Deceit

M
emory plays tricks. Even as she was writing it down, she knew there would be some things that didn’t happen quite the way she, Claire Cottrell, remembered. Her parents splitting up. Her grandmother dying and Claire, her mum and little sister Micky going to live in her grandmother’s house. Being left an emerald green casket by her grandmother, and a gold ring, which was the casket’s key, and a seventeenth-century manuscript written by a young woman named Margrat that
held a prophecy and was a warning
. How a
Doctor Nicholas Robert Benedict
was in possession of 20 spells written in hieroglyphics on Ancient Egyptian scrolls. Spells that gave him the power to cheat death and live over many centuries while he pursued the most powerful spell of all. The 21st spell that Claire now knew was in
the casket. The casket that could only be opened using her ring; and, in the words of the prophecy, by ‘…
the true daughter and the red-haired maiden
’.

Claire shivered. The shock of discovering that
she
was that red-haired maiden would never leave her. Not to mention the discovery that the seventeenth-century Doctor Nicholas Benedict of the manuscript and Robert Benoit, who had come into her life after Grandma died, were one and the same.

But she
had
honestly believed it was all over when Robert had fallen from the crane that night nearly two years ago. Because she had proof that the curse he had placed on his descendants – that any male child would die in the womb or be stillborn – had been lifted: Matthew, her baby brother and Robert’s grandson ten times removed had been born, alive and kicking fifteen months back. Claire had breathed a huge sigh of relief then. The nightmare was over at last.

How stupid she’d been to think that…

It was nine o’clock on a Saturday morning and she was already wide awake. Normally she’d have stayed in bed until lunchtime, listening to music
and using her laptop. Trying to drown out the noise from downstairs: the backroom door opening, releasing snatches of sound; Micky practising her violin before her lesson and making a noise like a rusty metal gate opening and closing, opening and closing; Matthew crying and fractious because he had more teeth coming through; Mum shouting.

But this Saturday was different. She was going to be spending it all with Joe. Joseph Nowicki, who was clever and funny and quirky-looking with his lop-sided smile, olive skin and beautiful grey eyes that made her insides feel like wriggling jelly beans. Who was going to be leaving after the summer… five months maximum… to go to a university miles away. Five months… an eternity of time that she knew would pass in a nanosecond.

Everyone at school knew that Joe was more than just Claire’s friend. But Claire’s mum was too wrapped up in her own worries to notice. Besides, they didn’t spend much time at Claire’s house… her sister Micky was always hanging around and getting in the way and generally being irritating. She wouldn’t leave them alone for a minute. As for her dad, he had his own relationship with his
much younger partner, Lindsay. Lindsay… Claire still felt like she was being a traitor to Mum if she even mentioned Lindsay’s name at home. At first Claire had hated her as well. She’d felt agitated and jittery whenever Lindsay was around and her ring throbbed and felt hot and tight on her finger as it always seemed to do at the first sign of danger. She wished she could take the damn thing off. But it had been stuck fast on her finger from the first moment she had put it on. And Lindsay was certainly a danger to their family, because she’d stolen her dad away from them, hadn’t she? At least that’s what her mum said.

So at first, when Claire was visiting her dad at their old house and Lindsay was there too, Claire had been rude to her, or just not spoken at all. It had made Claire’s dad really cross, but Lindsay had smiled and pretended not to notice that anything was wrong. And gradually Claire had come to appreciate that Lindsay always treated her like an adult (which was something Claire’s mum didn’t do). Maybe because there were only ten years between her and Claire, she never tried to act like a parent. And she was very,
very
careful not to bad-mouth Claire’s mum.

But one Saturday, when Claire’s dad had taken Micky out on her new Rollerblades and Lindsay and Claire were alone together, Claire had started talking about her mum. She couldn’t help herself. There was stuff she needed to get off her chest.

She told Lindsay how they’d had yet another colossal row the evening before. Claire had wanted to go out (to meet Joe) and Mum had wanted her to stay in and babysit while she went to the supermarket. Claire had said there was no way she was staying in just so her mum could go shopping! She’d made the mistake of adding, “
As if you don’t have all DAY to do that
.”

