listen,’ Matron said brightly, ‘I’m just going down to the kitchen to get you a little something to eat. You haven’t had anything for two days and I’m sure you must be feeling very hungry. I shan’t be long.’ She hurried from the room and the door closed behind her.
Two days. She’d been here for two whole days. Milly tried to remember what had happened but her mind was a blank. How had forty-eight hours of her life completely vanished? She remembered that she’d felt pretty grotty when she’d got up on Sunday morning, the day Dixon brought her back to school. The journey had been uneventful and it had been good to see her old friends again, especially Sarah Whitmore, the girl who slept in the bed next to her in the dorm. However, as the day had worn on, she’d felt worse and worse. In the end, she had gone to bed early. She’d tried to sleep but everybody in the dorm kept talking until all hours.
On Monday they’d had physical education on the front lawn, but by then she was feeling so awful it was really hard to do the exercises. Miss Averard had shouted at her a couple of times but Milly hadn’t been able to follow the instructions. Her limbs had felt like lead, her throat hurt like billy-o and her head had been banging. How she’d got through the day, she never knew. Of course she’d got into hot water about her shoes . . . she knew she would. Everyone was cross with her and they seemed to think she was pretending to be ill to avoid facing punishment. She’d even got a detention for falling asleep on the desk, even though she wasn’t actually asleep. It had simply become too difficult to hold her head up. She tried to tell them but nobody was listening. The headmistress, Miss Christie, threatened to ring Mummy.
‘I imagine you put those shoes in your wardrobe at the end of last term and didn’t say a word to your mother,’ Miss Christie said icily. ‘And now I have to embarrass her by telling her she must come to the school to take you out and buy some. Why you girls can’t use a little more common sense, I’ll never know.’
Miss Spencer, her form mistress, was the only person who showed any kindness, but even she couldn’t seem to understand that Milly really and truly didn’t feel well. Milly couldn’t remember being sent to the sick bay. The last thing she recalled was pitching forward in the music room. Sarah had tried to catch her but hadn’t been able to hold her. There had been a lot of noise and somebody had screamed. Had she crashed into some chairs? Yes, she rather thought she had. But what had happened after that? Frustrated with herself, Milly shook her head. Everything was a blur. She couldn’t remember.
Matron came back with some cold rice pudding. ‘This is all I could find,’ she apologised, ‘but it’ll have to do.’
Milly sat up and fumbled for her glasses which were on the bedside locker. Putting them on, she pulled the rice pudding towards her. She managed a few mouthfuls but the congealed stodgy pudding wasn’t very appetising. It stuck to her mouth and clogged her oh-so-sore throat, making her gag.
A little later, the head came into the sick bay with her father. It was a wonderful surprise. As soon as she saw him, Milly felt a mixture of joy and apprehension – joy because she was feeling so rotten and it was wonderful to see someone who really cared about her, and apprehension because she wondered if Miss Christie had rung him to complain. While Milly struggled to sit up she felt her father’s strong arms pulling her close. He was warm and smelled of Knize Ten, the gentleman’s toilet water. While Miss Christie wrung her hands as she explained that Milly hadn’t mentioned to anyone that she was feeling ill, father and daughter hugged each other. As they parted, Charles handed Milly a small present. It was a little stuffed dog. It was a bit babyish but, because he had given it to her, Milly loved it. She lay back on the pillow with the dog next to her cheek.
‘Poor old Sweet-pea,’ he said, stroking her cheek as he ignored Miss Christie’s prattling. ‘Sit up, darling. I’m taking you home.’
Matron offered to help Milly dress but her father waved her away. Snatching the blanket from the bed, he wrapped it around his daughter like a cocoon and swept her into his arms. With Matron right behind them, twittering on about the blanket belonging to the school, they thundered down the stairs. Dixon was sitting in the driver’s seat of her father’s car. When he saw them coming, he leapt out and opened the back passenger door. Milly was aware of half the school leaning out of the windows to watch the spectacle as Miss Spencer hurried outside with Milly’s case. Charles Shepherd laid his daughter on the back seat and tucked the blanket around her.
