The Girl Who Wasn't There Page 12

  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…”

  As Lindsey’s gaze drifts off, remembering herself in what’s now Clem’s room (mine must’ve been Gary’s?), I notice that Kat has frozen; has something Lindsey’s said set free a flicker of some long-lost image for her?

  Before Lindsey spots her sudden stillness, I reach over and grab the tin from my friend. Her eyes – framed in black – are wide and staring, as if focused in concentration as her mind jumps around, trying to catch hold of the fluttering butterfly of the memory.

  “Give’s a go,” I say brightly, while Lindsey happily rambles on.

  “You know, I was the first in my class to get a Walkman – one of those portable machines that played tapes, I mean. You girls won’t remember those.”

  I politely shake my head, though I think Dad has mentioned them, when I’ve not really been listening too closely (sorry, Dad).

  “Then when I was at uni, I got myself a CD Walkman too,” Lindsey carries on, “and bought my favourite music all over again! So yes, the tapes, the CDs, the Walkmans, the magazines … all gone.”

  Clang!

  The tin lid finally gives, goes clattering across the pretty rose-speckled tablecloth and hits the sugar bowl.

  “Whoops!” laughs Lindsey, catching it. “Well, let’s see what’s in here, shall we?”

  She begins to take out the contents of the tin, studying it bit by bit, laying it out over the roses.

  “I loved these hair combs… I used to wear my hair up a lot. Oh, look at this – postcards from Jenny and Susan and Helen! I used to be so jealous that they went abroad for their holidays. My family always went to rainy caravan parks in Wales, or up to the Lake District if we were lucky…”

  Lindsey chats away, full of wonder at every scrap, every badge, every
cinema ticket stub, every piece of paraphernalia.

  I look and smile and ask interested questions now and then, sneaking the odd peek at Kat, who still seems vague and unsettled, and nibbling her nails.

  “And this! This I must have torn from a copy of Smash Hits,” says Lindsey, holding up the Top Ten Singles list I remember coming across in the summerhouse with Kat. “It’s from 1987. I was crazy about almost every track on there. Especially ‘La Bamba’! It was from the soundtrack of a film we were all mad about.”

  “La Bamba”?! The song Kat sang the evening we snuck around school… The track on the CD that Miss Carrera played yesterday…

  She cut it off the junk sculpture, I remind myself.

  Was that CD part of Lindsey’s recently junked stash? The stuff old Mr Butterfield cleared out before she or her brother could stop him…?

  Kat is biting her lip, shooting me a small, secret smile.

  She knows what I’m thinking and she’s letting me know I’m right: we’ve just stumbled on the third piece of the puzzle.

  “You know, I was so totally in love with the lead actor, Lou Diamond Phillips,” Lindsey says with a wistful laugh, unaware of the looks me and Kat have just exchanged. “Well, we all were! And actually, I remember this one time a girl in my class came around to mine and we even made up our own dance to the song. How funny is that?”

  Very funny, think. I heard the traces of your forgotten laughter the other night.

  “Katherine; that was her name…”

  Katherine slides slightly down in her seat next to Lindsey, through shock at hearing her name or an attempt to hide herself away, I don’t know.

  She’s blinking at me behind the curtains of her straightened hair.

  But at the mention of Kat’s name, Lindsey’s smile fades, and she falls silent.

  “Was Katherine your best friend?” I say.

  It’s not the question I really want to ask, but if I rush in with, “So what happened to Katherine?” then Lindsey will know we know more than we’re letting on.

  “No … I mean, I liked her, but Helen Smith was my best friend. Katherine was just part of the extended gang. We all played netball in the same team.”