The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (29 page)

In the Sheriff’s station, Hector was climbing on the furniture.

“Gotta change
all
the lightbulbs! Gotta make this station shine!”

Jimmy was spinning in his chair, fanning out papers as he did so.

“I’m solving them all,” he muttered feverishly. “All five of them. Right now!”

“No!” The Sheriff jumped from his desk, stumbled on his bad knee, and snatched at the papers in Jimmy’s hand.

Jimmy ducked away, reading eagerly.

“Shred them,” ordered Hector, and he swung himself onto his own
chair, dragging the typewriter across his desk. “I’m sending out an urgent notice!
No more missing persons reports for my deputy!
Enough! I’ve had enough!”

“You’re the one who
asked
for them.” Jimmy frowned fiercely at the papers. “What’s the connection? I
know
there’s a connection, I can
see
the connection! I just can’t catch it!”

“Never asked for these ones! They’re from Cellian Central Intelligence! It’s your fault, Jimmy — you’re too darn good! They heard about you and sent you
five
of their unsolved!” Hector was typing as he fumed. “I’m telling them now,
Solve your own missing persons! We’ve got better things to do!
I’m saying,
You’re supposed to be the best, aren’t you? Or anyway, the most central!
”

“What’s the connection?” Jimmy’s eyes swerved from report to report.

“There
is
no connection!” Hector swiped his letter out of the typewriter and rapidly turned it into a paper plane. “That’s five
separate
missing persons from all
over
the Kingdom that they’ve sent us! Nothing to do with one another! Nothing to do with us, more to the point. Nothing to do with you!”

He looked down at the airplane in his hand and frowned in consternation. Then he threw it across the room.

The door to the station swung open and Elliot Baranski skidded in. The paper airplane flew toward his nose.

“It’s the
same
!” Elliot shouted, catching the plane and hurling it right back. “Hector, it’s the same! There’s a connection!”

The Sheriff looked up. Jimmy looked up.

There was a pause and in the pause, everything seemed to slide away.

It was the bars of Red: They were fading.

But Elliot’s voice still clamored: “It was in Dad’s workshop! A note on his board that said peripheral connectors are pin 1 plus 12, something, whatever, and just now I saw it at the Watermelon Inn! Uncle Jon used the
exact
same sequence, only for heaters. The guest room
heaters! It’s gotta mean something! It’s gotta be connected to the night it all happened. It’ll maybe even tell us where he is!”

Hector and Jimmy gazed at Elliot.

He shouted the story of the two notes again and again, until they understood.

“What do you think it means, Elliot?” Hector ventured.

“I don’t know! But —” and Elliot himself was abruptly aware of the volume of his voice, the quiet around him.

“Might be what you call a coincidence,” suggested Hector. “Or, no, more likely, your dad fixed the heaters one time for your Uncle Jon, and he wrote that sequence down for himself
and
for Jon, just for technical reasons. Or maybe, like I said, it’s plain coincidence.”

Jimmy was staring around the station. Paper chains hung from windowsills and paper lanterns were strung across the desks.

“Seems like we decided to redecorate,” he said ruefully.

“Ah,” sighed Hector, looking closely at one of the lanterns. “Used our paperwork to do it too.”

Their bewildered, sheepish quiet seemed to spread out of the station, down the steps and right across the town.

“It’s fourth-level Reds,” said Jimmy, his eyes on Elliot. “They make you do crazy things. They make you see things that aren’t there.”

“But it was there,” whispered Elliot.

“You know what I mean. A connection that’s not there.”

The quiet kept drifting, and then it was filled with the sound of ringing bells.

“It’s the all clear,” Jimmy said. “No, it’s more than that. That’s the code that means the whole wave of Reds is through.”

“It’s over,” Hector murmured, and Elliot stood in the center of the station, his forehead crumpling so hard he had to close his eyes.

10.

O
ne Friday morning in the first week of July, Belle came back.

She arrived at Madeleine’s flat for the lesson with Holly, and she looked exactly like herself, but her voice was dry and hoarse.

Outside, it was raining quietly and efficiently, and inside the electric lights and lamps cast a soft glow. They stood around at first, welcoming Belle, and there was a strange physical awareness. A sense of the shape and closeness of their bodies in the small golden space surrounding Belle.

Belle took on the character of her low, dry voice, her eyes almost sultry, her words lethargic.

“The only thing,” she said, “is it hurts to talk. Otherwise I’m better.” Then, with a shrug and a quick lift of her eyebrows, she said: “Of course, if you people could learn to read auras, we wouldn’t
need
to talk. We could just, like, glance at each other’s auras and know everything in all our heads.” As she spoke, her eyes shifted from Holly to Jack to Madeleine, studying the air above their heads.

“Or we could learn telepathy,” suggested Holly. “No need to interpret colours. Cut to the chase.” She moved into the kitchen, announcing she was going to make Belle ginger tea with honey.

