I tried to say “Mia!” but all that came out was a hoarse croak.
She didn’t hear me, anyway. She only went on staring into the void. I hoped she was talking to Henry there. I simply wasn’t going to contemplate the possibility that Arthur had come back from wherever he’d gone. At least my legs would still carry me as far as the window. I closed it with a loud bang. Buttercup twitched and pricked up her ears, but Mia was still staring at nothing.
And Lottie was quietly snoring.
On the spur of the moment, I reached for the glass on her bedside table, swung my arm back, and threw the contents into Mia’s face. Then, at last, she stopped staring at the void and screeched out loud.
Her screech, which probably loosened a few tiles on the roof above us, also woke Lottie. She snatched off her sleep mask and blinked at the light, scared to death.
Buttercup barked. (Now she barked? Now! What had she been doing earlier? Had she accompanied Mia to the window, wagging her tail and panting anxiously? So much for the theory that the blood of gallant rescue dogs flowed in Buttercup’s veins.)
And I rushed over to Mia, who was dripping wet and looked bewildered, hugged her as tight as I could, and sobbed incoherent remarks into her hair.
I’ve no idea how long I stood there in tears, clinging to Mia, but after a while she pushed me away.
“You’re squashing me, Livvy,” she said. Her teeth were chattering. “And something in here smells.”
Lottie sniffed. “That’s only my valerian tea,” she said, looking at the bedside table. “It was standing … oh!”
“I had to wake Mia somehow.” I sniffed hard.
Lottie put her arm around me and looked at Mia and me sternly. “Okay,” she said. “Whatever just happened, the first thing you need now is Lottie’s hot chocolate.”
“Oh wow, if you’re talking about yourself in the third person, things must be really dramatic,” said Mia in a subdued voice. “I mean, I was only … sleepwalking a bit. Wasn’t I?” She nudged me. “You should have tied those knots tighter.”
“I did tie the knots tightly! You…”
“Hush,” said Lottie. “No quarreling now. Now is chocolate time, and then we’ll see.” She turned to her wardrobe and handed Mia a flowered nightdress. “Put this on, or you’ll catch your death in those wet things. And the two of you could do with these as well.” A pair of thick socks knitted by Lottie herself and a woolen blanket came flying our way.
Five minutes later, Mia and I, wrapped in the blanket, were sitting on the upholstered bench under the kitchen window. The kitchen clock told me that it wasn’t nearly morning yet, and I was far too tired to work out how long the whole nightmare had lasted. In any event, much less time than it had felt like while it was going on.
Lottie switched on the coffee machine to froth milk for the hot chocolate. Although Mia’s scream a little while ago had been bloodcurdling, no other member of the family had shown up, and I was glad of that, because I wouldn’t have known how to face them. I still felt absolutely shattered (and I looked it, too, as a glance at the hall mirror in passing had shown me). I didn’t know whether I would ever be able to give anyone a sensible account of what had happened.
I couldn’t even explain it to Mia. When she heard that she’d been about to jump out of the window yet again, she went what for her was unusually quiet.
“How stupid can a person be?” she murmured, obviously cross with herself. “And from the third floor this time!”
Lottie quickly put the hot chocolate down in front of her, and then, in spite of the early hour, she got butter out of the fridge, and then found flour and sugar. Her expression was very anxious, and her hands were shaking slightly.
“I’m going to bake vanilla crescents,” she muttered. “And then everything will be all right, my little elf-girls. Then everything will be all right again.”
“From the third floor!” Mia was still shaking her head.
“You couldn’t help it,” I assured her, but I was glad she didn’t ask any more questions.
She said she couldn’t remember much of her dream, only that it had been very odd, and for the moment I was happy with that. It was bad enough for one of us to have been sent almost insane with terror.