Perfectly Reflected (2 page)

I was still astounded by the difference it made to me, to be able to tell when people were thinking happy or miserable thoughts. It seemed to be an unexpected side effect of the miraculous recovery I had made from my vegetative coma. Only two of us knew what had really happened to me: me and Callum, whose mysterious reflection only I could see.

Callum was waiting patiently, as he always did. I tried hard to not look at him in the shiny surface of the glass and instead concentrate on the police officer as he advised. But it was so hard to ignore him. My love for him felt so profound, and I knew, given what he’d risked for me, that he loved me too. Knowing that we were separated by – I swallowed and forced myself to remember – the fact that he had drowned, made no difference to the intensity of my feeling for him. Ever since we’d seen one another under the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral I had loved him completely. I shook myself mentally, then refocused on Inspector Kellie; as I watched closely I could see a slight softening of her gaze as she looked at the young policeman. “Thank you, Constable,” she said formally. “I’ll be with you shortly and you can take me through the main points.”

I looked swiftly at the PC; he too had a bouncing yellow flicker just above his head. I wondered if the two of them would ever admit anything to the other. Whatever happened next
though, it was enough for me that the inspector was in a good mood; maybe I was going to get away with it.

She looked back at me, and pushed the file away.

“Well, Alexandra, I see that you have clearly already been punished by your school. And I think that, under the circumstances,” and she waved her hand at the medical report, “there is little to be gained by prosecuting you for these offences.”

I felt my heart lift at her words but tried to continue to look contrite.

“However,” she continued, and my heart sank again, “I shall have to issue you with a formal reprimand. You have expressed regret, and as your driving didn’t cause any accidents we won’t take it any further. We will keep the reprimand on file though, and if there is any repeat offence, there will be no leniency shown.”

Dad wasn’t quite so happy when we finally got outside. “I have no idea what a reprimand will do to the insurance policy,” he grumbled. “It may be best for you to give up driving for a while until the dust settles.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage, Dad.” I grinned at him briefly, unable to contain my joy. “I’ll enjoy having you both ferry me around, especially once Josh is off in the autumn.”

He groaned again as he realised I was right. If he didn’t insure me to finish my lessons he was definitely going to get stuck with a lot more driving as soon as my brother Josh went off to university. He was in a no-win situation and he knew it, so I was surprised when he suddenly smiled back.

“I’ll talk to the insurers today,” he said, “and get an update on the increase. Then you can give me a cheque for the difference.”

I had no quick answer to that. He had won after all. He knew that I had quite a lot of money saved up to buy my own car
when the time came, as I had been putting away all the babysitting money I made. I felt my arm tingle and could hear Callum chuckle as he caught up with the last part of the conversation.

“He’s right, you know. It’s your own fault you’re in all this trouble. If you hadn’t believed Catherine’s lies about me in the first place, none of this would have happened.”

I made a non-committal noise that would convey my feelings to Callum without alarming Dad. As we got into the car I considered the changes in my life. Less than a month ago I had been a perfectly happy, normal teenager, out celebrating the end of my exams. Now I was lying to the police and finding every opportunity I could to be alone with a strange and gorgeous apparition who was summoned by a bracelet I’d found in the Thames. I glanced down at the amulet on my wrist, its fiery stone glinting in the light, and felt overwhelmingly grateful to have found it and discovered its extraordinary power.

I settled back into the passenger seat and couldn’t help smiling as I thought of him. He was tall, dark blond and extremely athletic. I could see him beside me in the mirror or in other reflective surfaces, and hear him when the amulets on our wrists were in the same space, but most of the time I could only feel the faintest of touches as he sat behind my shoulder when we talked. He was a Dirge, a soul caught in a terrible half-life of misery after falling into the River Fleet and drowning. These days the Fleet was mostly covered over, and very few Londoners even realised it was there, but centuries before it had been a busy river running from Hampstead in north London, and something about its water, still flowing into the Thames, had a mysterious power to transform those who drowned in it, though none of the Dirges understood what it was. All they knew was that day after day they were
compelled to feed on the happy thoughts and memories that they stole from unsuspecting people and stored in the amulets they all wore. And every night another fierce compulsion drove them back to St Paul’s Cathedral, the place they now called home.

