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The Marchmont MurderBeing an account of the murder of Ms MelkinWritten by Bertie Wells, Temporary Honorary Member of the Wells and Wong Detective Society and the Junior Pinkertons (because our siblings are utterly ridiculous)Began Tuesday 30th March 1937 I suppose this notebook — the embossed leather one Harold gifted me for my birthday last month — is now a casebook, of the sort I know Daisy and Hazel try to hide beneath their beds whenever they find themselves away from school. Truly, I believe we Wells must be cursed in some way or another always to encounter murder. Uncle Felix, of course, actively seeks it out (but not one of us is supposed to know about his real job, so he hardly counts); Daisy is not much better, although it is never technically her fault when murders have been happening around her non-stop ever since that horrible business at Deepdean.In that way, I am the exception in my family: I would be perfectly happy if I were never to encounter an inspector or dead body for the rest of my life. But I will have to apologise to Daisy for every time I told her to get a grown-up or find the police instead of playing detective, for death seems to have found us again. Last night, Ms Melkin was murdered in her room, barely 20ft away from us while we slept.You see, Harold has just been made the prime suspect, and I fear we may be the only ones capable of proving his innocence.
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Everything has happened so quickly I can barely get the events straight in my head, let alone write them down. Were Daisy here, she would tell me to start at the beginning and work from there, so that is what I will do.Harold and I arrived in Edinburgh on Tuesday, at the end of the Lent term. One of the wonderful things I have discovered about uni is the length of our holidays — why, we sat for almost 8 hours on the Flying Scotsman without fretting one bit about wasting our precious free time (although I will admit that I was at least mildly bored after the third time the conductor mentioned whatever record the train had broken a few years ago). Three whole weeks two ourselves in a strange city! And we had not even had to pay for it ourselves; after the disaster that has been our last few holidays, what with Fallingford and then poor Chummy and Donald, Uncle Felix had practically shoved the tickets into our hands with a recommendation for a good hotel and a vague mention of a contact he knew in Edinburgh.The train pulled into the station with a roar of steam and the sharp shriek of breaks. The whole journey, Harold was staring avidly out of the window and peppering our conversation with odd facts he’d picked up about the railway (“The first train journey from London to Edinburgh with no stops, Bertie! It’s a marvel of engineering.”). I, meanwhile, was trying my very hardest not to be ill after foolishly attempting to read for the first hour.We emerged onto a platform which hardly seemed different to the one we’d left that morning. Porters bustled around lugging mounds of suitcases taller than they were, women in heavy skirts scurried between trains clutching elegant hats, and newspaper sellers yelled the headlines in accents so thick I could scarcely make out one word in three.Swinging our bags over our shoulders and stumbling slightly with the weight, we walked to one of the more friendly-looking newspaper boys. “Good afternoon,” I said, painfully aware of how out-of-place my accent was here. “I don’t suppose you could tell us where to find this address, could you?” I proffered the scrap of paper I’d scribbled the name and location of our hotel down on to the boy.He glanced at it for barely a second before rattling off a list of directions so fast it felt like whiplash. It was all I could do to nod politely along. “I’m awfully sorry,” I said once he had finished, “But I couldn’t quite hear you over the…” I gestured vaguely at the station around us.He muttered something incredibly rude about the English, which I will not repeat here, but nonetheless pulled a stub of a pencil out of his pocket and flipped the note over. “We’re here,” he said slowly, drawing a rectangle which I supposed was meant to be the train station. “Waverley. Take the tram to Marchmont,” here he drew a squiggly line, “and walk back the way you came for a bit. The Craiglachie’ll be somewhere down the second road to your left and, if you cannae find it, some gadgie’s bound tae ken where it is if you ask.” He sketched a few blocks of shops and houses in and handed it back to me.“Thank you,” Harold said, pressing a coin into the boy’s hand. He’d been standing just behind me for the whole interaction, and it struck me then that however strange I found being here, it was almost certainly worse for him. In London, at least, there are people from all over the world, even if they are scarce. Here, I could not see a single person who did not have my pale face and rosy cheeks other than Harold. I couldn’t help but notice the glimmer of curiosity in the boy’s eyes, nor how Harold tensed while we walked away.Outside, the street seemed just as busy as the station. Standing on tiptoe, I glimpsed a sign not unlike that of a bus stop sticking out from a pole beside the road. Already, a cluster of people congregated around its base.“Bertie, the tram!” Harold exclaimed next to me, pointing at the red and white tram rounding the corner ahead of it. Why, if we didn’t rush… without thinking, I grabbed his wrist in my hand and positively towed him towards the crowd just as the tram slowed to a stop.We squeezed our way between the people until we reached the conductor. “Two tickets to Marchmont, if you please,” I huffed, more winded than I care to admit. He handed them to me without comment, gesturing at the next person to hurry up. We ascended the winding staircase to the top deck, immediately sliding into the pair of seats one row back from the front. I would, of course, have sat at the very front if I could, but three children no older than seven had already claimed them for themselves. They were engrossed in an argument with who I assume was their mother, who spoke low and calmly in a language I didn’t recognise.As soon as the tram pulled out of its stop, Harold coughed pointedly. For a moment, I didn’t know what he was on about, then I noticed that my fingers were still locked tightly around his wrist. I released him at once, blushing as red as a schoolgirl. In front of us, the little boy shrieked something excitedly before his mother pulled him back onto his seat. I flexed my hand subtly, trying to shake off the feeling of Harold’s wrist warm beneath my fingertips.“So,” Harold said after a moment of awkward silence, “What do you know about this friend of your uncle?”I cast my mind back, trying to remember if Uncle Felix had ever mentioned knowing anyone in Edinburgh before. “There’s James Laggan,” I said slowly. Yes, I distinctly remembered Uncle Felix starting to tell a story about running after a motor bus with Jimmy Laggan before Daisy asked him why he could not simply have waited at the bus stop instead. By the way he went quiet, Laggan was almost certainly involved in his more secretive work. “I’m certain it must be him — Uncle Felix has never mentioned anyone else in Edinburgh. He’s a few years younger than my uncle, but just as quick off the mark by the sound of it. He must be a decent sort of fellow for Uncle Felix to like him.”Harold grinned and there was something so astoundingly bright about it that I was taken aback for a moment. “Well then,” he said, “I have a feeling that this holiday will be positively delightful.” A floating feeling came over me then and, despite myself, I could not help but smile back.
