Tess hurtled across the floor toward the front door of Roedeer Lodge as the bell jangled a second time. Finally! I’m going to get to the post before Mrs. Thistleton! But as she reached the inner doors leading to the vestibule, the housekeeper appeared from behind a large potted plant, armed with a damp cloth and a vicious expression. Tess leaped back as though she’d been stung.

“Miss de Sousa,” the housekeeper said, running the cloth over one of the plant’s wide, glossy leaves.

“You even dust the plants?” Tess gasped in disbelief.

Mrs. Thistleton simply sniffed in reply, tucking the cloth under one arm as she reached out to unlock the front door. The postman stood on the step, a bundle of letters in his hands. It was tied with string and all Tess could see were the backs of the envelopes, which gave no clue as to what address these letters bore—nothing to add to Tess’s meager knowledge of where she was.

“Just this?” Mrs. Thistleton said, and the postman nodded.

“No parcels today, missis,” he confirmed.

“Very good.” Mrs. Thistleton began to close the door again.

“Wait!” Tess shouted, trying to push past Mrs. Thistleton. “Is there anything for me? From Miss Ackerbee? Of Ackerbee’s Home for Lost and Foundlings?”

The postman looked away from Tess and glanced toward Mrs. Thistleton. He looked back at Tess again with guilty eyes.

“I—er. I don’t believe so, miss. No.” He cleared his throat and pulled his cap down low before turning away, his steps crunching over the gravel.

“Wait!” Tess called. “Please!” But the man was already through the gate and locking it behind him. He gave Tess one last look and then climbed into the cab of his van. It trundled down the road and out of sight, its steam engine hissing.

“I’ll thank you to get out of my way,” Mrs. Thistleton said, bumping against Tess, keeping the bundle of letters tight to her chest.

“It’s been almost three weeks!” Tess said, barely aware she’d spoken out loud. “Why hasn’t anyone written?”

Mrs. Thistleton stood at a table in the vestibule, deftly flicking through the post. “Children are fickle, I suppose,” she said in a light tone. “They forget. Perhaps you thought you were more important to them than in fact you were.”

Tess turned to face her. “Wilf would never forget me.”

Mrs. Thistleton looked up and gave a thin-lipped, short-lived smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go through this correspondence and sort Mr. Cleat’s from mine. I’m sure you have plenty to do to keep yourself entertained in your…laboratory.”

“So there is nothing for me?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Thistleton said with a slight sigh.

“Please can I just look? For myself?”

“No, you may not,” Mrs. Thistleton said, turning her nose up. “And close the door, please. You’re letting in a draft.” She turned away and began to cross the lobby, her shoes click-clacking on the tiled floor.

“Did you even send my letters?” Tess called after her, but there was no response. “Of course you didn’t,” she said to herself as she banged the door shut. She closed her eyes and put her hot forehead against the cold metal of the lock, then pulled the door open again. She strode out of the house, pulling her cardigan tight around her body. Violet, nestled above Tess’s collarbone and almost hidden by a swath of her long dark hair, stirred as if in protest at the sudden change in temperature.

Tess crunched her way across the gravel driveway and looked back at the house. The windows of its upper floors flashed as they reflected the sunlight, and ivy rustled in the slight breeze. All was still and Tess knew she couldn’t bear to go back inside. She’d never had more space to call her own than she had here, but she had never felt so trapped.

Then an idea popped into her head. “It’s about time we went on an expedition. Right, girl?” she whispered to Violet, who perked up, curling a leg out of Tess’s collar as though testing the air. Tess turned and made for the garden. It was bounded by a neatly clipped hedge, and at its far end there was another gate, which gave way to the scrubbier, more overgrown property beyond. Tess made straight for it.

She kept an eye on the house as she picked her way around the perimeter of the garden. The gate was padlocked shut, the iron bars themselves rusted with age and neglect, but beyond it Tess could see rolling greenness and a distant tree line. Mrs. Thistleton had told her she was never to go beyond this locked gate but it was too tempting to resist.

“Ready, Violet?” she whispered, and then, pulling her skirt up over her knees, Tess began to climb. She placed a foot on a curl of ironwork at the bottom of the gate and hauled herself up, using an overhanging branch to get high enough to sling one leg over the top. Quickly she dropped to the ground on the far side of the gate, where she caught her breath, wiped her hands on her cardigan and looked around.

She found herself in a field, the grass almost to her knees and heavy with moisture. Before long she had reached the trees, their branches so old and thick with leaves that they almost touched the ground. She turned and saw that she had almost lost sight of Roedeer Lodge—just the tops of the turrets and the bristle of chimneys at either end of the roof were visible beyond the high hedge around the garden, and the gate Tess had climbed was hidden among the shadows. Facing forward again, she stepped through the crackling undergrowth to see a sheltered path, long unused, which led away through the forest. She took the deepest breath she’d taken since she left Ackerbee’s.

Suddenly she felt Violet stand to attention.

“What’s up, girl?” she said, keeping her voice low. Violet simply thrummed in response, like a plucked string. Tess kept walking, and ten steps later, she finally saw what the spider had spotted.

A turn in the path led toward an old ivy-choked building buried amid the trees like something that had fallen from the pocket of a passing giant. Its roof was domed, with a segment missing from it almost like a cake with a slice cut out. The building was octagonal, with a tall pointed window on each face and a door that had been beaten open a little, either by bandits, or the weather, or both. Tess was cautious as she approached.

She paused to pick up a fallen branch as she drew close to the door and she hefted it in her right hand as she used her left to push the door all the way open. Tess tumbled through into the interior of—of what exactly?

Four long wooden benches sat on either side of a narrow aisle, facing a raised platform of bare stone with a window stretching above it. Once, the window had probably been filled with color and light; now it was dirty and broken, branches poking through the smashed pane. A rickety worm-eaten lectern sat at one side of the platform, most of its boards missing.

Tess looked around. Each of the windows on the eight faces of the building was made up of small, intricate colored panes, though they were dull in the shadow of the overgrown trees. The whole place was filled with windblown leaves and dotted with rancid pools of rainwater, and some of the ceiling boards near the back had fallen through, giving an unnerving glimpse into darkness overhead. Tess had the sensation of space and silence up there, and the softness of decay. She put her branch on the floor as gently as possible, finally understanding where she was.

It’s an old chapel, or something similar, she thought, a smile breaking over her face for the first time in what felt like days. It doesn’t look as though anyone even knows it’s here anymore. “And it’s perfect,” she whispered into the silence.