Perfectly Reflected (16 page)

“And you ought to be in a police cell, Catherine. For attempted murder.”

“But there were no witnesses, sweetie. What a shame.”

“I don’t need witnesses. I have the evidence on my arm where you hit me.”

“Do you really think that you’re ever going to convince anybody that I was responsible? I don’t exactly look like a murderer, do I?”

“Look, I’ve had enough of playing games. That amulet doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to me, and I’m going to get it back.”

“And just how are you going to manage that? You don’t have any idea where I am. For all you know I could be at the other end of the country by now.”

“You’re not though, are you? How could you carry on making my life a misery if you were?”

Her tinkling laugh made the skin on the back of my neck crawl. “Oh, you have no idea, absolutely no idea, how much more miserable I can make you, wherever I am. With a bit of luck you’ll soon be just as miserable as me.”

But before I could ask her what she meant the phone went silent. My heart filled with dread at the warped things she might yet come up with to hurt me. And all the while I couldn’t help imagining Callum trying to reason with her, his brow furrowed in a deep frown, his golden hair unruly, his soft lips pressed together in a hard, thin line.

I knew I shouldn’t torture myself by thinking about Callum, that the important thing was to be concentrating on how to find Catherine, but I couldn’t help myself. I sat at my desk and pulled the mirror towards me, searching every corner of it yet again for a glimpse of him. The ache I felt was gnawing deeper and deeper, and I kept thinking that my wrist was beginning to tingle. But every time I thought it might be OK, that he might have found a
way around the problem, that he might be here with me, I realised that I was wrong. I was alone in my room, the silence deafening in my head. Defeated, I laid my head on my desk, trying not to dwell on all the happy conversations we had had in this spot.

Could he hear me, I wondered? Was he watching me right now? I had absolutely no way of knowing. A single tear escaped and ran down my face. I sat up hurriedly, cross with myself. Being maudlin wasn’t going to get my amulet back. I needed to work out a plan for how I was going to track Catherine down, and once I found her, I was going to have to get the amulet off her, whatever the consequences. I had never fought anyone before, but I would fight tooth and nail to get back what was mine. I was going to make Catherine regret the day that she had taken my amulet from me.

Dreams

Something wasn’t quite right. Richmond was sunny and warm, and everyone seemed to be smiling. I walked across the green, my loose skirt flowing in the breeze. As usual the green was dotted with people enjoying the weather – couples lying intertwined on the grass, mothers with toddlers racing around clutching ice creams, and teenagers gathering together in hordes. Every few minutes a plane roared overhead, but no one took much notice.

I had no plan about where I was going, no destination in mind, I was just walking. As I looked around me I saw a group of familiar faces on the other side of the green, so I veered in that direction. It was a group from my school and the boys’ school next door. Someone had clearly been buying doughnuts; the wreckage of the box was on the grass in the middle of the group. As I got there I peered into it hopefully, but there were just a few sugar strands clinging to the edges. I sighed, and threw myself down on the ground with the others. The conversation was going on in a low hum, and I couldn’t quite catch any of it, but I wasn’t terribly worried. It was lovely lying in the sunshine.

I slowly became conscious that the conversation was changing. It had changed from the low, lazy, background noise to something more charged, as if people were suddenly anticipating something exciting happening. I rolled over and propped myself up on my elbows, looking at what had captured everyone’s attention.
Two people were walking together over the grass towards us, but from this distance I couldn’t identify them. The sun was behind them so they were in silhouette, but it didn’t seem to stop anyone else recognising them. The hum of conversation became much more excited and every face was turned towards them. It was a tall man and a shorter, willowy girl. They didn’t seem to be talking.

It wasn’t until they were almost on top of us that my eyes were finally able to pick out the familiar features, and I felt my head snap up in shock. Callum was walking towards me, side by side with Catherine. I looked around wildly, but no one seemed to think anything odd was going on. Callum looked gorgeous, with his dark-blonde hair being gently ruffled by the breeze. His penetrating blue eyes fixed on mine. I tried to leap up, to greet him, to hold him tight, but I found my movements were suddenly slow and sluggish. The babble of excited talk finally broke through.

“Catherine! Over here!”

“Catherine, great to see you!”

