Frozen Charlotte (21 page)

I walked down the street towards the café, the one where it had all started with the Ouija-board app. My coat was buttoned up to my chin and a woolly hat was pulled low over my ears. It had snowed earlier in the day and was threatening to do so again. My feet were like blocks of ice in my boots despite the second pair of socks I’d put on.

When I turned the corner into the next street, I saw him straight away. He was standing outside the café wearing a blue scarf and a long dark coat. As I walked down the road, the first few flakes of snow began to fall, settling in his black hair. He was gazing around but didn’t notice me until I was almost right in front of him, then he broke into a huge smile that made my heart do a kind of flip-flop inside my chest.

I’d worried that it might be a bit weird between us, since we hadn’t seen each other in months, but he walked the last few steps to meet me and threw his arms around me in a tight hug. He had to bend his
tall body down slightly to my level and I could smell the fresh, minty scent of his shampoo.

Neither one of us spoke for a few moments and I didn’t want the hug to end. It was such a joy to feel the warmth of his body, strong and healthy again, close to mine. It helped to dispel the awful memory of those first few days at the hospital when they hadn’t even been sure whether or not he would survive. When the paramedic had revived him at the scene I had been so relieved, but that had just been the start of a long difficult journey. Now the injury had finally healed, although it had left a jagged scar down his side that he would carry for life.

Eventually, he pulled back and smiled at me. The smile completely transformed his face and brought so much warmth into those blue eyes of his that it was almost like looking at a different person.

“Well,” Cameron said. “How are you?”

“Never mind me,” I replied, giving him a poke. “Don’t keep me in suspense – tell me about your audition!”

“I got in!” he said. “I’ll start music college in London in September.”

“That’s great! Oh, Cameron, I’m so pleased for you!”

The snow was coming down even harder now. It felt like we were a million miles away from Skye and last summer and everything that had happened on the island.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing hold of my hand. “Let’s go inside and get warm.”

We ordered hot chocolate and sat down at a table by the window.

“How’s Lilias doing?” I asked.

“Really well,” Cameron said. “The new house has been so good for her and she’s even made friends with the girl who lives next door.”

“That’s fantastic!”

“And Mum’s been doing better too. We’ve been allowed to see her a couple of times. Since… Since Piper died, she seems to have made big leaps in her progress. The doctors are really pleased with her.”

“I’m so glad.” I reached across the table and brushed my fingertips against Cameron’s hand.

The firemen had gone straight into the house that night to try to save Piper but, by the time they found her, it was too late – she had burned to death.

“Did you manage to straighten everything out with your parents?” Cameron asked.

“It took a while but they don’t think I’m suicidal any more, if that’s what you mean. What happened with the investigation?” I asked. “Into Brett’s accident?”

“Officially closed,” Cameron replied. “Apparently Piper’s friends told the police that Brett … well…” He suddenly looked apologetic. “That he kissed you that night on the beach.”

I could feel myself blushing. “It… It’s not what you think—” I began, but Cameron instantly put his hand over mine across the table.

“I know,” he said. “It’s OK. You don’t have to explain – I can imagine what happened well enough. I’m only sorry I wasn’t there to— Well, anyway, all that matters is that her friends thought that might have given Piper a motive for attacking Brett. And they found her DNA on the needles. But since she’s not around any more … well … they’re not going to charge me with anything. Dad told them about how she set the house on fire and now they’re saying that perhaps she had undiagnosed mental problems.”

“And the dolls?” I asked quietly. I hesitated to bring them up, just the mention of them sent a chill through my blood, but I had to know.

“I went back to the house,” Cameron said, lowering his voice to match mine. “As soon as they let me out of the hospital, I went back, but it’s just a burnt-out shell now. There’s nothing left. I combed through the rubble but I couldn’t see any Frozen Charlottes. The ones that were left must have all been destroyed when the walls collapsed in the fire.”

“So it’s definitely over then.”

“It’s definitely over,” Cameron replied. He leaned back in his chair and looked suddenly nervous as he picked up a menu and fiddled with it. “You’ll come and visit me, won’t you?” he asked. “When I start college? London’s a lot closer than Skye. Or I could visit you, I mean, whatever is—”

“Of course I’ll visit,” I said, my fingers entwining with his. “All the time.”

