Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses by Catriona McPherson

grown-out-of toys of her sisters, leaving her shelves and cupboard-tops stacked three deep with elderly dolls and decrepit bears and then she could never be persuaded to leave the treasures of the day outside in the garden at bedtime, so that her room was full of wildflower posies in jam jars and the floor was covered in watercolour sketches, spread out to dry half-finished and never to
be
finished since the next new day brought its fresh demands and adventures. There were bowls and teacups – doll-sized – she had made from river mud and transported home and in the corner on a piece of board there was a sandcastle made at Watchet which Fleur could not leave behind when the rugs were rolled and the flasks tipped out at the end of a picnic. She had brought it home and tried to keep it damp with an orchid pump full of water before more treasures claimed her. So there it sat, a heap of yellow sand with shells and feathers still adorning it and all her sisters ever said if they strayed too close and felt the crunch under their bedroom slippers was:
    ‘Isn’t she a poppet? Isn’t she a love? Shall we take it back to the beach, Florissima, and let these grains see all the other grains in their family?’
    ‘I shall rebuild it one day,’ Fleur said, very grandly. ‘I have that snap of it, remember. And I did sketches too.’ Then she turned back to her dolls’ house and continued with the endless renovations she was undertaking there.
    The study-cum-bedroom of the English mistress at St Columba’s shared only the features of having four walls, a window and door. The narrow bed was covered with a plain woollen blanket and the bedside table held only a glass and a Bible. The desk was bare, the dresser top bore not so much as a hairbrush. I thought again of the convent I had imagined, but here was not even a cross on the wall as there might have been there.
    Fleur – and I still had to work to convince myself that it really
was
Fleur – drew out the hard chair from under the desk and bade me sit down. She leaned against the windowsill and I thought of her as she had been, sprawled on her bed in her outdoor shoes, eating bread and jam and sharing it with her angora rabbit, who often slept there.
    ‘Did
they
send you?’ she said. Her voice was without inflection, no way of knowing whether she feared or welcomed or even cared what had brought me there.
    ‘Pearl asked me to come, yes.’
    ‘And how did you get past— I mean, how did you end up having dinner with the girls?’
    ‘Miss Shanks got the idea into her head that I was a French mistress and somehow I was swept up in things.’
    ‘You’re not, are you?’ said Fleur, her eyes wide, looking very stark suddenly in her pale face.
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Of course – silly. Only all sorts of people are doing all sorts of things these days.’
    She was right; but I chose, for the moment, not to tell her. She was studying me very speculatively.
    ‘Miss Shanks doesn’t know you’re not, though, does she?’ she said. ‘And she doesn’t know you came to see me? That’s good. That’s something anyway. And so, please, Dandy, just go. Before she finds out.’
    ‘But Fleur – why shouldn’t you have a guest? Pearl told me she couldn’t gain admittance – or Aurora – but she didn’t tell me why and I don’t understand.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Fleur. She was speaking in an urgent whisper. ‘Please just go.’
    ‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ I said. ‘I promised your sisters I would come and see that you were all right.’
    ‘And I am. It’s my choice not to see them. I send letters. I’m fine.’
    ‘Yes, well, clearly that’s nonsense,’ I answered. ‘Clearly you’re not. Fleur? Darling, what’s wrong?’
    ‘Nothing!’ Fleur said, bending over towards me at the waist to make her whisper do instead of shouting. ‘I’m quite quite content and perfectly well and I kept telling them that but they wouldn’t stop ringing up and bothering