Red Velvet

Elly has never heard of Aunt Rose, recently taken into hospital, before she goes with her mother to stay at the aunt's house. This and the absence of photos at the house seem not to matter as much as the snatches of the seventeenth-century past that Elly stumbles into. Gradually, the story of the twins, Arbella and Hugh, and the local girl Eleanor, in love with Hugh, is revealed and with it the awful mystery of the old skeleton discovered recently trapped in a trunk. There are also secrets from the more recent past to be uncovered as well as the relentless bullying that Elly has suffered at her school. It is all woven together into an exciting story which takes its unhappy heroine to a position where kindness and an understanding of the past give her confidence to face the future.