They knew of only one way to end their misery, but it carried a huge price for the living human who trusted them. Callum’s sister Catherine had made me believe that he didn’t really love me. In my despair, she had very nearly succeeded in tricking me into sacrificing myself. She had sucked away every memory I had ever had and left me for dead. I was only alive because Callum had been prepared to risk himself to save me, emptying his own amulet of stolen happiness so he could capture a copy of all my memories as Catherine spooled them out of me. And after she had finally escaped their life of purgatory in an explosion of sparks and died, he gave them back to me, leaving himself with nothing. Every time I thought about it, I felt breathless with love and gratitude. Most of the time, at least around me, he seemed to be able to tolerate the desperate wretchedness that he must be feeling without a good store of the thing that was so essential to him. And he wouldn’t tell me what he was having to resort to in order to refill his amulet. I didn’t want to ask. Whatever he was doing, though, he was as loving towards me as he had been when we had first met.

There was no one else in when we got back to the house, so I didn’t have to spend hours telling Mum all about the police caution. As soon as I could, I ran up to my bedroom to see if he was already there. The bedroom was gloomy from the boarded-up window, but as I slipped on to the chair by my desk, the tingle was back in my arm and a sense of peaceful contentment washed through me.
Callum’s face behind my shoulder was perfectly clear in the mirror, his blue eyes sparkling with amusement.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said, surveying the carnage of my bedroom.

“Well, you know, windows are so last year.” I couldn’t bring myself to burden him by recounting my horrible morning. I hated to do anything that might add to the weight of his misery; it could wait until we had more time.

“I can’t believe you sat there and lied so convincingly to that poor policewoman. You obviously have a hidden talent.”

I tried to look ashamed, but failed miserably. I was too happy to see him again. “It was all perfectly true,” I objected. “I did have to get there to save Grace, and I really didn’t know why because I didn’t have any clear idea about what Catherine was going to do. I mean, I guess I could have gone into a little more detail, but she would never have believed it anyway.”

“No, it’s probably not the sort of thing she hears every day.”

“And with Catherine dead and gone we don’t exactly have anyone to pin the blame on.” I paused, wondering if now was the right time to ask a question that had been bothering me. “Did she
really
hate life over there that much?”

It was Callum’s turn to pause. “She was always really depressed, and I guess she must have been as bad when she was alive. On top of that, existence over here is, as you know, bleak. I guess she was desperate.”

“Given the option, would you all choose to die?”

“Oh yes.” He smiled ruefully. “With a notable exception, there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t take the chance to be released.”

“I can’t believe that you have to live like that. It’s all so, so unfair!”

Callum sighed. “I still can’t help wishing that I had told you everything from the beginning…”

“I know, I know. Then none of this would ever have happened. I believe you might have mentioned that before,” I teased him, trying to lighten the mood. “But at least now we have our regular trips to St Paul’s, and that wouldn’t have happened without Catherine.”

When Callum had saved my life, he had unexpectedly given me the ability to see him – and touch him – as a proper flesh-
and-blood
human. But only at the very top of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Before the accident the amulet allowed me to see him face to face only under the very centre of the famous dome, and even then I hadn’t been able to touch him. In my opinion it was worth a near-death experience to be able to caress his face, hold his hand, kiss those firm lips … my thoughts wandered off into dangerous territory.

“That is very true,” he agreed, his lips brushing the back of my neck in the reflection. “Although this is great for me, it’s so much better to be able to hold you properly. When can you next make it into town?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe at the weekend. Term will be finishing next week too, so after that it should be easier. I still don’t think Mum and Dad will be keen, though. They’ve been so worried about me since I came out of hospital. I’m going to have to come up with a really good excuse.”

