Round Behind the Ice House by Anne Fine

Author:Anne Fine [Fine, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
Published: 2006-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

I’M STILL SHIVERING now. I should have had the sense to change my clothes before I came back here, for though I’ve rooted all around the filthy damp floor of the ice house to find every single stump of a candle there is, and I’ve lit them all round me, I’m still so cold I can hardly keep the egg book flat on my knees for trembling, and this pencil is hurting my fingers, I’m having to grip it so tightly to keep it from sliding all over the page.

I have the key, though. I wasn’t quite sure what I was after when I caught myself hesitating outside Cass’s door instead of keeping on down the hall to my own. My sandals were squelching those growing dark stains into Mum’s polished floor, and trickles of rainwater from my hair still filled my eyes, slid down my face and neck, and into this sodden clinging shirt. Perhaps when I stopped just outside I was telling myself I should get on the nearest rug as soon as I could. Perhaps I thought I was after a towel. There are always more on Cass’s floor than in the airing cupboard. She rubs her hair dry with them and then simply drops them into the clutter.

Whatever I thought when I stopped, the moment her door closed behind me I knew what I wanted. It’s here in my hand now. I’m going to bury it deep in the hard-packed black earth down here under the rotting sack floor, where neither Cass nor Halloran will ever think of looking. I have the key to her room.

That will trap her. I don’t think even Cass would dare leave the house after dark if she knew any one of us might tap, tap, tap on her door and then walk right in to find her bedcovers carelessly tossed back, and she herself gone. So there’ll be no more little meetings round behind the ice house at nights, or over at Halloran’s place, where Jamieson saw what he saw. Cass will never dare risk it. Suppose she were caught? Oh, she could spin her endless sticky word webs the morning after, and flounce: ‘Of course I heard you knocking on my door last night! But I just didn’t feel like talking. Is that a crime?’ Or, full of sleepy morning innocence: ‘I did have a strange dream of wood being chopped right outside my room. Could that have been when you were trying to wake me?’ And if she were irritable from her persistent lack of sleep, we’d hear something surly like: ‘Oh, that was you banging on my door last night. I’m sorry I didn’t bother to answer. You see I thought it was Tom.’

Spin, spin away, Cass. You always have. But there will be no point in it this time, for even you will be helpless for once without this key you found. Whoever stands knocking may simply push open your bedroom door, and looking around as I did just now, see you aren’t there.

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