On the fifth day, Viola emerged.
It transpired quite unheralded, stripped of all ceremony and the customary proclamations. One moment the chair beside Anna was empty; the next, Viola was sitting in it, her book closed in her lap, with her eyes fixed on the map of England as though she had been there all along.
Mel said nothing. She did not exclaim or celebrate or draw attention to the victory. She simply adjusted her teaching position slightly, so that Viola could see the map more clearly, and continued discussing the wool trade of Yorkshire.
When the lesson ended and the girls were released for their morning walk, Anna and Thistle tumbled out the door in their usual chaos of elbows and competing voices. Viola hung back for a moment, standing by her chair with her fingers twisted together.
“Miss Grace?” Her voice was barely audible, a wisp of sound that required leaning in to catch.
“Yes, Viola?”
“The Bristol Channel. It’s also called the Severn Estuary, at the eastern end. Where it gets narrow.”
Mel absorbed this information with appropriate gravity.
“You’re quite right. That’s an excellent point. Shall I add a note to the map?”
Viola nodded, the barest movement of her head, and then slipped out the door to join her sisters. But she was smiling, barely, just enough.
Progress, Mel thought, came in many forms. With Anna, it came through responsibility. With Viola, it came through patience and space. With Thistle…
With Thistle, progress came through chaos management.
The first window escape happened on day four. Mel had been in the middle of explaining long division when she looked up to find Thistle’s chair empty and the nursery window standing open, curtains billowing in the afternoon breeze. By the time she reached the sill and looked out, Thistle was already halfway down the trellis, Brutus clutched in one hand, her small feet finding purchase on every rung as though she had practiced this climb a thousand times.
“Thistle.”
The child looked up, braids swinging.
“Yes, Miss Grace?”
“Where are you going?”
“Brutus needed fresh air. You said he needed afternoon constitutionals.”
“I meant supervised afternoon constitutionals, through the door.”
Thistle considered this. “The door is boring.”
“The door is safe. The trellis is not.”
“I’ve climbed it lots of times.”
“And one day you will fall. And then we shall all be very sorry, particularly Brutus, who will have no one to carry him in a pocket.” Mel kept her voice calm, conversational, as though discussing the weather rather than imminent plummeting.
“Please climb back up.”
“Can I climb back up through the window?”
“You may climb back up through the window this once. Tomorrow, we shall use the door.”
Thistle ascended the trellis with considerably more enthusiasm than she had descended it, and Mel made a mental note to speak with the groundskeeper about removing it before the next escape attempt.
The second window escape happened on day six, from a different window, down a different route. By day eight, Mel hadidentified and blocked every possible climbing exit from the nursery and schoolroom, and Thistle had moved on to other forms of chaos.
The kitchen incident occurred on day nine.
Mrs. Kemp’s screams could, according to the cook, be heard in the village. Certainly they could be heard in the schoolroom, where Mel was attempting to teach Anna and Viola about the reigns of the Tudor monarchs while Thistle was supposedly napping.
