The Girl Who Wasn't There (13 page)

“Where are you, Kat? Where are you, Kat? Where are you, Kat?” I mumble almost silently as I let myself be bustled along the first-floor corridor, past the art room on the way to French.

And then I spot something out of the corner of my eye.

A shift.

A stutter of a movement that doesn't match the bustle and amble of students going on around me.

It's like a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't image.

A girl with huge blue eyes and a floppy hair bow.

“Sorry – oops! My fault. Sorry,” I say, turning against the tide and making my way over to Kat. She's leaning against the wall of the art room, her head resting on the frosted glass panels that run the length of it.

“Where've you been?” I ask her.

“Just the usual – nowhere-land,” says Kat, giving me one of her wry, apologetic smiles. “Getting my energy back, I guess.”

“Well, I'm glad you're here now, 'cause I've found out something…”

With that, I rifle in my bag, pulling out the shortbread tin from the summerhouse.

“Look,” I say, popping it open and pulling out the class photo of Kat and her classmates. “This – this is Lindsey Butterfield, right?”

“Mmm,” mutters Kat, nodding.

“Well, I know who she is!” I announce.

“The old site manager's daughter,” says Kat. “She used to live in your house. She was maybe my friend.”

Kat's just repeating what we've already figured out.

She doesn't know that I know
more
.

“I've seen her, Kat! Grown up, I mean. She runs a café in town.”

It came back to me in the shower, when I gave myself a bit of thinking time (just like Mum said). I remembered this cheery, slightly plump blonde woman who served us the time we went in with Lilah's mother. The café was newly opened back then, and Lilah's mum spent ages talking to the friendly owner about how it was going. The friendly owner who I
absolutely
recognized from the 1987 photo as being an older version of Lindsey, even if the Butterfield's name hadn't been a ginormous giveaway.

“Is that good?” asks Kat, trying hard to understand my excitement.

“Maybe!” I say hurriedly, noticing that the crowds are thinning out, that I'm going to be late for class if I'm not careful. “I think we need to go and see Lindsey … she's
got
to be able to tell us about your –”

I stumble, only just avoiding using the word “death”. It's such a harsh, heavy word.

“– of what happened to you, I mean,” I quickly correct myself.

“Maisie? What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in class now?” a friendly but teacherly voice suddenly asks. It's Miss Carrera, swooping out of the art room in one of her long white aprons. The hem of it brushes Kat's leg, but she seems unaware. I guess it's just me who can see Kat right now.

“I'm going, I'm going,” I assure Miss Carrera.

Then I notice Kat waver like some mirage, a hovering, vibrating image of my friend. She's there and then she's not, in split-second rotations.

“Maisie? What's wrong?” I hear Miss Carrera's voice ask, full of concern. “Why are you staring at the wall?”

But I'm not staring at the wall – I'm looking at my friend, wondering what's happening to her, what's wrong with her.

She's sinking down, down, fainting away.

“No!” I call out, crouching to catch her, to cradle her in my arms.

Her eyes are fluttering, as if she's slipping into unconsciousness…

And then she's gone.

“Maisie!
Maisie!
” I vaguely hear Miss Carrera say, only half-aware of her arms around my shoulders.

And here I am, crouching on the ground.

As far as Miss Carrera and any last-minute, late-running students can see, I'm holding nothing but thin air…

 

“The bottom line is, I'm worried about you.”

I don't look at Mrs Watson – I just stare down at the selection of biscuits she's placed on a rose-patterned plate in front of me. I haven't touched one.

“Please don't be,” I say, shuffling on her squelchy leatherette visitors' chair.

“Well, I am. Students don't go crumpling to the floor in corridors for no reason.”

She's saying it kindly, with a bit of humour in her voice, hoping I'll respond with a smile, open up to her.

But it's not going to happen.

I have to protect myself – and Kat.

“I felt a bit dizzy for a second, that's all.”

“Yes, but is it because you haven't eaten enough today?”

“I had lunch.”

“Which was…?”

“Macaroni cheese,” I tell her.

I don't tell her I ate about a mouthful of it and it tasted like boiled rubber tubing. No offence to the school cooks, but when you're consumed with finding your fading dead friend, you
kind
of lose your appetite.

“Dehydration, then. What have you drunk so far today?”

