Private Investigation

Hidden History

Before anyone had the chance to stop her Agatha was out the door chasing her sister. She saw Hort coming down the stairs, heading to the front door and she beat him to it, not stopping as she pulled her coat off the hooks by the door. The force at which she did so sent most of the others toppling to the ground. 

Once outside she looked around but Sophie was already out of sight. The gates were still closed meaning she can't have gone to the village. The gardens were too open so she wouldn't have gone that way. Agatha looked straight ahead at the dense forest, the autumn canopy creating enough shade to hide from view, but she knew Sophie wouldn't stop in there and then it struck her. She knew exactly where Sophie had gone. 

"Where did she go?" Hort came charging through the door, his eyes frantically searching for the blonde. 

"I don't know. You should go and find Tedros he'll take you into town and you can both look there tell Beatrix and the others to look in the garden." 

"What about you?" 

"I'll check the woods." 

Agatha sprinted for the wall of trees surrounding the estate, not giving Hort the chance to ask anymore questions. She knew it was wrong to lie to him, he was only trying to help, but this was Agatha's job, she had to fix things with Sophie and she had no chance of doing that with countless other people around.      

  Each step Agatha took made her more and more paranoid that the sound of dry leaves under her feet would alert Sophie. But then again Sophie had at least a five minute head start, she might not have been fast but the path diverged in so many ways it could take hours to find her. 

Eventually Agatha's legs couldn't carry her at the same pace and the sound of her heart rate drowned out any other noises in the forest. Her left boot got caught on a fallen tree trunk hidden under the leaves and she went tumbling to the ground, the same leaves that caused her fall, cushioning the impact. With all her remaining strength she tried to push herself off the ground but a searing pain shot up her leg. She pulled herself over to a tree and leaned against it, praying the pain would not last. 

"Where are you Sophie?" she sighed to the empty forest. Agatha began to worry, she was pinning all her hopes on one place when Sophie could be on the other side of the county by the time she gets there.   

Agatha dug her hands into her pockets realising for the first time how cold the wind was. She took a deep breath and inhaled the fresh salty air, an then she froze. Salty? She was close. Fighting through the pain, Agatha pulled herself to her feet, leaning against the tree as to not put too much pressure on her ankle. 

When the girls were little before they met lovers or liars, before modelling and protesting, they lived in a small village on the coast. Every Wednesday after school, when Sophie didn't have dance classes or drama and Agatha wasn't helping her mother in the pharmacy they would both go down to the beach and watch the sunset. Agatha would flick matches that she had smuggled from her cottage into the sea and Sophie would spend her time scribbling in her note pad (which Agatha later found out were strange 'beauty potions', as she called them.)It was their place to escape everything and relax for an hour a week. On a clear day they could sometimes see the smoke from London after a bad night of bombing or hear the air raid sirens drifting across the water, but in their remote little village the war seemed like worlds away. That is until the refugees came and suddenly the war had come to Gavaldon. 

The problem was there wasn't a beach near Carleon manor it was all too high above sea level, but there were cliffs. They overlooked the ocean and gave the same sense of calm. Agatha recalled that Sophie often referenced them in her letters, saying Rhian would never dare follow her there as it took too long. She was now wishing she remembered the part about too long.