The Girl Who Wasn't There (12 page)

 

“Knock, knock, knock!”

Someone really is saying that, as well as doing it.

“Maisie?”

I try and drag myself out of the soft sludge of sleep and figure out where I am.

For a second I blink and wonder why the furniture is this way round, let my fingers touch the plain wallpaper and frown over where my Cath Kidson flowers have gone.

Then the pieces of my scrambled brain slot into place and I remember I'm not at 12 Park Close any more.

I'm in Nightingale Cottage.

I go to Nightingale School.

And my best friend is a ghost.

“Are you all right, honey?” Dad asks, sticking his head around the door.

Er, no, not really
, I think.

Or then again, maybe I am surprisingly all right, considering.

Considering I just realized I've been hanging out with a dead person all week.

Wouldn't that blow Dad's mind? If I casually said, “Hey, you know Kat, the girl you met last Friday night? Well, she wasn't really there, if you see what I mean.”

Of course he wouldn't see what I meant.

Of course he'd think I was ill.

Or going through some hugely delayed reaction to Mum dying or something, if he wanted to go all psychological on me. (Though that's more Clem's territory, since psychology is one of her A-levels. But I am definitely
not
going to tell her about this.)

“You've slept for nearly twelve hours!” Dad says with a laugh.

“Have I?” I mumble, propping myself up on my elbows and reading seven-fifty a.m. on the clock. I'll have to hurry to get myself ready for school.

“I'll stick some toast on for you, if you're hungry,” he adds.

“Yeah, I'm starving.”

Dad seems pleased to hear that, and disappears with a stomp, stomp, stomp down the stairs. I guess he was a bit worried I was sick or coming down with something last night, since I didn't eat any of my tea and went straight up to bed.

Of course I wasn't sick; I was just too numb and bewildered to think about food. All I'd wanted was time on my own, to sit in my room and try to make sense of the conversation I'd just had with Kat. To get it fixed in my head who she was and
what
she was. To figure out exactly how I was going to help Kat. (
Always remember,
Mum wrote in the notebook,
you're smarter than you think. Just give it time.
I wish…)

As I lay my head down on the pillow last night, I'd fretted over what Kat had whispered to me that first lunchtime we'd met, when she'd come up to me in the dinner hall. “I'd
love
to find out her story!” she'd said, entwining her arm in mine. I'd thought she was talking about the supposed Victorian ghost, but of course she was really talking about herself…

“Peanut butter? Marmite?” Dad offers as I join him in the kitchen a few minutes later, slouching on to a chair.

“Both, please,” I yawn, dragging my fingers through my hair.

“What did your last servant die of, Maisie?” says Clem, breezing into the room in a hazy fug of perfume and the smell of warm hair-straightening serum. “Dad's working, remember – he's only dropped in for a second, you know!”

I can't think of a smart response; I'm too tired after my epic sleep, when my brain shut down from information overload. But then again, I can generally never think of a smart response to Clem's snippy remarks.

Luckily, I don't have to this morning; Dad leaps to my defence.

“Leave her alone, Clem; I offered,” Dad tells my sister, happy to pass me my breakfast bits while he waits for the kettle to boil so he can fill his flask mug with coffee.

I expect Clem to go huffing off with a half-heard, petulant grumble, but she doesn't.

In fact, she's strangely quiet.

I glance up from the toast I'm buttering and see that my sister's eyes are narrowed, closely observing Dad as he plonks down the jars beside my plate with a cheery whistle.

“What? Have I got toast crumbs on my chin or something?” Dad asks, suddenly registering Clem's forensic gaze and brushing his face with his hands.

“
You
look very happy,” she says, accusingly.

“I'm a happy sort of person! What can I tell you?” he replies, but he's grinning, as if he's in on a joke we're not part of.

“You can tell us what you're smiling about, for a start,” Clem demands.

“What is it?” I join in and ask, feeling very awake now, even if I probably don't look it, with my scruffy PJs and bedhead hair.

“Well, I took my youngest daughter's advice…” he begins, reserving his smile for me.

“Whoa –
tell
me you didn't listen to anything
she
had to say,” Clem interrupts, reserving her lazy sarcasm for me. “You
know
that's about as sensible as paddling through a piranha-infested river.”

“OK, Clem, if you don't want to hear what your sister's advice was, and how it worked out, then fine,” Dad says with a maddening shrug.

Maddening for Clem, since
I
know what I said. What I said when I kept Dad company as he cleaned the art room windows yesterday afternoon.

“Dad! Don't be so childish!” she accuses him, as if she's the most grown-up of us all. Yeah, so grown-up she's looking like she might just have a tantrum if he doesn't spill his story in the next ten seconds or less.

If I wasn't so keen to find out what was going on, I'd've happily sat munching my toast, watching Dad wind her up some more…

“Dad – are you talking about Donna?” I ask him, feeling pretty certain it's what he means. He's taken my advice; he's asked her to be honest with him about what's going on. And he's smiling, which means it
has
to be good news, doesn't it?

“I called her up, Maisie, like you told me to,” Dad acknowledges, as he pours the hot water into his flask mug.

“And what did she say?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Clem's gaze dart from me to Dad to me again. Not knowing what's going on must be absolutely infuriating for her.

Great!

“She apologized. She said she's sorry if she's been a bit distant; she said things had been getting on top of her.”

“So it's definitely nothing to do with me and Clem?” I check.

“Wait a minute, what do you mea—”

“Definitely not,” says Dad, cutting across Clem's protests. “And hey, if she had a problem with you and your sister, she wouldn't be coming here for tea with us tomorrow night, would she?”