“Orange juice at breakfast time, squash at lunch, and here –” I take a practically empty water bottle from my bag “– I've had most of this.”

“Well, it's something else, then. Having you been feeling unwell recently, Maisie?”

“No, Mrs Watson,” I say, both to her question and the plate of biscuits she's waggling under my nose.

With everything that's happening at the moment, I've been feeling the opposite of unwell. I'm brimming full of spangles and excitement and wonder.

“Been feeling headachey? Migraines? Is it that time of the month? Are you feverish?” she tries, giving up on the biscuits and plopping them back down on her table.

When Miss Carrera phoned down to the office, and Mahalia and her first-aid skills rushed to my rescue, I thought that was it. I didn't expect to get this cheery but determined grilling from my form teacher.

“No, Mrs Watson.”

“You know, it
might
be that you're anaemic … lacking in iron, that is. It's quite common in your early teens. Tell you what, I'll mention to your dad that he should take you to your doctor – have you tested.”

It's on the tip of my tongue to jump in and tell her no,
please
don't mention anything to Dad, but if I panic and get flustered it'll look bad, as if I'm hiding something (a ghost, actually).

Luckily a sentence flashes into my head – fluttering from the well-worn pages of Mum's notebook – which shows me how I have to play this.

“Actually, I have to go for a check-up next week, for an … ear thing I have,” I say nicely (
It's always nice to be nice
). “I could ask the doctor about the anaemia thing then?”

Yes, I am saying this nicely.

Yes, I am also lying.

But it
is
getting Mrs Watson off my back for now, I hope, and stopping her from involving Dad.

“Good! Good thinking, Maisie,” she replies positively. “And ear problems often cause balance issues, you know, so do tell your doctor about what happened in the art room corridor just now.”

“I will,” I say.

I won't
, I think.

“Good, good,” says Mrs Watson, with an approving nod.

Can I go now, can I go now, can I go now
,
I mutter silently to myself, putting my hands on the armrests of the chair, hoping I can say thank you (nicely) and get back to class.

“And there's nothing at all troubling you, is there, Maisie?”

Ah, it's not over yet.

“No, Mrs Watson.”

“Nothing's making you unhappy?”

It's the opposite. I haven't felt so happy in a long time.

“The girls here are being nice to you? You're making friends?”

“Yes, miss.”

The girls here are steering clear of me, but I don't care, 'cause I
do
have a friend. The most special, amazing, out-of-this-world friend. Who I really need to find and check that she's all right…

“It's just that you do seem to be on your own rather a lot. Miss Carrera
and
Mrs Gupta in the library mentioned it, and the office staff have noticed too…”

For their information, I'm not on my own. But I'm not about to say that, of course.

“I sometimes like to be by myself,” I answer as pleasantly as possible.

“Hmm. You know, I'm hoping you haven't got some, say … deep, dark secret on your mind, Maisie,” says Mrs Watson, her eyes boring into mine, as if she's trying to see what's going on inside my head.

Well, I
do
happen to have a secret in there, of course, but it's not deep or dark; it's shiny and amazing. And there's no way I'm going to let Mrs Watson know about it, so I drop my eyes to the plate of biscuits.

“Honestly, I'm fine. Can I have one of those after all?”

“Yes, yes!
Please
do. Take two,” Mrs Watson says enthusiastically, taking this sudden interest in snacks as a sure sign of returning good health and spirits, just as I hoped.

I nibble my way through the first one (though it's like eating crunchy cardboard coated in chocolate) and shuffle slightly, readying myself for goodbyes.

“The thing is, Maisie, without raking up the past, you obviously know that I have your records from your last school and I
am
aware of the … the
incident
that happened there.”

Oh.

That.

All the spangles and excitement and wonder fade away from me and I'm plunged into a moment of gloom.

“Right, so it
is
that. I see.”

Mrs Watson – spotting my expression – thinks she found the source of my woes, the reason for my crumple in the corridor.

I say nothing.

“But I want you to know something, Maisie,” Mrs Watson carries on, craning forward in her seat so she can be more in-my-face earnest. “Coming here to Nightingale School, it's a new start, a clean slate.”

“I didn't hurt the other girl deliberately, Mrs Watson – I really didn't,” I say hurriedly, hating this unexpected wave of old pain. “But no one believed me!”

