were shiny and made from some kind of ornamental metal. Odd, I thought, since nuns didn’t like fancy things, but hardly the evidence I was looking for.
Inside she had a dozen or so neatly folded postulant aprons and skirts separated into stacks. I ran my hands between the cottony layers and along the interior edges of the wood drawers. Nothing but a dried-up vanilla sachet that had lost its scent.
‘Hurry up,’ Claire said in a shouted whisper. She looked worried, shooting sharp looks over her shoulder. ‘The sun’s setting.’ A shady darkness fell into the room as the sun completely disappeared behind the hills. ‘She’ll be coming back!’
I puffed more and more on my cigarette, frantically moving about Marguerite’s room, thinking about how I was running out of time. Ash flew from my cigarette when I pulled back her bed quilt, yanking the sheets from the mattress like a mad dog. Nothing. Frustrated, I kicked the bed, and a piece of paper slipped through the metal bed frame and landed upright on the floor—a list, a long list.
I paused in shock, and then reached for it. The names of nearly every sister and delinquent at the convent written in ink and in sequential order. Beside each one was a star or a check-mark. Around my name was a dark circle that had been traced over so many times the paper had torn.
My mouth drew open, cigarette sticking to my lip, surprised by the amount of ink and the darkness of it around my name.
‘Someone’s coming,’ Claire whispered through the window in a frantic, breathy shout.
The duelling clip of footsteps echoed down the corridor—clip, clop, clip, clop…
I gasped, looking at Marguerite’s closed door, heart pounding.
‘Hurry!’ Claire said, and I heaved the mattress back onto its frame and spread the quilt into place faster than I had taken it off. I lunged for the window, but then realized I still had Marguerite’s list in my hand. A key slipped into the door lock. I shoved the list back under the bedframe and dove head first out the window with my cigarette pinched between my lips. Just as my legs slipped over the ledge, Marguerite’s door unlocked.
The door creaked open, and we heard the whisperings of two women in the corridor, chatting as if they were in no rush to come inside. We hurried to slide the planks back into the window brackets, their voices quieting just as we slid the last one into place. We froze, then the door swung wide open, and the room lit up with candlelight.
Claire and I dropped to the ground.
Footsteps trudged to the window, the end of my cigarette burning closer and closer to my lips, a ribbon of smoke teasing the hairs in my nose. With a flick of my tongue, I flipped the burning cigarette over into my mouth and clenched it in between my teeth. Then I prayed.
Please, God. Please…
Seconds passed as Claire and I crouched quietly in the dark space below the window, the ominous feeling of Marguerite’s eyes hovering above us. An eerie pause followed as I felt her presence standing dangerously close to the window, followed by the clink of a hand touching the planks.
Claire squeezed my hand, harder and harder and harder until I thought it might split in two.
‘Achoo!’ Marguerite sneezed, and I closed my eyes, stuffing down a smoky cough.
Please… God…
Marguerite’s fingers slipped from the planks, and she walked away from the window. Seconds felt like minutes, the ember burning ever so close to my tongue, until finally I heard the soft click of a shut door.
I spat the cigarette from my mouth, gasping for clean air. ‘You can open your eyes now, Claire,’ I said, coughing into my shoulder. ‘She’s gone.’
Claire whined like a caught little mouse.
‘Claire?’ I said, but she’d let go of my hand and run back into the convent.
6
I slept soundly, as soundly as one could in the dank, grey basement under the convent’s bell tower, when I heard Marguerite’s heavy, almost manly voice bark my name. ‘Adèle!’ She loomed over my cot, the shadowy outline of her postulant’s veil hiding her face. Her breath seemed forced, laboured, as if it was hard for her to breathe. She tapped the soft part of my hand, in between my knuckles, where it was still tender from the lashing she gave me the day prior.
I propped myself up by the elbows and focused on her face, but all I could see was the collar of her