Cameron smiled at me across the table and just for a moment I almost felt like Jay was there with me too. As if he was glad for me, like he was telling me that it was OK. His voice was clear inside my head.
Be happy, Sophie. That’s all I want…

Perhaps Cameron could feel it too somehow, because he said, “Maybe one day we could visit Jay’s grave together? I know I never met him but I’d… I don’t know – I guess I’d just like to pay my respects.”

“Of course we can. I think you two would have really liked each other.”

Cameron smiled at me and then said, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

He picked up the menu again. “So what’s good here?”

I smiled. “Everything.”

It was a freezing winter’s day when the little girl found the suitcase washed up on the beach. It had obviously been in the sea a while because it was soaking wet and covered with seaweed and even had a few barnacles stuck to it. But the rusted padlock came open easily in her hands and, when she saw what was inside, her eyes widened in delight.

She snatched up the case and raced back down the beach to show her parents, who were coming along more slowly behind her.

“But they’re all broken and dirty, Judith,” her mum said. “You don’t really want to keep them, do you?”

“I do, I do! Mummy, they spoke to me! And they said they want to be my friends, my
best
friends!”

“Oh, well, if they want to be your
best
friends then I suppose you can keep them. Although I don’t know why you’d want strange little broken dolls
like that when you’ve got so many nice ones at home. You’re going to have to come up with a lot of names for them all.”

“They have the same name,” Judith told her.

“And what’s that?”

“It’s Charlotte.”

The pressure of exams leads Izzy and her friends to take a new study drug they find online. But one by one they succumb to hallucinations, nightmares and psychosis. The only way to survive is to stay awake…

When Sam hears screams coming from a nearby house, he sets out to investigate. But the secrets hidden behind the locked doors of Bierce Priory are worse than he could ever have imagined. Uncovering the horror is one thing, escaping is another.

Gabe makes a discovery that could be the answer to all his problems. But taking the Aztec gold disturbs the spirit of an evil Spanish priest hell-bent on revenge. Can Gabe escape the demon he’s unleashed?

“Just a few more weeks. That’s all – a few more weeks and then we’re done.”

“Until September.”

“Whatever.”

“And, you know, aren’t you forgetting something? Like exams, maybe?”

Everyone else groaned, despite Grey’s grin. Nobody needed (or wanted) to be reminded about the exams. The Clerkenwell School took exam results very seriously indeed. Almost as seriously as their parents did.

The bell signalling the last of the afternoon’s classes rang, and Izzy hauled herself up from the small grass square that passed for the Clerkenwell’s courtyard, dusting down her school skirt and scooping her bag on to her shoulder. All around the
courtyard, students started towards their respective classrooms, watched from the doorways by the school prefects. Not that anyone was in much of a hurry – it was the last real day of term. When the bell rang at 3:30pm, that was it. Study leave – and then exams, yes, but Izzy wasn’t going to think about that until she had to. Which was horribly soon.

If she was honest, she thought, hitching the strap of her bag further over her shirt, it was
probably
about three weeks ago. Mia and Dom had had their revision timetables all drawn up and printed out by half term. “Tiger mother,” they’d said in unison when Noah had sniggered at the neat charts marked up in the twins’ diaries – everyone knew how pushy she was when it came to school. Not that Noah had much to worry about. He was probably the only one of the whole group who stood a chance of getting anywhere near a top grade. There was a reason he was at Clerkenwell, after all, and unlike most of them it wasn’t his family’s money.

Izzy slipped into her seat in the English classroom just ahead of Kara and Grey. Kara kept
her head down – she was the one person in the whole class who looked unhappy about the end of term. It didn’t exactly take a genius to know why, either. Poor Kara. She was so afraid of being on the outside that she’d rather be the butt of Tigs’s jokes than risk being forgotten. You could see it in her face. Even after all the time she and Tigs had known each other, she was still afraid of being shut out. All she wanted was to be part of this mythical ‘inner circle’ that had Tigs at its centre. Izzy had said as much to Grey, not all that long ago, as they’d waited for the lifts in the lobby of the Barbican’s Lauderdale Tower where they both lived.

Grey had shrugged and said, “You know what else has an inner circle? Hell.”

“You’re telling me Antigone Price is the devil?” Izzy had laughed as the lift pinged and the doors opened, following Grey inside. She’d jabbed the button for the thirteenth floor, followed by the eighteenth for him.