‘We’ll soon have you home and in your own bed.’ He winked and pressed the end of her nose. As he stood up, Dixon took the case and Miss Spencer handed the mutilated shoes to her father. A dark frown clouded his face as her form mistress explained why they looked as they did. Milly expected a row or, at the very least, a bit of a fuss, but her father took the shoes from her and, having examined them, he stepped aside and threw them, one at a time, to the far side of the front lawn with a first-class cricketer’s bowling action. Then he climbed into the front passenger seat.
‘Home, Dixon, and step on it.’
Dixon started the engine and they set off, leaving a shower of gravel and two astonished members of staff behind them. Lying on the back seat, all warm and cosy, Milly’s heart sang. She still felt lousy but she was happy. Sweet-pea. Her father hadn’t called her that in years. She was excited to get back to Muntham Court with him. Best of all, she would never have to wear those terrible shoes again.
After two more days in her own bed, Milly was feeling so much better. Mummy was still in London, so her day-to-day care was down to her father and the household staff, which was lovely because everybody made a fuss of her. Mrs Cunningham made her favourite dishes, lemon curd tart and jam roly-poly, Martha came and played cards with her and, best of all, one afternoon Bodkin, the old gardener, brought Cleo over in a wicker basket. The cat was as delighted to see Milly as Milly was to see her, and it was lovely to hear from Bodkin about how she was getting on in her new home.
‘Your Cleo’s got a gentleman friend,’ said Bodkin. ‘She gets out at night a-singing on the wall ’ith him.’ He grinned and elbowed Milly in the ribs. ‘I reckon she’ll be ’aving his kittens afore long.’
Once Milly was fully recovered, her father still checked in on her regularly, but he spent most of his time at the cottage. She would kneel on the window seat in her bedroom, her little stuffed dog under her arm, and watch him walk across the grass, jump over the ha-ha and head towards the woods. Milly was still terrified that someone in the cottage would tell him what she and Pearl had done but, with each passing day, nothing was mentioned, so she became less anxious.
Each evening, Milly and her father had a meal together. To begin with he came up to her bedroom but, after a few days, she was allowed downstairs.
‘I should very much like you to meet someone before you go back to school, Milly,’ he said lighting his after-dinner cigarette. ‘Dr Jennings says you should be well enough to return at the weekend, and by that time you shall have had a whole ten days to recover.’
It was a bitter-sweet moment for Milly. She had so enjoyed being with her father and, if she was being honest, the absence of her mother, who found fault with her all the time, meant that being home was a lot more relaxing than it usually was. Best of all, for the first time in her life, she’d been thoroughly spoiled.
Her father coughed. ‘In a couple of days’ time,’ he continued, ‘we’ll both go down to the cottage together.’
Milly sucked in her lips and held her breath, but luckily her father didn’t seem to notice. Finishing his whisky, he stood up and kissed the top of her head. ‘Night, darling. Sweet dreams.’ And with that he left the room.
As she cuddled her toy dog, Milly’s heart was racing and her breathing was ragged. Did her father actually want her to meet his hussy? What if her mother found out that she’d been down to the cottage? Or Pearl, for that matter. Then there was the small matter of the woman herself. Supposing she was a witch like Pearl had said. Milly shivered. Would she be able to see through her? Would she know what she and Pearl had done?
No, she couldn’t do it. She’d tell her father she couldn’t possibly go down to the cottage and meet her.
She didn’t dare.
Chapter 7
A couple of days later, her father told her they were going to the cottage. Milly said she’d rather stay inside, but her father wasn’t having any of it. ‘It’s time you had a breath of fresh air,’ Charles insisted. ‘Don’t forget that I have to get you a new pair of shoes before you go back to school.’
