I liked the drawing room best in the mornings. The sunlight came through the tall windows just right, striking the laced curtains and painting the room in soft blues. Mother would make her selection of flowers for the day, she’d pick out her favourite vase and change the epergne on the kitchen table. It was her ceremony, to consult me on the best flower for the day, and, without fail, I’d pick the brightest, boldest, yellow daffodil, plucked straight from the garden.

 She’d make her preparations for the morning. First, she’d have Odessa dust the house and sweep the floors, inspecting her work afterwards to ensure there wasn’t a speck of dirt or a crumb of food left remaining. Second was the newspaper, which arrived promptly every morning at 6:30, without fail (and mother made sure of this, for every minute she spent without the paper, was a minute spent writing a strongly worded letter addressed to the poor editor in charge of publication). Finally, Mother insisted on meeting the milkman, for she felt entitled to the richest milk and would make sure of it every morning. She’d settle in an alcove facing the tall window, bask in the sunlight, read the paper, and chat over tea with Odessa, while she did the morning chores.

‘Well, at least he’s safe.’ Odessa said.

‘I find it troublesome he hasn’t returned. That’s all.’ She said, leaning her head back, and adjusting her glass spectacles. I noticed, that in light of my brother’s absence, their meetings seemed to stretch longer. I learned a lot from these conversations, (some of which, I tried to forget) gossip, politics, polite disagreements, (and Odessa would tread carefully here, choosing her words with care not to offend Mother, as her moods were subject to a great deal of change.) However, what I found most interesting, were the talks regarding my missing brother. I’d position myself on a small table facing Mother, and listen with great attention, noting anything of interest down in my journal. And I’d do all this in secrecy (Mother hated eavesdroppers with a passion) if she found out I’d done all this, I’d surely be banned from sitting in the drawing room, just like I’d been banned from the pantry, or the attic, or the whole of father’s study.

 ‘You don’t think it’s him, do you?’ Mother took a bite of the éclair she’d been holding with one hand, set it down on a plate, and pointed to a sketch on the newspaper (which, no amount of twisting my neck would allow me to see.) Odessa paused, her eyes flickering over the sketch quickly before looking away. ‘My boy’s not gone red, has he?’ She swallowed it in one gulp. ‘But every sketch comes out looking like him.’

‘I’m sure Arran’s’ She began searching for her next words. ‘Busy at the moment.’

Mother narrowed her eyes, tapping her fingers on the edge of the table. ‘I wonder, what trouble he’s gotten himself into...’ She slammed the teacup, spilling a bit of tea on her white dress.

‘Trouble?’ Odessa wiped Mother’s dress, careful not to disrupt her reading.

‘Yes, trouble.’ She beckoned Odessa to come closer. ‘The money-I’ve good reason to suspect it’s stolen.’ She put down the paper and looked squarely at Odessa. ‘Fifteen hundred pounds. Fifteen hundred pounds in a slip of paper. I mean, if it isn’t stolen then what reason’s he got for hiding?’

‘It won't be long before the whole town knows, especially with that twit Kennedy about.’ She took a glance around the room, almost as if Mrs Kennedy was there with us. ‘God, I hate that woman. You know yesterday I saw her wearing…’

I had no interest in what Mrs Kennedy was wearing. I wanted to find out what had happened to my brother. If Arran truly was the criminal (and I had reasonable doubt that this was the case) then the police would have information on his whereabouts, and with that information, I could find him and bring him back home safely.

 But what would a constable make of a small boy wandering into the station, and enquiring the whereabouts of a wanted criminal? And what if the constable told my father? Or worse yet, if he decided to lock me up ‘on account of my unruliness’ like Father said he would? Or if he dragged me by the neck, and put me in one of those old-fashioned gibbet posts Mrs Stanmore had told us about in history class?

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I sat there, my little fingers gripping the edge of the journal. ‘Gone red.’ What did that even mean? Aunt Greta’s hair had gone red, perhaps that was what had happened to Arran. But that didn’t explain the fifteen hundred pounds Arran had supposedly stolen. Not to mention his strange disappearance, it seemed as though everyone treated it like some minor inconvenience. It was like they were ignoring him.

