"What is going on with you, Isabel? You're acting out, yelling, telling lies. This isn't like you," Mother said.

"Nothing," I grumbled.

"We know that recent events have been difficult but that doesn't give you the right to misbehave the way you have been. Your father and I are trying to understand where this behaviour is coming from, but it's hard to do so if you refuse to talk to us."

Mother looked at me from across the room. She had her arms folded across her chest and she stood near the window, the fading sunlight pouring in and giving her a strange, almost ethereal glow. Father was sitting in one of the armchairs with his fingers steepled together and a slight crease in his eyebrows. He looked to be thinking about something rather hard, most likely about me, but he allowed Mother to take point on the questioning.

Since we arrived home that afternoon, they had been giving me an intense interrogation regarding my behaviour, not that I really listened. I could hear Mother's voice, but most of it just washed over me and I stared out the window at the trees. Every now and then, I would see a small bird fly out from amongst the branches or hop along the ground on a quest for food. The birds were far more interesting than the questioning and overall feeling of the current situation.

"Are you even listening to your mother, Isabel?" Father said, relaxing his fingers. "I have a good mind to not allow you to go on this overnight event. With the way you have been behaving, I don't think you have earned the trust required to go on such an excursion."

"This is getting us nowhere," Mother said. "We just want to know why you didn't tell us where you would be after school."

"How could I have told you where I was going if I didn't know I needed to go to Uncle James' shop until after school finished? How exactly was I supposed to tell you where I would be? Walk in the opposite direction of the shop to your office to tell you? Or, walk right past the shop to Uncle Christopher and then have to backtrack to the shop, all the while missing out on time that could be spent doing my schoolwork?"

"Watch your tone, young lady."

"You need to calm down, Robert. This isn't helping."

"No, but neither is mollycoddling her."

"Fine, if it makes you happy I'll spend my afternoons standing outside the school gates, even in the pouring rain, so you know where I am. Is that better?" I groaned. "I get it, I can't stay overnight with Evelyn on Saturday. Can I go? I have schoolwork to finish, and as you keep reminding me, school is important."

Mother let out an exasperated sigh and glanced at Father who nodded his head slightly. I took that to mean I was free to go so swung my satchel onto my shoulder and ran up the stairs to my room with my satchel hitting me in the hip with every step. My heart hammered away in my chest and I knew it had nothing to do with climbing the stairs and more to do with what had just unfolded in the drawing-room.

When I reached my room, I hauled open the door before closing it behind me and then throwing my satchel onto the bed. I pressed my forehead against the cool wood of the door, taking several deep breaths to try and calm the anger rising in my chest. Heat felt like it was radiating off my body and through my veins with the cold sensation of the door doing little to combat the heat.

My chest squeezed, almost like someone had tied a cord or a bit of rope around me and had pulled it as tight as possible. The rope felt like it was being pulled tighter and tighter to the point that I struggled to breathe in even the smallest amount of air. I turned and pressed my back against the door, sliding down to sit on the floor with my palms pressed flat against the floor. The rope got tighter.

I remembered something Grandfather once said to me about how to manage my emotions if I felt they were getting out of control. He said I had to ground myself, get out of my head and into the real world, using my five senses to do so.

What I could see: The fading sunlight streaming in through the window, the pink colours of the clouds.

What I could hear: Birds tweeting in the trees outside, the wind hitting the windowpane, and the clock chiming downstairs.

What I could smell: Fresh air coming in through the open window.

What I could feel: Floorboards under my fingers, the notches in the wood and the scratches from furniture being moved.

What I could taste: Blood on the inside of my cheek from where I had gnawed on it during the car ride home.

The rope on my chest loosened and I swallowed down gulps of air to try and calm my breathing. After a few minutes, my chest stopped heaving and I flattened my legs against the floor, tilting my head and letting out a shaky breath. Outside the door, I could hear the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs just down the hallway. I scrambled to my feet and crossed to my bed, pulling out the handkerchief and sewing supplies from my satchel to make it seem like I had been doing my school work.

A knock echoed through my room from the other side of the door.

"Come in," I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

The door swung open and Mrs Smith stood there with a silver tray in her arms. "Your parents thought it best if you take supper in here tonight."

"Of course they did," I muttered.

"I don't like that attitude, young lady." Mrs Smith walked into the room and placed the tray on my writing desk. I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes."Do you need anything else?"

I shook my head. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure? You look a little pale."

"Just tired, I guess."

"Alright, well, if you need anything you can ring and I'll have one of the girls come up." She gestured to the bell pull by the wall.

"Thank you, Mrs Smith."

Mrs Smith smiled and backed out of the room, leaving me in silence with nothing but the fading bird calls for company. I crossed over to the writing desk and sat down at the chair, staring out of the window and watching the sunset behind the trees. Pink clouds dotted the sky, but as the sun dipped further below the trees, the colour faded with it. Soon, all that would be left to look at would be the shadow of the trees and the small slither of moonlight to break through the clouds.