“If you’d all just keep up with your horoscopes,” Jack said, “we wouldn’t even need to
meet
. We’d just go, oh, right, so that’s what’s going to happen, may as well sleep while it does.”

Madeleine was laughing, but she had the curious sensation that her body was too small. Too neat and rigid compared to Belle, who was somehow more present and at ease in the room. But this was
Madeleine’s flat, and that was Madeleine’s boyfriend beside her. The feeling made no sense. She tried to rattle it out of her head, but instead, looking sideways at Jack and Belle, she felt sudden, intense embarrassment.

She felt as if she had spent the last few weeks accidentally wearing someone else’s coat. Now the owner had returned and was gazing at her with shrewd, wry amusement, astounded that she’d never noticed her mistake, but ready to forgive if she apologised.

At the same time, watching Jack joke with Belle — he was touching the centre of Belle’s forehead, telling her she should just
close
her third eye sometimes, out of respect for privacy — as Madeleine watched this, she saw him.

Suddenly, and for the first time, she saw Jack.

And what she saw was this: that he was complex, imaginative, funny, and kind, and that he had, in addition to his beautiful nose, golden-green eyes like a tiger. That he was smarter than anybody realised, and that, behind those tiger eyes, he was Byron.

He
was
Byron, just like he claimed. He was reckless, passionate, scared, hopeful, and, in his soul, a poet.

Helplessness washed over her; she wanted to get Jack out of here, get him alone. She wanted to tell him what she had seen, to speak in an urgent voice, or to write a letter to him. She wanted to praise him and praise him. There was an ache to have him touch her and gaze at her in wonder, only this time she wanted to gaze back in the same way. But even as she had these thoughts, she knew she was too late. She’d had her chance, and missed it.

Belle’s return would signal the end of the summer romance, and this was all Madeleine’s own fault. She had designed their relationship
as
a summer romance, and Belle, seeing that, would make Jack see it too. It would be over.

Holly handed Belle the tea and returned to the kitchen.

She switched on the kettle.

“I’m just making Belle a cup of lemon tea with ginger,” she called.

Jack and Madeleine turned to look at her. Belle drank from the mug in her hand and faced the window.

“You already made one,” said Jack.

Holly smiled.

Then she pressed her fingers to her forehead, very carefully and methodically, as if she was looking for something that she’d left inside her head.

“Sinus headache,” she said. “They’re bad in the morning, although they
usually
get better once I walk around.” She reached for the kettle. “I’ll just make Belle a …”

Then she lowered it again.

“Do you know,” she said with a surprised tilt, “I think I might lie down for ten minutes?”

Jack, Belle, and Madeleine talked at once, suggesting painkillers, herbal remedies, antibiotics, and promising to leave her alone, but Holly waved her hands in the air.

“Stay here,” she said. “All I need is ten minutes — and it’d be nice to hear you chatting while I doze. Then, when I get up, I will
teach
you something.”

She walked across the room to the bed. All three were silent, watching her. Holly wrapped her arms around one pillow, put her head on the other, and closed her eyes.

“You should change into your pajamas,” Belle said. “I hate lying down in jeans. We’ll face the other way while you change.”

Holly smiled without opening her eyes and snuggled into the mattress like a child.

Jack and Belle sat on the couch, and Madeleine took the sewing-table chair.

They raised their eyebrows at one another.

“I think we should get out of here,” Jack said across the room to Holly. “You need quiet.”

Again Holly smiled, her eyes closed. “I told you to stay,” she murmured. “I would’ve
said
if I wanted you to go. Don’t you have
homework
or something?” Her voice faded into a yawn, and within moments her breathing slowed and deepened.

“She’s asleep,” whispered Belle.

“Should we go?” said Jack.

Madeleine looked across at the small, curling shape of her mother on the bed.

“I want to stay with her,” she said.

“Well,” Jack whispered, “she told us to work. I’ve got stuff to do on my tourism project for Denny. Maybe I’ll run downstairs and print it out. You want me to get anything for you two?”

Madeleine asked him to print out an attachment to one of her emails, giving him her password so he could, and Belle explained that she was so far behind in everything that there was no point trying to catch up. She’d just watch them work.

They listened to Jack’s footsteps, his knocking on the door downstairs, the door opening, Denny’s voice.

They looked at each other.

“You get glandular fever a lot?” Madeleine asked, even though they’d already covered this when Belle arrived.

Belle sniffed, ignoring the question. Her eyes were moving around the flat, her foot tapping slowly.

“So,” she said, turning back to Madeleine. “You and Jack, eh?”

This time Madeleine did not reply. She felt a sudden surge of something — of her own self, her pride, her past — and she found herself holding Belle’s gaze. She’d do what she could to keep Jack.

