Chapter 74

Osla was being charming and Mab was being terrifying, and between the two of them, Beth dared to hope she might get out.

Mab had collared two orderlies, the head matron, and a doctor doing his rounds. “I have serious concerns about my sister’s health. ” Arms folded, scarlet fingernails drumming. “If we can discuss your therapies. . . ”

Osla had gathered every nurse in sight and most of the inmates, and was chattering like a breathless Mayfair magpie. “. . . two hundred pounds of rose petals in the abbey alone. She’ll be wearing an absolutely topping tiara of the queen’s for her ‘something borrowed. ’” Leaning forward confidentially, making the women lean in. “You mustn’t tell anyone, because Mr. Hartnell swore me to secrecy at my dress fitting, but the queen will be wearing lilac silk, a real fizzer—”

“How did you get invitations to the royal wedding? ” one of the matrons breathed.

“My husband rubs shoulders with some useful London people. We saw Prince Philip once. An absolute dream. . . ”

No one was paying attention to Beth, lingering close but not too close to the locked gardening shed.

“Perhaps increased outdoor activity? ” Mab was suggesting to the doctor. He was visibly writhing to please her. “My sister always loved working in the garden. If that would help with these mood swings you describe. . . ”

“Gauloises, anyone? ” Osla passed her cigarette case around, throwing smiles like diamond chips. “There’s simply nothing like French cigarettes, French knickers, or French men! Now, the princess’s bridesmaids. . . ”

“What kind of gardening tools do you have for the patients? ” Mab steered her entourage around to the shed. “I’m sure my sister would improve if she could get her hands in the ground. Let me see what you have. . . ”

The head matron unlocked the shed. Hanging inside was that set of keys that opened the small access doors where the gardeners trundled wheelbarrows of dead leaves off-grounds. The shed that had never once in the three and a half years Beth had been watching it been left unattended, not for so much as a cigarette break.

“They say Princess Margaret will be in white organza, but I think she’ll switch at the last minute to make a splash—” Osla broke off, patting her forehead. “Goodness, is anyone else warm? ”

Glances at the cloudy sky. “It’s November, ma’am. . . ”

The shed was open; Mab stepped inside to frown at the tools. “You could use more spades and trowels. I’ll speak to my husband about a donation. Tell me, what other supplies could the institution use. . . ”

“Really, it seems quite warm. . . ? ” Osla’s voice trailed upward uncertainly. She rose, frowning—and toppled over in a heap on the grass.

“DOCTOR! ” Beth screamed.

(“Scream loud, Beth—we need every single head spinning in that moment to look at Osla. ”)

The doctor jerked away from Mab and came at a trot. The nurses and even the inmates clustered around Osla, who lay on the ground with her limbs twitching, head rolled back.

(“The doctors here have seen epileptic fits. Can’t you just pretend you saw a spider? ”)

(“It will work, Beth. ”)

“Nurse, it’s some kind of seizure. Hold her head—”

Osla twitched gently, not overdoing it. You’re good, Beth thought, hope beginning to hammer at her ribs.

(“As soon as the distraction’s under way, Mab moves. ”)

With every eye on Osla, Beth watched Mab’s hand move to the key hook inside the shed.

(“The keys aren’t labeled, but it will be one of the smaller ones. I don’t know which; grab them all. Are you sure you can get them off the ring without being seen? ”)

(“It may have been a long time since I was pocketing lipsticks from Selfridges, but I’ve still got a fast swipe. ”)

Beth saw her arm move in a quick yank, and then Mab was shutting the shed doors and pushing into the crowd around Osla. “My sister has always been prone to these little spells. Give her some air. . . ”

Osla’s eyelids fluttered. Mab helped her sit up; there were blushes, apologies. Oh, how too too embarrassing, doctor. . . One of the nurses, Beth saw from the corner of her eye, was hastily locking up the shed, not bothering to look inside.

Doctors and orderlies fought to help Osla up, and she drooped gracefully against all the solicitous male arms. “Time to get my sister home, ” Mab announced, and brushed through the crowd toward the house, a stream of nurses and patients moving with her. She and Beth managed to reach the door at the same time, jostling each other. Beth felt the three small keys press into her palm.

(“After that, Beth, it’s up to you. ”)

DON’T RUSH IT, Beth thought.

Wait for Mab and Osla to be escorted out. Wait for the commotion from Osla’s fit to die down, for the common room to settle. Wait for the nurses to fall back into their usual rounds. Wait.

But what if the grounds crew goes back into the shed, and they see—

Beth squashed the panic. She’d waited for three and a half years; she wasn’t going to ruin everything now out of haste.

Drifting slowly out of the common room, as if returning to her cell. Drifting down the passage instead, whisking behind a curtain. The matrons at the front desk weren’t supposed to leave the entrance unattended, but they did, all the time. The patients were so quiet; there wasn’t any real risk—and besides, there were the walls outside to contain them if they wandered into the grounds. Matron Rowe, on the desk today, couldn’t go forty minutes without a cigarette. . . sure enough, she whisked round the corner after fifteen patient minutes of waiting. Beth slipped outside, barely breathing.

