Don't Look Back (3 page)

‘It
is
pretty dazzling,' he agreed.

‘Isn't it?'

Harry twisted his curly hair absent-mindedly. ‘I don't know what to suggest.'

‘Something weird's happened here,' I insisted.

‘What about Patrick's friends? We should ask them before we do anything else.'

I rolled my eyes. ‘He doesn't really have any. He's so unpredictable … one minute the life and soul, the next aggressive and then morose and depressed. Not many people will put up with that.'

Harry reached to brush my fringe from my eyes and
I instinctively drew away. ‘If the police aren't going to do anything, then … we should search the place and look for evidence.'

‘They said we could file a missing persons report.'

‘Yeah, yeah … I'll put it to Mum, but she won't be impressed. She'll expect the entire country to be on high alert and a giant manhunt underway … at the very least. Now come on and help.'

Harry set to work with all the enthusiasm of a deranged detective, opening drawers and cupboards and closing them again, his forehead creased with concentration. I decided he was just acting out what he thought he should do without really having a clue. There were a few letters on the mat and a bank statement that I tore open. Patrick got through roughly the same amount of cash each day, most of which he spent in the pub or off-licence, but the last transaction had been fifteen days ago. I knew before I opened the fridge that it would be empty. On the bedside table I recognized a children's Bible, bound in red leather. I used to have a matching one, but I didn't have a clue where mine had gone.

‘Sinead!'

Harry's urgent tone made me look up quickly, banging my head on an overhanging cabinet. He was holding some sort of notebook in one hand. I went over and took it from him. There was a heavy iron key resting between the blank pages; it had a distinctive fleur-de-lis design. I weighed it with one hand, trying to imagine the sort of door that
would need something so heavy and ornate. A quick glance around told me that none of the doors in the flat had a keyhole.

I scratched my head, a suspicion beginning to slowly filter through. All those years that Patrick had left me a trail to follow. Was he still playing our game? But surely we were too old now. Even so, the blank notebook was classic Patrick and I had an idea what to do. I picked it up, making sure to keep it open at the same page, and took it to the quatrefoil leaded window in full glare of the late afternoon sun. The pages began to scorch, revealing two words of spidery writing:
Tempus Fugit.

‘What the … ?' Harry looked at the sky in awe as if a thunderbolt had struck him.

I gave him a playful shove. ‘You're a scientist, Harry! Lemon juice turns brown when heated.'

He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry … I just wasn't expecting it. It's the building – all old and strangely … hallowed. It gives me the creeps.'

‘It's just a building.'

‘When we came in you lowered your voice,' Harry said. ‘Didn't you notice?'

‘You're right,' I said. ‘It does have an atmosphere. Maybe … chapels have memories and all those years of praying and singing hymns have kind of seeped into the walls.'

‘Suppose.'

A shaft of light burst through one of the panes and
illuminated a circle on the floor. I stared at the pattern of swirling dust motes. ‘Mum thought it would protect Patrick. We looked at loads of places but she insisted on this one even though it was more expensive. She thought he might be saved – probably expected him to have an epiphany at the very least.'

Harry looked vacant. ‘Epiphany is like a … revelation,' I said, ‘a blinding flash of self-awareness.'

‘Oh,' he said vaguely.

I sat down heavily on the smooth white bed sheet, studying the letters on the page, deep in thought. ‘I think this is part of Patrick's game, leaving me clues to decipher to make me follow his trail. It's definitely his handwriting.'

Harry peered over my shoulder. ‘Latin?'

‘Yeah,' I muttered. ‘Patrick went to a posh school where they studied dead languages.'

Harry looked at me questioningly. ‘Do you know what it means?'

‘Time flies,' I answered, ‘or time flees. It comes from a poem by Virgil.' I decided to enlighten him further whether he wanted me to or not. ‘The saying is sometimes used on clocks and sundials. It was very popular with the Victorians because they liked to remind people how short life is and how you can never get back the time you've lost.'

