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Things had not, looking back, always been so bad. Admittedly, what had soured her relationship with Eleanor seemed to have been the mere fact of her existence (which was not fair at all), but—there had been a time, when they were just children, when there was still love to be lost between Kitty and her sister. She had not been quite old enough to understand why the world was not built for her, nor had Eleanor been old enough to use that against her.
Admittedly, looking back on it, Eleanor had always been petty and jealous; but only in the way of a young child who had failed to realise that she was not the supreme overlord of humanity.
They had had a snow fight, at one point. The fact that it had been in March, of all months, had been a bit of a surprise: a welcome surprise, but news nonetheless. No doubt it had had a negative effect on the growth of crops, and whatnot—but for two eight-year-old girls, it had been nothing short of a holiday come early.
She remembered acutely what she had written in her diary that day (for once without Miss Fletcher, a horrid woman who had for some reason been under the impression that a good governess was one who sneered at everything her tutees did, and breathed down their necks every time they blinked slightly wrong). It had been:
Dear diary—SNOW!!!
And then, for she had always wondered if her diary might be found, in the far future (which was true! It had been found, and they had written a whole paper about it, and wasn’t that delightful?), she had added:
In MARCH!!!!!!
(Normally her diary was more detailed than this.)
And then she had thrown on the furriest, warmest clothes she could find, and dashed out to the fields outside. Eleanor had been outside, waiting, and Kitty, upon closing the door, had immediately been hit in the face by a snowball, which exploded into powdery dust, leaving her with a sprinkling of snowflakes dotted over her cheeks like freckles, and a distinctly damp fringe. (That would prove to be a nightmare to detangle in the evening.)
“Got you!” Eleanor had yelled, and run off.
When she had caught up with Eleanor—panting, out of breath, but no longer so utterly cold—Eleanor had been holding two shovels, giggling. She had passed one to Kitty and said, “We’re going to build a snowman!” which was really more of an order than a suggestion, but for once it was a demand that Kitty actually wanted to comply with, so they had heaped up snow—probably wrecking the surrounding grass—until it was sufficiently body-shaped. It had not been a very good snowman, all in all (a ‘bonhomme de neige,’ Miss Fletcher would have termed it—with irritation, as Kitty kept on sleeping through French lessons), and when they tried to add a head, it fell off twice and barely stuck the third time, but it was made of snow, and it was vaguely like a man, and when they added sticks for arms and some bits of coal for buttons, you could almost pretend that it had been designed and was not just a dodgy attempt to clear the field.
After that, they had had a snowball fight, a proper one, running about trying to compact the fine snow into something peltable, trying to hit each other but for the most part giggling too much to really get anywhere—and then they had made snow angels, which was terribly unladylike, but what fun—and then they had raced back to the house, and been met with the supreme disapproval of Miss Fletcher, who as it turned out had just got back from a visit to her sick brother.
(She had been delayed by the snow, apparently, though her brother’s health had improved enough that she could return; Kitty had privately wished that her brother would fall into a coma, or something, so that she could stay watching over her brother forever, or failing that that her brother might die so that Kitty could see the corpse. Corpses were fascinating. She had told all this to Eleanor, her natural confidante; Eleanor, always squeamish, had wrinkled her nose, and pointed out that it would be much quicker to just get Jacob, the stable boy, to steal some arsenic and slip it into Miss Fletcher’s tea.
But those were very mean words, so Kitty had not pursued them.)
And so the afternoon had been dreadful—lines, Miss Fletcher’s delightful way to teach them a lesson on doing things (gosh, having fun, how dreadful!) without permission. But in the evening they’d managed to convince the cooks to make them hot chocolate, and had sipped at it in front of a roaring fire; and thank goodness Miss Fletcher had not been there, for it probably would have caused her heart to stop (an outcome which would have been a resounding positive—so maybe she should have been there, after all).
It was one of the last truly positive memories she had of her sister; the rest were tinged with regret, or guilt, or confusion, simply because—well, it had never seemed so bad in life, but it really wasn’t that nice to ‘accidentally’ spill a boiling drink all over your sister’s dress, nor was it courteous to let her take the blame for an ill-advised prank. All the good in Eleanor had spoiled; all the childish joy in the world had fallen away, and things had never quite been the same from then on.
She had not been there to see Eleanor die, the way Fanny had watched her husband die; the last she had seen of Eleanor was a carriage taking her sister away from the house, away from Kitty, to marry some rich and heartless man. Robin had had no platitudes; he had been delighted. Humphrey had been less gleeful, but he had still seemed remarkably relieved at Eleanor leaving. And when a letter had arrived, saying that Eleanor had fallen ill, and died, only a few years after the fact—Annie had laughed, and said she’d had it coming after all.
Perhaps, she thought, they were onto something after all.
Things had not, looking back, been entirely bad—but she had to admit, Eleanor had been no sunny personality.