The Houdini Effect (11 page)

I’ve told all my friends.’

‘
Well, go back to the
drawing board then,’ I

said, realising rather
selfishly as I did so that I had no supportive sibling to spill my
story to. Maybe I
could
say something to Rach or Em . . . but no . . .
they were really good friends but they were also, both of them, two
of the most down-to-earth people you could meet in a month of
Sundays. Matters supernatural would be way over their
heads.

Our English teacher had once talked about
something called ‘suspension of disbelief.’ This poetical phrase
means that you actively forgo your scepticism in order to believe
the most stretched-out, far-fetched yarns. As they’d proved,

Rach and Em’s suspension
of disbelief kicked in if I didn’t turn up at the pool, even when I
was in possession of a halfway decent sounding excuse to explain my
absence. Anything less ordinary, forget it. Once upon a time I
could have fancied con-fiding in Troy but unless I learnt to speak
back-wards (!) I now considered Troy a no-hoper, a character from a
silly fairy tale (my own).

‘
Too late for going back to
the drawing board even if I wanted to go back to it,’ Harry
explained. ‘I’m down on the talent sheet as an escapologist not
just a magician.’

‘
Then it’s obvious isn’t
it?’ I said. ‘Find something else to escape from.

‘
As obvious as that pimple
erupting on your chin,’ said Harry. ‘Escape from what?’

‘
I don’t know,’ I said,
automatically touching my chin before remembering my first rule,
which was never to gratify Harry’s nasty habit, whenever he was
stressed out, of dishing out personal abuse. ‘Didn’t you assure me
more than once that you had a Plan B?’

He shrugged. ‘I might have been
exaggerating,’ he had the grace to admit.

‘
Funny that,’ I said. ‘I
never would have guessed. But whatever. You’re the one with all the
magic books, which you refuse to let me look at. You’ll come up
with something else. You always do. You know you do.’

‘
Do I?’

‘
Of course. When have you
ever failed before?’

‘
Today, with the
straitjacket.’

‘
All you needed was more
practise,’ I said, trying my hardest to sound convincing, aware
that I wasn’t succeeding because I didn’t really believe it
myself.

Harry shook his head. ‘No, I need to be
older and stronger.’

‘
Well then,’ I said
conclusively. ‘That proves it.’

‘
Proves what?’

‘
That you
didn’t fail. Like you said, all you needed was to be older and
stronger. That’s not failing. It’s . . . ah well, it’s just not
being quite ready for a straitjacket yet. Do something you
are
ready
for.’

‘
How can I come up with a
new effect before October 27th,’ he said.

‘
October 27th?’

‘
My audition
day.’

‘
So soon!’

‘
I told
you when it was. I told
all
of you.’

‘
I don’t
remember.’

‘
That’s the trouble with
this family,’ said Harry.

‘None of you ever listens
to a word I say. No one ever listens to
me
. Everyone’s always too busy with
their own stuff.’

I nodded. ‘Maybe that’s true,’ I said. ‘Up
to a point. At least as far as Mum and Dad are concerned.’

‘
And you as well,’ insisted
Harry.

‘
Who rescued you?’ I
reminded him. ‘Who’s sitting here listening to you gasbagging on?’
Harry didn’t reply to that. ‘All you need to do is to find
something you that don’t need to be older and stronger for to
escape from.’

It seemed as if I might be getting through
to him at last. ‘You think so?’ he said.

‘
I know so. Go for it
Harry. Re-check that dusty old magic book of yours. You’re bound to
find exactly what you’re looking for.’

Harry visibly straightened his shoulders.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I will have another look at
Marvello’s book.’

‘
That’s the spirit,’ I
said, adding generously: ‘And let me know if I can help in any
way.’

Famous and foolish last words from a
considerate, but intemperate, sister.

‘
I will,’ said Harry. ‘By
the way, that looks like a nice sandwich. I’m hungry. Did you make
it for me?’

‘
As if.’ But in an extra
flourish of generosity I handed him my sustenance (missing only one
bite) and went off to make another one for myself.

Brain food

Crunching on a replacement peanut butter and
pickled-gherkin concoction I mulled over all the

things that had happened. Truth to tell, Em
and Rach’s deception (if that wasn’t too strong a word for it and,
looking back, it undoubtedly was) and

Troy’s apparent
disinterest in anything other than his weird linguistic skill (I
had to admit, it
was
a skill. Perhaps he should have entered the talent quest!)
paled into insignificance beside those two frightening random
appearances of Laurie and Iris. Apart from the many past
consternations caused by Harry’s magic tricks, nothing more
inexplicable than them had ever happened to me. At least, deep
down, you knew Harry’s magic could be explained (if magicians like
him were prepared to divulge, that is) but I was at a total loss as
to what to think and do about the mirrors. I’d done my best but I
hadn’t been able to rationalise to myself how I had seen what I had
seen.

Tell someone! a voice screamed in my head
but how could anyone else (even if you excluded such
arch-rationalists as Rach and Em) believe what I could hardly
believe myself? As they say, you had to have been there.

And what if I’d been hallucinating or
suffering from some sort of brain seizure? Maybe - I realised with
sudden horror - there was something creepy going on in my head
right now that meant I was on the point of dropping dead any
second. My non-existent love life (ha!) would forever be
non-existent!

And what if, just what if,
dirty little Harry
had
been playing one of his tricks? It seemed in-

credibly unlikely but I
didn’t want him to show me up as a gullible idiot whom he had
fooled, yet again.
They do it with
mirrors. Smoke and mirrors
.

I told myself to concentrate, to focus.
By

exercising my brain a little more maybe I
could, on my own, find some solution to the mystery. If the people
I had seen in the mirrors definitely were Iris

and Laurie then that would be a start, of
sorts. I had to be sure. But how?