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It was pure luck, and nothing else, that let me read the sign at the tram stop a split second before we had passed it. Once again, I grabbed Harold by the wrist and we raced down the stairs in a clatter, very nearly falling over. “This is our stop,” I gasped to the conductor. He frowned at my somewhat late pronouncement but, nonetheless, signalled to the driver to stop.Barely had we stumbled off the tram before we doubled over in laughter. “Honestly, Bertie,” Harold sighed once we had regained enough breath to speak. “You could hold my hand without needing to drag me someplace, you know.” I felt my stomach do a little flip and for a moment, the light dizziness from the tram returned. He must have seen something on my face, for he quickly added, “I’m only joking, of course. No need to act so serious!”“Right,” I replied in an unconvincing tone. I suddenly felt quite awkward standing there in silence and turned abruptly back the way we had come — right into a young man walking in the opposite direction.“Shit!” he said loudly grabbing my shoulder for balance as he stumbled forward. I, too, had reached instinctively to steady us and we ended up in a sort of half-embrace.“I’m so terribly sorry,” I rushed, stepping back and pushing my glasses back up my nose. I pointedly did not look at Harold. I could hear him snickering to my side and I refused to give him the satisfaction of an acknowledgement. “Are you alright?”Now that I looked at him, I could tell that he was not much older than us. He had a sharp face and crisp grey suit with a lavender handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket, but there was still a youthfulness to the set of his jaw. He was, I thought, rather a dandy. “I’m not quite ready to be carted off to the hospital,” he said dryly, the corner of his lips twitching up. “It seems I have finally met my match for clumsiness, so my pride is injured more than anything.”Still, I apologised again as he continued to walk off down the street. There is an awful embarrassment to walking straight into the path of a stranger only to then have to stumble through a handful of sentences of polite conversation.Once I was quite sure that the man was out of earshot, I whirled at once to face Harold and fixed him with the sternest glare I could muster. “That was hardly called for,” I said in a tone of mock affront.Harold, the bastard, simply shrugged. “You have to admit it was amusing. A handful of words and suddenly you lose all awareness of the world - perhaps I should say such things more often if it means watching you fumble through apologies like that again.”I did not stop glaring at him, ignoring the red I knew was rising in my cheeks. I turned my nose up haughtily. “Well, then you shall simply have to make your own way to our hotel,” I said and began walking parallel to the tram tracks.I made it maybe three steps before Harold appeared at my shoulder once more. “Come on,” he said through a laugh, nudging my shoulder with his own. I nudged him back, harder, resisting the urge to lean into him instead. God, I was acting like a moron. “I hope you remember where the hotel is because I haven’t a clue.”When I took it out, the map was horrifically crinkled but thankfully still legible. The boy had marked the tram station with a faint circle. Two streets away a cross marked out a block of apartments. I glanced up, finally taking in the streets around me.The buildings were taller than those in Cambridge. Imposing brick facades stretched upwards with big bay windows protruding upwards into spires. Each building was easily four stories tall. The base floor of almost every building I could see seemed occupied by a shop or another, from Rankins to James Thin to the Capercaille Inn. Above, the windows were framed with curtains in mismatched floral designs — apartments, I guessed.After so long in Cambridge, I had almost forgotten what a proper city looked like. Cambridge always felt like something out of a storybook; a child’s idea of what a university and city should look like. Marchmont was by no means new, but it lacked the weight of history Cambridge always seems to carry with it. It felt busier, too, though I doubt there were any more people rushing around the street than back home.It took another few moments of squinting at the map before I was confident enough not to get lost instantly. “This way,” I said, walking off firmly along the side of the tram line. Harold followed without comment and together we wove through the crowd. I am happy to report that I avoided knocking any other strangers over.The street seemed to stretch on infinitely in front of us as we dragged our luggage with us. I kept glancing down at the scrap of paper clutched tightly in my hand, double-checking every decision and turning. It didn’t matter that the Craiglachie was supposedly down the second main street we came across; I refused to become lost. I counted the streets off in my head as we walked, eventually turning down the one I was sure would lead to our hotel.The road sloped steadily uphill before steepening in the sly way which meant we were halfway along it before we realised quite how out of breath we were. “I swear I will never complain about the hills in Cambridge ever again,” Harold panted. His cheeks were flushed a dark with effort and I imagine I looked equally strained. “But I say, oughtn’t we be there by now?”I shrug, stumbling forward an extra few steps before pulling the map out of my pocket and passing it to him, too tired to say anything in reply.He stared at the map, turning it around in his hands. A furrow appeared between his eyebrows and I could almost see the thoughts whirling through his mind. After a moment, he scowled suddenly down at the page.“Whatever is the matter?” I asked although I could already guess the answer.He jabbed a finger at the map. “I am never trusting you to find anything ever again for the rest of my life, Wells,” he hissed. “This is where the hotel is,” he pointed at the cross, “and this is where we are.” He indicated a spot on a street considerably closer to the tram stop and a good 600 yards too far away from the main street.“Shit.”
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The Craiglachie spilled around a corner of the street, separated from the road by a tall hedge that we could not see over, even if we jumped. Its chimney stacks stretched above its four stories as if they were trying to touch the clouds. Unlike the buildings around it, it had only one line of bay windows tucked around the corner. It was, I thought, rather a plain building, but perhaps that was why Uncle Felix liked it so. Even only a handful of yards away from Marchmont Road, it was quieter, concealed from the bustle of daily life.A woman came up behind us, her heels clicking on the cobbles. She brushed past us without a word, walking rather quickly. She struck quite an imposing figure as she strode up to the hotel’s door, with her pale fur coat pulled tightly around her. She opened the door without knocking and disappeared into the hotel.I turned to Harold. “Ready?” I asked.“Bet,” he replied, grip tightening on his bags. We followed where we’d seen the woman go, trying to look more confident than we felt. We’d travelled before and had been alone plenty, but it is different to be somewhere you know innately than to be in a strange city hundreds of miles away from home.We knocked on the front door and waited patiently, exchanging nervous glances. After a few moments with no reply, I pushed the door open, stepping through into the front room. “Hello?” I called out, placing my bags down on the floor with a dull thud. The room was small enough that I could have crossed the room in five steps or less, yet it didn’t feel claustrophobic. The heavy tartan curtains were drawn back so daylight filled the room. Instead, it was all rather cosy and quaint, with a fire burning merrily away in a hearth bracketed by two armchairs. A desk stretched across the back of the room, behind which a portly man stood scribbling in a hefty logbook. Before him stood a couple deep into a discussion which might well have been an argument.“You can’t honestly expect me to stay here with her,” the woman snapped.The man scoffed, folding his arms. “Pray tell, where else are we to stay then? No, I booked these rooms and we will damn well use them.”“Hello?” I called out again, craning forward slightly.The desk clerk caught my eye, and I do not think I imagined the relief that washed over his face. “If you would excuse me a moment,” he said quickly to the couple, who gave no sign that they had even noticed him. He pottered towards us, a polite smile fixed on his face. “Good day to you, sirs. However may I help you?”“My uncle booked rooms for the pair of us,” I said, glancing back at Harold who was still lingering in the doorway. “We’re set to be staying for a week. Wells and Mukherjee?”He gestured us over to the desk, neatly sidestepping the couple. They had stopped arguing and were now staring sullenly forward, occasionally shooting dark glares at one another. The clerk ignored them.He slid the ledger closer towards himself, flicking through the pages until he found the one he was looking for. “Ah, yes!” he cried. “Rooms 2 and 9 — only 9 has bay windows, I’m afraid, but we are quite fully booked at the moment. I trust you will not need assistance with your luggage? Very good, very good. Breakfast will be served between 8 am and 9 am, I can provide a list of respectable cafes for luncheon, and supper will be served at 7 pm. The rooms are numbered so you should have little difficulty finding yours. The dining and living rooms are through there,” he gestured at the door propped open behind him, “And the rooms are up the stairwell.” He passed me two keys labelled with embossed metal disks without another word. I must admit I was slightly relieved when he paused; I would have sworn the man had not taken one breath through the whole of his talk.I nodded my thanks and he returned almost immediately to the couple, squaring his shoulders and grimacing slightly as he did. Harold passed me my luggage and together we began climbing the stairs tucked behind the desk. We were already quite out of breath from our trek searching for our hotel so were positively gasping for air by the time we reached the first floor.“You take the bay windows?” I panted. I did not mention that they always reminded me of my room in Fallingford and nor did I need to; Harold nodded without complaint.“Meet downstairs in half an hour? We should have just enough time to look around the city a little before supper if we’re quick about it.”“Sure thing.” I handed him the key to room 9.He took it with a grin before pausing and turning to me with a questioning expression. “I say, you aren’t just giving me the bay windows because you’re hoping for a nicer view higher up? Because, in that case, I might have to fight you for that room key.”