Another Me (3 page)

Next morning, they had both gone off to work by the time I left the flat for school. I met old Mrs Brennan at the lift. She was our next-door neighbour. Nosy, but nice. She knew everything about everybody, but she was always doing people favours, always knitting for someone, or baking for them.

‘That you off to school, honey?' she said.

Stupid question. I was in my uniform, hardly likely to be going to a pop concert. ‘Yes, Mrs Brennan,' I said.

‘My you've got bonny hair,' she said, flicking my shiny bob with her hand. ‘It's always that bouncy looking. Healthy. In this day and age you don't often see healthy hair like that.'

‘This day and age' was Mrs Brennan's favourite expression. She used it all the time.

The lift arrived and as the doors creaked open I let Mrs Brennan step inside.

‘Look at the state of me,' she said, pointing to her reflection in the mirrored steel at the back of the lift. ‘You'd never think I used to have hair as bonny as yours.'

I compared the two of us. Mrs Brennan with her tight curls like a steel scouring pad. And me, with my hair bouncy and shiny and blonde. The mirror made the lift look bigger. I was glad of that. It took away from the feeling that when the doors slid closed you might have been locked in a steel coffin.

We were past the ninth floor when it began to shudder.

‘Not again!' Mrs Brennan moaned, and we watched as the lights above the doors tracked our progress to the ground. 9-7-5-. Suddenly, with one almighty shudder it came to an abrupt halt.

‘It's always this odd lift that breaks down.'

She didn't notice my smile. Only my reflection saw that, and it smiled too. I winked at myself. The odd lift. Such a funny expression, summing up perfectly the contraption that served the odd-numbered floors in our tower block. The lift
was
odd, and strange and weird. Breaking down, refusing to open doors, or close them. Shuddering and shaking. Always causing problems. Always trapping someone inside. As if it had a life of its own.

‘They never have a problem with the even lift,' Mrs Brennan went on. ‘See this lift … it's going to kill somebody one of these days.'

Cheery thought, Mrs Brennan, and I winked at my reflection again.

Mrs Brennan suddenly stamped on the floor so hard she made me jump. It must have given the lift just the jolt it needed and once more it juddered into shaky life and continued its descent.

‘Don't want you to be late for school, Fay,' she said, and grinned at me. She was wearing red lipstick that was spread beyond her mouth and had smudged on to her white false teeth. I tried to pretend I wasn't looking at that.

‘Oh, I won't be late,' I said.

‘Aye, but you were quite right yesterday. You're better using the stairs.'

We had almost reached the ground floor.

‘Yesterday?'

‘Aye, don't trust this blinking coffin of a thing. You've got young legs. Use the stairs.'

‘I took the lift yesterday, Mrs Brennan.'

Young legs or not, I almost always used the lift.

The lift thumped to a halt at the bottom, and the doors creaked open. Mrs Brennan pulled her coat tight about her to face the cold morning air.

‘I'm the one who is supposed to forget things, hen.
Yesterday. I saw ye going down the stairs while I was waiting for the lift.'

An icy finger was running down my spine.

‘I remember thinking, what lovely hair. Bouncing above your collar it was, and I waved at you. Remember now?' She patted my cheek. ‘And you waved back.'

I
was
late for school, and used the broken lift as an excuse. But actually I had dawdled, my mind racing with what Mrs Brennan had told me.

In the cold light of a November morning I shouldn't feel so afraid. And what was I afraid of exactly? I didn't even know. All I knew was that Mrs Brennan was mistaken. I had taken the lift yesterday; in fact, it had been almost a week since I'd clattered down all those flights of stairs, angry and annoyed that the odd lift had yet again broken down.

But yesterday.
No
.

‘Your bonny hair bouncing above your collar,' she had said. And yesterday, I had indeed washed my hair. I remembered how much I had admired it myself as I looked in the lift mirror when I was going to school. How shiny it had been. Thinking how I must ask Mum
to buy that shampoo again.

But it wasn't me or my shiny hair that Mrs Brennan had seen. It wasn't me who had waved at her.

