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Well, it didn’t turn out to be, really, but I managed to hit the first rung with my foot after only three failed attempts. After that, things got a bit simpler. I climbed higher and higher until suddenly, there loomed an opening before me. What was this again?
Your window, you idiot!
Oh yes! Quite right. I wanted to climb through the window into my room. That was why I was up here in the first place. Funny how that had almost slipped my mind.
Through the window, I could see Ella. She was sitting in bed - in my bed, to be precise -anxiously twisting the sheet on my empty mattress between the fingers of her small, ivory hands and staring down at my rumpled pillow.
‘Lill,’ she sighed, again and again. ‘Oh Lill!’
Strange… Why was she trying to talk to me, when from what she knew, I wasn’t even there? And why was she up in the middle of the night? She should be in bed, recuperating from an evening of tiring love affairs at the garden fence. But there she was, sitting, awake, and for some reason, apparently quite upset, too.
Taking the last few rungs, I swung my leg over the windowsill. When Ella heard a sound coming from the window, she sprang up and whirled around, clutching her hands to her chest. Her mouth opened to scream as she saw a sinister figure climbing in through her bedroom window.
The sinister figure, that is to say I, sprang forward and clamped a hand over her mouth.
‘Be quiet, silly! It’s no burglar, only me!’ I hissed into her ear. ‘If you scream, you’ll chase the little yellow piggies away!’
Her whole body relaxed in my arms.
‘Mmpf! Mgmpf nmm mpf.’
‘I suppose that means “Hello, Lilly, how nice to see you”?’
‘Mmmpf!’
‘I see. It’s nice to see you, too. If I let you go, do you promise not to scream?’
‘Ympf!’
Seeing as that was the closest approximation to a ‘yes’ I was likely to receive, I took my hand from her mouth
. She turned to face me, grabbing me by the shoulders. Her eyes were large and moist with panic.
‘Dear God, Lilly! Where have you been? I was expecting you to come home hours ago, and I waited and waited, but you never arrived. I’ve had to tell the most dreadful, fiendish lies to explain your absence to Aunt. Where have you been?’
‘I?’ A small laugh escaped me. ‘I was with the little yellow piggies. Alexander was there, too.’
‘Little yellow… what? And who is Alexander?’
‘Alexander the Great. Haven’t you heard of him? Spiffing chap, absolutely spiffing.’
Ella sniffed.
‘Lilly? What is that smell?’
‘Smell? I don't smell anything. What do you mean?’
‘That smell… It smells like the tables at balls where the drinks for gentlemen… are… served…’
Her voice dwindled. Slowly, the colour drained from her face.
‘Lill! No, you can’t have! Lill!’
I smiled broadly. She remembered my name! It was so nice that someone did. Mr Ambrose never called me by my first name, let alone a sweet nickname like Lill.
‘Yes, my delightful, dear little sister?’
‘Lill, have you…?’ She lowered her voice until it was only a hushed whisper, deserving of a dark and dingy crypt, where human sacrifices were conducted by some strange oriental cult. ‘Have you been drinking?’