“Bugger off,” I muttered, clipping him around the ear. He batted my hand away with a laugh and shoved me lightly towards the staircase. I rolled my eyes but went regardless.Room 2 was tucked away around the corner from the stairwell, looking out over the street below. My key slid easily into the lock and turned with a soft click.The door opened into a small room, just big enough for the bed and washbasin to fit comfortably within it. On the far wall, a small window overlooked a garden tucked between the hotel and hedge boundary. It was nothing special; my room at Cambridge was almost as big, but it was cosy, and when I sat down at the end of the bed, it was perfectly comfy.I heaved my bags up beside me and began the arduous process of unpacking. Out came my handkerchiefs, vests, shirts (which, now I saw them, I regretted not pressing before we left) and glorious green trousers Squashy always teases me about. I reached for the set of drawers by the bedside, pulling the top drawer open. It jammed, sticking on the loose panel at the top of the cabinet. I gave it a sharp tug and it opened. I huffed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t managed to pull the loose wood clean out of it.It did not take long before my belongings were neatly stashed away, my bags shoved haphazardly beneath the bed and out of sight. My coat was draped across the end of the bed and I shrugged it on, taking a moment to button the front against the wintery chill I knew we would face the instant we stepped outside. When we were walking around it had been warm enough, but I knew with a sinking sort of certainty that we would not stay that way for long, especially as the sky was already beginning to darken outside.I pushed my door open and stepped through into the landing, pausing to lock it behind me. The Craiglachie is a perfectly nice hotel, but after everything that has happened over the past few years leaving my room unlocked whilst I am not there leaves me with a creeping dread of what might happen. Once it was so bad that Harold had to hold my hands and remind me how to breathe, the weight on my chest was so very heavy.You’d have thought that, given the events of less than an hour ago, I would have learnt to pay attention to where I walked instead of allowing myself to become so caught up in my own mind I lost all sense of the world around me.You would be wrong.No sooner had I rounded the corner of the stairs, intending to go and find Harold, than I walked straight into a person coming up them.“Golly!” the same young man from earlier cried. “What a peculiar coincidence. I never did get the chance to catch your name.”I stared at him, utterly mortified. “Albert,” I said after a moment, my cheeks flushing red. “Albert Wells. I am so sorry for walking into you!”His brow furrowed in the way that so many people’s seem to do once they hear my name. When I left Fallingford after the murder, I’d hoped that everything could be dealt with quietly and swept under the rug. For a while, it was. The gossip settled down, society’s thrill and intrigue at violence calming with the news of a simple trial, the conviction almost assured given the evidence. Then the rumours began to circulate.I didn’t know what was worse: that he had lied to me constantly in the days before his arrest, or that, despite everything, he still defended me when the papers accused us of… that. Three years was plenty of time to move on, but I still could not help the spark of panic that shot through my chest at the idea of anyone recognising me. Of anyone deciding to look deeper into papers’ claims.If the man noticed, he stayed quiet about it and I was grateful. “Eoin McGinty,” he said smoothly, proffering his hand. I shook it. There was a sharpness to his gaze that hadn’t been there before and, not for the first time, I wondered what others must see when they look at me. Sometimes it is obvious: a sympathetic smile or lingering glance, sometimes an immediate, infectious nervousness. I could not tell what McGinty was thinking in the slightest.Suddenly, I recalled the time and snapped out of whatever trance I had become stuck in. “I’ve got to be off,” I said hurriedly, “But I imagine I will see you around.”“See you around,” he replied as I rushed off down the stairs. Harold would kill me if I was late.
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I met Harold halfway down the stairs and stopped dead. With his hair quaffed and his vivid red scarf tucked neatly into his coat, he was the epitome of an English gentleman. There was a crispness to him that hadn’t been there before and my breath caught in my throat. But then I looked closer, at the way his coat was still stained with brick dust, the way his hair still curled where it was long despite the grease he must have spent a good ten minutes applying, and he was just Harold again.He smiled at me and I could not help but smile back. “You ready?”“Bet,” he replied, before glancing down. “Nice socks, Wells.”I followed his gaze and realised, with a hot flush of embarrassment, that one of my trouser legs was quite caught up, leaving my socks with clumsily hand-embroidered frogs (Daisy’s idea of a funny present) visible to the world. It would not have been so bad had Squashy not been so clearly occupied by something else while sewing. As it was, the only way I could tell they were frogs was the card that came with them: ‘Have a hoppy birthday’ scrawled above a sketch of a frog wearing glasses uncannily like my own. At least this pair had one hole and one heel each, unlike the last pair I’d received from her.I pulled it down as fast as I could, but Harold was already grinning in the way I knew meant that this was not over. I sighed, resigned to my fate of endless gifts of ugly socks from him, Manda and Alf. “Very nice pattern,” he continued, intentionally oblivious to my suffering. “Is it… mould?”“Frogs,” I muttered.“Of course!” He smiled brightly and it took all of my willpower not to sock him or do something else entirely. “That would have been my first guess, except the five-eyed one threw me off.”“And the puddle one?”He squinted down at the little of my socks that were visible below my trousers. “Yes,” he mused, “That does make it a trifle harder to recognise.”I rolled my eyes fondly at him before turning back down the stairs, Harold barely two steps behind me. We clattered loudly down the stairs, barely resisting the urge to race down them. But if, for a brief moment, we succumbed to the temptation, no one would be able to prove it.When we emerged into the front room, it was not empty. Instead, the woman with the red hair stood before the front desk, gesticulating wildly to the clerk. “This is entirely unacceptable!” she said loudly. It took me a moment to place her accent; the sole American I have spoken to for any length of time is George’s friend, Alexander. Her accent was broader than his, dragging some vowels on for far longer than needed and cutting others short. “I specifically asked for a large room with a bay window and a view of the city, and the sole thing I can see is the next building over.”The clerk pressed his lips into a thin line, taking a deep breath in the way all pressured hotel clerks seem to do before explaining something obvious. “I’m terribly sorry, Ms Melkin,” he said before a wave of pressure crashed into me. I tried very hard not to double over from the sheer force.Around me, the world seemed to spiral out of focus, as if I were viewing it from underwater. My heart pounded in my ears and nausea rose within me until I distantly thought that I might be sick.I was at once standing in the foyer and pacing around the library in Fallingford, a newspaper clutched so tightly in my hand that the letters would be legible on my palm for hours afterwards.Daisy wrapped her arms tightly around me or Harold touched my shoulder and words drifted to me without meaning. I felt gentle hands guiding me outside into the front garden, or maybe Cook guided me to a seat and pressed a plate of biscuits into my lap to sit there, untouched, until she took them away once more. The air was cool against my face, or maybe it was still the warm stuffy air of the kitchen.“Bertie?” The voice didn’t have an owner but it sounded familiar. I looked up, head reeling. The world spun around me and I could not have made the speaker out any more than if I were looking at my surroundings through a kaleidoscope. “I need you to breathe, okay, Bertie? Breathe with me: in… and out.”My lungs inhaled and exhaled in a choked gasp, nothing like what he was doing. He didn’t correct me; he only repeated it, lifting one of my hands to his chest so I could feel its steady rise and fall through his coat. The feeling of someone else touching me was almost too much to bear, searing through my skin and shattering the images in my mind even further.“In… and out.”In…In…In…“In… and out.”…and outIn, and out.In… and out.I hadn’t realised my eyes were closed until I opened them, blinking stupidly in the daylight. I could hear people moving around us but didn’t dare look. For now, the world could stay confined to me and my hand pressed into his coat, fingers still clenched tightly around nothing.“You with me?” Harold asked quietly. I stared at his shoulder in silence, refusing to make eye contact. There was a reddish smear on his lapel as if he had dirtied it and then tried to wash it off. I thought it was brick dust, though it could also have been tomato ketchup. “Bertie?” Still, I did not respond. “I’m going to hug you now, if that’s okay,” he told me and, slowly enough that I could have stopped him had I wanted to, he stepped closer, wrapping his arms around me with just the right amount of pressure.I could not help myself; I tucked my face into the space between his shoulder and neck, inhaling the wool-and-stone-and-street-food smell of his scarf. Surrounded by him, I felt the last of my barriers break down. A sob escaped my lips before I could stop it, muffled against him. His hand reached up to rub soft, comforting circles against my back. “It’s okay,” he whispered as if I were a child in need of comfort instead of an adult who should be able to cope with his problems on his own. “I’m here; I’ve got you.”“Sorry,” I mumbled. Our holiday had barely even started and I was already ruining it.He scoffed. “Nothing to apologise for. Take your time, then we can sit here for a bit or go exploring.” I smiled slightly, even though he could not see it. “I want to see Royal Mile and Greyfriars Bobby — I overheard a gentleman talking about him on the tram and we must go as soon as possible. Am I talking too much?”“No.” Even opening my mouth took all of my concentration and effort. I gritted my teeth. “Keep going. What’s a grey fried Bobby?”“This is only what I overheard on the tram, mind you,” he said quickly. “I hadn’t heard of him before, so we shall have to go to be certain of anything. Greyfriars Bobby was a dog and, after his master died, he spent years sitting on his grave. They put up a statue of him near the graveyard, only the man called it a kirkyard or something equally strange. Once I graduate from Cambridge and become a celebrated historian I intend to have a dog, you know. Some sort of terrier who will sit on my lap while I do whatever it is I will do and whom George can play with whenever he visits.”“You should get a labrador.” I pulled back slightly and wiped my eyes on my cuff. Harold pretended not to notice. “Clumsy and loyal, just like you.”He gasped dramatically, pressing a hand to his forehead in a mock swoon. For a moment, I missed the warmth of it around me. Then I realised how ridiculous I sounded even in my head and tried very hard to think of anything else. “How positively dare you!” he said, affronted. “It wasn’t me who got us lost on the way here.”“You tripped over your bag when you stood up on the train. You were the one who left it next to your seat.”He flushed slightly. “I’m not that clumsy. Besides, you seem to have perked up some.”I nodded, then asked, rather abruptly, “How did you know? How to make… that go away?”“George used to have something similar,” he said simply. “If a place was busy, or new, or someone he didn’t know touched him, he’d panic. It took a while, but I figured out how to calm him down. He can cope better now and do most of it on his own, but that’s what I’d always do for him: go somewhere quiet and focus on the small things.”“Like breathing.”“Like breathing,” he said and smiled. “Now come on — we have a tram to catch.”
