The thing that allowed Samantha to do what she did was a piece of advice her father gave to her the last time she got into trouble.
‘If you do something bad, it has to be for a good reason.’
Seeing Veronica Walsh suffer was a very good reason.
‘Well?’
Samantha started; she didn’t even realise she had been staring at Veronica’s precious plaything.
‘Veronica, please put your doll back in your bag and return to your seat.’
‘Yes, Miss Duff.’
Samantha waited until the class settled down again before she shot up her hand, the universal “I have to go” signal. Once the classroom door was pushed shut behind her, she went through Veronica’s bag.
‘Why is my bag open?’ Veronica shot every classmate in the immediate vicinity the steeliest glare she could muster. That some undoubtedly jealous person had dared look inside her bag didn’t annoy her – it proved they were beneath her, just like her mother had always said. The really unnerving thing was the thought of their grubby, lower-class hands touching her things. She reached in, intending to give her doll another airing and rub her good fortune in their faces. She was about to scream when she found the note someone had scrawled on the inside of her rose pink satchel.
Don’t tell or I’ll kill her.
Wiping away the first genuine tears she had cried in her life with her palm, Veronica fastened the buckles on her satchel and walked as non-chalantly down the corridor as she knew how. She waited for the doll to be returned, or at least for a sign that she was okay, for a week before her remarkable patience was finally rewarded. Finding her satchel open before last bell, Veronica thrust her hand in and pulled out a note scrawled in the same diabolical handwriting.
Meet me in the boiler room.
She burst down the corridor and bolted out the side door, sniffling as dozens of horrible possibilities of how the kidnapper might be playing with her doll filled her mind. The tears were almost blinding her by the time she got to the boiler room, and she didn’t notice the pinkie-sized T-bar shoe until she stepped on it. She bent down and picked it up, and reached blindly for the door handle when a jagged china foot spilled out. Her beloved doll’s dress was tied to the handle in such a way that when the wind caught it, it waved like a cemetery flag. She turned the knob, too terrified not to wail.
‘My doll! My doll!’
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