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“No!” we all say as one.
“No need for that,” I say. “It was nothing but a hedgehog that had gotten in.”
Brigid blanches. “Hedgehog? I’ll get my broom! He’ll not run amok in my ’ouse!”
“That’s the spirit, Brigid!” I call after her. “I think it was a French hedgehog!”
“A French hedgehog?” Felicity repeats with a bemused expression.
“Oui,” I say.
Ann clutches the letter to her chest. “We’ve got what we came for. Come on. I want to know my fate.”
A sliver of day remains as we hurry to the chapel, but the sun is falling below the horizon fast.
“What does it say?” Felicity tries to steal a peek at Ann’s letter but she won’t relinquish it just yet.
“Ann!” Fee and I protest.
“All right, all right.” Ann passes it to us, and we grab it greedily from her hands. “Read it aloud. I should like to know that I’m not dreaming!”
“‘My Dear Miss Washbrad,’” Fee and I begin in unison. Eyes shut, lips in a grin, Ann mouths every word. “‘I hope this letter finds you well. I have spoken to Mr. Katz and he is disposed to offer you an appointment with him on Monday next, at two o’clock in the afternoon. I advise you not to be late, my dear, as nothing puts Mr. Katz in a darker mood than a lack of punctuality. I have recommended your talent. Your beauty speaks for itself.
“‘Yours Affectionately, Lily Trimble.’”
“Oh, Ann, that’s wonderful,” I say, handing back the letter, which she tucks into her dress next to her heart.
“Yes, yes, it is, isn’t it?” Ann’s joy transforms her. She walks taller for this token of hope.
Holding hands, we race for the chapel as the day slips free from its moorings and sinks below the land, leaving behind a fiery wake of pink.
One of the younger girls reads from the large Bible at the pulpit. She is a small thing, no more than ten, and she has a pronounced lisp, which threatens to turn our prayers into giggles at any moment.
“‘And the therpent thaid unto the woman, Ye thall not thurely die…’”
“Gemma,” Ann whispers. “I cannot possibly keep my appointment with Mr. Katz.”
“What do you mean?” I murmur from behind my Bible.
A sudden cloud passes over her face, extinguishing her earlier joy. “He thinks that I am Nan Washbrad.”
“It’s only a name. Lily Trimble changed hers.”
Cecily shushes me and I do my very best to show I’m ignoring her.
“But what she said—‘Your beauty speaks for itself.’ Don’t you see? I am not that girl. It’s one thing to create an illusion, but how—how do you live it forever?”
“‘For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyeth thall be opened, and ye thall be ath godth, knowing good and evil.’”
“We thall be ath godth,” Felicity mimics, and there is a sudden round of coughing in our pew to cover our snickers.
Miss McCleethy cranes her head and narrows her eyes at us. We raise our Bibles as if we were a school of missionaries. My gaze travels to Mrs. Nightwing. She sits straight, eyes ahead, her expression as inscrutable as the Sphinx’s.
My thoughts turn to the letter hidden in her wardrobe. What warnings could Mrs. Nightwing have ignored? What plan?
Suddenly, the words in my Bible blur, and the world once again slows to stillness. At the lectern, the girl’s tortured recitation has stopped. The room is stifling; my skin crawls with sweat.
“Ann? Felicity?” I call, but they belong to that other time.