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We managed to find our way back to the tram stop without much difficulty or getting lost. The walk was far shorter than we had expected, but I suppose that only shows quite how lost I got us earlier — which, might I stress, was not entirely my fault. Harold could have asked for the map to check my navigation, for we both know that he is the better at it of the two of us, but he did not. Logically, that makes a good portion of the blame fall on his shoulders, not mine.Even the tram journey seemed to pass quickly, aged buildings clustering around us as we slipped across the divide into Tollcross. The near-identical Marchmont apartments and houses give way to mismatched slate and smooth storefronts, new and old buildings jumbled together with no apparent order. It was at once dizzying and exhilarating to be somewhere completely different to home, or even any other place we have been. The sole place even remotely similar is London but that hardly counts; London is large enough to be identical to almost any place imaginable.We spotted Tollcross with plenty of time to spare and chamber down the stairs and off the tram without being glared at once. We were, it seemed, already beginning to learn.In Marchmont, the buildings had all been relatively uniform; here, each house was almost entirely different from its neighbour. The street was cobbled and narrow and not quite straight, almost meandering its way between the buildings.We began walking, not bothering to check the map. “Bertie,” Harold said after a moment, his voice strained, “Is it just me, or is this entire street a bridge?”I was about to tell him to stop being so absurd when I followed his gaze to a low stone railing set into the gap between two buildings. I rushed over, planting my hands firmly on the top and leaning as far over as I dared. “Golly!” I exclaimed. We must have been 20ft in the air. Whole streets and buildings filled the void below us and I marvelled at the site.It felt as if we were hovering above the world. As a child, I would spend as long as I was allowed watching the boats drift beneath our feet whenever Daisy and I walked along the canal. We’d stand, mesmerised by the fresh, bold paint of the boats and the yelled conversation of the people in them. This was almost like that. Instead of brightly painted wood, there were vivid blue and red coats and fancy hats with feathers. It was a technicolour scene out of a dream and I loved it.Harold came to stand beside me, and I felt more than heard his gasp of astonishment. Observing without partaking was an odd sort of magic. It was freeing, somehow; here, we could watch without fear of judgment or prying eyes. He craned forward over the edge, hand brushing against mine as his fingers pressed against the stone. I shivered and buried my nose in my scarf. Before long, we would be back in the warmth of the hotel. I longed for a cup of tea but couldn’t bear disturbing the silent wonder that had settled over us.“It’s stunning.” Harold’s voice was barely above a whisper but I heard it nonetheless. I glanced over at him. His cheeks were tinted red from the chill and his breaths came out in wisps of smoke.“It is,” I agreed. Harold’s eyes flitted between the people walking below, tracing some story only he could see. I wondered what a casual observer would see looking at us: two figures huddled in jackets not designed for Edinburgh’s weather, shoulders and hands pressed close together. We could be anyone: friends visiting a city that had no business being so cold, arch enemies from school, a young couple still in the nervous, stumbling stage everyone seems to go through. For the few moments we stood there, it did not matter. We were just people, as anonymous as any of those on the street below us. A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the cold.
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That evening, I dressed quickly for dinner and was straightening my collar when Harold hammered at my door. His hand was still raised when I pulled it open and rushed out into the landing.“I’m not late!” I gasped, shoving my wristwatch in Harold’s face. He only just managed to step to the side to avoid my punching him in the face. “Oops.”He laughed, more relaxed than I’d seen him in ages. Something stirred deep within me at the sight of him practically glowing but I ignored it with ease. I was suddenly, impossibly grateful for Uncle Felix’s insistence that we have a proper holiday; we’d been out of Cambridge for less than a day yet it felt like a weight had lifted off my shoulders without my knowing it was there in the first place. Looking at Harold, I knew it was the same for him. In Edinburgh, we could just be Bertie and Harold. Albert Wells from Fallingford had nothing to do with me here, just as Harold could leave behind the young man who had to work twice as hard as any of the rest of us to be seen as equal.We made our way down the staircase and into the dining room. A long, rectangular table filled half of the room, framed by a window on one wall and a merry fireplace on the other. The rest of the room was taken up with smaller tables, few of which seemed to have been set.Already, the long table was almost filled. I recognised the couple from the lobby when we’d first arrived and the man I’d crashed into - McGinty. I tried my hardest to ignore Ms Melkin from her place at the end of the table and the way my breath snagged in my chest at the sight of her. There were another two people I didn’t recognise, too: a balding man with a nervous air and a young woman no older than us who smiled and waved as we slid into the remaining seats.“Hello,” she chirped immediately. “Fine weather today, isn’t it? I’m Mairead - Mairead Kinadale.” She stuck her hand out across the table.I paused before shaking it. Her grip was firm and assertive and utterly unladylike. She reminded me of Daisy: intentionally oblivious of whatever anyone else might think of her. She met my eye with a tilt of her chin as if daring me to point out the social misstep and try to treat her as a lady. I didn’t. “Albert Wells, pleased to make your acquaintance,” I replied instead.“The Albert Wells?” Ms Melkin asked before Harold could introduce himself, leaning towards me. I tried to hide my flinch but didn’t deny it. “Tina Melkin, Sunday Press. I wrote a piece or two on the whole Fallingford scandal when it first happened and I would simply love to do a follow-up piece. You know, see what happened to the heir caught in the middle of a murder and allegations of-”“No,” I said abruptly.“It would certainly be interesting,” she continued as if I had never spoken. “The murder, your closest friend — unless, of course, the rumours were true…”“No,” I said again, just as sharply. “I’m not interested.” I knew exactly which article she was referring to: it was sometime between the murder and the trial (time seemed to flex and stretch and shrink until I could hardly keep track of it) and I do not think I could ever forget it. For hours, I sat in the library, reading and rereading those few lines of text thousands of times until the ink began to fade onto my fingers and the words blurred before my eyes. There, in crisp newsprint, was the sort of blatant accusation I had been terrified of for weeks.According to Ms Melkin’s article, Stephan and I had been far closer than friends for months before he did that. I didn’t know if it made it better or worse, how far from the truth the article was. Between my shock and terror, I couldn’t help the sickening jealousy welling up inside me. It was as if my every desire had been splashed out for the world to see — it had been, in a way. Months instead of days. Passion instead of confusion. Sex instead of scared, quiet kisses in the dark.Her expression flickered briefly into annoyance before settling back into the impassively interested façade all journalists seem to have. “Just think about it! The Fallingford murder hooked people in a way I have never seen before; they would love to see what happened afterwards, and, of course,” She glanced at Harold. “Your new paramour.”Harold shot to his feet, the bench clattering beneath him. “How dare you,” he hissed. “You have no right to accuse me - accuse us - of that.” His eyes were narrowed, his features steeled and his whole body tense. He seemed coiled, as if ready to attack or flee. I went to pull him back down but stilled my hand just in time. It would do nothing for us. I swallowed.