‘Uh… yes?’ He shot her a look that said he thought she was being dense on purpose. ‘You have indefinite detention.
‘Fine.’ Allie stomped up the stairs after the other girls. ‘Because I have nothing better to do.’
‘I’m busy too, you know,’ he’d called after her but she hadn’t looked back.
Clutching a torch, she slipped through the open garden gate. The weather had warmed slightly, and the frozen earth had thawed into a soupy mud. Her head filled with thoughts of spies and Nathaniel, she sloshed through it in search of Mr Ellison.
She found him setting up at the edge of the orchard, whistling tunelessly to himself as he worked.
‘My best worker is the earliest one,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How are you today?’
‘Fine.’ She stood up straight, trying to look fine.
‘That’s good,’ he said. He carried a massive armload of equipment out of an open shed. ‘Makes an improvement. Feel good and others around you will feel good by association.’
Allie didn’t notice she’d wrinkled her nose in disbelief until he waved a finger at her. ‘It’s true. Try it if you don’t believe me. You’ll see.’
‘OK…’ Her tone was doubtful.
‘You’re going to be working in the berry section today.’ He handed her a rake and clippers. ‘Getting the bushes ready for spring. Follow me and I’ll show you what to do.’
They headed back across the dark garden.
‘Where’s Carter?’ Allie asked, jumping over a muddy hillock.
Mr Ellison’s brow lowered. ‘Late is all I know.’
‘Oh.’
The gardener was demonstrating how to tell the leafless blueberry branches from the blackberries when the sound of fast heavy footsteps made them both turn.
Before Allie realised what Mr Ellison was doing, he’d moved in front of her wielding a heavy iron hoe in his right hand as lightly as she might hold a pen.
The gardener was very tall, about six foot five, and always had a lumbering gait, but suddenly he seemed capable of great swiftness and grace. Seeing this, Allie felt both awe and despair. Was nobody at Cimmeria what they seemed to be?
Within seconds, though, he’d relaxed and she heard him murmur under his breath, ‘What is wrong with you, boy?’
Standing on her toes, she saw Carter pelting it across the mud, his torch flickering on and off weakly.
‘Sorry,’ he panted, skidding to a stop in front of them. ‘I overslept.’
‘Late.’ Mr Ellison uttered the word with the same contempt some might use for ‘Traitor’.
As Allie watched in astonishment, Carter hung his head. ‘I’m sorry, Bob,’ he said. ‘I can come back later to make up the time.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ the older man muttered. But he seemed mollified by Carter’s contrition, and soon he left them working on the berry bushes alone.
After Carter’s mood swings the day before, Allie approached him with wariness. She didn’t know what was going on in his head – but he couldn’t just pick her up and put her down when he wanted to, like a toy. They were either friends or they weren’t.
It wasn’t easy work – the blackberry thorns were like tiny daggers and the way they worked through gloves and sleeves seemed almost malicious.
‘Ouch, you bleeding, bloody, stupid…
‘You OK?’ Carter, who was gathering pruned branches for burning, glanced over at her with a mixture of concern and amusement.
It was the first time he’d spoken to her directly and Allie looked up at him in surprise but recovered quickly, giving a nonchalant shrug. ‘I’ll live. I guess nobody was ever thorned to death.’
‘As far as we know…’ he said.
‘Maybe it was covered up by the berry industry.’
They exchanged a smile; Allie relaxed a little.
As she pulled the glove back on, she thought about the way Mr Ellison had leapt in front of her a few minutes before. ‘Is Mr Ellison Night School?’
Carter’s expression darkened. ‘Yes and no.’ He looked around to make sure the gardener was nowhere near. ‘He was once. He went to school here. Studied philosophy at Oxford. Went to work in the City for one of the big banks. Then something happened – something bad.’
Allie tried to imagine Mr Ellison, young and dapper, in a suit. It was almost impossible. She’d never seen him in anything but dark green overalls. Never seen him without dirt on his hands.
Allie stared at Carter, willing him to continue. ‘Do you know what happened?’
‘All he’ll say is that he made a mistake that hurt a lot of people. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that he quit and never went back.’ He threw a long branch into the compost pile. ‘He’ll never forgive himself.’
The story was sobering. The idea that you could make a mistake – just one mistake – and your whole life could be ruined was frightening.
Allie’s thoughts drifted back to what was going on here right now. And she wondered if any mistakes of that magnitude were being made. She was fairly certain they were.
‘I wonder…’ she said.
‘I think…’ Carter said at the same time.
They both stopped and chuckled awkwardly.
‘Sorry.’ Carter waved a twig at her. ‘You go first.’
‘It was nothing,’ Allie said. ‘I just wonder if Eloise is OK out in that house by herself. I wonder if she’s scared.’
‘First of all she’s not by herself,’ Carter said. ‘They’d never leave her alone. She probably wishes she was by herself. And second…’ He looked at her speculatively as if trying to decide how much to say. ‘Don’t get too married to the idea of Eloise being innocent just because Nicole thinks she is.’
Allie stared at him, a rising sense of panic tightening the muscles of her throat. ‘Wait. Don’t tell me you think she’s really the spy?’
‘I don’t know if she is or isn’t. I just don’t think Nicole’s theory proves she’s innocent. And I wouldn’t assume she didn’t do it.’
‘Why not?’ Allie’s voice took on a defensive tone. ‘She couldn’t have done the chapel thing, right? I mean, not on her own.’
She hadn’t realised until he’d taken it away from her how much her belief in Eloise’s innocence mattered. She wanted that belief back.
His eyes were as bitter as dark chocolate. ‘Nobody around here is really innocent, Allie. Surely you know that by now?’
‘I should have known you’d be talking instead of working.’
Mr Ellison’s voice cut off Allie’s planned response. Looking up, she saw the gardener striding towards them, his green uniform already a bit muddy. Knowing what she now knew about him, she liked him even more somehow. There was something compelling about suffering – something uniting.
Allie endured her classes with barely controlled impatience. None of the Night School instructors showed up to teach. A variety of teachers were shuffled in from other classes to take over and the whole exercise felt slapdash and annoying.
Word had also been passed out that Night School training was temporarily suspended – no explanation was given.
That afternoon, Allie and Rachel stood on the landing of the grand staircase, pretending to chat casually. Suddenly, Rachel straightened. ‘Target sighted. Six o’clock. Battle stations.’
