“No. I can’t say that I have.” I know the type of book she means—cheap, sentimental claptrap about put-upon girls triumphing over adversity without ever losing that sweet, kindhearted, feminine softness everyone seems to prize so highly. The kind of girls who would never cause their families to worry and suffer. Girls nothing like me. The bitterness is too much to contain.
“Oh, wait,” I reply. “That’s the one where the heroine is some poor, timid girl at boarding school who gets bullied by everyone for being such a sap. She reads to the blind or raises a lame brother or perhaps even a blind and lame brother. And in the end everyone discovers she’s really a duchess or some such who goes off to live like a queen in Kent. All because she took her punishment with a smile and a sense of Christian charity. What poppycock!”
My breath keeps catching in my chest. I’ve been overheard by the embroider-and-gossip set, who giggle in shocked delight at my bad manners.
“It might happen,” Ann says, softly.
“Honestly,” I say, with a brittle laugh, as if it will excuse the harshness of my words. “Do you know any orphan girls who’ve been plucked from obscurity and made into duchesses?” Get yourself under control, Gemma. You mustn’t cry.
Ann’s voice takes on a new determination. “But it could happen. Couldn’t it? An orphan girl, a girl no one expected much from, someone who’d been dumped in a school because her relatives thought of her as a burden, a girl the other girls laugh at for her lack of grace, charm, and beauty . . . that girl might show them all one day.”
She stares into the fire, knitting ferociously, the needles clicking together, two sharp teeth in the wool. Too late I realized what I’ve done. I’ve struck at the very heart of Ann’s hope, a hope that she could become someone else, someone with a life that doesn’t involve spending the rest of her days as governess to some rich man’s children, grooming them for a wonderful life and opportunities she’ll never see.
“Yes,” I say, my voice hoarse and quiet. “Yes, I suppose it could happen.”
“Those girls, the ones who misjudged . . . Lucy. They’d all be very sorry one day, wouldn’t they?”
“Yes, they would,” I agree. I don’t know what else to say and so we sit and watch the fire crackle and spit.
Peals of high laughter draw our attention to the far corner. Pippa emerges from the sheik’s tent where the other girls still sit. She saunters over to the two of us and slips her arm through Ann’s.
“Ann, darling, Felicity and I feel simply awful about the way we treated you earlier. It was terribly unchristian of us.”
Ann’s face is still slack, but she blushes and I know she’s pleased, sure that this is the beginning of her new, wonderful life among the beautiful. The end of The Perils of Ann.
“Felicity’s mother sent a box of chocolates. Would you like to join us?”
There is no invitation issued to me. It’s a huge slight. Across the room the other girls are waiting to see how I’ll take it. Ann glances at me guiltily and I know what her answer will be. She’s going to sit and eat chocolates with the very girls who torment her. And now I know that Ann is as shallow as the rest of them. More than ever I wish I could go home, but there is no more home.
“Well . . . ,” Ann says, looking down at her feet.
I should just let her wallow in her discomfort, force her to snub me, but I’m not about to let them get the best of me.
“You should go,” I say, flashing a smile that would put the sun to shame. “I really must catch up on my reading.”
Yes, after all, if I were to join you, I might enjoy myself, and wouldn’t that be a shame? Please, don’t spare me another thought.
Pippa is all smiles. “There’s a sport. Come on, Ann.” She waltzes Ann off to the far end of the room. With a forced yawn for the benefit of the girls watching me from the tent, I sit down and open my mother’s social diary again, as if I couldn’t care less about being ignored. I turn the pages as if I’m captivated, though I’ve already read each one. Who do they think they are to treat me like this? Turn another page and another. More giggles waft out from the tent. The chocolate’s probably from Manchester. And those scarves are ridiculous. Felicity is about as bohemian as the Bank of England. My fingers land on something crackly and stiff inside the book, something I hadn’t noticed before. An account from a sensational London newspaper, the sort the upper classes pretend not to notice. It’s been folded over so many times that the ink has worn away in the creases and elsewhere, making it hard to read. I can just make out the gist of it, something about the “scandalous secrets of girls’ boarding schools!”
It’s tawdry, of course. And that’s what makes it so fascinating. In lurid prose, the article details a school in Wales where a few girls went out walking “and were never heard from again!” “A virtuous rose of England snipped by the tragic dagger of suicide” at a finishing school in Scotland. A mention of a girl who went “mad as a hatter” after some mysterious involvement in a “diabolical occult ring.” What’s diabolical is that someone received money for this rubbish.
I’m about to put it away when I see something near the bottom about the fire at Spence twenty years ago. But it’s too worn for me to read. It’s just like my mother to save such a sordid article to add to her list of worries. No wonder she wouldn’t send me to London. She was afraid I’d end up on the front page. Funny how the things I couldn’t bear about her bring a pang to my chest now.
A shriek comes from Felicity’s sanctuary.
“My ring! What have you done with my ring?” The scarves fly open. Ann backs out with the other girls bearing down on her, Felicity pointing a finger accusingly. “Where is it? Tell me this instant!”
“I d-d-don’t have it. I d-d-didn’t d-do anything.” Ann stumbles over her words and suddenly I realize that part of her flatness, her control, must be an effort to keep from stuttering like this.
“You d-d-didn’t? Why d-d-don’t I believe you?” Felicity’s face is mocking and hateful. “I invite you to sit with us and this is how you repay my kindness? By stealing the ring my father gave to me? I should have expected something like this from a girl like you.”
We all know what “like you” means. Low-class. Common. Plain, poor, and hopeless. You are what you’re born, always and forever. That’s the understanding.
An imposing woman with a handsome face sweeps over to the girls. “What’s going on?” she asks, stepping between Ann, who is cowering, and Felicity, who looks ready to roast Ann on a spit.
Pippa goes wide-eyed as an ingénue in a bad play. “Oh, Miss Moore! Ann has stolen Felicity’s sapphire ring.”
Felicity thrusts out her ringless finger as proof and attempts a mournful pout. “I had it earlier and noticed it was missing just after she came in.”
It’s hardly a convincing performance. The organ-grinder’s monkey is a better confidence man, but there’s no telling whether or not Miss Moore will be taken in by these two. After all, they have money and position and Ann has none. It’s amazing how often you can be right as long as you have those two things working in your favor. I’m ready for Miss Moore to straighten her spine and humiliate Ann in front of everyone by forcing her to admit her shame—and calling her all manner of horrible names as well. There’s a certain type of spinster lady who takes her amusement by torturing others under the guise of “setting a good example.” But Miss Moore surprises me by not taking the bait.
“All right, then, let’s have a look around on the floor. Perhaps it fell somewhere. Come on, everyone, let’s help Miss Worthington find her ring, shall we?”
Ann stands looking down at her shoes, unable to move or speak, as if she expects to be found guilty. I know I should feel pity for her but I’m still a bit miffed over the way she abandoned me, and an uncharitable part of me thinks she deserves this for trusting them. The others move chairs and peer behind curtains in a halfhearted attempt to find the ring.