A Pack of Lies by Geraldine McCaughrean Read Free Book Online

the mattress and the darkness to reach up for her . . .
    She must have dozed for a few moments, for she dreamt she heard a mechanical shush-shush-shushing and the ping ping ping of a broken spoke against a mudguard. She sprang awake, her scalp prickling with unease.
    Perhaps a letter to her parents might be a wise precaution. Otherwise Raissa’s clever tongue might winPapa round before Grace had a chance to banish the girl from their affections. Yes, a letter. Perhaps then Papa would
write
, dismissing the girl, and it would never come down to Raissa’s word against hers. ‘How fine a thing is a good education,’ thought Grace, slipping out of bed. ‘I doubt if that girl can even write her own name, let alone write letters like mine!’ And she lit a lamp which drove the darkness away to a safer distance.
    Through the house she went, waking the macaw and the monkey with the light, but no-one else. The whining of insects seemed to beat against the house and make it tremble, but after all, it was only the flicker of the lamplight that made everything quake. She composed in her head as she went.
     
    Dear Mamma and Papa,
    Do send word that that dreadful girl Raissa be dismissed. This morning I found her wearing one of my dresses . . . and
cutting her hair
with my needlework scissors! When I remonstrated with her, she said ‘I’m as good as you any day’ and wanted me to curl her hair to look like me. I think she is only behaving like this because you are away, but oh, dear, precious Mamma, I simply don’t know how to handle servants, and she does frighten me so with that little penknife of hers. Darling Papa! Did you know that her betrothed — the man called Imrat — is a Nationalist and wants to ‘wash the English out of India on a tide of blood’? Such people! Do please write and advise me what must be done. I am so very alone without my dear Mamma and Papa . . .
     
    Flushed with the thrill of inspiration, she pulled her escritoire to the edge of the table, drew up a chair, opened the lid, and lifted out the tray of pens. As she reached in for the paper, something soft and cold curled around her wrist and gave her a fright. Then she laughed at her foolishness. ‘Of course! Raissa’s plait!’She drew out the pink stationery and shook her arm to dislodge the rope of hair.
    But it would not shake off. In fact it clung tighter, taking another turn and another around her forearm, the bulbous end searching up inside the sleeve of her nightdress . . .
    Until the snake struck, Grace was still convinced that the blackness round her arm was nothing more than a hairpiece cold with safflower oil. Afterwards, she just had time to hear — beyond the cackle of the macaw and the jibbering of the monkey and the migraine roar of the Indian night — the shush-shush-shushing of brakes binding, as a bicycle rode away across the lawns. Then the poison stopped her pulse — for a vein runs direct from the right hand to the heart.
    * * *
    By this time, the pavement outside the shop was full of forlorn, irritable people, craning their necks this way and that for the owner of the empty newsagent’s. They clutched large Sunday newspapers and palms full of coins. Mr Singh left at the run to serve them, but returned ten minutes later, carrying a black tin cash-box.
    ‘If you would be so good, I should like to buy the delightful wooden writing box, Mrs Povey. And there was a book also that I saw . . . a book about India and the days of the British rule.’ (It was the book MCC had had propped open on the handlebars, and he fetched it instantly.)
    ‘Oh Mr Singh, I couldn’t . . .’ said Mrs Povey.
    MCC held out the box and the book, and the newsagent’s arms closed around them as the arms of India once closed around her sweet Independence.
    ‘But the box has no key!’ said Mrs Povey sadly.
    Mr Singh hugged it closer to his chest.
    ‘Oh but Mr Singh, it’s Sunday and I shouldn’t . . .’
    Ailsa crossed to