Beth
Ihesitated at the top of the stairs, coughing with every other breath, blinded by the thick gray smoke.
“Where are you?” I shouted. “Where is everyone?”
Someone crashed into me in the gloom. It was Leonora. And she pulled a frightened-looking Nina behind her.
“Get downstairs!” Leonora said. “We need to get out.”
We stumbled down the stairs, and as Leonora yanked open the front door, Markus and Hendrik emerged from the smoke behind us. Markus’s eyes were red-rimmed and streaming. Hendrik, coughing and wheezing, was bent double, gripping Markus’s arm for support.
Leonora tugged Nina and me across the threshold, and we all gasped in lungfuls of cold, fresh air.
“I’ve shut the door on the flames,” Markus shouted.
The smoke in the hall was thinning, now that the front door was open.
“It’ll buy us some time; the fire’s contained.
Did anyone ring 999?” When nobody answered, he peered around and reached for the phone.
He dialed the number, then turned to Hendrik.
“Get outside, Dad. Go with Leonora. I’ll follow in a second. ”
I tried to move back into the hall, wanting to help Hendrik, who was struggling to breathe and pressing his fingers and thumb against his streaming eyes.
But Leonora’s grip on my arm was strong, and she shoved Nina and me down the steps ahead of her, as if she couldn’t get away from Hendrik fast enough.
“Leave him. He’ll be fine.” Her voice was surprisingly bitter. “He always is.”
“What happened?” I said. “Where’s the fire?”
Leonora’s fierce stare made me shrink inside my skin. “It’s in your bedroom, Beth. Were you burning a candle in there?”
I shook my head, appalled. “No, I—”
“Did you leave something switched on? Your hair dryer?”
“No!”
Leonora made a sound of disgust, but she cut it off sharply and checked over her shoulder. Hendrik still hadn’t emerged from the house. Leonora glanced across to the stable block with a calculating expression on her face. It was dusk; in another few minutes, it would be completely dark.
“Go and sit on the wall,” she said, gesturing toward the shadowy end of the stable block. She dropped her voice to a hiss. “Whatever happens, he mustn’t see there are two of you.”
Wordlessly, Nina and I linked hands, and we stumbled away across the gravel together. My chest ached from the smoke I’d inhaled, but also from something else—this confirmation that the deception of Hendrik had never been a game at all. It was something far more serious.
Before Nina and I reached the stable block, a crash of shattering glass made us look up to see flames bursting out through my bedroom window. Clutching at Nina, I staggered backward, my heart racing. How had this happened? It wasn’t really my fault—was it?
When I turned away from the bright flames, the surroundings seemed even darker in comparison.
I could just about make out Hendrik sitting on the gravel beyond the steps, batting away his chauffeur’s attempt to get him up on his feet, with one hand shielding his eyes.
Leonora and Markus stood side by side a little closer to us, their upturned faces bathed in the angry red light from the flames at my bedroom window.
A sudden thought stopped my breath. They were going to blame me for this, weren’t they?
It was my bedroom; of course they’d blame me.
My throat tightened at the injustice of it; I dropped Nina’s arm and stepped away from her.
It wasn’t my fault. I was sure it wasn’t my fault.
But what difference would that make? I wasn’t really part of their family; I’d only ever been a guest.
Nina was still transfixed by the fire, and I took the opportunity to turn away and scan the frozen lake in the gloom, desperately hoping to catch a glimpse of Jonas.
Might he have come over early? Might he already be waiting for me on the island?
The idea of moving in with him and his mum was suddenly vastly more appealing.
I tried to creep away across the gravel, but before I reached the lakeshore, I heard Nina close behind me.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was heavy with bewildered hostility.
“I’m just—” I peered again toward the island, but dusk was rapidly giving way to night, and it was impossible to see more than hazy shapes. There was no gleam from a torch, no sign of Jonas.
“Did you start the fire?” Nina said. Her face was a smudge in the gloom, her dark eyes glittering. “Did you put something in my food to make me sick? Was it you?”
“No!” I stared at her, aghast. “How can you even say that?”
“Well, you think it was my mum—how can you even say that?”
“I don’t know, Nina. I don’t know!” I stepped onto the ice in the brand-new pixie boots I’d been so proud of yesterday. “Please. Just go back.”
Nina’s tone changed as she followed me onto the slippery surface. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to think. Don’t leave me, Beth, please. I need you.”
I turned to face her, skidding a little. “No, Nina. Go back to your parents.”
“I’m not supposed to show my face to my grandfather, remember?” She sounded close to tears. “Where are you going? You can’t leave me here.”
I shook my head and half walked, half slid away from her as fast as I could. A new, thin layer of powdery snow covered the ice, and I swung my arms as I plowed ahead, trying to generate some speed to widen the gap between us. But it wasn’t long before I realized she was still following me.
“Beth,” she sobbed, “please don’t go. I need you.” Her voice rose in pitch. “Take me with you.”
I almost laughed at that, and I swung around, unable to see her expression in the darkness now, even from just a few meters away.
“I can’t even look after myself,” I said. “Just look behind you.” I waved an arm at the glow from the upstairs window in the distance. The faint wail of sirens reached us across the fields.
“But where are you going?” Her voice was a wail. “You’re going to see Jonas, aren’t you?”
My heart squeezed with sympathy for her, but what choice did I have? “You know you can’t come with me, Nina.” I began to slip-slide away from her again. “Go back to your parents.”
This time, there was no sound of her attempting to follow, and for once I was grateful for Leonora’s rules.
I veered away from the island slightly, no longer believing Jonas might be there waiting for me—he’d have joined me by now.
Instead, I planned to skirt around the island, cross the lake, and walk up past Milner’s Drain to the main road.
I’d lived at Raven Hall for eighteen months; I felt confident I could find my way in the dark—perhaps Markus was right about me becoming a proper Fenland girl.
While the fire engines battled the blaze in my Raven Hall bedroom, I’d be marching down to the village to seek refuge with Jonas.
But then a shout flew across the frozen lake. “Girls!” It was Markus’s voice from somewhere near the dock. “Nina! Beth! Where are you?”
I hesitated, and in that moment, I heard Nina’s breaths, short and sharp, moving toward me again. I swung around, trying to make out her shape in the darkness.
“Go back, Nina!”
“No!” She crashed into me and grabbed my hands in her icy fingers. “I’m coming with you.”
Markus’s voice boomed out again, and it sounded closer. “Girls! Please! Where are you? Come back!”
“Let go of me.” I freed my hands from her grip and stumbled away, no longer sure of my bearings.
“Wait!” she called out. “Hang on. Dad drilled his holes on this side. He said we mustn’t skate beyond the island.”
Nice try, Nina, I thought. “I’m not skating.”
She was still coming closer. “But it might not be strong enough . . .”
“Well, go back, then!” I turned in a circle and caught her outline in my peripheral vision. “I’m trying to get away from you too—can’t you understand that?”
And that’s when it happened. A loud snap, like the crack of a whip.
A strange, slow-motion shift of the ice beneath my feet.
And we were both slipping and tipping. And no matter how far I clawed my fingers onto the ice in front of me, my feet and calves and thighs slid down, down, down into the cold, deadly water.
I couldn’t breathe. And I couldn’t move. The world closed in around me.