Another Me (5 page)

Kaylie sighed. ‘Drew Fraser in a kilt? I'll die, so I will.'

‘If somebody shouts up from the audience, “What do you see in that wimp, Macbeth?” I'll be the one who'll just die,' I said.

‘You'll have to do something about that self-esteem of yours, Fay,' Dawn said. They were both enjoying every minute of the whole thing. Revelling in their parts as the witches, screaming whenever Drew Fraser stepped on stage. Enjoying Monica's jealousy of me. I wished I could be more like them. They never seemed to worry about anything. But, of course, they didn't have to stand up on the stage on their own, with every eye on them.

No, I couldn't call it fun.

‘Your dad coming for you tonight?' Kaylie asked me.

‘Not tonight. He's working late, but Donald said he'd give me a lift home.'

Dawn gave me a push. ‘You're not going home with a teacher. My mum's coming for me. She can give you a lift.'

Dawn's mum had us laughing all the way home. Just back from Weightwatchers, she'd put on three pounds and she did nothing but rant and rave that the ‘blinking scales were off', or maybe she'd ‘worn too much make-up'.

‘I starved myself for a week, and I put on three pounds! That's not possible! I only ever eat half a doughnut!'

I was still laughing when they dropped me off at the flats. Especially since Dawn's mum had decided to take them for a fish and chip supper as a consolation.

‘What the hell,' she bawled. ‘The diet's not working anyway!'

Dawn always seemed to have so much fun with her family. I was almost jealous of her.

The odd lift was actually working for once but as I
hurried into the entrance I could hear the machinery whirr into life and hear the doors creaking as they began to close.

‘Hold it! Please!' I shouted.

I broke into a run, but I didn't make it and in the second the doors slid closed I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirrored steel at the back of the lift.

Now I would have to wait until the lift came down again. I watched its progress in the lighted numbers above the doors.

7-9-11-13.

It came to a halt at my floor. Someone getting in? Someone getting out?

The doors of the even lift opened and one of our neighbours stepped out. ‘Oh, is that one actually working?'

I nodded, noticing that the lift had begun its descent again. 13-11 . . .

‘Makes a change, doesn't it?' I said.

‘I wouldn't trust it, hen. The men have been working on it all day. Sure you don't want to go up in this one?'

But even if I'd wanted to, the doors had begun to close as the lift was summoned by someone on another floor.

9-7-5.

‘No. I'll take the chance,' I said, laughing as I remembered Dawn's mum and her diet.

The neighbour went off muttering. ‘We want to do something about that lift. It needs to be totally renewed. Or, better still, the council needs to be renewed.'

3-1.

The odd lift arrived and the doors slid open. I hesitated, half expecting someone to step out. The someone who had perhaps got in at my floor. But the lift was empty. Someone must have got out at my floor.

I stepped inside, and pressed 13. The doors creaked shut and the lift began to rise, trundling almost painfully, floor by floor. Doesn't sound too healthy, I thought, hoping it would hold out, at least until it reached the thirteenth floor again.

It was then that something struck me as odd. Do you ever get a feeling like that? There was something that, for a moment, I couldn't put my finger on.

Something strange and out of place.

Something about the lift.

Something—

Suddenly, I thought I knew what it was.

My heart began to thump like a drum. My spine turned to ice. I began to turn around, ever so slowly.

The shock of what I saw took my breath away.

No, it wasn't what I saw. It was what I didn't see.

I didn't see
me
!

I should have been looking at my reflection staring back at me. Instead, there were only breeze blocks and girders. And a sign.

WE REGRET ANY INCONVENIENCE CAUSED BY REPAIRS TO THIS LIFT.

The stainless steel mirror was gone.

But only minutes ago I had glimpsed my reflection in it.

Hadn't I?

Or had I, for the very first time, glimpsed the other one?

What was happening?
It couldn't be true.
Couldn't
. I went over in my head exactly what I'd seen. My reflection staring back at me as the lift doors were sliding shut.

My reflection.

Same clothes. Same hair. Same surprised expression.

Yet...

It couldn't have been my reflection. There was no mirrored steel wall at the back of the lift. Only the workmen's sign, and brick wall of the lift well behind it.

So, what had I seen?