“Maisie, your father talked me through what happened,” she surprises me by saying. “And although it's probably unprofessional of me to say so, I think the situation wasn't handled very well by the head at Park View…”

Mrs Watson doesn't go so far as to say she sides with me, but the way her voice trails off, I know she does. And that suddenly feels so,
so
good.

“Look, Maisie, the bottom line is, no one here knows about the accident – apart from me, of course. Do you understand?”

Actually, it might not be just you, Mrs Watson
, I think, the good feeling slipping slightly as I picture the wary sideways glances I've been getting from Hannah and Natasha and Patience and the others.

Still, it's Kat who's helped me the most so far, and I have to remind myself that she's who and what matters most right now. I'm not going to let thoughts of Saffy Price and her lies linger any more…

“Thank you, Mrs Watson. May I go now?” I say just as nicely as I can as I get up from my chair.

“Um, of course,” she replies, slightly startled by my forthrightness. “But remember, my door is always open if you need to chat…”

As I leave, I realize – with shock – that I owe someone
very
unexpected a great big thank you.

Because if Mrs Watson thinks anything of my behaviour is odd, from now on she'll put it down to me having a wobble about “the incident”.

So thanks, Saffy, my worst enemy, for getting my form teacher off my back, and letting me get on with my new life with my strange and special new friend…

 

“Is this OK?” asks Kat, sitting perched on the stool in front of Clem's dressing table.

Her hands are in her lap, her fingers fidgeting with the soft, silky navy bow I made her untie from around her head.

“No. It's highly,
highly
dangerous,” I tell Kat.

I'm not talking about the straighteners I'm using, trying to tame her big, wavy hair right now.

I'm talking about being here in Clem's room. If my sister knew, she'd kill us both (though I guess that wouldn't matter too much in Kat's case).

But Clem isn't due back from her college across town for another twenty minutes at least. Which is all the time I need.

“We should be quick, then?” Kat blinks at me in the mirror.

“We'll be quick,” I assure her.

We'll be quick for two reasons: first, Butterfield's café shuts fairly soon, once the afternoon tea and cake customers wander home. I know this from my trip to the new deli yesterday – when I peeked next door at the café, my heart thundering as I spotted the grown-up Lindsey sweeping the floor inside.

Secondly, I know Kat has limited energy. After yesterday's fade-away in the art room corridor, it's taken her till now, after school on Wednesday, to properly reappear to me.

To be honest, I don't know how she'll have the strength to stay in plain view this afternoon. Maybe I should check that Kat's totally sure about this…

“Remember, you don't
have
to show yourself,” I pause and tell her reflection. “I can just go into the café on my own – with you beside me, but not visible to Lindsey. It'd be a lot less tiring for you that way.”

“But I was
once
real to her, and I'd like to feel like a real girl next to her, just one more time,” Kat says very certainly. “Maybe it'll help me remember more.”

“Even though you'll be in disguise?” I remind her. We don't want to risk shocking Lindsey Butterfield so much that she faints clean away and can tell us nothing.

“Yes, even though I'll be in disguise. Even though I look
weird
,” Kat says, pulling an unimpressed face as her hair is smoothed out, section by section. “Doesn't it look … lanky?”

She holds up a straightened section of her fair hair and lets it drop,
plop
.

“No – it's gorgeous,” I tell her. “I know it's not your style, but it'll mean you'll fit right in, I promise.”

“Well, if you say so,” says Kat dubiously. But dubious or not, I know she's putting her trust in me, and that's a pretty lovely feeling, actually.

“Now for the make-up…” I say, finishing my last lap with the straighteners and studying Clem's impressive array of beauty products spread out in front of the dressing table mirror.

I reach for the make-up remover and cotton pads first.

“Close your eyes,” I tell my friend as I start swooping the dampened pad over her eyes, to take off the thick mascara.

It doesn't budge.

I check the cotton pad; it doesn't have a mark on it.

Confused, I try dabbing at the pinky-bronze blusher on Kat's cheeks … same result, i.e.,
no
result.

It seems that ghosts just look the way they look. Kat's eighties make-up is part of her. There isn't a cleansing lotion invented that's going to make it vanish.

