Free Lily by Holly Webb

pantry.’
    Georgie frowned. ‘I’ve seen letters from Father – not to read. Only the envelopes, and glimpses as she was reading them. I always searched for the letters afterwards, but Mama hid them, I think. They had London postmarks.’
    Lily started suddenly, as a hand tapped her shoulder. She swung round, nearly tipping herself into the fire, and the small, dirty hand grabbed her sleeve.
    Peter had lost his pale, starved look after three years of all the kitchen scraps he could steal, but he was still thin, and he sti ll didn’t talk.
    ‘Were you listening?’ Lily snapped.
    ‘Lily! He can’t hear!’ Georgie whispered to her.
    ‘He may not be able to hear, but he can still listen,’ Lily told her, staring straight at Peter, and speaking very clearly so he could read her lips.
    Peter grinned at her, and wriggled his hand to suggest he’d heard a little. Some. Enough.
    ‘How did you creep up on us?’ Lily demanded crossly.
    Peter put down the box of firewood he’d brought in, and scrabbled in the pocket of his battered shirt, bringing out a piece of paper and a stub of pencil. He scrawled something on the paper, and handed it to Lily, smirking.
    If you’re running off, you need to get a lot better at it. Watch your backs.
    ‘We didn’t know you were sneaking around,’ Lily muttered.
    Henrietta had prowled all around him, sniffing at his feet. ‘Could you steal the key to this boathouse?’ she asked suddenly, scratching at his knee to make him look down at her.
    Peter’s eyes widened, so that they were almost as round as Henrietta’s. All the servants knew that magic was going on in the house, but they hardly ever saw it. The girls’ mother was careful, and Lily knew he had never seen anything like Henrietta. At last he nodded, and shrugged.
    ‘You’d do that?’ Lily frowned at him. ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ she added hopefully, after a moment. ‘We have to get away – Mama’s had Georgie under a spell, and we think she might… She might do something very bad…’ She couldn’t bring herself to say that they suspected Mama was planning to get rid of Georgie, like so much rubbish. ‘We’re going to London!’ she said instead. ‘Please, Peter, come with us. Won’t you?’
    Peter stared at her, his eyes twitching from side to side as though someone were chasing him, but after a moment he shook his head regretfully.
    ‘Not everyone on the mainland would be so bad.’ Lily couldn’t say like the family who sent you here , but they both knew that was what she meant.
    I’ll slide the key under your door , Peter wrote. Then he looked up at her, and added, Tonight ?
    Lily glanced at Georgie and Henrietta. The pug was nodding enthusiastically. Georgie swallowed, clenching her nails into her palms, and whispered, ‘Yes.’
    Lily nodded. ‘Tonight.’

    ‘Are you sure she keeps it in here?’ Lily whispered, glancing over her shoulder in a hunted sort of way. It was past ten and the evening was darker now. They had only a candle, and the light was flickering on the furniture, sending shadows leaping here and there like ghosts.
    Henrietta nodded, and put her front paws up against the dressing table chair. ‘I can smell it. Gold has a very distinctive smell, Lily. Like butter.’
    ‘Oh, do hurry! What if Mrs Porter’s burned the dinner again? Mama might storm up here and be back any second,’ Georgie moaned. She was lurking by Mama’s bedroom door, supposedly keeping a watch on the passageway. They had taken a thin film of face powder from the pink china pot on the dressing table, and laid it over the threadbare carpet at the top of the stairs. If Georgie’s spell had worked – which she said she was quite sure it hadn’t, although Lily and Henrietta had chosen to ignore this as just Georgie panicking – then if anyone walked through the powder, the lid of the pot should clatter up and down. It was a very clever spell. If it worked.
    ‘Georgie, how do we undo a lock spell?