“Tina!” a voice boomed behind us and we spun around instantly. “I say, oughtn’t you at least wait until dinner has been served before trying to write another article?”The man looked eerily similar to Ms Melkin, with the same ginger hair and sharply slanting brows, and his accent — American, I guessed — was identical to hers, if not slightly stronger. He looked as though he was in his late thirties but had a more youthful air than most of the other grown-ups at the table. He was dressed more plainly than her, too. While she wore an almost scandalous emerald dress with a heavy silver necklace, the man had on a suit jacket from last season at best, the ghost of a stain visible on a cuff.Ms Melkin mumbled something under her breath but didn’t reply. Instead, the man ploughed on. “I’m terribly sorry to have missed the introductions. Chester Melkin, at your service, and of course you will have met Tina.” He didn’t proffer his hand.“Mairead Kinadale,” Kinadale said immediately. She nodded at Harold and me. “Albert Wells, Harold Mukherjee, and that’s about as far as we got.” Harold settled somewhat but I knew he was no less tense for it.The man from the lobby spoke next, “Thomas Dalton, how’d you do? And, of course, this is my darling wife, Emily. I say, I recognise the name, Mr Melkin. I don’t suppose we have met?”“No, no,” Mr Melkin said tightly. He glanced at his sister. “Tina is a journalist — perhaps you have read one of her articles.” Nothing in Mr Melkin’s voice posed it as a question and, while his tone was perfectly cordial, the turn of his mouth was anything but.Across the table, a peculiar look crossed McGinty’s face but it was gone so fast I thought I must have imagined it. He smiled politely. “Owen McGinty.”Kinadale muttered something beneath her breath that I couldn’t catch. She, too, smiled in a sickeningly sweet way entirely unlike how she’d introduced herself to us. “What brings you to Edinburgh, Owen?” She stressed his name and only then did I realise what had bugged me when he said it. When I ran into him, I could have sworn he said Y-owen, not Owen.“Visiting family. And yourself?”“A friend.”“And it is so important to have good, close friends, is it not, Mr Wells?” Ms Melkin interjected. Across from me, Mr Dalton frowned. Speaking out of turn, let alone interrupting a conversation, was simply not done.I inclined my head, not trusting myself to speak. Kinadale, for all her disregard of convention, seemed to sense something uncomfortable about the whole ordeal and immediately sprung back into the conversation, as if Ms Melkin had not so much as opened her mouth. “And you, sir?” She turned to the man opposite her, subtly facing away from Ms Melkin.He coughed, running the brim of his hat through his fingers. “James Hargrave. I’m an editor for the Sunday Press.”“A newspaper editor? How splendid! It must be awfully interesting to investigate the news almost as soon as it happens.” I barely managed to stifle my laugh. Down the table, Ms Melkin was turning a rather spectacular shade of red as Kinadale managed to ignore her entirely.Mr Hargrave leant forward slightly, setting his hat down in his lap. “Indeed it is. I have met all sorts of interesting people throughout my career, some more favourable than others. It is not the sort of profession to be taken on lightly, of course. Are you looking to become a journalist, miss?”“I can’t say I’ve ever given it much thought — I’ve never been much good at writing or sniffing out stories.”McGinty scoffed. “Journalists have a habit of sticking their noses so firmly in other people’s business it’s a wonder they can sniff anything out, so I wouldn’t worry.”“I assure you, it’s perfectly respectable,” Mr Hargrave said but — did I image the look that crossed his face? Guilt was not quite the right word for it, but I could not think of a better one.And then dinner was served, and I had no more time to dwell on it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Dinner was like walking a tightrope. McGinty and Kinadale seemed to be actively antagonising Ms Melkin the whole way through the fish and meat course, only for Kinadale to glare at McGinty whenever he turned away. Mr Hargrave and Mr Melkin seemed oblivious to the war being waged across the table, but I was not sure if it was intentional. Instead, Mr Hargrave would mumble comments about the food or answer a pointed question from someone else on the table. Even Mrs Dalton, though she said next to nothing, would look anywhere but at Ms Melkin whenever she was speaking.Writing this now, it seems so blindingly obvious what was to happen that I do not know how Harold or I could have missed it. As it was, I spent the evening painfully conscious of every brush of Harold’s arm against mine, glancing up to see if Ms Melkin had noticed obsessively. My fingers itched for a drink and I reached for the wine, only for Harold to lift it out of my reach, passing it to Mr Dalton with a polite smile.The meal seemed to stretch on forever but, at last, we were free. At a glance from Kinadale, we three slipped out into the street, not bothering to wait for brandy. The instant we were free from the oppressive closeness of the Craiglachie, she turned to us. “That was a jolly awful time,” she said brightly.Harold snorted next to me. “I’ll say.”“Positively dreadful,” I agreed, then stuck out my hand in a strange imitation of the formal introductions we’d had earlier. “I’m Bertie.”“Mairead,” Mairead said, shaking my hand, “And don’t you dare shorten it. Charmed, by the way.”“Harold, and I’d be impressed if you could shorten it. I take it there’s a reason that we’re out here?” His words were formal but his voice was anything but. Whenever he is uncertain, he becomes the epitome of an English gentleman. His accent becomes more polished than anyone’s should rightfully be and every sentence is carefully weighed before he speaks. When he is relaxed, however… then he becomes himself once more. Dry humour hidden between the lines, biting sentences softened into friendly remarks.Mairead made a show of thinking deeply and glancing around us. “Why,” she mused, “I think there is. You see, after that show, I think I need a drink.”“Hear hear!” I cried and ignored the way Harold’s brow furrowed. I might regret it later but, in that second, I couldn’t care less. The urge to let the blankness of drink swallow me had faded just enough that I knew I could control it and, if I couldn’t, Harold would be there. He’d dragged me back from the edge after the Mellings and I dare say he would stop me before I ended up there again. He nodded and we set off into the labyrinth of the city.The night was still early, not yet bursting with life as I knew it would be given another hour or two, but even then the streets seemed to be almost entirely different to how they had been earlier. A road I knew was scarcely 200 yards long seemed to at once stretch for miles and stop abruptly after a few paces.Mairead, however, seemed to have no such difficulties. She walked with her chin high despite her scarf being pulled up to her ears against the chill. Every time we came across a junction she would choose her path without hesitation, leaving Harold and me struggling to keep pace. We must have passed a dozen pubs before she paused outside one, tilting her head to the side in a birdlike way before smiling and pushing the door open.The Bonnie Charlie was already packed full of people smiling and laughing and drinking. Groups of students were scattered between older patrons yet the divides were faint, constantly shifting and moving as people made conversation and cracked jokes. It was almost impossible to tell who were friends versus who were utter strangers.We dove into the crowd, winding our way to the bar tucking against the back wall. The crowd was densest around it. People leant on the bar or sat slumped on the stools while the landlord rushed between them. Before Harold or I could do anything, Mairead had already shoved her way to the bar.“Halò!” she called out, leaning forward and catching the landlord’s eye. “Trì leann mas e do thoil e - ge bith dè as saoire.” He nodded and grabbed three glasses.I stared at her. “What was that?”