I cannot believe what I have just heard. I wish I had stayed in my chamber now, instead of sneaking down to listen outside Papa’s study door. Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves.
If I had stayed in my chamber, I could have remained ignorant and carried on pretending – for a while at least – that Papa might protect me. But he didn’t even try. I want to hate him, but I can’t. All my hate belongs to Mama. It is easy to hate Mama. It is a straightforward feeling with clean, sharp edges, all neatly packed in a box. But I can’t hate Papa, not even now. What I feel for him is muddled and cluttered and it spills out of me in an untidy mess. I do know I am ashamed of him though, because the thought of what he has done makes my toes curl and my face burn hot. He has betrayed me. He has made it as clear as polished glass that Mama comes first every time.
I want to fling the door open and spit my venom at them both, but isn’t that what a madwoman would do? I won’t give Mama the satisfaction. I learned a long time ago how to harden my face and my feelings against her. But Papa …
I always thought that when it really counted, he would step in to save me. He has only ever done it once, but I have held onto that all these years, thinking and praying that he would do the same again when the time came.
I was only five. It was a cold winter and snow had fallen thickly onto the back lawns. It weighed down the branches of trees and sat in small drifts at the base of each windowpane. It had fallen onto the street at the front of the house too, but had soon turned brown and sludgy under the wheels of carriages and the hurried footsteps of well-wrapped pedestrians. I had never seen snow before and as I pressed my nose against the chill of the nursery window, I wanted nothing more than to run outside and touch this strange white stuff that had iced my world so prettily. But Mama had forbidden me to go outdoors.
‘Only fools and thieves go out in this weather,’ she said.
I knew that wasn’t true because I had seen the gentlemen in their thick overcoats going about their business and the servants were still in and out all day, the hems of their frocks flapping wetly around their ankles. So I waited until Mama was busy with her household books and I slipped the catch on the double doors in the library and stepped out into the dazzle of the gardens.
My boots crunched into the whiteness and I was amazed at how soft it was and how deep my boots sank into it. I bent down and touched it with my fingers. It was cold, but my fingers burned. I took some more steps, then I stopped and looked behind at the trail of footprints I had left. I was dismayed to see that I had ruined it all. I had spoilt something that had been so perfect. I didn’t know how I was going to fix it, but before I could even try, there was a shout from the house and I turned to see Mama standing at the library doors. Her face was quivering with anger. At first I thought it was because I had made all those footprints in the snow and that it was as bad as if I’d walked mud across one of the expensive rugs in the drawing room. But it wasn’t that at all.
I had disobeyed her and gone outside.
She made me take off my boots and my stockings then she shut the library doors in my face and locked them. I was out there for hours. Eli came to look at me once. He pressed his face against the library window and his breath frosted the glass. He waved at me sadly before he turned to go, leaving a small hole of clear glass where his nose had been.
I stood where Mama had left me. I didn’t dare to move in case I messed up more of the snow. But I was so cold. Too cold to even shiver. After a while I stopped caring about messing up the snow and I lay down in the softness of it and tried to pretend it was a pile of warm blankets and that it was all right for me to go to sleep.
That is how Papa found me. Half asleep and half frozen in the back garden. He picked me up and carried me indoors, and I cried bitterly when the hot flames from the fire brought the feeling back to my toes and feet.
‘Never do that again,’ he said to Mama in a strange, tight voice, as he wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.
‘She had to learn a lesson,’ Mama had said. ‘I was just about to fetch her in, in any case.’ She left the room without saying another word and Papa held me to him for a while.
‘I am sorry, Alice,’ he said.
I thought then that he was saying sorry for what Mama had done to me, shutting me out in the snow to half freeze to death. But I know better now. I understand what he really meant. He was saying sorry for loving her better than me.
A hand on my shoulder startles me. ‘You shouldn’t be listening at doors, Alice,’ whispers Eli.
I turn to face him. ‘And what of it?’ I whisper back. ‘Have they told you what they are planning to do to me?’
Before he can answer, there is a shift of noise from inside the study and Mama’s voice moves closer. I don’t want her to find me here, so I push past Eli and run back upstairs to my chamber. But I don’t miss the guilt that flashes across Eli’s face, like a rat running for cover.