So,
that's
what Dad's big beaming smile is all about!

“
Here?
” says Clem, her voice sounding sarky, as usual. Can't she ditch it for once? Hasn't she been hoping, same as me, that we'd meet Dad's mystery woman one day? If she keeps this up tomorrow, Donna really
might
go off the idea of us pretty quickly…

“Yes, here!” says Dad, screwing the lid on his flask mug. “Got a problem with that, Miss Clementine Mills?”

He's still grinning, skating over the top of Clem's negativity, which I can never manage to do (it sinks me).

“Well,
I
haven't got a problem living in this dump, surrounded by unpacked boxes, but your lovely girlfriend might.”

Clem fans out her arms, looking like one of those perma-smiling models on some shopping channel, displaying the goods for sale.

Only Clem isn't smiling and what she's drawing our attention to isn't anything anyone would want to pay money for.

I hate to say it, but she's right.

Apart from a few favourite things propped on the shelves, the rest of the kitchen still looks like we moved in twenty minutes ago.

“It's only been a week and a half, and you've had your new job to concentrate on,” I say to Dad, seeing him wince at the clutter we've been too busy living with to notice.

But Dad doesn't seem to register my comforting words, and begins rubbing his face with his hands.

“Maybe I should book us into a restaurant,” he mumbles.

“No, you
won't
,” says Clem.

“What's going on with you?” I find myself snapping at her. “One minute you're making out this place is too scuzzy to bring Donna back to, then the next, you're telling Dad he
shouldn't
cancel.”

“Look, if Donna is coming, it's serious. I mean they're serious; in a good way, right?” she says, talking to me as if I have the brain of a small, dim slug.

“Right,” I reply.

I notice that now it's Dad's turn to stare from one to the other of us, confused.

“So Donna needs to meet us. She needs to see the hovel,” says Clem, doing her shopping-channel-hostess act again and fanning her arms out. “If she still likes Dad after she's seen this place and we've grilled her—”

“Clem!” Dad gasps in alarm.

“Joking!” she sighs, rolling her eyes. “
As
I was saying, if Donna can handle the sight of me and Maisie
and
our dismal home, then she is bound to be a good person.”

“Er … OK,” Dad says dubiously, staring at Clem, then staring at the teetering mountain of brown boxes cluttering up one side of the kitchen.

“And me and Maisie will help you blitz this place tonight. Right, Maisie?”

“Right,” I say again, as if I'm answering a sergeant major.

But if it helps Dad and Donna be happy, I'm happy – just this once – to be ordered about.

“What can I say? Thanks, girls; that's great,” Dad laughs happily, stunned at Clem's kind offer. “Well, till tonight, then. I better go and shoo away parents trying to park outside the entrance, as usual…”

“Not so fast,” says Clem, putting an arm out to stop him passing. “What are you making for tea?”

“Oh! I, uh, I'm not really sure…”

“Your Italian stuff's really nice. Do that,” says Clem, sounding like a bossy head chef now. “And there's that new deli in town – they do real sun-dried tomatoes and posh fresh pesto and everything. Write a list and leave it for us. Maisie will go after school.”

“Will I?” I say, startled at the rate these orders are coming.

“Well,
duh
!” says Clem. “
I
can't go 'cause I'm dip-dying the ends of Bea's hair blue, aren't I?”

There's no arguing with that, I guess.

And I don't have the energy to argue with Clem anyway, not when I'm more concerned with problems I've got to solve, like how exactly I can help Kat. I mean, where do I begin?

“
What
new deli?” Dad asks Clem, at the same time as checking his watch and knowing he needs to get a move on.

“It's right by that café that opened a couple of years ago. The one with all the vintage plates and cups and cake stands in the window. What's it called again?”

I frown. I think. I
do
know it; Lilah's mum took her, me and Jasneet there when it first opened. We had scones and jam and cream and all felt wonderfully full and slightly sick after.

Oh,
why
can't I remember?

Maybe it's because my mind is too fixated on finding clues to unlock Kat's story.

Not that I'm likely to stumble on one here, in our messy kitchen, surrounded by boxes and clutter and breakfast plates.

“Oh!” gasps Clem, suddenly looking like she's been slapped around the face. “I remember now; the name of the café … it's
Butterfield's
!”

“No way!” Dad says with a grin. “The name of the old site manager of the school? That's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it?”

I'd say it's
much
more than a bit of a coincidence.

Mum's advice is right; I just needed to give my smartness some time. 'Cause it occurs to me that the first piece of Katherine Mary Jessop's puzzle has something to do with the box we –
she
– found in the summerhouse. And now I have a fuzzy but somehow sure feeling that the second piece of the puzzle has just dropped into place, and I can't wait to tell Kat all about it…

*

Buddhists have mantras.

And anyone who's into meditating has mantras too, words or phrases they repeat over and over again.

I'm repeating my own mantra now.

“Where are you, Kat? Where are you, Kat? Where are you, Kat?” in a voice so low that no one can hear, though they may see my lips moving, I guess. (Patience gave me a quizzical look in maths class, but thankfully she didn't nudge anyone else so they could gawp at me too.)

I'm desperate to see Kat, but I'm desperately worried too. The more she appears, the more exhausted she gets. Was helping me through the shock yesterday too much for her? I haven't seen her anywhere so far today. The corridors buzz with girls who aren't Kat, the packed dinner hall felt empty without her at lunch, the sprawling green lawn with its blossom-laden trees seems a khaki shade of grey without the presence of my best friend.