LITMIR.BIZ

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passing me by and continuing into the darkness below.

      ‘Yeah?’ I shouted back, taking a moment to steady my breath.

      ‘Come on, fat arse. Pick up the pace a bit.’ I winced, ashamed, and duly hurried, grateful that the darkness disguised my blush.

      By the time I reached the top, I was giddy and breathless, all too aware of the altitude and my own horrifying lack of balance, the stairs having lost their railings two floors earlier. There was a horrifying void in the centre of the tower, down into the darkness of what I would later realize was the old elevator shaft, a fall into which one would be unlikely to survive.

      In my exhaustion I stood for a moment, listening to the hiss and scratch of rats several floors below (and, I would soon discover, the flutter of bats in the belfry above). I steadied myself against the wall – a fortunate move, as the door swung open with a crack, a rush of warm air rushing into the cool stairwell.

      ‘Woman, get a move on,’ Robin said, grinning. She extended a hand, and I took it, feeling unsteady with vertigo as the darkness loomed below.

      I stepped forward into the wide room, struck by the brightness from within. The moon was streaming silver through the four huge, white clock faces, each of which took up the best part of every wall. I heard my own gasp echo from the walls like a dull chant; above, the bells hummed as a gust of wind brushed by.

      It was breathtaking, details clambering one after another: the Victorian chaise longues in faded brocade, piled high with jumbled papers and rolled-up sketches, painting and ink. The marble bird perched on a broad mahogany desk, surrounded by candles and strange, sober little dolls. Even now, decades later, the same trinkets line the walls; with every passing year, still more appear, lost, beautiful things that make the tower their home.

      ‘Hi, Violet,’ Grace said, not looking up from the book splayed open in front of her. Alex, sat beside her, gave a half-smile, waiting for me to catch my breath. I walked to the farthest clock face and looked out, shoulders level with the lowest point.

      Outside, the campus shone lavish in the falling light of the moon winking above the trees. Beyond, the town glowed dull, and farther still the infinite black of the sea glittered as it met the sky. Several feet below, a raven swooped, disappearing into the darkness of the woodland beyond the school gates.

      I turned away, struck with a sudden vertigo as my eyes followed it down, and walked a long, slow circuit of the room. I felt the other girls watching, waiting for me to speak. I picked up one object after another, as though only by touch could I make them real. A rag doll in a dirty gingham dress, eyes gouged, posed grotesquely on a stack of books; a vase of flowers which looked long dead but somehow retained their scent.

      A comic mask and an infant’s dress, which left my fingers powdery white when I reached out to touch its silk and lace. A winged brass figure, too heavy to lift, though its base was the size of my palm; a blown-glass vase, faded grey and muddy with earth; four deer skulls, antlers broad and piercing, like outstretched hands.

      ‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you?’ Robin said, finally. She flopped down on the chaise longue, her feet in laddered tights resting on the table, drinking whisky from a bottle she’d tucked inside the lining of her blazer. She held it out to me. ‘Want some?’

      ‘No, thanks,’ I said, with a weak smile. I’d found the journey up the stairs harrowing enough. The prospect of making my way down while sober seemed impossible, let alone intoxicated.

      With a jolt, a mechanism below rattled and shook, the elevator roaring into life. I glanced at Robin, and she shrugged. ‘I thought it was broken. Good exercise though, huh?’ I felt my cheeks burn, cruelly, and turned back to the shelves, running my fingers along the bruised white face of a porcelain doll.

      A click of heels echoed on the flagstones outside. Another broad scrape of the door, a rush of cool air from the stairwell, whistling through the cracks in the brickwork, unsettled by the relentless tick-tick-tick. Annabel stood, tall and imposing in the doorway, two books slung under one arm. She looked at us, one by one, as though appraising each of us in turn; I felt exposed, somehow, as she looked at me, her brow furrowed for an almost imperceptible moment. At last she smiled, though her eyes were still flat and cold. ‘So we are five again at last,’ she said, softly. ‘Tea, anyone?’

      ‘Forgive me, if I may,’ she began, lowering herself into an armchair, legs crossed beneath her. ‘I would like to go over a couple of things we’ve already covered for the benefit of our new student. Is that okay with you ladies?’ She looked at Robin, Alex, and Grace, who nodded, mutely.

      She turned to me, eyes bird-like, black and ringed with tan. ‘So, Violet, welcome to our little group.’ She smiled, the slightest of gaps between her front teeth, like tombstones in a graveyard; a warmth that seeped through my skin, a doll becoming real. ‘How much have the girls told you so far?’

      ‘Nothing. I mean, not yet,’ I said, glancing at Robin, who clicked her pen, and began sketching in the margins of her open book.

      ‘Good,’ Annabel said. She paused, blowing softly into her mug before taking a sip, looking at each of us as she did so. ‘We meet every Thursday, for two hours, at 6:15pm. You may schedule office hours with me, should you find yourself struggling with the work – but there is to be no mention of this class or discussion of our lessons beyond these four walls. Is that understood?’

      I nodded. She smiled, eyes deathly and emotionless. ‘I assume you’re aware of the history of this school, no?’

      I wondered why it was that I kept being asked this by tutors, and why each assumed I had some idea. ‘Some of it,’ I said, weakly.

      ‘I suppose we should start from the beginning,’ she said, placing her drink on the desk, steam rising hot. ‘This institution was founded in 1604, by Ms Margaret Boucher. Originally, it had only four students, all orphaned, or taken from parents who could not provide them with the due care they required. The Poor Law made it rather easier for Ms Boucher to do her work, since pauper children were given the opportunity to become apprentices. Naturally a formal girls’ school would have been something of a tricky prospect, since there were barely any schools for boys in the area as it was, but Ms Boucher was able to tell interested parties that she was simply offering something of a training academy for these young women, teaching them the arts of good manners, etiquette, and the like.’

      She pulled a pin from her hair, and turned it around in her fingers, a thin, white smudge of clay on the edge of her hand. ‘The reality, of course, was rather different. Ms Boucher had been something of a scholar, though of course there were few opportunities for a young educated woman to use this knowledge at the time. She loved the Greek and Roman tragedies; adored folk myths, studying them with an almost anthropological eye. She read plays and poetry, devouring whatever she could get her hands on, and regularly journeyed to London to see performances by Shakespeare and Marlowe, and others since forgotten. She spent three months in Italy, touring Florence and Rome, completely alone, purely to see the great works of Michelangelo and the other great Renaissance painters.

      ‘So, as you can imagine, she was hardly inclined to teach her students the importance of correct cutlery placement.’ She gave a wry smile; bit her lip, as though catching herself unguarded. ‘Soon enough, the school had sixty pupils, then a hundred; mothers would send their daughters here clutching forged notices of their parents’ deaths, in the hope that they might have a better life than the one which seemed their fate.’

      The clouds above shifted and the moonlight began moving from the east clock face to the north.

      ‘But in 1615, the fashion for witch finding reached the area. Women were dragged from their beds and burned at the stake, or thrown into the sea bound and weighted with stones. Neighbours betrayed one another for the witch finders’ gold. So-called moral society ran amok, with endless accusations made in bad faith. Heaven help the woman who is perceived imperfect, or of unusual character … So I am sure you can imagine the outcome for Ms Boucher, whose school by this point was a source of envy and bitterness among those who believed women should be seen, and not heard. She was accused of occult magic, of

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