Well her mum had well and truly lost it then… just like she always did when Claire stood up to her. She’d screamed and shouted at Claire for no reason she could see.

Claire had known she was being disloyal talking about it to Lindsay, but she couldn’t stop herself. “And why does she always take it out on me and never on Micky? Sometimes I think she hates me because I remind her of Grandma and they never got on.”

And Lindsay had said, “I used to think that about
my
mother… that she hated me. I thought it
was because I reminded her of my father – he left her when she was only sixteen and already three months’ pregnant with me. My mum wouldn’t ever talk about him. I wasn’t even allowed to know his name, where he lived or anything. When I was eighteen, I said I wanted to trace him and she went mad; said I shouldn’t
ever
try and find him. That only an immoral and unprincipled man would abandon his unborn child and nothing good would come from meeting him.”

“
Did
you try and find him?” Claire was really curious now.

“Only when my mum died a few years ago. Then I left messages and photos on those missing person Internet sites… you know the ones…
Looking for… Desperate to find
. I tried ads in newspapers too. But the only information I could put in was about my mum and about me. I didn’t know anything about him then.” Lindsay’s mouth was pinched and white. She looked distressed. “I shouldn’t have told you about him… you won’t tell anyone else will you? Promise. I haven’t said
anything
about it to your dad. He thinks my father’s dead.”

“Oh, okay.” Claire wasn’t sure about keeping it
a secret. Why was Lindsay so worried about Claire’s dad knowing? Was it because of what he had done to his family? Maybe it was too close to home for comfort. She was flattered that Lindsay had confided in her though and felt a curious kind of kinship with her now.

And when she was in the right mood, Lindsay could be a lot of fun. Most of the time she made Claire’s dad happy. And it pained Claire to say it… her mum never had. Though Claire imagined they must have been happy once, or why would they ever have got married?

Now that she had Joe she knew something about real love. But she still remembered how excited she’d been when she’d first seen Zac up on the high wire at the circus. Zac, who wore a ring identical to hers… who she had believed was the true guardian of the spells. Who was supposed to help and protect her, the same as Margrat had been protected by
her
guardian, Christophe. How childishly flattered she’d been because he was so cool and gorgeous looking, and he’d shown an interest in
her
.

She knew better now than to go by first impressions; she’d trusted Zac so completely,
but he’d been deceiving her all along. But since she’d met Joe, she’d begun to understand how her dad felt about Lindsay. How powerful feelings you have for someone can take over your life and mean you make decisions that aren’t always wise.

That’s just the way it is
, Claire thought as she climbed out of bed,
I like Lindsay a lot. And mum sort of guesses and it upsets her, because she still wants my dad to come home. And that is never going to happen is it? I’ve stopped wanting it to. But she hasn’t
.

So by ten o’clock Claire had already had a shower, washed her hair, tried on half her clothes and left them in a heap on the bedroom floor. Then her phone had buzzed and it had been Joe sounding sleepy and rumpled and making her feel warm and fuzzy with longing. “Half an hour,” he’d said. “Usual place.”

Getting dressed and quickly running downstairs, looking in the hall mirror as she passed (how annoying that she still looked so
young
!) she noticed the plant, an orchid, on the hall table. Her mum had a knack of killing things off, so it looked, predictably, half dead. Withered and dried out and
sad
. So without stopping to think, she leaned over it and scrunched one of its leaves
with her fingertips… and the words of the 21st spell had risen up from her subconscious and she heard herself chanting again in that unknown foreign tongue. She had no idea what the words meant, but they were clearly very powerful, because there was that hot buzzing feeling as if every atom in her body was vibrating in unison…

She’d had that same feeling when she’d first opened the emerald casket that night high up on the crane and a glittering swirling blue tornado of dust had escaped from it and swept desperate, power-hungry Zac to his death. Only now, instead of death, the spell clearly brought life… because the orchid was suddenly a mass of white flowers under her hand.