“Is something wrong?” Kat asks, aware of my sudden silence.

“Nothing's wrong, I'm just going to try something else,” I bluster, not wanting to make Kat feel unsure of herself; it might sap whatever energy she has today. “Let's try this…”

Yes. Thank goodness. I can at least put make-up
on
to Kat. And Clem's warm-toned, natural foundation gives Kat a healthier glow than she's had lately, cancelling out her pale skin, the dark rings under her eyes, the obvious, old-fashioned blast of blusher.

Then last it's a slick of light rosy-brown lip salve to cover up the pale, glittery-pink gloss she's so fond of.

“There,” I say, standing back and letting Kat spin around to check out her transformation into a twenty-first century girl.

“Wow,” she says uncertainly. “I really
am
in disguise…”

“Yep,” I agree with her, not taking it personally. Flipping it around the other way, I don't suppose I'd be a hundred per cent thrilled if someone made
me
over as a puff-haired, over-made-up eighties girl. “There's no way Lindsey will recognize you!”

“I don't recognize
myself
,” says Kat, turning this way and that. “Don't I need some colour on my cheeks at least?”

“
No
,” I say firmly. “But hey, I've thought of one more thing…”

I run through to my room, rummage in the last box I've still to unpack – one with all the random stuff I ran out of energy to sort neatly – and pretty quickly find what I'm looking for.

“Don't laugh,” I say, hurrying back to Kat and presenting her with some thick black-rimmed specs I bought a couple of summers ago from H&M along with this cute T-shirt with “GEEK” written on it in big letters. “They've only got plain glass in them. Well, plastic.”

“Aw, cute!” she says, immediately putting them on. “Morrissey wears ones just like these!”

I'm about to ask who Morrissey is, then vaguely remember that he's a singer Dad used to like when he was at uni, from a band called the Stranglers, I think. Or was it the Smiths?

But there's no time for musing over Dad's old vinyl collection; spotting the reflection of Clem's bedside clock in the mirror, I realize Kat and I really need to move it and get to the café before its owner locks up for the day and heads home.

Gulp.

Just what is middle-aged Lindsey Butterfield going to make of girls in Nightingale School uniforms turning up at her work clutching a shortbread tin…?

 

“All right?” I check with Kat.

“No,” says the girl next to me, who doesn't look very much like the Kat I know, which is good, in the circumstances.

The circumstances being, we're standing on the pavement across the road from Butterfield's café, watching a blissfully ignorant Lindsey Butterfield turning the
Open
sign to
Closed
.

It's OK, there's still time; she starts cleaning up now. I watched her do it yesterday, as I hovered with my jar of pesto, posh pasta and other stuff Dad had asked me to pick up from the deli next door.

“No?” I repeat anxiously, then turn to see that Kat is nervously smiling, so I know she's just messing with me. Sort of.

“So, are you ready?” I check with her, taking a deep breath myself and reaching out to her with my left hand (the shortbread tin is in my right, clutched to my chest).

“No,” she half-jokes again, taking my hand and letting me pull her across the road, through a gap in the traffic.

We hesitate again, just outside the café.

“We're braver than we think, OK?” I say to Kat, pretending I'm reassuring her, though I'm really reassuring myself. (I'm paraphrasing one of my mum's notes-to-me-and-Clem. I have never felt
less
brave. At least not since last Monday, five minutes before I had to walk into my new school.)

“OK,” says Kat, her blue eyes blinking trustingly at me through the plastic lenses of her chunky black glasses. “Then let's do it…”

My voice has a helium squeak to it; my hand is shaking as I tap on the glass.

“Sorry! We're closed!” the blonde woman – Lindsey – mouths at us as she stacks chairs on tables, ready to mop the floor.

I try beckoning her.

She gives a rueful, sorry smile and shake of her head, and points to her watch.

Help. She thinks we're after a last-minute latte and a chunk of carrot cake. Not information that might solve the mystery of a long-dead schoolmate. Who's, er, standing right beside me.

“The tin!” says Kat. “Hold the tin up!”

It's a good idea, so I do it.

I turn the front of the tin towards Lindsey, hoping she can see the Scottie and the Westie nuzzled up together. Hoping those dogs and the twee tartan trim of the tin box will bring some long-forgotten memory flipping to the forefront of her mind.