There had to be a logical explanation.

Memory loss.

That was a terrifying thought. My gran had once been as bright as a button. When she watched
Countdown
on TV every afternoon, she could do the sums quicker than anyone I knew. Yet, now, when we visited her in the nursing home she would ask me, ‘Who are you? Do I know you?'

The first time it had happened I had thought she was playing a game with me, but when I realised that she really didn't recognise me I had cried so hard Mum couldn't comfort me. I hardly visited Gran now. She frightened me.

‘It happens sometimes when you get old,' Mum had tried to explain.

But could it happen when you were young, like me? Was it hereditary? Did it run in our family?

I couldn't shake the thoughts from my mind all day.

‘What is wrong with you, Fay?' Kaylie gave me a dunt.

‘You've been in a dream all day.' Dawn looked at me with her eyes full of concern. ‘Everything OK at home?'

Why did everyone always have to think it was something to do with home? ‘Everything's fine at home,' I snapped at her. ‘OK?'

Dawn sniffed with indignation. ‘Keep your hair on. I'm trying to be nice here.'

I couldn't even bring myself to apologise to her. I wanted to explain, to talk about it with them. But what could I say that didn't sound daft? Anyway, I decided. It was probably just a stupid mistake that would never happen again.

Over the next few days it seemed that I was right. Nothing much happened at all. Except the nights got darker, and we were all caught up in Daft Donald's rehearsals for
Macbeth
.

Even our headmaster thought Donald was being a bit too ambitious.

‘What about something more simple, Donald?' I heard him suggest one afternoon. ‘
Three Little Pigs
. This lot just might manage that one.' He guffawed with laughter at his joke.

What a cheek!
Three Little Pigs
, indeed.

Donald, however, was adamant. ‘I want to stretch
them, push them to their limits. Help them to understand and appreciate the sheer poetry and drama of Shakespeare.'

No wonder we called him Daft Donald.

Stretch us? I felt like yelling at him. He
was
stretching us, because this play was worse than the rack.

Especially for me. No matter how hard I tried I could never seem to remember the lines. And every time I stumbled over them, there was Monica at my elbow.

‘Don't think I'm going to be understudy too long,' she would say.

‘You'll be fine, Fay,' Donald would say, coming over to me and going over the lines with me again.

When Monica was out of earshot one afternoon I asked him, ‘Why exactly did you pick me, sir? I'm rubbish.' I whispered the last bit. Didn't want Monica to know I agreed with her.

Donald shook his head. ‘You are not rubbish, Fay. Far from it. I think you've a quality that suits your name. Fey. One minute I look at you and you're so quiet and still, and the next, the anger just flashes out and you can be quite scary. That's the quality I want you to bring to the part.' He patted my shoulder. ‘You'll be fine, Fay,' he said again.

However, I wasn't the only one who was having bother. The three witches kept giggling, and Macduff kept tripping over his sword. After one disastrous readthrough Donald had had enough. He clapped his hands together to get our attention. ‘Right, tomorrow after school you're all staying behind for an extra rehearsal.'

There was a communal groan.

‘It'll be too dark, sir,' one of the boys shouted.

‘We'll get the girls to see you home, to protect you,' Donald told him sarcastically.

‘My mum won't let me stay behind,' one of the girls said.

He had an answer for that, too. ‘Permission slips will be sent out to all the parents, or I'll phone personally. We'll arrange transport for those of you who can't get picked up afterwards. A door-to-door service.'

He glared around us. ‘You really are a bunch of wimps,' he said.

Monica smirked at me. ‘Well, some of us are anyway.'

I should have sniped back at her, ‘You won't have to stay back, Monica. After all you're only the understudy. Who needs you?' But by the time I had thought of it
she'd moved off with her friends, leaving me standing with a red face once again.

Drew Fraser was watching me and he shook his head and muttered as he passed me, ‘Some Lady Macbeth!'

I'd show him, I thought. I was going to be so good at this rehearsal that I would shock them all.

And I did.

But it had nothing to do with the rehearsal.

