Frozen Charlotte (10 page)

Did ghosts open and close doors? But if it wasn’t Rebecca, then who could it be? Why would anyone want to creep out in the middle of the night like that? I remembered the little girl, the one that couldn’t have been Lilias, skipping round the dead tree in the garden, and wondered whether the same thing could be happening now. Was I following a shadow of some kind – a memory, a ghost? After all, hadn’t Rebecca inexplicably left the house in the middle of the night, gone out of the garden and wandered along the clifftop to her death?

There was only one way to find out who was out there. Moving as quietly as I could, I put my hand on the balustrade to feel my way, and went down the stairs after them.

With my heart in my mouth, I stepped off the final stair and hurried across the hall towards the front door. As my hand clapped down on the door handle, a high-pitched voice to my right said, “
Who goes there?
”

“Quiet, Tom!” I hissed, silently cursing the wretched bird.

I saw the figure the moment I stepped outside, their dark silhouette was hurrying towards the gates, but they were still too far away for me to make out who they were. As I went down the path after them, the cold wind blowing in from the sea made me shiver. Summer seemed to be so much colder in Skye, and I could taste salt in the sea air.

The garden gate opened and closed and the figure disappeared from view. I quickened my pace down
the unfamiliar path, the gravel crunching loudly under my feet. I still hadn’t turned on my torch, for fear of being seen.

When I reached the gate it was still unlocked and I threw it open, afraid I would already be too late to see which way the figure had gone. So I was unprepared when a bright light suddenly shone in my eyes and two people screamed in my face.

I screamed back and threw up my arms, but then Piper said, “God, Sophie, you frightened us half to death! We thought you were Cameron!”

I slowly lowered my arms and realized that the bright light came from a moped, the engine still running, and that Piper was standing there with a boy perhaps a year older than us, dressed in jeans and a jacket and carrying a helmet under his arm. He was tall and broad-shouldered with features that would probably be considered handsome – he looked like the kind of boy that all the girls at school would fancy and giggle about, but he had extremely small eyes that seemed to glitter out of the dark at me.

“I saw someone leaving the house and I thought it was Lilias,” I said, clutching at the first plausible lie
I could think of. “So when I saw you go out of the gate I panicked—”

“Haven’t you ever heard of
sleep
?” the boy snapped. “Isn’t that what normal people do at this time of night?”

“I don’t think they sneak around clifftops on mopeds either, do they?” I replied, irritated by his tone. “I thought it was Lilias going outside and I was worried because of… Because of what happened before.”

“Are you talking about Rebecca?” the boy said, looking at me with those tiny eyes of his. “I’ve never heard of anyone freezing to death in July, have you?”

“It’s all right,” Piper said, laying a hand on the boy’s arm. “Sophie knows all about our situation – she won’t give us away.” She turned to me and said, “Sophie, this is Brett. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you we were still seeing each other but, after what happened with Cameron, I’m sure you can understand why.”

Now that I knew who he was, I looked at Brett again, but he didn’t make any better impression on me the second time. He was good-looking enough, but there was just something about him that made my skin crawl. Perhaps it was the fact that his eyes were so small, or the slight curl to his lower lip, as if he
found himself constantly disgruntled and disgusted by the world, and the people in it.

“Brett and I have to meet in secret now,” Piper was saying, “because of Cameron.”

“That cripple!” Brett sneered. “If he was anyone else I’d have bashed his head in by now! It’s only on account of Piper that I don’t. He’s still her brother, after all, even if he is an uptight little shit.”

“Show Sophie what he did,” Piper urged. “She’ll understand then.”

Brett turned and pulled up his jacket and T-shirt, giving me a clear view of his back. It was covered in angry white marks, a shocking mess of scars that had only recently begun to heal. Piper had told me it was bad, and Cameron hadn’t denied it, but I think some part of me still hadn’t quite believed it until now.

“Did you… Did you report it to the police?” I asked.

Brett pulled down his jacket and turned back round. “Last week,” he grunted. “But they said there was nothing they could do because I took so long coming forward.”

“That was my fault,” Piper said. “I asked him not to make trouble for Cameron.”

“I’m not scared of him,” Brett insisted, despite the fact that I hadn’t suggested he was. “That guy is totally off his head, but I’m not scared of him. I could snap him in two if I wanted to. And I’m going to get even with him one of these days. No one takes a crop to me and gets away with it, no matter whose brother they are!”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Piper said, stroking his hand as if soothing a whining dog. “All that matters is that we’re together.” She glanced at me and said, “You won’t say anything, will you? It’s easier all around if nobody knows. We’re just going to go for a little drive and we’ll be back long before anyone misses us.”

I glanced at the dark, winding clifftop roads, and the trees bending in the wind, and said, “Is that safe?”

“Of course it’s safe,” Brett said. “I’ve done it hundreds of times before, haven’t I, babe?”

“Brett’s a very good driver,” Piper agreed.

“But this moped has got learner’s plates on it,” I said, pointing at them.

“What are you, the road police?” Brett said.

“Really, Sophie, it’ll be fine,” Piper said. “We’ve done it plenty of times before and nothing’s ever happened. Just don’t mention it to anyone, OK?”

I nodded reluctantly. “All right.”

But I felt deeply uncomfortable as I watched them get on the moped. Brett didn’t offer his helmet to Piper but rammed it on to his own head before swinging his leg over the bike. Piper clambered on to the back and wrapped her arms around his waist and they took off down the winding road. I watched them go, wishing that I’d never discovered Piper’s secret.

For a moment, I felt tempted not to return to the house. To just leave and never look back. But if Rebecca was an evil spirit, if she
was
dangerous and if she was here, then it was because of what Jay and I had done. Jay was already dead. Rebecca might go after Lilias next, or Cameron, or Piper. And I was the only one who was even aware of the danger. So I turned and reluctantly went back through the gate, taking care to lock it behind me.