I looked around wildly at my friends, who were all smiling at Catherine in welcome, gesturing to her to come and sit with them. No one seemed to be taking any notice of Callum. I turned back to look at him and saw his face was serious, stressed. He was staring at me intently, oblivious to everything else that was going on, as if he was willing me to do or say something, something that I didn’t understand. I tried once more to get up and to go to him, but I couldn’t seem to find the energy to move. The babble of noise around me increased again and I turned to watch Catherine being almost mobbed. They were all so pleased to see her!

I turned back to Callum again. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off me, but now his look was urgent, almost pleading.

I tried to speak, to tell him how much I loved him, how
much I missed him already, but the words wouldn’t come. I stared at him hopelessly, feeling the tears well up and roll down my cheeks. His mesmerising blue eyes with their flecks of gold flashed briefly in the sunshine, and his hand reached out towards me.

A voice echoed in my head. “Remember, Alex. You must try to remember…”

The alarm erupted next to my ear and I woke with a desperate sense of loss and longing, a sob rising in my throat. My face felt cold, and when I touched my cheek I was surprised to find it was damp; I had been crying in my sleep. The dream swirled around inside my head. Callum had been so close! I wished with all my heart that I could go to Richmond and find him walking over the green. If only my life was that simple. I tried to close my eyes and step back into the dream, to be somewhere close to him, but it was already too late. The outside world was pressing on my consciousness, forcing me to remember. The amulet was gone and my mission was to find it again.

As I tried to stretch I realised that I ached all over, and it was almost impossible to move. Even bits of me that I thought had been undamaged were hurting, and when I finally got out of bed and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror I could see bruises all down my side where I had hit the ground. There was no way I was going to make it into school. I rang the secretary’s office and left a message, hoping that they wouldn’t recognise the voice as being mine, and not my mum’s.

I gathered my laptop, my painkillers and a mug of hot milk with honey and made for the sofa, preparing to set up camp for the day. I wasn’t expecting Josh to appear much before lunchtime, so I had a few hours to try and fathom where Catherine might be
and how I was going to force her to hand back the amulet. That was going to be the difficult bit. Locating her was just a logistical difficulty; persuading her to hand over her only form of defence was going to be much, much harder. I didn’t want to resort to violence like she had, although a bit of me felt that it was the least she deserved, but I couldn’t think of anything else that would give me leverage with her. I forced myself to stop worrying about that bit. Until I found her it was all academic anyway.

I settled back on the sofa and opened the Internet, waiting for inspiration. While I waited I checked the news, to see if anything exciting had happened in the rest of the world that I had missed. There was nothing that took my interest on the BBC website, so I surfed a bit wider, not really knowing what I was looking for. I was just desperate to keep busy, to not think of the gaping hole that I could feel inside me, but every time I glanced at my empty wrist the pain washed over me again. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours but I missed Callum acutely. Just knowing that I couldn’t call him when I needed him, that he wasn’t going to suddenly appear with a telltale tingle in my arm, was dreadful. And however hard I tried I couldn’t shake off the sense of melancholy that had been with me since I woke up.

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I was startled by my mobile ringing, and even more surprised by the caller. “Hello, Ashley,” I said, warily.

“I’m
so
not surprised that you’re bunking off school today. You must be mortified that everyone has found out your little secret. And I have to say, it explains a lot!”

“What do you mean? What secret?” How could she possibly know anything? I knew that Grace wouldn’t have said a word, especially not to her.

Ashley’s laugh was brittle. “Have you not been looking at Facebook lately? The things you can learn!”

“Cut the crap, Ashley, and tell me what you’re on about.”

“It’ll be my pleasure. We’re all enchanted to learn you have an imaginary boyfriend, which is just
so
sweet, but also just a tiny bit disturbed, given your age.” Her tone was hugely condescending.

“What are you talking about? What imaginary boyfriend?” I tried to keep my voice steady as my blood ran cold.

“Callum! Couldn’t you have come up with a less ridiculous name?”

I couldn’t believe it. I knew that Grace wouldn’t have told anyone, so it had to be another of Catherine’s cruel tricks. But I just didn’t know what to say. If I told her he was real but living abroad I’d have the same problems I’d had with Grace, and I couldn’t tell her the truth. I did the only thing possible: “I’m not going to discuss this with you, Ashley,” I said and cut her off. Before she could call back to crow some more, I quickly dialled Grace’s number, the only one I had committed to memory. She must have been in a class as it went straight to voicemail.

“Grace, it’s me. Call me as soon as you can. Just had Ashley on the phone, loving telling me about Callum, my imaginary boyfriend. Do you know what’s going on? Please, call soon!”

