The Apothecary Page 0,62

down my earrings. “We need gold!” I said.

“I’ll get that, too,” Pip said. “But the bet’s now at five bob.”

Benjamin opened the Pharmacopoeia to the page with the invisibility solution, and the process went more quickly this time. We remembered the words, and didn’t need to go step-by-step with the Latin primer, or wrestle with my feelings about my grandmother’s earrings. We ground and dissolved and titrated until Pip came back with Sarah Pennington.

As they walked into the room, Pip was talking to Sarah, and even though he was shorter than she was, he had a confidence that matched hers. It didn’t come from having money, it came from having no money, and from knowing how to survive. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“I didn’t know there was a science competition,” she said.

“Course there is,” Pip said. “We won last year, at my old school.”

Sarah looked up and realised there were other people in the room. “Hi, Janie,” she said. “Did you win, too? Back in California?”

I was getting tired of her mocking tone. “Why do you keep saying ‘California’ that way?”

Pip shot me a warning look—for challenging his girl? For messing with his bet?

“What way?” Sarah asked.

“Like it’s a joke. It’s a real place.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Sorry,” she said. “So what’s your project?”

“We melt down a piece of jewelry,” Pip said. “And then we bring it back, just as it was.”

Sarah fingered the gold necklace around her neck, with its heart-shaped charm. “Exactly as it was?”

“It’s a project on the conservation of matter,” Benjamin said.

“Do you have a jeweller remake it?”

“No.”

“Then it’s impossible.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is!”

“So give me your necklace, and I’ll show you,” Pip said.

Sarah pressed her lips together. Then she ducked her head to unfasten the gold chain. I glanced at Benjamin to see if he was looking at the mesmerising back of her neck, but he was peering into the crucible. Sarah dropped the necklace into Pip’s hand, and his fingers closed over the little heart.

“It’s still warm,” he said.

Sarah laughed. “Go on. You can really bring it back?”

“We can do way more than that,” Pip said, which I realised wasn’t technically a lie. We could do more than recover a melted necklace—we just couldn’t do that.

Pip handed the necklace to me, and I held it over the hot ceramic crucible.

I hesitated for a second, but Benjamin caught my eye and nodded. What did a rich girl’s necklace matter, against the possibility of his father being captured in the North Sea, or of a Soviet atomic bomb going off because Leonid Shiskin had decided that his wife’s life was more important than the apothecary’s? I dropped the necklace in. Sarah could always get another one. It didn’t look like it had been her grandmother’s.

“So when do you bring it back?” she asked.

“At the competition,” Benjamin said. “It’ll be very dramatic.”

“Did you come from Mr Danby’s class?” I asked her. I wondered if he was still blinded.

“Yes, but we have a substitute, Miss Walsh,” she said. “You know, I don’t believe you can bring that necklace back.”

“We have another favour to ask you, Sarah,” Pip said.

“Oh?”

“This lot said you wouldn’t help us,” Pip said, “but I said you would. I said you’re the kind of girl who would naturally help.”

“I gave you my necklace, didn’t I?”

“This is more important.”

“All right.”

“It’s really important.”

“So what is it?”

“They didn’t even think you’d have what we need.”

Sarah stamped her pretty foot with impatience. “Why don’t you just tell me!” she said.

CHAPTER 26

At Lady Sarah’s

We left school without being stopped, and Sarah Pennington led us to her house to look for warm clothes. It was as if Pip had his own spell, a love potion that made her agreeable to whatever he wanted. He caught my eye when Sarah wasn’t looking and mimed money crossing his hand—five bob. I mimed putting on a warm coat to indicate that he’d get his money when we had everything we needed. Pip laughed and walked ahead with Sarah.

“I don’t even know what five bob is,” I said to Benjamin. “How much am I in for?”

“About a hundred dollars,” he said.

I stopped walking. “What?”

It was Benjamin’s turn to laugh. “No,” he said. “Maybe a dollar. Come on.”

I caught up to him. “I believed you!”

Benjamin looked pleased.

“Keep an eye out for truant officers,” Pip called back to us.

“Oh, they won’t bother us,” Sarah said.

The Pennington house, when we got there, was the biggest house I’d ever seen. It was in Knightsbridge, and it took