Free Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge Page A

it?’ asked Mr Grace.
    Triss could barely answer, and became aware that her heels were drumming against the chair legs, in an excitable, seated dance. She wondered if this was what drunk felt like. Perhaps she
was
drunk. Cake-drunk.
    She was having
fun
. When had she last had fun? Treats, pampering, protection, oh yes, she had all these things in abundance. But fun?
    Jazz was not respectable. She was not supposed to hear it, and nobody was meant to play it to her. She was sure that Mr Grace knew that, and she gave him a look of glee. His feet were not
tapping, she noticed. He simply stood by the gramophone, watching her and smiling.
    One of the shop women put her head round the door, and Mr Grace quickly lifted the needle from the record.
    ‘The young lady’s father is ready to take her home,’ she said.
    Triss felt a throb of disappointment. Mr Grace grabbed a clothes brush and helped her dust off the cake crumbs, even taking a moment to pluck a loose hair from her sleeve.
    When Triss was taken back to her father, she knew that her eyes must still be shining and her face pink from icing and jazz. Her father looked her over, frowned very slightly
and touched his fingers briefly to her forehead to check for fever. Despite herself, Triss felt a tiny pang of resentment. Couldn’t she be happy without it being a sign of a temperature?
    ‘If you would like to bring Theresa back in a week for a first fitting . . .’ Hearing these words, Triss’s mouth twitched. She was coming back here. Instantly she was filled
with a rush of guilty glee.
    Only as she was leaving did her spirits cool a little. Over on the reception desk she could see the scissors that had nearly fallen on her. A bright cloth had been thrown over them, but the tips
of the blades still pointed out. The weather-worn iron was blackened and unforgiving, and the points looked sharp.

Chapter 7
A LATE CALLER
    Triss rode home with jazz in her blood. More than once she caught herself trying to hum one of the strange leaping melodies under her breath, but it came out as a tuneless
murmur. She was filled with a wild sense that everything was possible.
    As she neared home, however, this strange new confidence peeled away. Her Trissness closed in around her again, like cold, damp swaddling clothes. As she saw her house hove into view, the last
fizz of enthusiasm left her.
    Her mind was so crowded with thoughts that for a moment she could not quite work out why the house looked different from usual. Then she realized that there was a dark angular blot in front of
the garage door. A motorcycle had been parked there with an insolent obstructiveness, blocking the Sunbeam’s easy cruise into the garage itself.
    ‘Of all the nerve!’ exclaimed her father, bringing the car to a sharp stop at the kerb.
    The motorbike was a lean black creature with a tan body and sidecar. It was mud-spattered, and looked as out of place in the prim, trimmed square as a footprint on an embroidered tablecloth.
There was something bold and ugly about the way it let you see right into its metal works. It had the rough cockiness of a stray dog one hair’s breadth away from snarling.
    At the sight of it, Triss felt her spirits sink further, though it took her a moment or two to remember why. She had seen the motorbike before, and its presence meant trouble. It meant scenes;
it meant both her parents being angry and upset.
    As Triss’s father made a great show of laboriously parking on the pavement, Triss caught sight of the motorcycle’s owner, standing with hands on hips and an air of impatience. The
tall, slender figure was dressed in a long, earth-brown overcoat with a high collar, thick leather gloves and a tight black leather driving cap trimmed with fleece. Beneath the coat, however,
divided skirts were just visible, and jaw-length dark hair peeped out from under the cap. Legs were visible almost up to the knee, and were shiny with nylon. It was unmistakably a woman, a woman