‘You didn't study Latin, Sinead.'

‘No, but it's about
time
, Harry,' I said pointedly. ‘I know the full quotation by heart.'

‘What's the point of putting it there, except to wind you up?'

My stomach lurched and my hands flew to my face. I should have seen it immediately. The clue was so obvious; Patrick had to be directing me towards the clock tower. My frightened eyes were drawn to a tiny door tucked away in one corner of the flat. A bookcase had been butted against the jamb and almost concealed it. I stood up slowly, my heart thudding, and silently pointed to the door. Harry caught my drift and immediately jumped in front of me, offering to go first. I shook my head. Patrick was my brother and I couldn't run away from this.

The door was tight-fitting or had swelled with the heat and I had to yank it open with both hands. I could immediately smell fresh air and feel a slight breeze. There was a scratching noise that made me freeze, but a reassuring coo let me know it was only pigeons. Patrick had mentioned that they'd taken to nesting on the ledge outside the clock face. Anyone else would have complained, but he said he liked to listen to them because they sounded so content and free.

Harry was right behind me, his palm in the small of my back. I felt as if I was being taken to the gallows. I noticed that there were footprints in the dust on each stair tread: someone had been up here recently. The feeling of dread coiled deep inside me. At the top we found ourselves in a small round space, empty except for general dust and grit, a few feathers and bits of chipped wood from a broken
stool. I was so relieved that my legs momentarily turned to jelly and I clutched the wall for support. There were openings in the bricks, little more than slits completely exposed to the elements, and some of the wooden floorboards looked blackened with age. Harry pointed upward to the set of even narrower steps leading to the belfry, but there was nowhere for anyone to hide; only the bells were up there, screened from view by a fretwork panel.

‘Thank goodness the tower is empty,' I said, the gnawing pain in my stomach subsiding slightly.

Harry nodded in agreement.

‘Why doesn't anyone try to fix the clock?' I said. ‘The movement doesn't look very complicated. I don't know anything about clock workings, but it's not exactly Big Ben.'

Harry gazed out over the town with one hand above his eyes as if he was a tourist. ‘It's a great view. Patrick's so lucky. But you said he didn't really want to leave home?'

‘It was one of Dad's conditions. If he was going to continue to support Patrick financially then he had to stand on his own two feet in other ways.' Distractedly I wrote my name in the dust. ‘Dad wanted to get him away from Mum. She loves him too much.'

Harry turned baleful eyes on me. ‘I didn't think it was possible to love someone too much.'

I was annoyed with myself because I'd meant to say, ‘She dotes on him too much,' but the truth had slipped out.
‘Sometimes love isn't that healthy,' was the only explanation I could offer.

I felt an incredible wave of sadness remembering something Patrick had once told me: that he'd found a place to make the buzzing inside his head go away. I was certain he'd meant up here. It was easy to imagine him at night, watching the stars and pondering on all the things that got him down, which was just about everything. He must have felt like the loneliest person on earth.

Harry squeezed my shoulder. ‘Come on, let's go. You can make me a coffee.'

I took one last lingering look at the inside of the redundant clock, wishing I could stop time as easily, when a flash of white caught my eye. I could already hear Harry's feet on the stairs and resisted the urge to call him back. The clock face was transparent and I was staring at a mirror image of the numbers, but there was a piece of paper attached to the axis between the hands. I had spotted it only because we'd startled the group of pigeons and the movement of their wings had caused the paper to flutter. But now that I'd seen it, it was impossible to ignore.

There was a gap of at least a metre between the wooden balustrade and the clock face. A platform must once have existed to allow access, but now there was a sheer drop. Peering down gave me instant vertigo. The paper wasn't faded and so had to have been put there recently – could it have been left by Patrick? I leaned across the gap, holding on to a hook in the wall for extra support. The wooden rail
dug into my hip as I tested its strength. There was a slight creak, but I was strong and had finally found an advantage to having long arms. I was tantalizingly close; another couple of millimetres would do it. The wood creaked again, slightly more ominously, but it held under my weight and I grew more confident and made a lunge for the paper.