Belle watched this, and twisted her own lower lip thoughtfully.

There was a long silence — sudden intakes of breath from Holly; the rain outside; traffic; a motorbike revving — and more silence.

Then voices downstairs, and the sound of Jack running up the steps.

His footsteps pounded quickly and then slowed and slowed, an almost comical slowing, like a machine winding down.

There was silence in the stairwell.

Belle and Madeleine glanced towards the door, then back at each other, and widened their eyes. The quiet out there continued.

“What’s he
doing
?” said Belle. “Putting on his Superman suit?” And it occurred to Madeleine that it might be okay. Somehow she had passed Belle’s test.

The door opened slowly and Jack came in.

At first, Madeleine did not notice the change. Her focus was on the papers in his hands, and the fact that he was moving towards her, holding out a single sheet.

“Printed this for you too,” he said, his voice an even murmur, his eyes on Holly, asleep across the room. “I noticed it in your inbox, and I knew you’d want it right away. I saw the name Tinsels, so …”

Madeleine grabbed the paper.

But when she looked down, there were just three lines.

Hi, I just found this in my junk mail, and I don’t know you so I think you must be thinking of another Tinsels (who knew there’d be more than one of us?). So I’m just letting you know so you can find the right one. T.

In Madeleine’s head there was a tangle of confusion (how could she have remembered the address incorrectly?) and disappointment (the jump in her heart when Jack said Tinsels’s name), and anger (with
this
Tinsels, for being the wrong one), and then confusion again (she was
sure
she had the email address right), and then at last she became aware that something was wrong.

She looked up. Jack was leaning against the kitchen bench, the papers in one hand and a curious expression on his face.

Madeleine felt her heartbeat panic while her mind rummaged for an explanation — and then, almost at once, she knew.

Her own email to Tinsels was right there beneath the reply.

Now her eyes fell on the phrases she’d written weeks before, and as they fell, she knew that he had seen them.

Standing on the staircase outside, Jack had read this.

Sorry it’s been so long
, she had written to Tinsels.
It’s been totally BIZARRO!
Then she’d complained about rain, damp, cold, and beans. She’d said life here was a survival adventure. She’d said,
it’s like we’re in a fairy tale, locked in a freakin’ tower trying to spin gold — only, if this were a fairy tale, I guess I wouldn’t say freakin’, and I’d know HOW to spin, or at least sew
.

She had said:

You should see what I’m wearing — these mad combinations of colours — it’s like I’m ADDICTED to colour and you know why? It’s cos I’m desperate for it. Cos, honestly, there are no colours here! There’s like a blankness — it reminds me of those paintings Warlock used to do when he was three or four, and he’d just use whatever dried-up paint was left on the brush and a lot of water. So it was just faded, washed-out greys. That’s exactly what it’s like here. And that includes the people — like, I’m home schooling with people named Jack and Belle and they’re nice and all, but seriously, they’re both just, kind of like, colourless voids.

Her hands clapped over her paper, as if she could stop the words now, and she looked at Jack, shaking her head.

“I didn’t,” she started. “I couldn’t —”

“Yes, you did,” said Jack with a small smile.

“You weren’t supposed to see this — I didn’t …”

It was worse because they had to be quiet, contain it at the level of whispers.

“What is it?” said Belle. Her eyes moved from Jack to Madeleine to the paper in Madeleine’s hand, and she snatched it before Madeleine could stop her.

Belle scanned the letter.

She lowered it.

“Now I understand,” she said, almost to herself. Then she smiled at Madeleine: “You move to England, then you sit around feeling sorry for yourself and trashing the place. It’s funny how it never sort of
occurred to you that there’s people in the world who might think that Cambridge is special, like maybe even
more
special than a princess like you?”

“I know,” whispered Madeleine urgently. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so —”

A terrible expression, a savage sort of sneer, replaced Belle’s smile, and she spoke in an everyday voice.

“I know what to say,” she said. “And it’s this. All this time I thought you were sort of rubbish and full of yourself, but I also believed that you really were our friend — me and Jack’s friend. So stupid of me! Do you know why I never read your aura, Madeleine? Do you know why I always make excuses not to?”

She was looking for her bag as she spoke, moving towards the door. Her head tilted at Jack, and he dropped the papers onto the sewing table and grabbed his own backpack.

Belle opened the door.

“It’s because of what your aura’s like,” she continued. “It’s never once changed since I met you, Madeleine, and you know what it is?”

She paused.

“It’s black,” she said. “I can honestly say I’ve never seen an aura so full of deception.”

Then she walked through the door.

Jack glanced back once. “You don’t always have to eat beans, you know,” he said. “They’ve got cheap frozen sausage rolls at Sainsbury’s.”

He held her eyes a moment, then closed the door behind him.

The sound of their footsteps faded down the stairs, and in the distance, the front door opened and closed.