Elspeth had come over faint then, stating that she was exhausted and had to lie down, leaving Katy and Huw standing awkwardly in the doorway of the bedroom that was no longer going to be Katy’s, not knowing what to say to each other. Eventually Huw had patted Katy’s shoulder and said he’d make the attic look nice for her. In the meantime she had to bed down with the boxes and cobwebs, spiders and dust, until the builders came in to make the bathroom and knock the two rooms into one. Katy didn’t mind. She had a good view of the garden from up there, and she could hear the conversations that filtered through the windows from below. She had her own private space – her own floor – in a beautiful house and that was all that mattered to her.
For weeks, Viola had been talking about a Halloween party to celebrate her birthday. She was going to invite her friends from school, she’d say loudly, whenever Katy was in earshot. Already Katy hated the snooty girls’ school she had to attend, with the stuffy pinafore and starched-shirt combo she was forced to wear. Everyone made fun of her accent when she opened her mouth, so she decided the best thing was to keep quiet. Even though Viola was two school years above her, her popularity and hatred of Katy filtered down through the pupils, which resulted in everyone giving her a wide berth as though she was infectious and riddled with lice – which was probably what Viola had been telling everyone. Katy tried not to care. She was used to keeping herself to herself. It had served her well at the children’s home and it would protect her here.
Elspeth had gone to town on the house, decorating every inch of it with fake cobwebs, furry spiders, pumpkins with sinister faces carved into them （Katy was made to help with this and hated it because the orange flesh stuck to her fingers）， ugly gargoyles, witches’ broomsticks, hanging bats. It was grotesque and changed the feeling of the house from pretty and dreamlike to ugly and nightmarish.
Viola’s friends were to arrive at five o’clock for some food, then go trick or treating. It wasn’t clear to Katy if she was invited, although Elspeth had given her an unflattering witch’s costume with stripy tights that kept falling down and a pointed hat that itched her head. Viola looked beautiful in a white dress, even with the scary face paint. She wasn’t quite sure who Viola was supposed to be but she admired the long Victorian-style dress, all chiffon, lace and petticoats, and glanced down at her own costume feeling like Cinderella in rags.
Viola’s friends were dressed in similar outfits to hers, Gothic and glamorous-looking, with red-painted lips, white faces and too much perfume. And they pranced about the kitchen, giggling and dancing, whispering behind their hands while Katy sat at the end of the table alone. Nobody spoke to her, except Elspeth and a kind-faced older woman called Franny, who was a cook-housekeeper, which Katy soon found meant she did all the jobs that Elspeth didn’t want to do.
And then eventually Viola and her sycophantic cronies gathered as a crowd in the hallway, moving en masse as though they were one living organism, and Katy hung back, by the staircase. ‘Viola, make sure you look after your sister,’ called Elspeth, as she handed out plastic bags for them to collect their sweets. ‘And don’t be back too late.’
Katy noticed how Viola shuddered at the word ‘sister’ and her obvious loathing made Katy’s eyes smart. Viola was determined to hate her – and, as a result, to cast herself in the role of tortured, misunderstood princess in her own little film, while Katy was the ogre.
Viola carried on out of the door, surrounded by her six friends, like maids-in-waiting, while Katy trailed pathetically behind. But they didn’t head to the nearby houses, as she’d expected them to: they continued towards the suspension bridge.
‘Um …’ called Katy, running to keep up. ‘Aren’t we going trick or treating?’
‘That’s for babies,’ one of Viola’s friends scoffed, a pretty girl with long red hair and freckles.
‘And the old farts around here won’t give us anything interesting,’ added another girl, with black hair and a green-painted face. Casey or Cassie. ‘Half of them won’t answer the door.’
‘Then where are we going?’ Katy could hear the panic in her voice.
But nobody answered. Instead they linked arms and giggled, running on ahead. She thought about going home but she was so desperate to join in, to show Viola she wasn’t a baby, that she followed as they trudged across the bridge, the pavements shiny with rain, the lights refracting in puddles, trying to ignore her sweaty palms and feeling of dread. She had been in Bristol just a few months, miles away from the children’s home in Gloucester, and still hadn’t got her sense of direction but it seemed they were walking a long way. Too far. After they had crossed the bridge Viola and her friends continued, splashing through puddles and giggling, and Katy felt she had no choice but to follow, more despondent with every step. The road was dark on the other side of the bridge, with fewer streetlights, and dense trees that seemed to leer at Katy as she passed, their twigs like bony fingers pointing and jeering at her. And then they turned off the main road and skipped down a narrower street and then … And then they were climbing over a fence into a wooded area. Viola was atop the fence, laughing as her skirts caught and her friends were trying to release her, and all Katy kept thinking about was why they were going to the woods in the dark on Halloween.