‘As you wish, Mr Nicoll,’ said Lizzie, though neither she nor Da seemed able to look each other in the eye.
Alone upstairs and sitting against Lizzie’s bed, I reached into the sleeve of my dress and pulled out the other word, counted. Whoever wrote it had beautiful handwriting. A lady, I was sure, and not just because the quotation was from Byron. The words were all curves and long limbs.
I reached under Lizzie’s bed and pulled out the trunk. I always expected it to feel heavier, but it slid across the floorboards without effort. Inside, slips covered the bottom like a carpet of autumn leaves, and Ditte’s letters rested among them.
It wasn’t fair that I was in trouble when Mr Crane had been so careless. The words were duplicates, I was sure – common words that many volunteers would have sent in. I put both hands in the trunk and felt the slips shift through my fingers. I’d saved them all, just as Da thought he was saving the others by putting them in the Dictionary. My words came from nooks and crannies and from the discard basket in the centre of the sorting table.
My trunk is like the Dictionary, I thought. Except it’s full of words that have been lost or neglected. I had an idea. I wanted to ask Lizzie for a pencil but knew she wouldn’t disobey Da. I looked around her room, wondering where she would keep them.
Without her in it, Lizzie’s room felt unfamiliar – as if it might not belong to her. I got off the floor and went to the wardrobe. It was a relief to see her old winter coat with the top button that didn’t quite match the others. She had three pinnies and two dresses; her Sunday best, once shamrock-green, was now paled like summer grass. I brushed it with my hand and saw strips of shamrock where Lizzie had let out the seams. When I opened her drawers, all I could see were underthings, an extra set of bed linen, two shawls and a small wooden box. I knew what was in the box. Just the other day, Mrs Ballard had decided it was time I knew about monthlies, and so Lizzie had shown me the rags and the belt that she kept in there. I hoped never to see them again, so I left the box closed and shut the wardrobe door.
There was no chest with games. There were no shelves with books. The little table beside her bed held a swatch of embroidery and the photograph of her mother in its simple wooden frame. I peered at it: a plain young woman in an ordinary hat and ordinary clothes, holding a simple bouquet of flowers. Lizzie looked just like her. Behind the frame was the hat pin I’d found in the trunk.
I kneeled down and peered under the bed. At one end were Lizzie’s winter boots; at the other, her chamber-pot and sewing box. My trunk lived right in the middle, its resting place marked by an absence of dust. There was nothing else. No pencils. Of course.
I looked at the trunk, still open on the floor, the latest word lying face-up on all the others. Then I looked at the hat pin on Lizzie’s bedside table and remembered how sharp it was.
The Dictionary of Lost Words. It took me all afternoon to scratch it inside the lid of the trunk. My hands ached from the effort. When it was done, Lizzie’s hat pin lay bent out of shape on the floor, the beads as bright as the day I’d found it.
Something filled me then, some strange and awful queasiness. I tried to straighten the pin, but it refused to be made perfect. The end had become so blunt I couldn’t imagine it piercing the felt of even the cheapest hat. I searched the room but found nothing that would fix it. I placed the pin on the floor beside Lizzie’s bedside table, hoping she’d think it had bent in the fall.
For the next few months, I mostly stayed away from the Scriptorium. Lizzie collected me from St Barnabas, fed me lunch, took me back. In the afternoons, I read my books and practised my writing. I alternated between the shade of the ash, the kitchen table and Lizzie’s room, depending on the weather. I pretended I was ill when they celebrated the publication of the second volume, the one containing all the words beginning with C, including count and counted.
On my twelfth birthday, Da picked me up from St Barnabas. When we came through the gates of Sunnyside, he kept hold of my hand and I walked with him towards the Scriptorium.
It was empty, except for Dr Murray. He looked up from his desk as we came in, then stepped down to greet me.
‘Happy birthday, young lady,’ he said. Then he peered at me over his spectacles, unsmiling. ‘Twelve, I believe.’
I nodded; he continued to peer.
My breath faltered. I was too big to hide beneath the sorting table, to escape from whatever he was thinking. So instead, I looked him in the eye.
‘Your father tells me you are a good student.’
I said nothing, and he turned and gestured towards the two Dictionary volumes behind his desk.
‘You must avail yourself of both volumes whenever you have the need. If you don’t, there is no reason for all our efforts,’ he said. ‘If you require knowledge of a word beyond C, then the fascicles are at your disposal as they are published. Beyond that —’ again he peered, ‘— you must ask your father to search the pigeon-holes. Do you have any questions?’
‘What is avail?’ I asked.
Dr Murray smiled and looked briefly at Da.
‘It is an A word, thankfully. Shall we look it up?’ He went to the shelf behind his desk and got down
