something her mother had said was alarming enough for her to need to go to her room at once, even if it meant a shouting match later.
She had not gone upstairs half an hour ago. So who had?
Mardy opened the door of her room. Perhaps her mother was simply mistaken. But her mother did not often make mistakes – and there was something odd about this day which had made her nervous. That final chord from the War Memorial was still quivering through her.
But – no. The room was empty, and as familiar as her own skin. She would have felt at once if an intruder had been hiding there. She knew every stuffed toy and CD box and pile of unwashed clothes in the place, and not a stitch of it had moved since she had left the house that morning.
On her desk lay her page-a-day diary. She kept it only occasionally. Daily life already seemed wearing enough: why fire herself out twice by writing it down? But sometimes she felt she would overflow if she couldn’t let out some of the things she couldn’t even tell Hal. Some of these were about Alan – especially just before Christmas when he seemed to have had a relapse and was terribly close to death again. That had been a long, dark festival. But in the last weeks most of the entries had been to do with Rachel. On the page that lay open was a single jagged sentence, obviously written in a hurry:
Rachel Fludd is a witch!
Mardy stared at it hard and wrinkled her nose.
“Mardy!” Mrs Watt was calling from the hall downstairs.
“Coming, Mum!”
Mardy gave one last glance round her room. Everything was as it should be. Everything was in its place … Except for that last sentence.
Rachel Fludd a witch? It was a suspicion she had often entertained, half seriously. It was certainly the kind of thing she might have put in her diary.
But, try as she might, Mardy could not remember writing it there.
“WHY DON’T YOU tell me what’s wrong?” asked Hal at last. They were nearing the end of Bellevue Road and Hobson’s was just in view. Mardy was already fiddling unconsciously with her purse.
“Uh?”
“Mardy, wake up! Have you heard a word I’ve been saying?” Hal did a little war dance in front of her. What he had been saying was not important – a mixture of football, geography and soap opera – but Mardy usually made a better show of listening than this. “Is your brother worse again?” he finally asked outright.
“Alan? No, no. I saw him last night and he’s just the same. A bit better if anything.”
“I’m glad.”
“His skin – you know it had that awful waxy look? Like a Granny Smith when you’ve polished it? That’s gone. He doesn’t look like he’s wearing a mask any more.”
Mardy relapsed into silence.
“But?” prompted Hal. “Come on, you know I can tell when something’s bothering you.”
“Only my mother’s got this way of talking like he was a saint. And he isn’t.”
Alan wasn’t a saint. Mardy loved her brother, but however much she tried to be pure and charitable, globules of resentment kept bubbling up through her mind whenever she thought about him, like marsh gas through a swamp. Little things, mostly, like the way he insisted on calling her Spud when he knew she detested the name. Or his habit of careless elegance which meant that, even lying motionless in his hospital bed, Alan was always the centre of attention. While their mother read Alan stories from the local paper, Mardy lurked in the background, picking off the less-wrinkled grapes for the man in the next-door bed and feeling like an imposter. She wished she could be filled with noble feelings, feelings of self-sacrifice and pity; instead, she wanted nothing more than to run back down the sterile corridors to her home.
They turned the corner to Hobson’s. Mardy looked with naked dislike at the camera mounted on the school gate, which they were obliged to pass. Cameras gave her the creeps and the hospital was full of them.
“Hal – would you think I was crazy if I said I thought I was being followed?”
“Followed!” repeated Hal, instinctively looking back down the tree-lined road. “Who do you think’s following you?”
“Don’t say it like that – like you think I really was crazy! Anyway, I don’t mean followed, quite. But watched. I think someone might be watching me.”
“Mr Shute through the CCTV?” suggested Hal. “It’s three minutes to nine again, we’ve got to hurry.”
Mardy looked annoyed. “You don’t understand,” she said. “Wait while I go to Hobson’s – I’ll tell you after.”
Mardy sprinted the fifty yards to Hobson’s, rather flustered. She really had meant to tell Hal what was bothering her, but found it was not so easy to explain. Rachel Fludd came into it, and the diary entry, and the strange thing that had happened at the War Memorial the previous afternoon.
And Alan? Perhaps, thought Mardy furiously, perhaps everything comes into it. Perhaps it’s another way of saying that life is strange, that the sky is blue and water is wet. A way of saying not much. But I’m not the kind of person who gets in a state over nothing, she thought. I’m just not that imaginative.
Mardy burst into Hobson’s, steaming with frustration. Nut Krunch Bars, at least, were reliable.
Mrs Hobson looked up from her paper. “Oh. Hello, Mardy.” For some reason she seemed surprised to see her. “What can I do for you?”
“My usual Nut Krunch,” said Mardy. “I’ve finished with low-calorie imitations – they taste like cardboard. Back to double chocolate from now on.”
Again Mrs Hobson looked at her oddly. “Back with a vengeance, I’d say. Two in half an hour is pushing it, isn’t it?”
“What?” asked Mardy distractedly, as she placed the right coins on to the counter.
“Two Nut Krunch Bars in one day. You only just left the shop.”
“What did you say?”
“Oh, not that it’s any business of mine,” protested Mrs Hobson. “I know what it’s like, Fighting Temptation. Would you believe I used to have a twenty-six inch waist?”
“I haven’t been in here since yesterday,” protested Mardy.
“If you say so,” laughed Mrs Hobson in an infuriating, disbelieving way.
“But I haven’t!”
“Then all I can say is, your doppelganger was here ten minutes ago – and she likes double-chocolate Nut Krunch Bars too. Now, hadn’t you better get along? Your friend’s getting in a bit of a state out there.”
True enough, Hal was standing at the window between two pyramids of baked beans, frantically tapping his watch.
