Underneath where Emmy had signed her name she added:
P.S. Julia has asked to come with me.
She put the note back inside its envelope and repositioned it on the nightstand. Then she told Julia to put on her pajamas.
“Why aren’t we sleeping in our clothes?” Julia said, frowning.
“Because they will wrinkle. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, do we?”
Julia shook her head gravely. Then she changed out of her clothes, draped them on the bedpost, and hopped under the covers.
Emmy had gotten into her own pajamas and was about to crawl into bed also when Julia sat up. “I need a drink, Emmy. I’m too excited. I’m thirsty.”
“You’ll have to use the loo if you drink too much.”
“Just a tiny sip, please? I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t have one. I’m too excited.”
Sighing, Emmy got up out of bed, opened the door, and headed downstairs. Rose had already gone to bed and Charlotte was locking the back door and turning out the lights.
A wave of guilt rushed over Emmy as Charlotte smiled at her and asked if there was anything she needed.
“Just a sip of water for Julia,” Emmy said.
Charlotte laughed lightly, grabbed a juice glass from the cabinet, and filled it half-full from the tap. “That enough?”
“Perfect,” Emmy said, taking it from her.
“Good night, Emmeline.”
“Yes. Good night. And thank you.”
Emmy could feel Charlotte’s gaze on her as she left the kitchen. Emmy wanted badly to run from those compassionate eyes. But she walked calmly with Julia’s water in her hand, took the stairs slowly, and opened the bedroom door.
Julia was sitting up in bed, eager for her drink. She gulped it down in one swallow.
“Won’t Mum be surprised to see us?” Julia said as Emmy took the glass from her.
Emmy stroked her sister’s head. It was difficult to stay angry with her. “Yes,” Emmy said, unable to say anything to the contrary.
She tucked Julia in.
“Wake me up when it’s time to go,” Julia said, yawning.
“Sweet dreams,” was Emmy’s answer.
She turned out the light and got into bed, turning her back to Julia so that her sister would not see that Emmy kept her eyes open.
When Julia’s breathing was slow and even, Emmy turned over, parted the blackout curtains, and watched her sister sleep in a spill of moonlight. She gazed up at the sky outside the window, thankful for the cloudless blanket of stars and generous moon.
She did not mean to doze at all, but the next thing Emmy knew, the clock downstairs was chiming two.
She sat up in bed, grateful it was only two and not later. Emmy could not risk falling asleep again. She got out of bed quietly and listened for any sounds in the house that would indicate that Rose or Charlotte was awake. Hearing nothing, Emmy slipped off her nightgown and stuffed it into the satchel. She dressed in the same clothes she had worn the day before, grabbed her jacket from the back of the desk chair, and bent to retrieve the satchel. When her knees straightened, an owl hooted outside their window and Julia’s eyes snapped open.
“Is it time to go?” she whispered.
Emmy’s mind raced for a way out of this predicament. She had time. She could wait a little longer.
“Not yet. Go back to sleep.”
Julia sat up. She saw Emmy’s made bed, and that her big sister was in her street clothes. “Why aren’t you still sleeping?”
“I—I just can’t sleep anymore.”
Julia tossed her legs over the side of her bed. “Me, neither.”
“Jewels, it’s not time to go yet.”
“But I’m not sleepy anymore.”
As Emmy pondered her response, the voice of reason seemed to murmur just at the edge of sound that this was a moment that demanded she weigh the consequences, consider the possible outcomes. She stood at a crossroads, half-aware that her choice would send her down a path from which there could be no turning back.
But instead of two choices, she saw only one—because it was all she really wanted to see.
Emmy mentally shooed the whispering voice away.
She would look back on that moonlit night and wonder and wonder and wonder what she would have done had she considered that the owl that awakened Julia was divinely sent so that she wouldn’t leave Thistle House that night. Had it been summoned to the tree outside the window and called her little sister out of sleep so that Emmy might stop and consider that there is always, always the other road to choose, even if it seems to be nothing more than an unpaved path in the middle of nowhere?
On that night, the night Julia could not fall back asleep, Emmy saw only what she wanted to.
“All right,” Emmy said, sighing as loud as she dared. “Let’s go, then. Don’t make a sound, Julia. Not a peep.”
As Julia dressed by moonlight and Emmy made her bed, Emmy decided she would take Julia straight to the flat. If Thea wasn’t home, she’d tell her sister to wait for Mum to get home from work. Emmy would still have plenty of time to make it to Knightsbridge by four. She would deal with Mum’s anger later, if she had to. And as for Julia . . . Well, Mum could easily get her sister back to Thistle House on Sunday. Easily.
Mum had the address.
She had the day off.
She owed Charlotte a visit anyway.
There was nothing to worry about.
Emmy grabbed her satchel, and together she and Julia tiptoed soundlessly down the stairs, out the front door, and into the sparkling night.