I slumped back on the cushions, exhausted and drained. I couldn’t believe it. Catherine had found yet another way to hurt me, this time using my friends. And still I had no idea why she was doing all of this, and until I found her, I had no way of making her stop. I felt so impotent, so helpless. She could be absolutely anywhere. She had all my money, so she could travel. She probably couldn’t leave the country as she wouldn’t have a passport, but otherwise she could be on a train to any part of the country, well
away from the Dirges and me. I could feel the self-pity creeping up on me again, imagining her face and how pleased she would be to see me lying on the sofa like an invalid.

It was that image that did it. I was doing
exactly
what Catherine wanted, wallowing in grief and misery. I sat up abruptly, wincing at the pain the sudden movement caused. There was no way she was going to win. No way. I was going to find her and I was going to get my amulet back, even if it meant me knocking her out to do it. I limped to the kitchen and threw away the remains of the hot milk. I needed strong coffee.

As I waited for the kettle to boil I decided that I had two distinct problems: finding out where she lived, and finding out what she wanted. She had clearly hated me from the minute that she came over; my troubles had started at exactly the same time that she had gone missing from the hospital. At the pub she had said that she wanted me to suffer, but had given me no idea why. I could only imagine that it was something in my past that she didn’t like, some aspect of my life with Callum. Could she be jealous, I wondered. Perhaps she wanted to keep her brother to herself, or safe from the pain that falling for a non-Dirge would inevitably bring? But none of those options made sense, as she didn’t seem to care about him at all.

I sighed. I was getting nowhere with motivation. Perhaps I would have more luck with location. I realised with a sinking feeling that I was going to have to log on to Facebook and see what rumours she had been spreading; there might be some clues to her location in the things she had said. I set up my laptop at the kitchen table, opened the French doors to bring in some fresh air, and took a deep breath as I started to scan my Web page. It was even worse than I had feared. There was a huge amount of chatter
that morning, mostly among Ashley’s little cohort of friends, all of it poking fun at me. I was surprised that so many of them had had the time to do it before school had started.

In the end I gave up reading it; a lot of it was unpleasant, and although there were some efforts by a number of my real friends to try and add a note of reason, they were being shouted down. Instead I focused on trying to find Catherine’s comments and started scanning my friends’ new contacts.

It was astonishing how many people we were now all connected to, most of whom we didn’t really know at all. I didn’t check Grace’s profile; I didn’t think Catherine would risk trying to get close to her. But she would enjoy getting close to Ashley, I knew. What better? Befriending someone who loathed me would suit Catherine down to the ground. I quickly pulled up Ashley’s profile page and started looking through all her contacts. And there, halfway down the page, was a likely suspect. Catherine River – the irony of it made my mouth almost twitch in a smile – had started talking to her a few days ago. I opened Catherine’s page – she hadn’t bothered to hide her profile at all – and sat back in triumph. There was no picture, but the location given was Surrey, and all the activity on her brand-new account was in the last few days. And the further I dug back, I could see that she was the person who had first started the rumours about Callum.

Having got a name I was able to search a bit more thoroughly. I didn’t think she would try and carry off multiple names; the risk of mucking it up was far too high. So I searched all the social websites to see what I could learn.

Catherine River had appeared out of nowhere a few days before. She knew which of my friends would accept any old invitation to connect and had targeted them first, and once she
was in the circle she had made some chirpy, funny comments and gathered a load more people around her. Her story was that she had been in the area when she was little and had known a lot of the girls at infant school. She had recently moved back and was keen to reconnect with her old friends. She knew more than enough about the school to be convincing, even though none of them would have remembered her name. But what do you really remember in detail from when you were only seven? It was an inspired ploy. And as my friends had been told that they’d known her, Catherine had been welcomed with open arms. And once she had been accepted, she had started dropping her bombshells about my imaginary boyfriend. I couldn’t begin to imagine what she might come up with next. I had to find her and stop her.

Her Facebook page said she was in Surrey, but that was bound to be a lie. The only thing I knew for sure was that Catherine knew what I knew. She had the same memories, the same knowledge as I did, so logic would dictate that she would be somewhere where I had been. She seemed to enjoy tormenting me, so that might keep her somewhere local, and if she had the amulet she didn’t need protecting from the Dirges; she didn’t need to be travelling away. The more I thought about it the more likely she was going to still be around the area somewhere.