When Pip’s voice came again, he sounded, if possible, even more miserable than she did.“Come on, Una, it’s no worse than a game of hide-and-seek.It’s not frightening at all!They’ll all come looking for you.Everyone loves you.You’ll be all right.And Oolong’s in there, too.”
For a moment, Pip might have been a little boy again, a little boy who was anxious for her approval.Had he ever cared aboutherat all, Una wondered, or had she just been the squire’s daughter all along—someone to be flattered and pleased until no longer needed?
But perhaps, in this state, he might listen to her.She had to try one last time.
“Listen, Pip,” Una said as cheerfully as she could over the horrible pain in her chest.“Nobody here cares about that old relic!Please don’t steal it.Come with me and talk to Uncle George.I really think he’d give it to you, if you need it.”
“That’s a nice speech, Una,” he said sadly.“But we can’t go back to the way things were.It was all a fairy tale.And you—well, we were stupid, naive children, both of us.”He laughed bitterly.“I may be nobody, but I can’t be your charity case.In fact—if you can keep from hating me—you oughtn’t to think of me at all, after this.Do you hear?Forget about me.”
She certainly heard the despair in his voice.Charity case?Was it Una’s fault that Pip believed this?If she hadn’t been so distracted with Violet…
No!Stop trying to find a way to blame yourself for everything!Violet had snapped at her, and the words struck her with new force, because that’s exactly what she was trying to do now.What was easier?To blame herself, or to face the fact that something was terribly wrong with a person who meant so much to her?That someone she loved was betraying her?
“Yes, I hear you,” Una said, altering her posture so that her hands were flat on the door, as if she could touch him that way.She must speak quickly.Even though it changed nothing, she must tell him what was in her heart.“But now you can listen to me.I think you’re trying to smash things up, just like you did at art school.It doesn’t matter a jot who your father is.Do you hear, Pip?You’re my brotherbecause I love you.Whether you lock me in or not.You can’t make me hate and you can’t make me forget.”
There was a kind of victory just in saying it.This, at least, was a choice that was entirely hers to make.One she had never had the chance to make with Violet.
There was no answer from the other side.Had he even heard her?She hoped that he had.Without testing the handle, she backed away from the door.Had he locked the door, and she so overwrought with emotion that she didn’t hear the sound of it?
Oolong pressed against her ankles.
And then Una had a very bad moment.It was that familiar feeling—the horrible feeling of being left behind.The feeling of being useless, small, and forgotten.Una had felt this after Violet had left, too.When she was known as Baby, she used to cover her eyes and go perfectly still when bad things happened.It had made a sort of sense.If she wasn’t really there, she couldn’t be hurt.
But Una was very much there, and Una was hurt.She sat down on the floor and hugged her knees.Oolong licked her cheek, then settled next to her, and Una breathed through the pain in her chest until it went away.
You are the very last person I expect to need rescuing, her teacher had said.
It was so quiet now that Una could hear the wind whistling about the tower.It came down from the fells, carrying with it the wet smell of heather and peat, the tuneful cry of larks, the warning cry of lapwings.It had wreathed round the abbey tower like this for hundreds of years.She knew some people thought it a mournful, ghostly sound, but to Una it seemed like a mother singing to her child.
Gwendolyn had been trapped here, Una understood that.And perhaps because of that, her leaving had always felt like an escape.But to Una, the abbey was not a dark curse or a lonely burden.It was simply—home.
Janushek was right, she thought.Una didn’t need rescuing, because this was where she wanted to be.At least for the time being.She had never felt more free to leave than she did now, today, when her promise not to leave the tower for the afternoon kept her inside—whether the door was locked or not.
Una breathed a long breath and opened her eyes.This was her home, and the room was mellow with a light that made the dust motes dance, as if they, too, heard the song of the wind.
She had a choice.She could yell out the window until someone came.But she would keep her promise to Pip, too.
“Well, Oolong,” she said shakily, dropping a hand to his back, “let’s see to those claws of yours, shall we?”
Chapter fifty-five
London
“Penny,”saidCrispinwhenhe found himself alone with his sister in the evening, their parents having gone out to see a new play.“Are you still hot on the trail of that secret society?”
“So hot, my shoes are scorched,” Penny replied coolly, not looking up from the novel she was reading.
“Well, then,” said Crispin, and turned a page of his issue ofPunch.
“Well, what?”said Penny.
Crispin shrugged.“You don’t need your little brother’s help.”
“I certainly don’t need you following me round again when I’m on a job,” Penny retorted.
“May I point out that I arrived at the establishment a good hour before you did?”
“No, you mayn’t.”
