The Shadow in the Glass JJA Harwood (book recommendations for young adults txt) 📖

door to her own room and seen all the rips Lizzie had left in her clothes she’d stared and stared, gripping the bedpost as her chest grew tighter and tighter.

She couldn’t stay here. Whoever killed Lizzie could be back at any minute. She had to get out.

Eleanor threw her mended dresses into her case and wedged it in front of the door. No one could sneak in now. Still, she had to be ready. She kicked her torn things under the bed – she couldn’t bear to look at them any more – and cracked the window open to listen. Hansoms in the streets, newspaper boys calling out the evening editions, a man ranting about iniquity and sinners. Nothing from the garden. But then, they hadn’t heard anything last night, had they? Someone had hit Lizzie over the head and drowned her, right outside their door, and they hadn’t heard a thing. With all the baize doors closed, someone could be creeping up the stairs right now and Eleanor would never know until her bedroom door creaked open.

Eleanor hauled her bed in front of the door, the legs screeching across the floorboards. She wasn’t going to let whoever killed Lizzie get her too. It must have been the butcher’s boy, Eleanor thought. He and Lizzie had argued, and now she was dead. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

But perhaps that wasn’t the only coincidence.

Eleanor had made a wish last night. She had wished for Lizzie to stop and now Lizzie was dead. Could the black-eyed woman have …

Eleanor shoved the thought away at once. Of course she hadn’t caused Lizzie’s death by wishing. The wishes weren’t like that. They were gifts, like in fairy stories, and they would make her dreams come true. They wouldn’t kill people.

‘Of course they couldn’t,’ said Eleanor, ‘of course not.’

She was not sure if she was expecting a reply.

Eleanor gave up on sleep and went downstairs at four in the morning. It was still dark outside. It wasn’t a problem until after she’d lit the range, when she had to go out to the water pump. Then, the night seemed to billow and swell around her, seeping underneath the doors like smoke.

Eleanor drew out a kitchen knife from the block. The handle slipped in her sweaty fingers, so she dug out a rag and wrapped it around the palm of her hand. She was not going to drop it, not when Lizzie’s murderer could be right outside.

Bucket in one hand, knife in the other, Eleanor eased the back door open with the toe of her boot and clambered up the steps to the garden.

Snakes of mist coiled around her legs. Clammy air oozed across the back of her neck, a strangling hand. The long, low shape of the water trough was a deeper patch of darkness, the rim of a pit that waited for her. The arm of the pump glistened: an iron scaffold.

Eleanor put a lit candle on the step and whispered a prayer. She tightened her grip on the knife and stepped out.

The creak of the bucket’s handle made her think of garrotte wire. Daisy said her cousin had been garrotted in the West Indies. Daisy said she still had the scar, running right across her neck. Daisy said that all the warning her cousin had got was the singing sound the wire had made, as the garrotter wound it tighter around his hands …

A rat flitted across her path. Eleanor yelped and almost dropped the knife.

She was nearly at the water trough. The long, thin shape, slightly raised from the ground, looked exactly like a coffin. Oh, dear God, she was going to have to clean it out today. The water glistened like oil in the darkness, a foul sweetness rising from the surface, and Eleanor’s stomach roiled.

She turned in a wide circle before she set down the bucket. The garden was empty – at least, she thought it was. The candle she’d put on the top step sent a thin beam of light spilling onto the grass, but as she turned back Eleanor realized that this had been a mistake. The light blinded her to what was really in the darkness.

She rammed the knife into her apron. She hauled on the arm of the pump, her hands slipping off the handle. She grabbed it again, yanked it downwards, and sloshed water into the bucket so fast that her arms went numb. The second she was done she tugged the knife back out and stared around the garden, heart pounding.

Nothing.

She picked up the bucket and lurched back to the kitchen. Almost there. She’d be safe inside soon. She’d close the door behind her, lock it tight, and wouldn’t even have to look at that awful pump for the rest of the day. She could feel it over her shoulder. A sickly, cold smell drifted out of the water, marking the place where Lizzie had died. Her eyes flickered down to the bucket, and she wondered how long a body could live without drinking.

Finally, she reached the steps down to the kitchen. She set the bucket down, fumbling for a candle.

‘Ella?’

Eleanor shrieked and dropped the knife. It clattered down the stairs. Someone else yelled too, and a match flared in the dark.

Eleanor snatched up her candle. Daisy and Aoife clutched each other at the bottom of the stairs, terrified, a carving knife wavering in Daisy’s hand. They broke apart when they saw it was only Eleanor.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘You startled me.’

Aoife shook out the match and slumped against Daisy’s shoulder. In the sudden darkness, she began to cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ Eleanor said again, ‘I was … I’m sorry.’

Mrs Fielding stood at the head of the kitchen table, her eyes ringed in shadow. The tip of her scar stood out white against her neck, just visible underneath the high collar of her dress. Eleanor couldn’t stop staring at it. Surely Lizzie had been lying, to say that Eleanor had given her that scar.

‘This will be