“Shh,” said Saffy, flapping her hand. “There now, dearest. Don’t be frightened.” She could taste her own panic, though, her shadow companion. “Let me take a look at you. Let Saffy take a look.”
Juniper stood inert and Saffy undid the buttons, fingers shaking. She opened the blouse, ran her fingertips over her sister’s smooth skin—shades of tending Juniper as a child—scanning her chest, her sides, her stomach for wounds. Breathed a great sigh of relief when none was found. “You’re all right.”
“But whose?” said Juniper. “Whose?” She was shivering. “Where did it come from, Saffy?”
“You don’t remember?”
Juniper shook her head.
“Nothing at all?”
Juniper’s teeth were chattering; she shook her head again.
Saffy spoke calmly, softly, as if to a child. “Dearest, do you think you might have lost some time?”
Fear lit Juniper’s eyes.
“Is your head aching? Your fingers—are they tingling?”
Juniper nodded slowly.
“All right.” Saffy smiled as best she could, helped Juniper out of the spoiled blouse, then draped her arm around her sister’s shoulders, almost wept with fear and love and anguish when she felt the narrow bones beneath her arm. They should have gone to London, Percy should have gone and brought June back. “It’s all right,” she said firmly, “you’re home now.
“Everything’s going to be all right.”
Juniper said nothing; her face had glazed over.
Saffy glanced at the door; Percy would know what to do. Percy always knew what to do. “Shh,” she said, “shh,” but more for herself than for Juniper, who was no longer listening.
They sat together on the end of the chaise longue and waited. Fire crackled in the grate, wind scurried along the stones, and rain lashed the windows. It felt as if a hundred years had passed. Then Percy appeared at the door. She’d been running and held the hot-water bottle in her hand. “I thought I heard a scream—” She stopped, registered Juniper’s state of undress. “What is it? What’s happened?”
Saffy gestured towards the bloodstained blouse and said, with ghastly cheer, “Come and help me, Perce. Juniper’s traveled all day and I thought we might draw her a lovely warm bath.”
Percy nodded grimly, and one on either side, they helped their little sister towards the door.
The room settled around their absence; the stones began to whisper.
The loose shutter fell off its hinge, but nobody saw it slip.
“IS SHEsleeping?”
“Yes.”
Percy exhaled relief and stepped further into the attic room to observe their little sister where she lay. She stopped beside Saffy’s chair. “Did she tell you anything?”
“Not a lot. She remembered being on the train and then the bus, that it stopped and she was crouched down on the roadside; next thing she knew she was on her way up the drive, almost at the door, her limbs all tingly. The way they get—you know, afterwards.”
Percy knew. She reached to run the backs of two fingers down Juniper’s hairline towards her cheek. Their little sister looked so small, so helpless and harmless, when she was sleeping.
“Don’t wake her.”
“Not much chance of that.” Percy indicated the bottle of Daddy’s pills beside the bed.
“You’ve changed your clothes,” said Saffy, tugging lightly on Percy’s trouser leg.
“Yes.”
“You’re going out.”
