2

Rose Campion leaned out of the dormitory window on the top floor of Miss Pecksniff’s Academy for Young Ladies and gave the drainpipe a hard tug. It was safely secured to the wall. Rose’s hands still smarted from where Miss Pecksniff had brought down the ruler on her palms, delivering each blow with a gleam in her eye that suggested she was enjoying herself immensely and only regretted that she hadn’t given Rose a really good beating sooner.

Rose and Miss Pecksniff had been at war from the moment Rose had arrived at the Notting Hill school. Her mop of unruly conker-coloured hair, slate-dark eyes and unladylike rosy cheeks seemed to instantly annoy the head teacher. Her ink-blotched pinafore (she’d been trying to write a song for her music-hall act in the hansom cab on her way to the school) was the final straw. Miss Pecksniff had stared appalled as Rose, glimpsing the velvety-green lawn, gave a whoop of joy, leapt from the still-moving hansom, ran on to the grass and turned a cartwheel. Rose had never seen a flourishing patch of grass, let alone a lawn, in muddy Southwark. It was perfect for practising cartwheels.

“Come here at once!” said Miss Pecksniff, her voice like an angry wasp and her pale-blue eyes bulging in horrified astonishment. “Young ladies never turn cartwheels and they are never, in any circumstances, permitted to walk on the grass.”

“Why ever not?” asked Rose cheerily, genuinely interested.

“Because I say so!” snapped Miss Pecksniff.

Rose was surprised. Whenever she asked a question of her guardian, Thomas Campion, owner of Campion’s Palace of Varieties and Wonders, he always tried to answer it, even though recently he had said that Rose had more questions than he had answers for and the only solution was to send her to school.

Rose was clever enough to know that the war with Miss Pecksniff was one she could never win. She’d made a promise to Thomas that she would stay at school, as he wanted, for at least a year, and she never broke her promises. Well, only if it was really necessary.

Rose knew that Thomas was only trying to do his best for her. He’d been trying to do that every day since the summer’s morning almost thirteen years ago when he’d found her, just a tiny babe, wrapped in half a threadbare linen sheet by Campion’s stage door. Rose was always eager to hear the story. But Thomas found it hard to talk about; he’d lost his wife and infant twin daughters to the measles just weeks before.

Thomas had raised her as a daughter, taught her to read and write – both of which she picked up with astonishing ease – encouraged her to perform at Campion’s and given her an enduring love of Shakespeare. Thomas said the playwright was a genius and Rose agreed. Rose dreamed of one day starring at the Lyceum or the Haymarket, and dazzling theatregoers with her Rosalind from As You Like It or Viola from Twelfth Night.

She loved Thomas and Campion’s fiercely but she still liked to imagine that when she became the most famous actress on the London stage the mother who’d abandoned her would at last come and claim her as her own. She enjoyed visualising over and over in her head the tearful and deeply moving moment when they were finally reunited and her mother begged her forgiveness.

Thomas told her that if she was going to be a great actress she needed to see a bit of life. Thomas hoped that school would give Rose a glimpse of a different world from the rough and tumble of life at the music hall on the south side of the Thames. Campion’s was a well-known landmark situated down Hangman’s Alley on what some whispered to be an old plague pit. Everyone said it was haunted. Hardly a day went by without one of the ballet girls claiming to have glimpsed a stranger’s face behind hers in the dressing-room mirror or to have seen an apparition of a lady in grey staring down at her from the otherwise empty gallery.

Such claims made Rose scoff. She didn’t believe in ghosts. Ghosts were about death, and Rose was full of life. Although she looked like an angel – albeit an often slightly grubby one – she could be a right little devil who thought nothing of hitching up her skirts if it helped her run faster, or giving the Tanner Street boys a mouthful if she caught them trying to sneak into Campion’s without paying. Seeing how bright she was, Thomas wanted Rose to have thebenefit of a proper education; unfortunately, the hefty fees charged by Miss Pecksniff fooled him into thinking her establishment would provide one.

Rose knew that this other world, with its elocution and deportment lessons, and the gossipy young ladies who looked down their little snub noses at Rose, was not for her. She belonged at Campion’s. She rubbed her fingers that still bore the indentation of the sharp edge of Miss Pecksniff’s ruler and angrily remembered the head teacher’s words from that morning.

“That one,” Miss Pecksniff had snarled, bringing the ruler down as hard as she could, “is for always questioning my authority.” Miss Pecksniff’s exertions had made tendrils of hair escape from her bun so it looked as if her thin, pinched face was surrounded by tiny dancing worms. Her pale-blue eyes were feverish. Thwack. Thwack. Rose shut her eyes but refused to flinch. Thwack. She bit the inside of her cheek. She would not be broken by Miss Pecksniff.

“That one is because you don’t belong here with decent, well-bred girls,” shouted Miss Pecksniff, her fury rising at Rose’s lack of tears, “and this one is because Thomas Campion does not pay his bills.”

Rose opened her eyes wide. She was shocked. If there was one thing that Thomas always did, it was pay his debts. It was a matter of honour.

“You’re lying,” shouted Rose, and to Miss Pecksniff’s astonishment she grabbed the ruler out of her hand and broke it clean in half. Miss Pecksniff shrieked loudly as other members of staff came rushing to her aid. The handyman, Jarvis, was a great burly man who grabbed Rose and pulled her arms behind her back, holding her wrists roughly.

“She’s like a wild animal!” cried Miss Pecksniff. “Lock her in the dormitory until I’ve decided what to do with her!”

Miss Pecksniff longed to expel Rose but she knew she couldn’t send the child home with her hands so red and raw from the beating. What she had told Rose was not entirely true: Thomas Campion had been very late paying the current term’s fees, but he had paid up, apologising profusely for the delay and even paying her interest on the money. Miss Pecksniff would decide what to do with Rose over luncheon.

Rose gave the drainpipe another tug, just to be sure, then she dropped her carpet bag out of the dormitory window. It fell on to the gravel below with a crunch. Rose held her breath, fearful that somebody would hear. But nobody came, so she hitched up her skirts and scrambled on to the window sill. Taking a deep breath, she swung herself out on to the drainpipe. Despite the pain in her hands, she clung to it like a monkey and began to climb carefully down. She reached the bottom without injury, apart from a ragged tear in her knickerbockers when they caught on a nail in the brickwork. She picked up her bag and turned towards the open gates at the end of the drive. She stomped viciously across the middle of the wet lawn, leaving a very visible trail of boot marks in the manicured grass. When she reached the road she set off at a run towards Southwark.

She had been at Miss Pecksniff’s Academy for exactly a year and a day. She had kept her promise. It was time to go home to Campion’s.