Free Amelia by Siobhan Parkinson Page B

Amelia’s heart gave a little leap. When Amelia had last seen it, the dress had still been held together with pins, its glorious colour undimmed, but looking rather shapeless and temporary. Now it was a real ball-gown, shapely and lovely. It worked a magic spellon Amelia, and all thoughts of the lost watch slipped out of her mind again.
    She fingered the silk, and it whispered to her. She picked the dress up and held it to her, and it whispered some more. She caught a handful of the stuff and did a twirl, holding the skirt out, and it shimmered as it rustled, and then it sighed and flowed as she came to a standstill and dropped her handful of material. It was like something that was alive. It was certainly something to treasure.
    Amelia laid the dress reverently back on the bed and went and propped the swinging mirror on her tallboy forward and examined her face. It was just as well she did, because there was a big black coaly smudge right in the middle of her nose. Amelia dabbed at it with her sponge until she had got rid of every trace of coal dust, and then she scrubbed her nails and, with long, careful strokes, she brushed her hair, which Mama had washed the night before and dried in front of the drawing-room fire.
    Finally, she stepped out of her school clothes, drew on her best stockings and slipped the emerald dress over her head, listening to its murmurings as it slid over her ears and settled on her body. She did up all the little buttons carefully, adjusted the dress in the mirror, bent down and slipped into her party pumps, and behold, Amelia Pim, age thirteen, with a pretty little nose and sea-green eyes that more or less compensated for her sticky-out ears, and a burnished waterfall of yellow hair down her back, was ready to face the world, or at least to face twenty young people of mixed sex and respectable background in search of a few hours’ entertainment.
    She glided down the stairs in the emerald dress, feeling as if she was floating on a silken cloud, as the dress gently billowed around her and rose up against her hands, with which she constantly smoothed and settled it. Just as she was halfway down, the doorbell rang and Mary Ann came at a gallopfrom the dining room with the step-ladder under her arm and made frantic signals to Amelia to open the door herself while Mary Ann made good her escape to the kitchen with the evidence. Amelia hesitated, her heart thumping, and then she gathered up her courage and opened the door. There stood Lucinda and her elder brother, her first party guests.
    How could Amelia ever have thought of not inviting Lucinda’s brother? That would have been a great mistake! He was tall, as sixteen-year-olds tend to be, much taller than either of the girls, and he had the same head of bubbly auburn curls that Lucinda had, except that his, cut shorter, looked less as if they were about to take over the world. He looked down at Amelia from a pair of tawny eyes, bright and devilish as his sister’s, and, with a slight forward inclination of the top half of his body that might or might not have been a bow, said: ‘Amelia Pim? I am Frederick Goodbody. Perhaps you remember me?’
    Amelia wasn’t sure if he was poking fun at her, but she thought it better to reply graciously. Just as she was about to open her mouth, she heard a muffled giggle behind her, and she knew Mary Ann must be there. She had been handling the situation nicely until she realised she was being observed, but now she could feel herself blushing. ‘Hello,’ she said, unceremoniously, and didn’t offer to shake hands. ‘Come in.’ And then she immediately started to chatter nervously to Lucinda, and to fuss with the coats, ignoring Frederick, who stood gallantly by and examined Papa’s hunting prints in the hallway.
    Then the doorbell rang again. It was Dorothea Jacob, with her older sister and her cousin Richard. Dorothea looked a bit strange. Her face was pale, but her eyes were pink and there were two bright