The kitchen was adjacent
to the laundry. Between the rooms was the back porch and door. I
heard Dad make another appearance from his underfloor bolt-hole and
go outside, heading for the garage. He spotted me eating at the
window and raised a grimy hand in greeting. ‘Wouldn’t mind one of
those sandwiches, Athens sweetheart,’ he called ingratiatingly, so
I made one for him. I decided I was getting very proficient at it.
Then I heard him call out again but not to me this time. ‘Nice day
for it, May.’

En route he must have seen
our neighbour over the fence. And that gave me my brilliant idea.
If anyone could positively identify Iris and Laurie it would be
May. I could try describing to her who I’d seen. Naturally I’d have
to do it without her getting any hint whatsoever that I had in fact
actually seen them. Tricky. Way tricky.

Once I’d pondered the matter a little
further I came up with a better idea. What I had to do was somehow
to get May to describe what Iris and Laurie looked like and then
match up her description with the mirror images.

Feeling strangely light and elated, almost
as if my problems were over (when in reality they’d

hardly begun) I made Dad’s sandwich and
handed it to him when he came back. Then, before I chickened out, I
scooted next door to talk to our strangely reticent neighbour.

Photographic evidence

Barry
did
work for the City Council but
not for Building Consents as I’d once teased Dad about. We’d
sometimes seen his work van parked at their kerbside or up their
drive. It had Parks Department written on its side.

I hoped Barry wasn’t one of those people who
came home for lunch if they were nearby. He could be anywhere
during the day so he might just turn up if it suited him. I didn’t
want him to find May and me discussing someone he didn’t like very
much. I wasn’t sure how he would react and I didn’t especially want
to know, either.

I walked up their driveway trying to look
much more confident than I felt. No Parks Department van in sight,
thank goodness. Not at the moment, anyhow.

May and Barry’s section was stridently tidy.
Bushes had been boxed into shape, ragged edges eradicated and not a
weed left alive. Mum would be deathly jealous. Before I’d even been
inside their house I was already starting to feel envious of what
it was going to be like. However, I suppose if you spend nearly all
of your time in and around the house and garden what else would you
have to do but keep things tidy?

It occurred to me that the way May appeared
to live her life was a bit like being under house arrest. Right
then I felt an affinity with her. Mum most

definitely would not want
to be without her paying day job, not even for the sake of a
pristine house and garden and a working husband. Once upon a time,
maybe, she might have thought differently but certainly not
anymore.
A tidy home is the
sign

of a life
wasted
, I’d once read on a greeting card.
I’d almost bought it for Mum.

I wouldn’t have been wasting my precious
holidays at home right now either if it wasn’t for Iris and Laurie.
I felt sorry for May but, honestly, I felt sorrier for myself.

I heard the click of the front door. May
must have just finished whatever work she had been doing outside
when Dad called out ‘nice day’ to her. Oh well, nothing for it but
to ring the bell, pretend like a proper visitor.

‘
Oh, hello Athena,’ said
May when she opened the door and found me standing on the other
side of it. (Naturally I didn’t correct her version of my name. Her
use of it just made me appreciate her all the more.) ‘I haven’t
seen you to talk to for a while.’

‘
Not since the night of the
barbecue,’ I agreed, ‘and that was ages ago. Nice garden you’ve
got,’ I added.

‘
I’m glad you think so,’
May answered. ‘It knows its place, shall we say.’

Funny way of putting it, I thought. ‘You
must spend a lot of time in it,’ I said to her.

‘
Not me,’ she replied,
which confused me even more since Dad had told me she was often in
the garden. ‘That’s Barry’s domain.’

‘
Oh, really?’ I
said.

But, really, I could have worked that out
for myself instead of leaping to an erroneous

conclusion. After all,
Barry was the one who worked for the Parks Department and whoever
kept a garden as regimented as theirs must have known a bit about
gardens as well as being something of a control freak. When I
contemplated

it, it was hard to imagine
May as the latter.

‘
Mostly I walk around,
wondering how it would look if I were in charge,’ May added. I’d
forgotten she voiced her thoughts slowly and deliberately and that
she was capable of coming up with something out of left field. I
decided it might be wisest to drop the subject of the
garden.

‘
I hope you don’t mind me
coming round,’ I said instead, deciding to get to the point just in
case Barry did unexpectedly turn up. ‘I was wondering if you might
have some information I need.’

At the very moment I said
that, a new, third idea popped into my brain. It would be far
easier if I could
see
what Laurie and Iris had looked like, not just be given a
verbal description.

‘
Information?’ said May.
‘About what?’

‘
Well,’ I said, ‘it
occurred to me that you might have some photos of Laurie and
Iris.’

Now it was me who’d said something out of
left field. May blinked, her turn to be surprised.

‘
Laurie and
Iris?’

I realised I should have come up with a
plausible excuse as to why I wanted to see photos of Laurie and
Iris. I had to invent one, double-quick. ‘Um . . . I was
remembering what you told us about them. They, ah, sounded like
interesting people.’ (How feeble is the desperate mind! Call that a
plausible excuse. Not!)

‘
Is it for school?’ asked
May, throwing me a

lifeline.

‘
Yes, that’s it!’ I said.
‘For an English assignment. We all have to do a biography project
about someone.’

Who would have thought a homework

assignment would come in
so useful?

‘
A biography. Well, that
might be difficult, seeing that neither Iris nor Laurie are here to
talk to.’

For a second I wondered if May had an ironic
streak like Mum and me but I decided no, she hadn’t. She was just
stating the facts. Iris was long dead and Laurie long gone. Well
not that long but long enough for anything to have happened to him,
including having died. As May said, it would be difficult for
anybody to write a bio when the subjects weren’t around to be
interviewed.