The floor dropped away beneath my feet as I overbalanced, my hands flailing in the air as I desperately sought to grip something solid. I dangled, clutching the lowest rung of the rail, my fingers numb and my arms torn from their sockets. Time slowed down. My mind detached itself and all kinds of unconnected things invaded my consciousness, circling in my head like planets in the solar system. Someone small and supple might have been able to swing their legs back up to the walkway, but I was too gangly to be good at gym. I couldn't scream because a strange paralysis had set in, and I knew the effort would sap what little strength I had left.

Who would miss me? I mean
really
miss me? Now that school had finished for the summer even my friend Sara had cooled off. I wasn't even sure why; after years of being close tension had recently grown between us that I didn't understand. It was such a shame that I didn't have any romantic feelings for Harry; I knew he should be with someone who liked him in the same way. My mother might finally realize that she had a daughter who needed her, but it would be too late. I'd never find out my exam results, fall in love, get a tattoo, climb to the top of the Empire
State Building, see the Great Wall of China. The beach boy from the police station flashed through my mind. Perhaps he had been a messenger warning me that this was
the
day, the day I'd been running from. I shouldn't have been so hard on him. A boy with sun-kissed hair and a handsome face had tried to warn me that I was about to die in a few hours' time, and I'd chewed him out.
It's always later than you think.

There was a moment of intense clarity as I anticipated the drop and was able to predict my injuries – broken legs, shattered pelvis, internal injuries, skull fracture – my chances were negligible. My ears were suddenly ringing with the music of a thousand bells. I didn't even hear Harry until he was standing above me, his face weirdly contorted and his mouth opening and closing. It was like watching TV with the sound turned down and I almost laughed, but it was too painful.

Harry tried to clasp my wrists. For a moment his eyes locked with mine and I saw despair reflected in them. There was no way he could support my weight, and time was running out; my arms were so dead they had ceased to feel connected to the rest of me. He disappeared from my vision and my eyes closed as I floated out of my body. It would be over in seconds. Harry must have returned because there was a voice close by, but a strange feeling of inner calm washed over me. My fingers, blistered and split as the wood gnawed into them, loosened their hold and I slipped further.

Finally, with one last breath, I fell backwards into the vacuum, waiting for the falling sensation. But it never came. Instead I found myself moving upward, a pair of strong arms supporting my torso, almost crushing me, and there was a heartbeat as loud as my own pressed against my chest. It didn't seem possible, but I was dragged on to solid ground, a dead weight, incapable of doing anything to help. My body eventually lay curled in the foetal position, unable to move, my bloodied hands cupped to my face. Harry's laboured breathing was somewhere close by but I couldn't orientate myself and the world was still spinning. A haunting echo of the past resounded in my head:
I won't go back on my promise, Patrick. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Harry tried to smile, but he looked badly shaken and the corners of his mouth could barely turn up. ‘It's a good thing you're so skinny.'

I didn't reply, but I did reach out one hand for him to hold. My eyes gradually focused, astonished by what I was seeing. Harry had one end of a rope attached to his belt and the other end to the hook in the wall.

He tilted his head in the direction of the church bells. ‘One of the ropes must have frayed. Talk about lucky.'

‘You just saved my life,' I croaked.

‘I know,' he said, ‘but don't try to thank me.'

Harry was still able to joke, knowing I wasn't very good at being grateful. I concentrated on regulating my breathing, overwhelmed with the knowledge that I was still alive. After another few minutes he hoisted me to my feet and helped me down the stairs, stopping to pick up the folded piece of lined paper that I'd managed to dislodge and which had gracefully glided down to earth like a paper
plane. My hands were trembling with shock and exertion. I washed them carefully under the tap in the kitchen sink, astonished that I still had the capacity to feel like a complete moron. Then I went to join Harry in the living room and sat cross-legged on Patrick's rug, picking splinters from my palms with a desperate need to concentrate on something.