“Hmm. Can you get Grace to help?”

“I’d love to, but I can’t tell her about you. She’ll think I’m mad.”

“I suppose so. I wish you didn’t have to keep things secret from your best friend, though.”

“It’s not so bad. Now she just thinks you’re some sort of cyber-boyfriend.”

I hated lying about Callum to Grace. She and I had shared so much over the years that it was almost impossible to deal with the practicalities of life with Callum without talking to her about it. I had got round the problem by telling her I had met someone I really loved over the Internet, and for now she was happy with that. At last I was able to indulge in a bit of mutual boyfriend-comparing with her. She was getting increasingly impatient to see a photo though, and I was planning to scour the Internet that night for something that would keep her happy.

“I’d like to meet Grace sometime,” Callum said reflectively. “She seems so happy and lively.”

“Steady!” I laughed. “Her happy thoughts and memories might be too much for you to resist!”

“Well, I
am
an uncontrollable monster, as you know.” He pretended to bite my neck.

“I’m not sure that I want you to meet her anyway,” I said in my best prim voice. “Everyone always loves her and you might end up preferring her to me. After all, it could just as easily have been her who found the amulet.”

“Ah, but it wasn’t though, was it? You were the one prepared to go digging for it.” He fell silent for a moment, remembering. “I still can’t believe that you did find it … and that it found me,” he murmured eventually. “What are the chances of that happening? It could all have been so different.”

I looked into his eyes, which were soft with emotion, and tried not to think of the scenario where I had not pulled the wire out of the Thames mud to find the amulet tied to the end of it. My
life would be calm, uncomplicated and, well,
dull
really. My mouth started to twitch into a smile.

“You could have got some really sad beachcomber bloke with a metal detector, so think yourself lucky. Besides, there aren’t many people who wouldn’t have run screaming into the sunset once you started talking to them.” I thought back to those uncertain days not so many weeks ago when I really thought that I was losing my mind.

All too soon it was time for Callum to go and start his usual evening task at the local multiplex. His preference for the happy thoughts generated by people watching cheesy comedies meant that he could do quite a bit of gathering pretty quickly in a full cinema. He said that the other Dirges all thought he was crazy. They said that the quality of this superficial happiness wasn’t as good as real happy memories, but it made Callum feel better about what he was doing. And right now he had a lot of gathering to do. He was still trying to get back to a reasonable state of equilibrium by refilling his amulet, but it was obviously difficult; although he tried to hide it from me, there were times when I caught a look of melancholy creeping over his features. Gathering occupied his every moment when he wasn’t with me, whereas I spent every spare moment trying to devise plans that would bring him over to me. How could I change things? I wondered yet again. What new surprises could I get the amulet to reveal that would allow Callum to hold me in his arms somewhere other than the top of the dome? There had to be a way and I was determined to find it.

I knew he needed to go so I smiled broadly at him. There was no point in making him feel any worse than he already did. With a promise to return as soon as possible the next morning he was gone, and my evening stretched ahead of me.

There were only a few days of term left now, and the teachers had mostly given up on setting us homework. They wanted to mark it about as much as we wanted to do it. I had some catching up to do though, as I had spent a lot of time in hospital, so my time was not yet my own.

I stretched and reached for my schoolbag to see if I could remember what I was supposed to be doing. I had been given the afternoon off to go to the police station earlier, but the long list of work I was supposed to cover was waiting for me.

I was just opening up my laptop when my mobile phone rang. I smiled as I shut the lid of the laptop back down again and pressed the answer button on the phone; it was Abbi, so we were bound to chat for ages.

“Hi, Abbi,” I said. “Hey, guess what? The police didn’t prosecute me!”

There was a strange, slightly muffled silence on the other end of the phone.

“Abbi? Are you there?”