Down the stone steps. Beth remembered mounting those steps the day she came here, feeling like Alice fallen down the rabbit hole. I am not Alice any longer, thought the former Miss Liddell. I am no longer trapped inside the clock.

Drifting, not running, around the women’s wing toward the back of the house, crouching under the windows. The access door came into sight, and Beth checked the clock tower. Ten thirty—the orderlies made rounds of the wall on the hour.

She flung herself at the gate, fumbling the trio of keys out of her sleeve. First key didn’t fit. She yanked it out, panting, fumbled with the second key, dropped it—

“What are you doing here? ”

An orderly stood staring at her, stopped buttoning his coat over his uniform. Ginger-haired, scrawny, clearly off duty and headed out. He was the one Beth had serviced in a linen closet, trying to learn what a lobotomy was. The one who had ruffled her hair afterward.

“You shouldn’t be out, ” he began, coming toward her, and Beth didn’t hesitate. She threw the useless key at his head, and as he flinched, she flung herself on him. He yelled in surprise, trying to fend her off, but she darted her head forward like a viper and sank her teeth into his cheek. The man yelped like he’d been scalded, and Beth forced her hand over his mouth, trying to contain the shout. He fell heavily, and Beth felt the impact along her entire left side as she fell with him, but her teeth only sank deeper. She heard herself making a mad keening noise. All the helpless rage of the last three and a half years boiled up her throat and roared when it met the coppery tang of the man’s blood in her mouth. She tasted more than blood; she tasted the chalky flavor of sedative tablets and the antiseptic tang of nurses’ fingers thrusting into her mouth to force her jaws apart. She tasted shame and despair and the urge to wind a bedsheet round her throat and hang herself. She tasted bleak stony hatred for Giles and a blunter, smaller venom for the nurses and orderlies who bullied the inmates; she tasted the metal of the drill that would have cut her skull open and the tensile snapping of her brain’s strands as her codebreaking mind was mutilated. “Let go, ” the orderly squealed into her ear, faces locked together as if they were dancing cheek to cheek. “Let go, you mad bitch—”

“No, ” Beth snarled through her teeth clamped into his face, and managed to get her fingers into his hair to yank his head against the ground. She banged his head once, twice, and he went slack. She banged one more time to be sure.

Beth’s ears buzzed. Her jaws ached as she released her teeth, and she wiped an unsteady hand across her mouth, feeling blood smear. She looked at the unconscious man below her, his cheek torn open. She didn’t know if it had been his head hitting the ground or if he had fainted, but he was out cold. She checked his pulse. Strong.

He was too heavy to move, and she had no way to hide him. She’d have to take her chances it would be a while before he was found.

She got to her feet, shaking, and staggered back to the access door. Her hands trembled too much at first to fit the second key to the lock. Her mouth was still coppery with blood. The second key didn’t fit. Please, Beth prayed, fitting the third.

It turned.

She was through the door in a flash, wedging it shut and locking it from the outside: outside the walls, for the first time in three and a half years. The path led down a grassy slope, toward a road she’d never seen. Beth flew down it, legs pumping. She’d told them where to wait; if they weren’t there. . .

Please, she prayed again.

There was Osla, perched on the long hood of a forest-green Bentley, hair ruffling in the cold breeze. Mab slouched behind the wheel, lighting a cigarette, saying, “. . . been trying to stop, but the week you stage an asylum breakout is not the week to quit smoking. ” They looked up, hearing her footsteps, and Beth saw them both flinch at the blood on her mouth. They tried to hide it, but she saw. For an instant her step faltered.

Osla slid off the hood and threw open the door. “Coming? ”

Beth crawled into the backseat, lying flat. She was suddenly dizzy, inhaling scents she hadn’t smelled in years: leather upholstery, Osla’s Soir de Paris, Mab’s Chanel No. 5. . . and her own smell, fear and ammonia and sweat. I want a bath. Mab started the car up, and they were swinging round. “Don’t speed, ” Beth said. “We don’t want to attract attention. ”

“Hide under this, ” Osla ordered, shoving a car rug over the partition.

Beth squirmed under it, but she couldn’t resist a peek through the rear window as they turned off the asylum road. Just a big gray stone house behind a tangle of dead roses and high walls, receding into the distance. Sleeping Beauty’s crumbling castle. The air coming through the open window was freezing cold, fragrant with bracken. Free air. . .

“Lie down, ” Mab hissed, mashing the pedal.

Beth lay down, head spinning. Mab and Osla were arguing, low voiced.

“—once they realize we aren’t Beth’s sisters—”

“—they have no blinking idea what our real names even are—”

The question burst out of Beth from under the blanket. “Can you tell me what happened to Boots? ”

A startled pause. Beth shrank, dreading the answer. “He was returned to Aspley Guise after you were taken away, ” Osla said. “Our landlady kept him. She mentioned him in her last Christmas card. ”

Beth squeezed her eyes shut. Her dog was alive, safe. That seemed like the best omen in the world.

Mab spoke up then. “Where are we going, Beth? ”

Beth opened her mouth and closed it again. The first real decision she had been offered in three and a half years. The Bentley rocketed over the moor as Beth Finch shut her tear-filled eyes with a sob of joy.

Alice escaped the looking glass, Giles. And now she’s coming for you.

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