“Maybe not the devil. But she comes pretty close…”

The afternoon dragged. Nobody bothered to hide the fact they weren’t working, and even their teacher didn’t seem too concerned. Mrs Alderman went as far as to sit down, tell them all to read a book and to get out a magazine for herself. She flipped through it, occasionally glancing up to make sure they were at least all still there.

A fly buzzed inside the sash window beside Izzy’s desk, somehow trapped between the two panes of glass. On the other side of the window, she could just make out the top of Lauderdale Tower looming over the neighbourhood.

When they first met, living in the Barbican had been her way in with Tigs – who had apparently decided that everyone living within the confines of the Barbican estate’s walls was (in her words) ‘safe’. Everyone
outside
was not. It was a ridiculous idea given that an apartment across the road in Florin Court – where Kara lived – cost just as much as one in the Barbican’s blocks and had its own residents’ pool, but that was Tigs all over. It wasn’t just about the money – although money was definitely a part of it. It was about something more. Of course, Tigs still hadn’t let Izzy forget that she was a new girl.
She’d only moved in a year ago, hadn’t she? Tigs had been
born
there.

With its locked residents’ garden and its lake with fountains and terraces, the Barbican was a maze of low-rise blocks punctuated by three towers. Sitting at the edge of the bustling City of London business district, just behind St Paul’s Cathedral, it had been built on land flattened by the bombs of the Blitz. The idea was that it would be the future of city life – thousands of flats and apartments in all shapes and sizes, raised up above the level of the roads and the traffic below. It was intimidating from the outside, designed to look almost like a castle. Even its name, Barbican, meant a kind of fortress. In the middle was the garden and the lake, and the Barbican Centre itself – a complex of theatres and cinemas, art galleries, libraries and restaurants open to the public, provided they could find the entrance. The whole place was a labyrinth of different levels, walkways that led nowhere and doors that could only be opened with a resident’s key. It was ‘exclusive’. And Tigs lived in the most exclusive part – a sprawling apartment on the thirty-fifth
floor of Shakespeare Tower, one of the high-rise blocks right at the heart of it. Something she liked to remind
everyone
of at every possible opportunity.

A loud scraping sound, followed by a crash, snapped Izzy’s attention away from the window and back into the room. Two rows ahead of her, a chair was lying on its side in the aisle and next to it Grey was flat on his back, crying with laughter. Mrs Alderman peered over the top of her magazine, scowled and shook her head. It wasn’t the first time Grey had managed to fall off his chair in class. He bowed to the room – obviously enjoying the applause he was getting – and picked up his seat, dropping back down into it with a grin.

“Show-off,” Izzy muttered.

When the bell rang, finally, she hung back, sliding her folder carefully back into her bag. Mrs Alderman had moved on to the crossword, and as Izzy passed the teacher’s desk, she glanced up. “Murder, Izzy?”

“How many letters, Mrs Alderman?”

“Eight.”

“Homicide, Mrs Alderman. But you know that already.”

“Just testing.” Mrs Alderman tapped her pen on the magazine. “How’s the revision going?”

“It’s going.” Izzy made what she hoped was a non-committal sound.

“You are taking it seriously, aren’t you?” The teacher was suddenly stern. “I’m not trying to pass judgement, but after your last school I know how important…”

“I’m taking it seriously. I am. Honestly.” Izzy stared at the floor. The classroom suddenly felt like it was shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. The walls were pressing in on her and all she could think about was getting out.

“I’m glad to hear it. These exams could affect your whole future. This isn’t a dry run, this is the real thing.” She blinked at Izzy, watching her reaction – then said, more kindly, “Although that’s not to say you shouldn’t have a break now and then.”

“No, Mrs Alderman.”

The teacher looked her up and down. “Go on, then. I imagine your friends are waiting for you. Tell Grey I look forward to seeing his exam script, by the way…”

“I will, Mrs Alderman.” Izzy smiled, and clutching her bag tightly she headed out of the classroom and into the bright sunlight of the courtyard.

Exactly as predicted, Grey was waiting, along with the others, on the grass. Izzy came out just in time to see him drop to his knees, shouting “Freedom!” at the top of his voice. His school tie was clutched in one of his raised fists and his dark hair flopped across one of his eyes.