I picked at the food Mrs Smith had brought up to me, rolling the peas across the plate and cutting smaller and smaller pieces from the chicken breast but not actually eating them. After a little while, I ate a few of the smaller chunks of chicken, but they didn't taste of anything and became stuck in my throat. All I can think about was how upset Grandfather would be if he saw me talking to Mother and Father the way I had downstairs.

It's not like I wanted to be rude to them, but I couldn't stop the amount of rage building up in my body and it just kept exploding out of me. Every time I wanted to be reasonable, to explain myself and my actions, the anger would bubble up inside me until it felt like I was about to burst. There was nothing I could do to fight it or stop it from happening and it just kept going again and again. I wanted it to stop, but I couldn't fight it, it felt like someone else had a hold on me.

After eating very small amounts of the dinner prepared, most of it I just pushed around the plate, I got up from the writing desk and rang the bell down in the kitchen with the fabric pull. I moved around my bed and sat cross-legged on the top of it, grabbing my sewing project and trying to look busy by tugging on the spools of thread.

A knock came at the door a few minutes later, followed by the creak of the door and a second appearance of Mrs Smith in my room.

"I thought you were going to send Mary or Helen," I said.

"They're both still serving downstairs." Mrs Smith crossed to the writing desk with her hands behind her back and frowned at the plate. "You didn't eat much."

"I'm not hungry," I lied.

"So you wouldn't want this?"

From behind her back, she produced a bowl which she brought over to me and placed on my nightstand. I leaned over from the bed, almost teetering on the edge of falling face-first onto the floor. She had bought me a bowl of chocolate ice cream and she had sprinkled pieces of a broken chocolate bar on top.

"I can never say no to ice cream." I smiled.

"Hm, I thought as much. Eat that quickly and I'll have one of the girls come and get it, I mean it this time." She laughed. "Don't tell your parents, I'm not sure they'd be all too pleased to think I was rewarding you for your recent behaviour."

"Then why did you bring it up?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"Because I thought you could do with someone on your side. I'm not saying I condone your behaviour because I really don't, but you are not the first teenager I've seen act this way. Your aunt Charlotte had her moments when she was your age, although I think most of it came from Mrs Ealing. They were both so young when everything happened that I don't think it affected them until they got older. She acted out, just as you are."

I looked down at my hands and twisted a piece of thread around my thumb before unravelling it. "I don't want to act out, I just can't help it."

Mrs Smith smiled. "Your mother used to do that, but she did it until her hand went purple." She gestured to me wrapping the thread. "As for your behaviour, these have been trying times and I'm sure your parents understand that, but I get the feeling there is something else going on that you're not telling anyone. I'm not going to pry, but if at any point you feel like you need someone to talk to, you know where I am."

Without waiting for me to reply, not that I had one, Mrs Smith took the tray from the writing desk and left the room. She switched the light on when she passed, illuminating my room in the warm yellow glow from the bulbs around the room. I sighed and reached over for the ice cream.

I poked the spoon around in the bowl, occasionally picking up a small amount of the ice cream and crushed chocolate bar and putting it into my mouth. The cold sensation shocked me a little at first, but I preferred it to the heat that had been coursing through my veins earlier that evening. I ate my way through the ice cream, being mindful not to drop any on my bed just in case Mother saw it, I didn't want to get Mrs Smith in trouble for being kind.

Mrs Smith had always been my favourite member of staff out of the few that Grandfather employed at the house. She knew a lot of secrets about Mother and Father, as well as my aunt and uncle. She even knew where the best hiding places were for chocolate or biscuits so that no one else would find them. I had known her my entire life and she saw straight through me and the reason why I had been behaving the way I had.

She was the only one willing to understand, more than Mother and Father, more than anyone else. Mrs Smith knew that there was something I had yet to say, a feeling I had yet to express and she didn't rat me out to anyone or even insist that I tell her as Mother and Father would have. I could go to her if I wanted to, not because I had to.

I finished the ice cream and placed the bowl back onto my nightstand for one of the others to collect later on before turning to the handkerchief and the small row of frogs I had stitched that afternoon. Because of the argument, I had missed out on vital time to finish the work before school the next morning and I knew it would be a late night. So, I gathered up the supplies, settled against the pillows and continued stitching long into the night. 

~~~

A/N - Chapter Ten is here! This was one of my favourite chapters to write and this is probably the moment I truly fell in love with the story and the direction it started to go in and I hope you love it just as much as I did! In other news, I am three chapters into the rewrite of The Orphan Girl now and I'm really liking this new version!

Questions! Was Robert right to have a go at Isabel? What do you think is going on with her? 

Comment below!

First Published - July 13th, 2021