“You said you wanted to go to a proper pub.” She shrugged. “I heard people speaking Gaelic so it’s going to be a good one — taing,” she added as the landlord pushed our drinks over, and put the money on the bar.“And you speak it?” Harold asked, a gleam in his eye that only appeared when he saw something - or someone - particularly interesting. I had to admit, there was something impressive about seeing someone switch so effortlessly between languages. Daisy had gushed to me once about how incredible it was when Hazel spoke Cantonese only to turn around and speak to her in English without the slightest hesitation. Still, I had not fully appreciated it until now.Mairead shrugged again, shifting her jaw. “Maw taught me when I was a kid,” she said shortly. Her accent had slipped from the proper, English one she’d spoken in earlier to a broader, softer one. Ever since we’d entered the Bonnie Charlie she seemed more vibrant, the tension that had been in her shoulders and face all day leaking out.Harold and I stayed quiet, waiting for her to continue. After a moment, she rolled her eyes and glared at us. “My father didn’t want her to teach me; he didn’t like thinking of Maw as a Gael or me as anything other than fully English, but Maw didn’t give a shit, said having the tongue was more important than being English. English is for polite society and my father, but Gaelic was for me, Maw and everyone else.“Anyway,” she smiled again, “What was that with Melkin? She seems like an arse, but even then.”“Bertie,” Harold said quietly to me, resting his hand on my arm in a comforting way. I knew what this was: reassurance that I didn’t owe my story to anyone, least of all a girl we’d just met. But somehow I didn’t mind.I rolled my glass between my hands. “Almost two years ago, my best friend murdered the man my mother was cheating on my father with.” I knew that I was being blunt but there was no nicer way of saying it. I ignored Mairead’s gasp of horror, continuing while I could still form the words. “A few weeks later, a journalist ran an article accusing Stephan and me of indecency.”“Ms Melkin,” Mairead supplemented and I nodded, sipping my beer. It tasted as though it was half vinegar. She took a sip of her own and grimaced slightly. “Holy shit.”“Yeah,” I agreed. “Holy shit indeed.” Without fully meaning to, I found myself leaning into Harold’s touch.“So,” Mairead said after a moment. “Do you have any suppressed trauma that you’d like to share, Harold?”He burst out laughing and I met Mairead’s eye. She maintained a stern expression for only a moment before we both broke into peals of laughter.When we had collected ourselves and begun talking again, I knew that my initial impression of Mairead was entirely accurate. She was fun in a way that reminded me of my school days. She would build on whatever Harold or I had last said, or throw in a joke, or point out something interesting about the crowd around us or our fellow guests at the Craiglachie before the conversation could do so much as falter.I liked her and I could tell Harold did, too. He almost knocked over his glass when he flung his arms wide to illustrate some point or other he was making. He shot a panicked look at me and I laughed, whatever he’d been saying entirely forgotten.It did not take long for us to finish our drinks and for Harold to order another — slightly better — round, and then another as we continued talking.“What are you doing in Edinburgh, anyway?” I couldn’t help my curiosity — an unfortunate side-effect of being around Daisy and Uncle Felix so often that the alcohol did nothing to keep in check.Mairead grinned. “Visiting a friend — she studies at the University of Edinburgh. Isn’t that incredible? She’s terribly smart and good cràic to be around. Yourself?”“Taking a break from the suppressed trauma,” I said dryly, fighting to keep my face from breaking into a smile.Mairead slapped her hand against the bar, hard, and I jumped slightly. “Then I refuse to have us do it here.” She flung an arm out clumsily as if to indicate the pub and all of its patrons. “Come on.” She downed what was left of her drink and stood, only swaying slightly.Harold and I followed her blindly out of the pub and two doors over. Even before we went in, music drifted out to us from the hall. It was not the jazz that seemed to fill the corridors of Maudlin almost constantly but something far lighter and more playful. The beat was firm and make me feel the ridiculous urge to begin skipping around where I stood.Just before opening the doors, Mairead turned around to us with a mischievous grin. “Welcome to a proper ceilidh.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The first thing that hit me was the noise. With the door closed it had been muffled but now the sound of folk music and stomping filled the air all around me. The hall was filled with people, all with flushed cheeks and wide grins. Some stood alongside the walls but most were in pairs in a shape that could only faintly be described as a circle stretching across the whole space.I have been to dances before, but those are typically rigid, formal affairs. This was the opposite. The women still wore nice dresses but most of the men were in kilts, not suits, and everyone seemed relaxed. There was an ease to their moments and smiles that could never have belonged at one of the dinner parties Mother used to throw.In almost perfect sync (I didn’t count the few falling over while still drinking from hip flasks), the crowd moved forwards and backwards around the circle, hopping and spinning and clapping. It took me a moment of staring before I figured out the pattern. The music made it easier, echoing the movement of the dancers and leading to the next step.The music ended with a cheer and the crowd broke apart. It felt the same as the pub had; in this little pocket of the world, nothing else needed to matter. The city outside the doors could have been a fever dream, the night nothing more than a passing shadow.Barely a moment had passed before a young man around our age approached Mairead and asked if she wanted to dance. She glanced at us. I could see her weighing up her odds of one of us being able to dance well enough for her to have a good night versus the morality of abandoning us in a situation she’d dragged us straight into.Harold made a shooing motion. “We’re not going to stop you having fun,” he laughed as the music started up again. Mairead shot him a grateful look before disappearing into the crowd with her new partner.I turned to Harold. “I don’t suppose you have the faintest idea of how to do this?” He shook his head. A stupid, wonderful idea crept into my head. I glanced around at the couples around us as they shifted into identical holds. “Tell me if this stops being okay.”I stepped up to Harold, as close as any other two people in the hall. I met his eye and let my hand slowly, cautiously, fall onto his waist. I was barely touching him, intentionally keeping my fingers feather-light against him, but it still seemed horrendously bold. He reached up, settling into the other half of the waltz hold we had both done a hundred times, but never like this. Never me and him.It took a conscious effort to tear my focus away from him and take in what the rest of the room was doing. After a beat, the room moved forward in a wave and we followed. Harold should have been dancing the lead but that hardly mattered when we were both bluffing our way through the steps. One, two, three, up-down. One, two… Harold stepped back and I moved with him, leaning with him. Our faces were close enough that I could feel the ghost of his stubble against my skin and then we were moving again, him backwards and me forwards. When the men around us span their partners, a mischievous smirk crossed his face before I was spun beneath his arm. I stumbled and crashed unceremoniously back into his chest.I felt more than heard his laughter as his hand fell back onto my waist and we were waltzing around in a circle. It had been a while since we’d been to a dance hall but I knew it could never compare to this. Every step Harold took was deliberate and I followed him without needing to think, the movement as easy as breathing. The people around us faded as all I could think about was the gentle press of his fingers against me and the brush of his breath against my cheek.
One, two, three, up-down.