I went up the stairs and ran past Rebecca’s room, just like Lilias did. When I climbed into my own bed, I didn’t think I would sleep. I was afraid to turn off the light in case I suddenly heard that humming again in the dark, only to find that it was coming from me. Perhaps there was no Rebecca at all. Perhaps it was
just me, quietly going crazy and not even realizing it. I’d felt permanently tired since Jay died, and I knew I’d lost weight because my jeans were too big for me now. What if I
was
actually losing my mind, too?

Suddenly, I found myself missing my mum. When I’d looked at her during Jay’s funeral I’d been surprised to see that she had tears in her eyes. She’d known him for a long time, like I had, and I knew she had always liked him. On a whim, I grabbed my laptop and sent her an email. It wasn’t the cheeriest email I’d ever sent. I didn’t say anything about Rebecca or the Frozen Charlottes or spirits, I just told her about how much I was missing Jay. It was a comfort, in a way, to speak about him to someone else who’d known him and cared about him.

I felt a little bit better afterwards and managed to sleep, although fitfully, until morning.

The next day I would regret that. Perhaps if I had stayed up all night as I’d originally intended, the disaster that set everything else in motion might never have happened.

I woke up with the sun streaming in through the windows. For a moment I snuggled in the covers feeling pleasantly drowsy, but then the wind rattled the window frame and I heard the howling that really did sound like voices out on the clifftop. It jerked me properly awake, and I remembered the events of the night before. I hadn’t heard Piper come home and the awful thought flashed through my mind that perhaps it was because she hadn’t come back at all. Perhaps that idiot boyfriend of hers had driven them both right off the edge of the cliff.

I jumped out of bed, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and didn’t even bother to brush my hair before rushing from the room, where I managed to collide with Cameron out in the corridor. He must have just come from the shower because his hair was still damp and his skin smelled pleasantly of mint.

“Sorry,” I gasped, drawing back.

“You’re in a hurry this morning,” he said, brushing his hair from his eyes. “You must really like your cornflakes, huh?”

I looked up at him, and his blue eyes seemed less cold than they had before. In fact, they seemed almost friendly looking, and for a second there was
a hint of laughter there that reminded me a little bit of Jay.

“No, I just… Have you seen Piper this morning?” I asked.

“I haven’t had that pleasure, no,” Cameron replied, raising an eyebrow slightly. “Why?’

“I… I need to talk to her about something.”

“She’s probably downstairs getting breakfast—” Cameron started, but was cut off by the scream.

It sounded like Piper, and it was coming from downstairs.

Cameron and I turned and ran down together, and all the while Dark Tom kept shrieking, over and over again, “
Murder! Murder! Murder!
”

We reached the front entrance just as Piper came running out of the old school hall. Her eyes filled with tears when she saw us. “Oh, Cameron,” she said. “Don’t go in there. I don’t want you to see it – please, please don’t go in!”

But he was already striding towards the door and, although she tried to stop him from entering the room, he pushed past her roughly.

I hurried in after him and gasped.

Broken keys, cut strings, splinters of glossy wood.

Someone had done their very best to destroy Cameron’s piano.

Many of the keys had been prised loose and lay broken on the floor. The wires had all been slashed through and curled up forlornly from the ruins of the instrument. They had poured water inside it too, and the steady
drip-drip
as it fell to the stage was the only sound in the room.

“No,” Cameron said, so quietly that I wouldn’t have heard him if I hadn’t been right next to him.

He reached out to grip the back of a nearby couch and I saw that his knuckles had gone completely white.

Behind us, Piper started to cry softly and, out in the lobby, Dark Tom was still shrieking incessantly, “
Murder! Murder! Murder!
”

All the noise soon brought Uncle James, who seemed almost as upset as Cameron. “How could this have happened?” he asked, over and over again. “Didn’t anyone hear anything?”

But none of us had heard a thing.

Uncle James called the police, and we checked the house, but nothing else had been disturbed or stolen. It seemed that whoever had done this had been
interested only in Cameron’s piano and nothing else.

“Irreplaceable.” Cameron muttered the word under his breath. “It’s irreplaceable.”

His right hand remained buried in his pocket as always but I could see that his left was shaking.

“Can you think of anyone with a grudge against you?” one of the police officers asked Cameron when they arrived.

He looked directly at Piper and said flatly, “Brett Taylor.”

Piper instantly burst into tears and said, “He was here. Last night, he was here! We went for a drive on his moped but then he dropped me back home and he drove away. He drove away – it couldn’t have been him, it just couldn’t! Brett would never do a thing like this! I know he wouldn’t!”

After what she’d said last night, I was surprised to hear Piper confess about seeing Brett, but I was glad that she had.

“Whether Brett was responsible for the piano or not, how dare you sneak out of this house in the middle of the night?” Uncle James demanded. “Opening that gate after dark is absolutely forbidden, Piper! You know that!”

Piper babbled on with apologies, while her parrot out in the hall kept screaming about murder, and all the time, Cameron just stood and stared at her, a flat look of pure loathing that was almost painful to see. I’d never seen anyone look at another person like that before. He was looking at her as if he wanted to kill her.

When the police finally left, with promises to question Brett, Uncle James called a specialist from town to come and look at the piano. We sat in silence as we waited for him to arrive, not looking at the instrument or each other. It felt more like waiting for a doctor to come and look at a dying patient than a man coming to look at a damaged piano.

The moment he saw the piano he sighed and shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s no good,” he said. “It’s completely beyond repair.”

Cameron walked out of the room without another word to anyone, leaving behind him a great silence that seemed to fill up with all the unspoken words that none of us were saying.