It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Or the most scary. There’d been a science lesson at school where Claire and her group had been about to dissect a dead locust. Claire had been steeling herself to press the scalpel down onto the locust’s thorax and was leaning over it, breathing hard, when the same sensation had popped unbidden into her head again, along with the words of the 21st spell. The locust’s legs had started to wave in the air. Then, to her horror, the locust had
flipped over, scuttled across the bench and down onto the floor. She’d dropped the scalpel and screamed. The whole group had.

Miss Ticknall, the science teacher, said of course the locust hadn’t come back to life. It couldn’t ever have been dead. Obviously the chloroform hadn’t worked. And Claire had sagged in relief.
Yeah
, she’d thought,
That’s it… the locust wasn’t ever dead
. Thinking anything else was clearly insane, so she’d pushed any fears to the back of her mind… along with the words of the spell… until the next time it had happened… and the next.

Now here she was, in the hallway, and ready to sprint out of the front door before her mum had a chance to call her back or ask questions, or notice the orchid, miraculously brought back to life. And her hand was just on the latch when the kitchen door crashed open and her mum came storming out carrying Matthew. He was wriggling, his legs kicking hard against her mum’s thighs and he was screaming his head off. His mouth a wide, wet, angry ‘O’.

“For God’s sake, Matthew, will you just shut up for two seconds while I get the washing sorted! You’re doing my head in!”

Mum was looking wild-eyed, desperate. Then she spotted Claire.

“You take him. Now! I can’t deal with him any more. Put him in the pushchair. Go out and don’t come back until he’s shut up.”

Then she just pushed Matthew towards Claire and as soon as his feet touched the ground and before he could turn round and grab her legs, her mum went back into the kitchen and shut the door. Matthew threw himself against it and started to sob.

For a split second Claire thought about making a sprint for the front door. But now Matthew had turned and was tottering towards her, holding up his arms. And she just had to lean down and pull him up and cuddle him close. She could feel his snotty wet nose against her neck. Knew there’d be dribble all over her new top. Felt the jerky shudder as he relaxed against her. And heard the little comforting sucking noises as he found his thumb.

She looked down at him, his long eyelashes making dark curves against his cheeks and felt a warm surge of protective emotion before the irritation and frustration kicked in big time. She was supposed to be meeting Joe. Now she was
going to have to babysit Matthew and it wasn’t fair. She stormed into the kitchen, still carrying Matthew, ready to plonk him down and tell her mum she wasn’t her unpaid childminder. But when she opened the door, there her mum was, at the table, her head down on her arms and her whole body convulsing with jerky sobs.

Claire swore. She felt Matthew’s little fat wet fingers push into her mouth in what she guessed he thought was an offer of comfort. Aaaagh! She turned and, grabbing Matthew’s buggy from the hall, struggled out of the front door, slamming it behind her.

Once Matthew was strapped in and they were on the move, she texted Joe.

The playground was only a couple of blocks away, on the edge of the common, near the boating lake. There was a little Italian café next door too, with outside tables. At lunchtime, on school days, Claire would often hang out there with Joe. As she
pushed the buggy past the café, the tables were already full of people. She did an automatic scan to see if there was anyone she knew. And for a split second she stopped dead and felt her heartbeat hammering up in her throat.

His back was to her, so she couldn’t see his face, but there was something about his hair and his jacket and the way his shoulders hunched up that made her think of Robert Benoit. And she hadn’t done that consciously for months now. Not since she’d met Joe and there hadn’t been room in her head for anything else. But then the man turned and she could see his profile and it wasn’t Robert. And she thought,
Silly, of course it’s not him. He’s dead!

That niggling doubt surfaced in her head again though. She’d always told herself that Robert must be dead, because she’d seen him fall from the crane – plunge 45 metres – with her own eyes. No human could survive a fall from such a height. But then Robert was no ordinary human. And he’d had his precious black leather bag with him when he fell, hadn’t he? The one that contained the 20 spells he needed to survive. Then of course they’d found Zac’s body, but not Robert’s.