I said nothing. My face felt fine, but I wanted to see what she was talking about. Was she lying or was something happening to my face? Had I just carved my own coffin?

Mother turned away from me completely, waving her hand. ‘I can’t bear to look at you right now. At what you’ve done to yourself. You disgust me. Go to your room. I don’t want to see you for the rest of the day and there will be no dinner for you tonight.’

I sat on the step, frozen for a moment. She walked away, leaving me alone.

Heart pounding, I scrabbled up the stairs on my hands and feet and ran into my bedroom, flicked the lamp on and faced the mirror. I stared, horrified. Not horrified by a rash or anything like that, but horrified by Mother’s cruelty. There was nothing wrong with my face. Other than a slightly pink handprint from where she’d slapped me and two black streaks of mascara, my face was absolutely fine.

The light had not hurt me. I was not dying.

Chapter 13

To my surprise, Mother went out again. I heard the door slam, the car growl away.

Time had passed and nothing had happened to me. I was fine. Absolutely fine. I didn’t even have a headache.

My tummy churned as I remembered Mother’s meanness. Anger and misery burned like fire and ice in my veins, and hot, prickly confusion pierced my mind like a thousand needles. Mother was wrong about me having a light allergy that was killing me. Had she been lying or had she made a mistake? I didn’t want to believe she was lying but I couldn’t stop thinking about the article, and fearing that she’d been lying all along, about everything.

I shook my head so hard my brain rattled. There was a way to find out more. Clarabelle. Clarabelle, the little girl Mother said she’d rescued from Utopia. The little girl who thought her name was Emma and said her daddy was the kindest man in the world.

Mother would be livid if she knew I was going to talk to Clarabelle without her permission, but right now, I didn’t care. My cheek still hurt from her slaps. She’d slapped me. Twice. And she’d smiled. There was a side to Mother that wasn’t kind. She could be cruel. Very cruel. And cruel people probably lied.

I thought about Miss Minchin from A Little Princess and shivered. There was something about Miss Minchin’s character that reminded me of Mother. I’d always felt it but had ignored the feeling until now.