With Harold leading, I barely needed to think about which steps were next. He could figure out the bloody dance; I certainly wasn’t going to. Harold led and I followed, blindly trusting that he would find his footing. I was right, of course; he didn’t hesitate once.He spun me around again and I managed to keep my footing enough not to knock the both of us over. Instead, I ended up pressed close against him. His fingers tightened on my waist, subtly enough that I doubted he had meant them to but enough that I didn’t step back, didn’t put any space between us. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest, the way his muscles shifted a heartbeat before the next step.It seemed like no time at all before the music finished and the hall was filled with the murmur of conversation as people milled around between the dances. Harold’s hand lingered on my waist a moment longer than it needed to but then he was stepping away, leaving an empty space where he had been.A nervous sort of laughter sounded behind me and I spun, feeling as jumpy as anything in the moment. Two girls stood in that huddled way girls always seem to stand when there is more than one of them. They giggled behind gloved hands and whispered to one another. Their dresses were perfectly fashionable, their hats pinned at just the right angle. I knew they were beautiful — they looked just like the girls in magazines or on cereal boxes — but in a distant sort of way. The boys in my form at Eton would have stumbled straight over themselves trying to introduce themselves to these sorts of girls. Harold turned, too, immediately breaking into a flirtatious half-smile. He stepped forward easily, brushing past me without a glance. Harold, it seemed, was the same. “Good evening,” he said in an accent even more polished than usual. He took one of their hands in his own and pressed a kiss to the top of it, bowing slightly. “Harold Mukherjee. To what do I owe the honour?”She giggled again, infuriatingly. I had to look away to try to swallow the hot ball of rage in me that had sprung from nowhere. “Amy McInsh. Do you dance?”Harold dipped his head politely, a flush creeping up his neck. “I’m afraid I have something of two left feet and would be most surprised if my friend here had feet at all.” He paused for a moment, letting the girls exaggerate how little they believed this and how the pair of us simply must give them a dance. “Even if I did know any of the dances, I promised dear Albert that I would keep an eye on him this whole evening, stop him from being stolen off by a girl much too good for him and so on, you know.”“Oh, no!” McInsh exclaimed. “That simply cannot be right. Surely your friend doesn’t need you the whole night — one dance couldn’t hurt.”“You are quite painfully mistaken,” Harold said with mock regret. “You see, Albert here is unfortunately rather dashing yet has not the faintest idea of how to address a member of the fairer sex, let alone save himself from her clutches should he need to. Why, only last month he was almost engaged before he figured out how to tell the poor girl he was reaching for a walnut, not her shoulder. It is quite the tragedy.”I glanced over at Harold despite myself, his words ricocheting through my mind. Dear Albert. Rather dashing. It was stupid, I knew, but what Harold was doing was also stupid. He was trying his hardest to escape from girls, of all things. Most every other fellow I knew would be jumping for the chance just to talk to them, yet Harold was acting as though it was the worst possible thing he could imagine. But then again, I did not much want to talk with them either.McInsh hummed non-committally. “Well, I’m sorry for bothering you.” I winced slightly at the annoyance in her voice but couldn’t quite stifle my relief when she turned sharply on her heel and left, dragging her friend with her.“You didn’t have to do that,” I said softly to Harold once I was sure they were out of earshot. “I know I’m awkward about all of that, but you didn’t need to lie or you not dance with them.”His hand found my waist again, pulling me subtly towards him. He smiled at me, softly and his breath was warm against the side of my face. “I didn’t need to, no, but I didn’t want to dance with them. I’d always rather dance with you.” A flush spread up from my neck and I prayed the lights were too low for him to notice.My heart was pounding and I cursed my body for betraying me like this. I cursed Harold too, because how dare he make me feel like this? The ground could have fallen out from beneath my feet and I would not have noticed the difference.I rested my hand on his arm and his fingers tightened in my shirt. His hand felt as though it was searing through the fabric where it cupped the top of my hip, pulling me tighter against him. He leant forward, resting his forehead against mine. We stood, faces scarce inches apart, until they weren’t. Our lips hovered torturously close, until they didn’t. We clung to the little space between us, until we didn’t.Until there were no more inches, no more hovering, no more space. Until Harold’s lips brushed against mine, so fleetingly it could almost have been a figment of my imagination.I froze.“Oh,” Harold gasped, jolting back as his eyes widened with horror. “Oh, God. Bertie, I’m so, so-”I shook my head jerkily. Harold had… we had… “I’m not like- like that,” I whispered.“Okay.” There was a tremor in Harold’s voice that hadn’t been there before. He ran a shaking hand through his hair, disrupting its perfect curl. “I just thought- never mind that. I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have- I’m sorry.”I looked over his shoulder at the couples behind him. They were still trapped in a dance, like we had been just minutes before. Before… “I’m going to find McInsh,” I said, more harshly than I had meant to, and brushed past him, ignoring the sparks shooting through my shoulder as it knocked against his.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Amy McInsh was a good dancer. She had lived in Edinburgh all of her life. She had dragged her friend — Saorsa, she’d said — out to ceilidh after something to do with an older sister and a fiance. She was pretty and polite. She hadn’t minded in the slightest when I’d stumbled over and asked her to dance, desperately trying not to think of Harold’s hands on my waist or his lips against mine. She was lovely and I didn’t like her one bit.She laughed too much and her perfume was suffocating. I stumbled stiffly through the dance, trying to copy the couple in front of us. It was painfully repetitive and McInsh's conversation did nothing to ease it. My hand was too heavy on her waist, her breath too heavy against my skin. Still, the crowd moved around us, tossing us like a rowing boat in a storm. It was a relief when the clouds broke.The music ended and, at last, Amy pulled away. I tried to hide the relief I knew would be flashing across my face. It was hardly her fault that I couldn’t stand dancing with her for a moment longer; I had forced this façade upon myself. But still, I couldn’t let it slip. I had to enjoy this, had to dance with Amy and flirt with Saorsa and hold a drink but not dare take a sip, not now, not when everything was too much and I couldn’t think and could barely breathe-I shouldered my way out of the room and out onto the street, subconsciously retracing my footsteps from earlier. The music was no longer fun and lively; sometime between arriving and leaving, it had turned into senseless noise. I couldn’t have kept dancing, even if I had wanted to.The night air was bitingly cold. It stung my face and hands, no matter how much I blew on them. I sorely regretted leaving my jacket inside, even as I leant against the stone. The cold seeped through my shirt but… finally, I could inhale without my chest burning in protest.“Smoke?” I’d hardly noticed the man standing next to me until he leant over, holding out an open box of cigarettes They were a dirt-cheap brand but I didn’t care.“Cheers,” I said, pulling one out. I almost dropped it, fumbling with half-frozen fingers. He ducked his head in, lighting it from his own. I nodded my thanks and took a long draw through it. I’ve never liked smoking. It feels like suffocating and I can do that fine without the help of smoke. But, at that moment, I just wanted the calm.The man frowned at me around the cigarette clamped between his teeth. “You alright, lad?”I scoffed, a plume of smoke punctuating what I wasn’t saying. I tilted my head back, staring up at the sky. I couldn’t see any stars. It was an odd thing to notice; I’ve lived in Cambridge for three years and the stars there are dim, tired-looking things, even when not hidden by fog. I hadn’t missed the skies at Fallingford even then, but now their absence was sharp and painful. Everything about Fallingford was. It felt like mourning a dear friend instead of a place. Fallingford was where I tried (and failed) to kill Daisy dozens of times before giving up and accepting that I had a sister and couldn’t do anything about it. It was where I had learned to shoot, read and think. It was where my father had taken me out to the little house by the lake in the Summer and pointed out constellations, far above our heads. It was where I had started to learn who I was, only for it to be ripped out of my hands and flung into a murder trial.Although Fallingford still exists, my version of it does not. The narrow staircases, hidden alcoves and quiet groves in the woodland away from prying eyes might still be here, but they are no longer a refuge. I couldn’t risk slipping into becoming like that, because there was no place left where I could.It was childhood, and secrets and a city with no stars and it was agony. I only noticed the tears slowly dripping down my cheeks when I reached up to rub my eyes and my hand came away damp. I took another long drag of the cigarette, focusing on keeping my breathing steady instead of shaking. If the man noticed, he had the grace not to comment.I turned my face down again and glanced around the street. It was quieter than earlier but that was not to say it was empty. People still walked up and down in front of me, albeit with louder voices and more pronounced stumbling. I watched, only faintly interested, as a man and woman (I did not think they were a couple — they were familiar with one another, of that I was sure, but they lacked the subtle touches and glances couples always share) meandered along the cobbles, speaking quietly. It was only when they got closer that I realised they were arguing, and that their voices were oddly familiar.