Mother’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. ‘Clyde, fetch Cordelia. We’re having guests this afternoon, and I’ll not have you daydreaming when there’s work to be done.’

I slipped the journal neatly into my pocket, gave Mother a nod, and made my way up the stairs, past the withered, antique painting in the lounge, and into a corridor. On the left side: adjacent rooms, all in order of size, and on the right other, a thin, closet door, with slats so thick, I could fit between them. At the end, an open window with thick blinds, spilling rays of light.

The first room, the largest, was Cordelia’s.

 You were sure of this, not by the tidy placard bearing her name, but by the loud, almost incessant banging coming from within. Five minutes of loud banging would be followed by five minutes of complete silence, followed again by five minutes of banging, followed once more by five minutes of silence. And this went on, through the day and into the night, before stopping at around two in the morning, and picking back up again at six.

This kept me up at night because my room was right next to hers, and whenever I went to investigate, I’d find Cordelia banging on the wall with a metal pipe she called ‘Precious,’

 Then she’d tell me ‘Oh, I’m not making that dreadful noise, why no!’

‘Precious is!’ Then she’d turn back around and start up again.

This time, it was quiet. Cordelia was busy arranging her bows in an orderly fashion, separating the reds from the light reds, and the deep reds from the deeper ones.

‘You’ve been scribbling again, haven’t you? Honestly, Clyde, you’ll end up with ink all over your clothes, and then Mother will be furious.’ She whipped her head back to greet me, her nose crumpling, and her eyes narrowing, in a fashion not completely unlike mother.

 There was a likeness between the two, the way their eyes would narrow, and their nose would crumple, and the permanent scowl engraved onto their faces. But Cordelia wasn’t Mother, she was strappy, not very elegant, and had an unearned sense of arrogance.

‘Mother wants you, Delia.’

‘Say that again?’

I sighed. ‘Mother wants you, Lady Cordelia, heir to the Bute estate, and the most beautiful lady in all the land.’ She insisted I said that (under threat of being beaten with ‘precious’) because she believed that if I relinquished my claim now, she’d inherit the house when we were older.

‘Now, what was I talking about?’ She paused for a moment to think. ‘Oh yes! I just can't help but wonder what’s inside your precious little journal.’ She flared her nostrils, a habit I noticed she also had in common with Mother.

I took a few steps back, but with the distance I gained, she recovered in longer strides, her legs were longer, and she was quite a bit stronger than me. It was only a matter of time before she lunged at me and tackled me to the ground. Which is exactly what she did.

She lunged forward, and all I could do was brace myself. I wanted to scream, but her hand clamped over my mouth, she dug her nails into my cheek, and yanked my hair, pulling me towards the door, and closing it with a slam.

 She lifted me into the air, flipping me, so that the ceiling became the floor, and the floor became the ceiling.

‘Stop, Cordelia! It hurts!’

‘Oh, don't be so dramatic, Clyde. It's supposed to hurt. Why else would I bother?!’ She cackled, gripping my ankles with such force I felt my feet might pop off entirely.

My journal hit the ground with a thump, pens scattered and rolled in all directions. I thrashed against her hold, but her grip remained firm. She shook me, turned me, and twisted me about, before dropping me as you would discard a broken toy, leaving me writhing on the floor in pain.

‘Don’t touch that!’

I said, gasping for air. But she went ahead reading my journal anyway.

She flipped through the pages. Just as I began to reorient myself, she said ‘How boring’ before tossing it. ‘You’re so boring, you know that? What a horrible, boring little brother.’

Without a second glance, she turned and made her way downstairs, her voice echoing down the stairwell ‘Coming mother!’

I lay there, gasping for air, wondering what was wrong with her. She certainly didn’t get it from mother, or father, or me, she was just evil. Purely evil. At times, I’d wonder if she really was a part of our family, or if she’d bumped her head when she was younger and forgotten all her manners.