Free No Peace for Amelia by Siobhan Parkinson Page A

side.
    Tentatively, she squeaked open the drawing-room door. The curtains were half-drawn and the cushions lay drunkenly around. An old pink corner of blanket poked untidily out of the ottoman. Automatically, Amelia went and tucked it neatly in. Then she noticed that the lid of the log box was open, and the logs were sticking out of the top, as if someone had hurled them in hurriedly, instead of stacking them properly, and there was a miniature forest floor of wood chippings and tattered leaves and strips of bark and little brittle bits of fern frond strewn around near the box. There was no sign of Grandmama or Edmund, who could usually be found reading at this time of day, huddled over the fire if the afternoon was cool, or on warmer days just huddled over where the fire would have been.
    Amelia found them in the kitchen, tidying up. At least, Grandmama was tidying, and Edmund was followingher every step, which was a great hindrance to the old lady in the narrow confines of the kitchen, but she didn’t complain. Edmund turned two enormous eyes, brimming with unshed tears, on Amelia when she came into the room, and immediately put his hands behind him and stepped back defensively.
    â€˜Whatever’s been going on?’ asked Amelia, looking from the cowering child to a stray heap of flour in an unexpected corner and noticing more coaly streaks on the floor.
    â€˜Well,’ began Amelia’s grandmother, but she didn’t get any further, for Edmund’s previously unshed tears suddenly trickled over his eyelashes down his cheeks, and he cried out: ‘It isn’t real, it’s only a toy,’ and stepped further back from Amelia again.
    Mystified, Amelia hunkered down to the boy’s level. She took out her handkerchief and wiped the wettest parts of his face, but when she tried to put her arm around his shoulders, Edmund backed off, keeping his hands awkwardly behind him. Amelia relented, stood up and raised a querying eyebrow at Grandmama. Her grandmother shook her head, as if to say that it was best not to enquire further, not with Edmund in the state he was in.
    â€˜I think maybe you should go to Mary Ann,’ said Grandmama quietly. ‘She’s up in her room.’
    â€˜She just bit my nose off in the hall,’ retorted Amelia.
    Edmund looked anxiously at Amelia’s nose, which made Amelia smile.
    â€˜Not literally, silly. I mean she just snapped my head off.’
    Edmund’s eyes grew rounder and wetter still.
    â€˜I’d better go,’ said Amelia.
    Amelia found Mary Ann packing. The place was in a shocking mess. There were feathers and little hunks of kapok everywhere, as if Mary Ann had been having the wildest pillow fight with herself, and scraps of paper lay about, like large and colourless confetti. There was a hole in the floor, which Amelia had to step over to reach her friend.
    â€˜What’s going on, Mary Ann?’ asked Amelia, looking around at the devastation, anger beginning to well up inside her.
    â€˜I’m leaving, Miss,’ said Mary Ann, folding her things and not looking up.
    â€˜Miss!’ exclaimed Amelia. It was always a bad sign when Mary Ann reverted to calling her this. ‘Oh, Mary Ann, what’s wrong, what’s wrong? Why is everyone so miserable, and why is the house in such a mess? Did you have a fight with Edmund?’
    â€˜Fight with Edmund?’ This extraordinary notion made Mary Ann look up. ‘Lawny!’ she said, her mouth almost cracking into a smile at the thought of such a thing.
    Clearly, this wasn’t what had happened. Somebody else, some outsider had wreaked this havoc. How dare they!
    Amelia tried another tack: ‘Why is there this hole inyour floor?’ and she peered down into the rectangle of dark.
    â€˜That’s my hidey-hole,’ said Mary Ann, matter- of-factly .
    â€˜Hidey-hole? What have you got to hide, Mary Ann?’ Amelia’s nose crinkled in distaste at the