After two steps, Audrey wanted to retreat. The current tugged at her ankles and the tiny stones on the streambed bit into her feet. But she kept going. She wanted to impress this girl for some reason. She took a few more steps, shivering in the chilly water, and then she was there.
“You made it! Sit down.” The girl gestured to a patch of weeds and dirt and sat down on the ground, cross-legged. She unfastened a napkin that was pinned to her waistband and opened it to reveal a plump sausage roll and a scone. She carefully broke each treasure into two pieces with her filthy hands and laid them on the napkin. “Help yourself,” she said. Dirt rimmed her bitten fingernails.
Audrey didn’t want to seem rude. And the food did look good, the sausage roll golden and crispy, the scone studded with plump currants.
“This was supposed to be my lunch but I skipped school today.”
“Skipped? Why?”
“Because the sun is shining for the first time in days, and I needed to be outside.”
Audrey bit into the roll. She couldn’t identify the spices but it tasted delicious. “Won’t you get into trouble for skipping?”
“I don’t care,” she said, lifting her shoulder in a shrug. “I already know as much as the teacher does.”
“You don’t really.”
“It’s true!” She laughed and leaned closer. “If I tell you a secret, will you give me your solemn promise not to tell anybody?” Audrey hesitated before nodding. “No, no, no,” the girl said, laughing again. “You can’t make a solemn promise like that! Don’t you know anything about sharing secrets?” Audrey shook her head. “You have to put your right hand over your heart, like this, and say, ‘Cross my heart and hope to die. I swear by my very life not to tell.’” She scooped up a handful of leaves and crushed them in her fist, letting the bits drift to the ground.
Audrey swallowed. Her heart drummed very fast. A thrill of fear shivered up her spine as she covered her heart. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said. “I swear by my very life not to tell.”
The girl inched closer. “My mum borrows books from your father’s library. She brings different ones home for me each time she comes and then returns them. I’m very careful with them. But that’s how I know as much as my teacher.”
“Don’t you have books at your house?”
“Ha! We don’t even have books at my school!”
“I can’t imagine a school without books.” Audrey swallowed the last bite of sausage and wished she had a serviette to wipe her hands. It had been delicious but a bit greasy. The girl wiped her fingers on her skirt.
“Well, I’m sure the fancy school you’re going to will have plenty of books.”
The reminder dimmed Audrey’s delight with the picnic, as if the sun had crept behind a cloud. “I don’t want to go away and leave Wellingford Hall. I miss being home even when Alfie and I are on holiday at the seashore.”
“Then why are you running away?”
Audrey didn’t reply. She didn’t know.
“They’ll come searching for you, you know.”
“I know.”
“Here, eat your scone.” The girl handed it to her. Audrey took a bite. It was as good as Cook’s scones. Maybe better. She wished she had a cup of tea to go with it.
“Why don’t you go to day school, like I do,” the girl asked, “and then go home at night? I walk to my school, but you could ride in your father’s automobile.”
Audrey stopped eating. “That’s a very good idea.”
“Don’t look so surprised. I’m just as smart as you are. I’m just not as rich.” She shook the crumbs off the napkin and repinned it to the waistband of her skirt.
“I feel bad for eating half your lunch.”
“Well, the next time you decide to run away, you can bring your lunch along to share with me.”
“The next time?”
The girl rolled sideways on the ground, laughing. “You’re so thickheaded! It’s a joke, Audrey Clarkson. You aren’t really going to run away this time, and so there won’t really be a next time. And they aren’t going to invite me to a picnic on your lawn, are they?”
“I’m sorry. I would like very much to invite you.”
The girl stood in one smooth movement and brushed off her skirt. “Come on, let’s wade to the other side and I’ll walk you as far as your lawn. You can tell them what you decided about school.”
Audrey waded through the icy water again, the stream tugging at her steps. The back of her dress was damp from where she’d sat on the ground. She would be in trouble with Miss Blake but she didn’t care. They put on their shoes and the girl led the way down a path that Audrey hadn’t noticed. She halted at the very edge of the woods as if hesitant to step onto the thick, manicured grass. “Bye, Audrey Clarkson. Good luck!”
“Thank you. And thank you very much for the picnic.” She turned toward home. The sun lit up the windows on the west wing of Wellingford Hall as if setting them ablaze. Audrey took a dozen steps, then turned back. “Wait! You never told me your name.” But the girl had vanished into the woods.
Eve followed the narrow path through the woods, her excitement building. Wait until Granny Maud heard about her picnic with the girl from Wellingford Hall! The ninny had been running away from home. Imagine! Who would ever run away from a fairy-tale place like Wellingford Hall with dozens of servants to grant her every wish?
Granny would be waiting with a pot of tea brewing beneath the tea cozy and a bite of pastry, warm from the oven. She would fold Eve into her soft arms as if it had been ages since she’d last seen her instead of just this morning. She would tut-tut over Eve’s rumpled dress as she picked bits of leaves from her hair with her knotted fingers and then ask about her day. Granny wouldn’t care that she’d skipped school, but she would be very surprised to hear that she’d met the rich girl from Wellingford Hall. Granny read the Bible aloud to Eve every night before bed, and it seemed like Jesus had a lot of grim things to say about rich people who didn’t share what they had with the poor.
A blue jay scolded Eve from the treetops as she emerged from the woods to cut through the cemetery. Granny was teaching Eve the names of all the birds and the songs they sang. Granny talked to the little wrens who nested in the back garden as if they were her children.
Eve ran the last few yards to their cottage and burst through the door calling, “Granny Maud! I made a new friend today, and you’ll never guess who it was. Never in a million years!” Her granny was asleep in her chair by the range, her knitting limp in her lap. She didn’t stir, even when the wind slammed the door shut behind Eve. Granny’s hearing, like her eyesight, was becoming worse and worse. Eve crossed to the range to put the kettle on for their tea, but the fire was barely warm.
“Granny!” she said, speaking loudly enough to wake her. “You let the fire go out.” She still didn’t move. Eve knelt beside her chair and shook her shoulder, gently at first, then harder and harder, shouting her name. “Granny Maud! Wake up!” Her knitting needles and half-finished sock fell from her fingers. Something was very wrong.