“For crying aloud, Tina,” Mr Melkin said with a laugh. Even though I knew he was not being friendly, he still sounded it. “I don’t want our entire lives to hinge on some foolish childhood disagreement. I came here to try make amends, not to make you miserable or worsen things.”Ms Melkin smiled at him. It would have been pleasant, were it not for the slight twist at the corner of her mouth or the way it didn’t reach her eyes at all. “And yet, so you have. I do not have to do what you want simply because you ask for it. Ever since Daddy spoke with you last year, you have been positively awful to me. Just because you have never strived for success does not mean I should surrender mine to you.”“Your success?” Mr Melkin scoffed. “I was the one who edited your first articles. I got you your first editorial.”Without quite meaning to, I leant forward, trying to catch every word. “I am not indebted to you. Whatever I owed you for your kindness I have paid back in full — it is not my fault that this is your situation, nor that Daddy does not trust you as he might. Frankly, I would not either.”“Please,” he said and made a funny sort of motion with his hand, as though he had reached to grab hold of her and thought better of it. “I have no-one else.”“You had five years, Ches,” Ms Melkin said. Her voice was softer but no kinder for it. “Grow up.”I looked away quickly as Ms Melkin sped up, brushing past me and leaving Mr Melkin alone. He muttered something under his breath but I did not dare look to see what he was doing lest he notice me. It seemed bad form somehow, to accidentally hear something so clearly meant to be private.I counted ten seconds in my head before daring to look back up. Naturally, I met Mr Melkin’s eyes immediately. A horrid look crossed his face before he could hide it behind a smile. He waved, looking perfectly cheery and not at all like a man who was practically begging mere moments before. I nodded back, but I could not shake the sense that maybe Mr Melkin was not as simple a person as I had first thought.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
I did not avoid Harold for long. He was already seated when I went down for breakfast, and he greeted me as warmly as ever. I returned his smile and tucked into the plates of sausages and potato and black pudding. We talked the whole time without once mentioning the night before. It felt as though we had agreed without speaking that it was not to be discussed, that we were better by far simply to pretend it had never happened.It was better this way. It had to be.“By the way,” Harold said as I slathered raspberry jam on a slice of toast, “I was thinking of climbing Arthur’s Seat — you know, the big hill just outside the city — this morning. I could use some company?”If things were truly back to normal, he would never have asked in such a round-a-bout way. It was not like Harold to be anything less than blunt and to the point. I wanted to agree immediately. It would be easy to jump straight back into being inseparable friends as if it were still yesterday morning. Yet something twisted in my chest at the thought of spending hours alone with Harold away from prying eyes.After a moment, I nodded tensely. “Naturally. Mairead, do you want to join? If you haven’t anything better to do, of course.”She gave me a peculiar look but shrugged. “I’m not supposed to be anywhere until late this afternoon, so I can’t see why not.”We ate breakfast quickly. Harold and I talked for almost all of it, but something still felt off and stilted in a way it never had been before. Neither of us had ever much liked small talk yet it seemed to be the only thing said that morning. Yes, the weather looked fine. Yes, I was hoping to explore Edinburgh more through the week. No, I had not read that morning’s paper— Mr Hargrave smiled slightly and passed it down the table.I flicked through it without properly reading it while Mairead finished her toast. There was a whole column dedicated to some new take on Germany and Italy becoming closer allies and rearmament. I skimmed it but there was nothing I hadn’t already read half a dozen times. No one, it seems, can quite decide what Hitler means for Germany or the rest of Europe. George, Harold told me, has not stopped talking about another war, but obviously that’s all nonsense. The papers just need something to write about; everything will die back down eventually. There was a small article tucked away at the base of the page about Amelia Earhart’s latest misadventure — a crash, though no one was injured. I filed it away in my memory to mention to Squashy, who has become positively obsessed with her if her letters are anything to go by.“Well then,” Mairead said, “Are we all ready?”After Harold and I voiced our agreement and we had all wrapped pastries up in sheets of newspaper stolen from sports columns (after checking with Mr Hargrave; we were not animals) and stuffed them into our pockets for later, we slipped out onto the street. Arthur’s Seat was not far away and there was no need to try to catch a tram.We skirted the edge of Marchmont and broke out of the lines of terraces into a glorious expanse of open grass bordered by trees and winding gravel paths. A group of young men not much off of our age were trapped in a furious game of what looked like hockey, if half the rules were removed and the ball spent more time in the air than on the ground. Despite the weather, almost every one of them was in no more than shirtsleeves and a vest. There was a raw power to their motions as they charged into each other and pelted the ball across their makeshift pitch. I tore my eyes away and glanced around the rest of the Meadows.There was a cluster of church-like buildings across from us — the University, according to Mairead — but almost everywhere else was hidden by the trees. Teenagers who looked far too young to be students (although, I suppose, everyone younger than us looks far too young to be anything) clustered around benches and under trees as they poured over textbooks. These, at least, had on thick overcoats and wool hats pulled low over their eyes.We passed through another few rows of buildings before, quite without warning, the city fell away behind us. It was not a large hill, by any means — certainly, it was smaller than the mountains Father would take Daisy and me to in the Summers when we were younger. But it still seemed impossibly tall to be in the middle of a city. It stretched high above any of the surrounding buildings and spread past dozens of streets. It was odd: I know, logically, we were still in Edinburgh, yet it was just… calm. I could still hear the sounds of the trams and omnibuses and people, but they were muted. Quiet. I thought I understood a little more as to why Uncle Felix had thought Edinburgh the perfect place to pack Harold and me off to; the idea of anything horrifying happening here simply felt wrong.I only noticed I’d stopped dead when Harold and Mairead were already fifty yards up the path. “Do hurry up, Bertie!” Harold called down to me as if he hadn’t intentionally been walking faster to make sure I fell behind. “There will be plenty of time for ogling once we’re at the top.”I responded with my full knowledge of the English language and its non-verbal gestures. Harold, naturally, said something I shall not repeat here for fear of Daisy learning some… choice vocabulary, but he said it in that easy-going way that made it impossible to take true offence.“Don’t you dare forget the 1791 duel!” I cried back. It had become a running joke between the four of us — Harold, Alfred, Amanda and myself — ever since Manda had discovered entirely by accident while combing through old copies of the Annals of Cambridge. Apparently, two students from Pembroke Hall had entered a duel over some petty disagreement and one had died. It was a terribly morbid thing to joke about, I knew, but we were studying History, after all. That itself is not short of fascinatingly gory details sufficient to make even Squashy interested.Nevertheless, I hurried to catch up, hooking my arms around both of their shoulders as soon as I did. Harold froze and I realised what I had done wrong in an instant, but… he wrapped his hand over my shoulder before I could release him.The three of us stumbled like drunkards up the path. It was impossible to keep in a straight line when we were each pulling in a slightly different direction so as not to trip on a rock or hole. Harold crashed into my side, nearly knocking me off my feet. “Watch it!” I warned, pulling my arms back and striding ahead a few paces. I turned around to face him, walking backwards up the hill. “It’s awfully rude to trip anyone-”God, I thought, has a very particular sense of irony. No sooner had I said anything than my heel caught on a tree root. My foot slipped out from beneath me before I could catch myself, even as I flung my arms out in a futile attempt to stop the inevitable. Then strong arms grabbed me by the coat and hauled me back onto my feet and straight into their owner.“Oof,” Harold gasped as I nearly pushed him over, too, a hand pressing against his chest to try to stay balanced. I could feel the quickening in his breathing even through his overcoat. It took every spare bit of concentration I had not to think about last night and how close he had been then. His hands grazed my waist to steady me before he pulled them back jerkily. “What was that about knocking people over being rude?”