Yes! I think it might be working.

Lindsey frowns.

Walks a little closer.

Tucks a lock of her now-dyed-blonde hair behind her ear as she concentrates.

Then her eyes suddenly widen, her brows arching high in surprise.

Bingo…

The door is pulled open with a tinkle of a bell, and we find ourselves being ushered inside.

Pow – we're immediately hit by the rich scents of sweetness and coffee grounds. The smell mingles with the sounds of some man in a clipped English voice crooning over a jaunty ragtime piano.

“Let me turn the music down,” says Lindsey, bustling over to an iPod dock set behind the retro wooden counter.

I shoot a sideways glance at Kat, who's tilting her head to one side, deliberately letting a curtain of hair drape over her face, helping to hide it. (Guess she's still not totally secure in the disguise of her new-look appearance.)

“Please, have a seat,” says Lindsey, walking back towards us and ushering us to sit at one of the tables where the chairs haven't been stacked on top yet.

“Thanks,” I say shyly, perching on the edge of the chair nearest to me.

Kat seems to hesitate, letting Lindsey choose her seat first – then she sits down right next to her.

I'm sort of surprised, thinking my friend would've been so nervous she would be practically velcro'd to my side. Then in a split second, I figure out
why
she's done it: Lindsey won't get such a good view of Kat side on. And sure enough, the café owner is looking directly at me now.

“Is this what I think it is?” she says with a hopeful smile, the fingers of her veined hands tapping lightly on the tin box.

“My name's Maisie, and me and my friend…” I begin – then stumble over how to introduce Kat.

“Patience,” Kat jumps in, perhaps just grabbing hold of the first girl's name that popped into her head.

“Yeah, me and my friend Patience found it,” I carry on. “I live in Nightingale Cottage now; my dad is the new site manager.”

“Really? My old house!” Lindsey beams. “My father was the site manager there until a few months ago. Of course, I remember the days when he was called caretaker, and before that, janitor…”

Lindsey's face softens, her head swirling with memories of her childhood, I guess.

“I hoped this was yours, when I remembered the name of this café…” I say, nodding at the tin.

“Yes, I suppose it's useful that it's an unusual name!” Lindsey admits. “But where did you find this? I was there helping Dad pack up before he moved to his retirement flat. I thought we'd got everything.”

“It was hidden under the seat in the old summerhouse,” I tell her.

“Of
course
!” says Lindsey, rolling her eyes. “I moved it out there when my brother Gary raided my room once. I hated him looking through my stuff. He'd do it just to bug me. You know what little brothers are like!”

I smile, though I don't know, of course, only having a fearsome big sister myself. And Kat; she has –
had
– a little sister. I've never found out any more about her, or Kat's mum.

Actually, what did Kat say the other day when she didn't want to go home? “I'm not my mum's favourite person right now…” I should ask her about that. Though she might not have an answer anyway. Lots of information seems to come to Kat in wisps of half-remembered moments.

“I've forgotten what I put in here,” Lindsey continues, pulling the tin towards her and scrabbling to open the tight, slightly rusty lid with her nails. “And to be honest, I thought Dad must've thrown it out. Just before he moved he had a clear-out of lots of my and Gary's old stuff from our schooldays. Some of it went in the bin, some of it he donated to the art teacher, for the kids' projects, he told us. Wow, this is wedged tight!”

“Here, let me,” says Kat, taking the tin from her and using her slim, white-knuckled fingers to prise the lid open. I hope she doesn't use up too much energy doing such a human task, but she's so desperate to see if Lindsey has some answers for her that I suppose she's willing to risk it.

“I was so cross with Dad for doing that without checking with me and Gary first,” Lindsey chatters on, “but as he said, ‘Well, if you two were so keen on that old rubbish you'd've come and collected it years ago.' He had a point, I suppose.”

“What sort of stuff was it?” I ask, imagining how awful it would be if Dad threw out some of my special things, like all the notebooks I doodle in – even
Mum's notebook
, by accident – and shudder.

“Oh, I had a pile of my favourite
Just Seventeen
and
Smash Hits
magazines,” Lindsey reminisces as Kat's fingernails scrabble on metal, trying to get a grip. “And all my old tapes! Me and my friends loved hanging out in my room, listening to music…”