“You’re such a loser,” she said, stopping just in front of him.

“You love it,” he grinned up at her, brushing his hair out of his face. “It makes you feel superior.”

“I am superior. Obviously.”

“You keep telling yourself that.” Grey shook his head.

“So, I was thinking,” said another voice from somewhere behind Izzy’s head, cutting through their conversation as though it wasn’t happening. Her heart sank. Tigs. She didn’t turn round, hoping that Tigs would take the hint. Some hope – Tigs carried on regardless.

“I was thinking – revision party? My place? Later?”

“Revision party? Yeah, right. Like my parents will go for that,” said Juliet, perched on the wall next to Dom. She peered over her sunglasses at Tigs.

“Fine. ‘Study group’, then.” Tigs sighed theatrically. “Aren’t they working, anyway?”

“Mum’s on the rota, Dad’s on call. Go figure.”

“What they don’t know while they’re busy being super-doctors won’t hurt them, will it?” Tigs flicked her glossy blonde hair back over her shoulder and beamed. “So it’s sorted. Six o’clock.”

“Shall we even bother bringing books?” Noah raised an eyebrow at Tigs, who pouted.

“Depends if you want to waste time studying, doesn’t it?” With another hair flick, Tigs shot them all a dazzling smile and flounced off in the direction of the main entrance, forcing Noah to step out of her way. If Grey noticed the sway of her skirt as she went, he didn’t show it. But then, he never did. Dom, on the other hand…

Juliet followed his gaze. “Ugh. You’re all so predictable.”

“Shh.” Dom tried to put his hand over her mouth.
“No talk. Pretty girl walking.”

“Oh, come off it!” Juliet twisted underneath his arm and gave him a gentle shove. He slipped backwards on the wall and only saved himself from going over altogether with an undignified scramble.

“You know that was all for you, don’t you?” Izzy nudged Grey in the ribs as they fell into step. Their little group was the only one still in the courtyard. Ahead of them, the solid wooden door on to the street stood open, while behind them Dom tried to empty the dregs of his water bottle over Juliet, who screamed and raced past them with Dom and Noah in hot pursuit, laughing. It was just the two of them left now. Grey watched the others for a moment as they ran off, then shook his head.

“Not interested.”

“In Tigs? Doesn’t look like she feels that way about you…”

“Yeah, well. I’m taken, aren’t I?”

“What? Oh, in your
dreams
, lover-boy.”

It had become a running joke – ever since the day she’d almost collided with him in their building’s entrance lobby and seen the stack of terrible horror movie DVDs in his hands. Top of
the pile was a copy of
Warlock
, of which she knew every single line. The bond had been instant, and since then they’d had regular horror ‘dates’ (as Tigs liked to call them, making little quote marks in the air with her fingers each time) watching endless schlocky films full of monsters, vampires and chainsaw-wielding maniacs. Grey liked the monsters – even if he got annoyed when Izzy pointed out that you could usually see the seams in the swamp-creature’s latex suit. Izzy, on the other hand, liked the serial-killer ones best, and it drove her crazy that Grey always guessed the bad guy. Any time Izzy shrieked or hid behind her hands, he would shrug and laugh smugly. “You knew that was coming though, right? If they die offscreen, they’re not really dead.” This was usually the point where she threw a cushion at him.

Grey and Izzy walked side by side on the narrow pavements, as they did every school day. In the mornings, the huge concrete bulk of the Barbican fell away behind them like a shadow. In the afternoons, it rose up to meet them. Today, it baked in the sun beating mercilessly down on the glittering skyscrapers of the City. To an outsider,
looking at it from the wrong side of the forbidding wall, surely you’d have to be crazy to want to live there. It was hot in the summer and miserably gloomy in the winter, when the rain streaked the endless grey with black. But when you got into the middle of it (
if
you got into the middle of it) the Barbican was another story altogether. The garden was full of spreading trees that cast shade on even the hottest afternoons, and from inside the fence that kept the general public out, you could sit on the side of the lake and dangle your feet into the water.

The porter in the entrance hall of Lauderdale Tower nodded in greeting as they walked in, then turned back to whatever he was watching on the little television under the security desk. Grey ducked ahead through the glass doors into the lift lobby, flicking at the ‘call’ button on the central console, which sat on top of a small column in the middle, and turning to watch the three lifts expectantly.