Step By Wicked Step
Chapter 1
On a wild and stormy night, five students, Claudia, Colin, Ralph, Pixie and Robbo, are sent ahead on a school trip to Old Harwick Hall. Instead of taking the school bus with Miss O’Dell and their other friends, they have to ride on a minibus with Mr. Plumley, one of their accompanying teachers, to their destination. After arriving, they explore the building and find an old, hexagonal tower room with five beds in it. In the dark of the night, with no electricity due to the raging storm, Colin spots a door which leads to an old, abandoned room where they discover a diary of a young boy by the name of Richard Clayton Harwick. Prior to reading the diary, they wonder why they are put together in the minibus. They achieved the answer after eavesdropping on Miss O’Dell and Mr. Plumley’s conversation – on Miss O’Dell’s list, their names had ticks which indicate that they each had two different addresses on their permission slips, one for their mother’s home and one for their father’s home. Each child comes from a divorced family. Pixie reads Richard’s diary out loud for the other children to hear.
Chapter 2
Richard Clayton Harwick’s father is ill and this worries everyone in Harwick Hall. Before his death, he tells Richard to take care of his mother and sister, Lilith and Charlotte Harwick. After that, Richard not only feels sad for his father’s death, but also because his father had only thought of his mother and sister instead of him until the end of his life. Later in the story, Lilith marries Reverend Coldstone, an anglican priest (he is not Catholic because he is not addressed Father, and he marries Lilith, Richard’s Mother. Roman Catholic Priests cannot marry) who is cruel towards Richard but is very nice towards Charlotte. Richard is then sent to a boarding school called Mordanger School, where he is treated like a prisoner. He then decides to run away and sail all over the world. He comes back twice to Harwick Hall but never bothers to enter it or meet his mother and sister. He finally returns home after reading a print which states that solicitors have something to his advantage back home, discovering from a letter Charlotte had written before her death, that his family had been searching for him until the end of their lives and how Reverend Coldstone had turned out to be a very bad man. He then runs away forever, leaving his green diary in his room.
Chapter 3 – Claudia’s Story: Green Pyjamas
Claudia starts telling her story to the other children: Claudia’s parents quarrel a lot until her father decides to take his things and move away to his mother’s house. One night, there is a flood of phone calls, and for the first time, Claudia hears the name Stella, her dad’s new girlfriend. After that night, Claudia’s dad dare not visit nor come near the house anymore, but only talks to Claudia over the phone. On Boxing Day, Claudia meets Stella for the first time and thinks that Stella is a plain and mousy person. After a row with his mother, Claudia’s dad then moves into Stella’s house. Later, Stella gives Claudia a pair of beautiful green pyjamas as a late Christmas present even though Claudia is always rude and mean to her. One evening, Claudia’s dad and Stella holds a dinner party to celebrate his thirty-seventh birthday. During the dinner, Claudia’s dad’s friends ignore Stella as they think that by doing so they would be loyal to Claudia’s mum. Claudia felt sorry and went downstairs to thank her for the green pyjamas and thus making her point to the dinner guests that Stella is a wonderful person.