Daft Donald spent the first half hour of the rehearsal doing his best to help us understand the plot of
Macbeth
.

‘We know what it is, sir,' Drew Fraser shouted. ‘Handsome king, mad wife.' He glanced at me and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Some pantomime witches and a ghost . . . oh, and a couple of murders.'

Everyone laughed as if he had said something wildly funny. Everyone except me and Donald.

‘Hey, Drew, you're making it sound interesting,' someone shouted.

‘You've got to understand the mo-tiv-ation, Drew,' Donald spoke slowly and carefully as if Drew was an idiot. Which, of course, he was. ‘If you understand the mo-tiv-ation of the characters, why they behave as they do, then you will understand the words . . . the beautiful words.'

It was the ‘beautiful words' I had the most trouble with. Why couldn't they just talk like real people? All that wouldst, and shouldst. No wonder I could never remember what I was supposed to say.

When it came to my first scene I could tell Donald was getting fed up with me. And not only Donald. Monica kept chipping in: correcting me when I was wrong, cueing me when I hesitated.

‘Shut your gob!' I wanted to yell at her.

Finally, Donald drew his hands through his hair in exasperation. ‘Fay, honestly, this is Lady Macbeth's entrance. It's a really important scene.'

‘It's an awfully long speech, sir,' I moaned. ‘Could you not cut it down a bit?'

Monica sniggered behind me. ‘If he cuts it down any more you'll be coming in and saying “Hi,” and walking off.'

Once again everyone laughed. She was desperate to replace me. So she could show Donald what a wonderful Lady Macbeth she would make. That thought alone made me determined to try harder.

‘I'll get it right, sir. I promise,' I assured him and he smiled.

‘I'm sure you'll do your best.'

This caused another snigger from Monica and I heard Dawn snap at her, ‘Jealousy's a terrible thing, Monica.'

Donald drew me aside. ‘I'll tell you what, Fay. I have the video of
Macbeth
– it's in my briefcase in the staff room. You go and fetch it. Take it home and have a look at it. It might help you.'

As I left the auditorium he was calling out for the three witches to go over their scene with Macbeth and I could feel Monica's unsmiling eyes follow me even after I'd closed the door.

It was strange being in the school at night, in the dark. Strange and eerie. The lights from the auditorium shone into the corridor from its high windows, but apart from that the corridor was gloomy.

Gloomy and silent except for my footsteps, and the faraway sound of my classmates' voices. I pushed through the swing doors which led to the next corridor and as they swung to behind me I realised it was even darker in here. Far away, too far now for comfort, I could hear the rantings of the three witches, Dawn and Kaylie making the most of their parts. I stopped and glanced back. The doors swung back and forth, back and forth . . . almost as if someone had stepped
through them a second behind me.

And all at once I was afraid again, and I didn't know why.

I was in my own school. I spent almost every day here. Nothing to be afraid of here. Yet, I watched mesmerised as the doors swung back and forth as if I was waiting for—

Nonsense! I stamped my foot. I was just being silly. I will not be afraid, I told myself. And I turned round, saw it, and screamed.

How stupid can one person be? It was only my reflection. A dark image on a classroom window. I let out my breath in a long relieved sigh. Light. I needed light. There would be nothing to be afraid of in the light. I found the switches and threw them on. A long string of lights beamed down the corridor to the staffroom. Better. So much better. My steps even sounded more confident as I clicked along.

In the staffroom, I immediately switched on the light there too.

Donald's battered leather briefcase lay half open on the floor. I lifted it up and held it against me. Nothing strange here, I told myself, looking round at the posters
on the wall. Mel Gibson, and Homer Simpson, a cartoon of the headmaster. Not unlike the posters we all kept in our lockers. Ordinary, safe, normal.

Suddenly, the light went out, plunging the staffroom into darkness. A blown light bulb, I told myself, refusing to be frightened. I took a step back into the corridor and closed the door.

I had only taken one step towards the swing doors when the light above me went out too.

One bulb, that could be an accident, but two? I ran as I passed beneath the next light.

It went out, too.

And the next.

Now, I
was
frightened. What was happening?