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‘Yes, Ella.’
‘The Queen kissed Prince Albert before they were married.’
‘Yes, Ella.’
‘So…there can’t really be anything terribly wrong with it, can there?’
‘I suppose not.’
Another moment of silence. It wasn’t the same silence that always emanated from Mr Ambrose, though. This silence was much less icy, and much, much more thoughtful.
‘Lill?’
‘Yes, Ella?’
‘Would you mind terribly…well…what I meant…what I mean to say…’
‘Spit it out.’
‘Would you mind if I stepped out for a moment or two? I forgot there’s something I have to do tonight.’
I bet you do.
‘Of course not. Go ahead.’
Ella was out of bed and at the door before I could blink.
‘Thanks!’
And she was gone.
The You-Know-What of Horror
Ella didn’t even wait to put her dress on. She was out before I could move a muscle.
Hm… where could she be going? You have three guesses, Lilly.
I only really needed one.
Sighing, I rolled out of bed, threw on a robe against the cold of the night and went to the window, where I had let the ladder stand, just in case. Down in the house, I could hear the pitter-patter of Ella’s swift, light feet. I, for my part, climbed leisurely out of the window and down the ladder. By the time the back door exploded outward and Ella rushed into the garden, one hundred percent the delectable damsel in her white nightgown, I was sitting behind my usual bush, trying to count the daisies on the ground in the moonlight.
‘Edmund!’
Ella’s cry faded away unheard. Instead of pining at the fence, her lover had apparently done the sensible thing and gone to bed. Ella didn’t seem to realise or care, though. She rushed towards the fence.
‘Edmund!’
Once again, no answer. Gripping the poles of the fence, Ella pressed her face between the bars and called, so loudly that I was worried she might wake up our aunt up in the house: ‘Edmund, my love!’
However, Edmund my love - or rather her love, thank God - didn’t respond.
Ella then said a very, very bad word. A word that made me raise my eyebrows and raise my opinion of my little sister’s vocabulary a notch or two. Turning, she stomped over to the garden shed. For a moment I didn’t realise what she was after - until, that is, she reached out her arms and with both hands grabbed the ladder leaning against the shed. The ladder I had used to climb out of the window. The ladder which had rested against the garden shed for over a year without the lovers once getting the idea of using it to climb over the fence.
I sucked in a breath!
This was a historic moment! I was almost sorry I didn’t have a professional painter here to record it for posterity. I was still in a daze by the time Ella had reached the top of the ladder. Not hesitating a second, she swung her legs over the fence.
‘Mpf! Ouch!’
