Free The Dress (Everyday Magic Trilogy: Book 1) by Sophie Nicholls

You walked out of the crooked arrangement of streets at the city centre, past the funny lopsided shops and tearooms and the squat little buildings with beams and mullioned windows that Ella now knew well, out over Lendal Bridge and up, way up past the station towards the racecourse. There, where the sky opened out, the houses changed to rows of grand Georgian terraces with large windows and glossy black railings or elegant stucco villas fronted with flights of stone steps. And Katrina’s house was one of the largest and grandest.
    Her garden was the size of a park. There were enormous chestnut trees and swings and monkey-bars. There was a funny little garden house too – Katrina called it the summerhouse – where they took picnics, sandwiches with the crusts cut off and biscuits and cupcakes and glass bottles of Coke, their outsides all filmy with cold, which the servant, Leonora, packed for them in a special hamper.
    ‘She’s not a servant ,’ said Katrina. ‘Blimey, you make it sound so medieval. It’s just Leonora and I’ve known her since I was a baby. She used to be my nanny.’
    But there was also Milton, a man with a sulky expression who drove Katrina and her mother around in a big silver BMW and lived in a flat above their garage. He wore a special cap with a crest and carried Mrs Cushworth’s bags of shopping.
    ‘And boy, does she know how to shop,’ said Katrina.
     
    *
     
    ‘Pssssssst…’
    The sound was like a small firework going off.
    ‘Hey, Ella. Deaf as well as daft, are you? I’m trying to talk to you!’
    The secret missive landed on the desk in front of her, a piece of paper torn from an exercise book and folded over and over until it was the size of a hailstone. Ella dropped the paper into her lap, unfolding it one-handed under the desk and glancing down.
    The handwriting was small and very round, the letters pressed deeply into the page, as if the writer had formed them under slow, determined pressure:
    ‘Today after school. Meet me outside the girls’ cloakrooms.’
    Ella felt the hairs on the back of her neck where they were caught up into a tight pony-tail, begin to prickle. She dug her fingernails into her palms and tried to catch Billy’s eye.
    Smile. Look them straight in the eye.
    But when she glanced over her right shoulder, Katrina’s face was grinning, her face so open and her eyebrows raised in such an expectant way that Ella couldn’t help her lips from forming a smile too. The appointment was sealed. And with it, she thought to herself, she might as well give up any idea of keeping herself to herself. Anyone could see that Katrina Cushworth didn’t operate like that.
    But she was also curious. What was it about this Katrina – or Kat as she liked to call herself, ‘Because Katrina sounds so, well, as if you’ve got a broomstick up your bum, don’t you think? ’ – that had led her to make the first move? She’d been circling slowly since Ella had first arrived, not altogether un-catlike, come to think of it. A little like the tabby cat Ella liked to watch from the shop window, skulking through the courtyard, circling its prey. Katrina had been sniffing her out, watching and waiting to see what she might do next.
    At half past three, Katrina was already waiting, slouched against the wall at the door to the girls’ cloakrooms, her hips thrust forward, her left foot in its dainty patent shoe running up and down the back of her right leg.
    As Ella came down the corridor, she saw Katrina yawn, stretching her legs and arms in a dramatically bored expression.
    ‘Ready, then?’
    Waiting but not waiting.
    ‘No Billy, tonight?’ said Katrina, pulling a fake pouty expression.
    Ella shook her head.
    ‘I am allowed to have girlfriends, Billy,’ she’d said to him that afternoon. ‘It might be nice. I want to do girls’ things too.’
    ‘Fine,’ said Billy, ‘but Katrina Cushworth ?’ He made a face and minced off in the opposite direction, wrists flapping, knees