Who?

Me?

No. That was madness. Crazy thought.

Yet, people were seeing me, where I wasn't. It was happening too often to be coincidence. All this was beginning to make me really afraid.

And then, another terrifying thought hit me.

Where had this other one gone to?

The lift had stopped at level 13. My floor! No one had got in. So, someone must have got out! The
someone
whose image I had seen? Was that someone, even now, waiting up there? Waiting for the lift doors to open?

Waiting for me?

I watched as the lift rose steadily upwards. The ninth floor. The eleventh.

Almost there.

I was breathing so fast it hurt.

Waiting for me? And then what? Suddenly, I didn't want to know. I didn't want to find out. I jabbed my fingers at the buttons.

EMERGENCY STOP!

But it didn't stop. It wouldn't.

For once, the odd lift wouldn't stop.

13
.

I was here. And I had never been so afraid in all my life.

I pressed myself back against the side of the lift as the doors creaked their way open. If I could have melted into the concrete I would have.

What was waiting for me on the thirteenth floor?

Nothing.

The doors slid open, and stood silent waiting for me to step out.

No one was there. Still breathing hard, I took one tentative step forward, hardly daring to look . . . to my left . . . to my right.

My heart jumped as I glimpsed a shadow! Coming round the corner. Rushing towards me. Someone
was
here!

I closed my eyes and screamed. I screamed as loud and as long as I could. Screamed even louder as someone grabbed me, their fingers biting into my shoulders.

Doors were pulled open. Every neighbour we had ran from their flat. They flooded on to the landing. Including my mother. She was the first person I saw when I finally opened my eyes. In her dressing gown, her hair just washed, panic etched on her face.

The second was Mr Reynolds, our other next-door neighbour. He was the one holding my shoulders and trying to calm me down.

‘I'm sorry, love. Did I frighten you?' He glanced at my mother apologetically. ‘I rang for the lift and then
went back to check I'd locked the door. She was getting out just as I turned the corner. I must have frightened the life out of the wee lassie.'

I could see that some of our other neighbours weren't so understanding.

‘I thought somebody was getting murdered,' I heard one of them complain.

‘I'm . . . I'm sorry,' I stammered. I looked at Mum. ‘I'm sorry.'

She was apologising, too, for me. Looking around the neighbours, trying to get them to understand. ‘It's because it's so late, and the landing's so dark. Sorry.'

When Mr Reynolds went off in the lift, and the neighbours had closed their doors again, satisfied but perhaps a little disappointed there hadn't been a murder, my mother led me inside the house. ‘My goodness, Fay, that was a bit OTT just because a neighbour darted round the corner to catch the lift.'

I wanted to confide in her. I suppose I wanted someone to explain it all away logically so I could understand. But not to my mum. Not then. Because even then I could sense an icy atmosphere in the house. Dad was in the kitchen eating his dinner as if it had been poisoned. And Mum began banging dishes about angrily.

They'd had another argument.

The last thing they needed was for me to ask them to explain what was happening to me.

I didn't sleep well that night. But by next morning I had made a decision. I would confide in Kaylie and Dawn. They seemed my only hope. My best friends. Who else could I trust? Even though I knew when I told them they would think I was even loopier than they had thought before.

They listened, Dawn with her mouth open and her eyes wide like saucers. Kaylie with a milk-lined grin. I told them everything, finishing with the apparition (if that's what it was) in the lift.

Dawn shivered. ‘That's dead creepy,' she said, excited.

Kaylie sounded annoyed. ‘I thought you didn't like ghost stories?'

Why couldn't she understand? ‘It's not a ghost story,' I told her. ‘It really happened. I want you to help me find a logical explanation.'

A logical explanation was the last thing they wanted. But it was Dawn who came up with one.

‘Have you ever thought you might have a twin? An
identical twin?'

I must have gone pale for Kaylie pulled me close. ‘Are you all right? Do you think that might be the answer?'

‘But, why would my mum and dad keep me, and give away my twin?'

Dawn couldn't meet my eyes. ‘Maybe your mum kept a lot of secrets from you.'

She was talking about my mum's secret boyfriend. Hinting that if a mum could have a boyfriend, what was to stop her having other secrets?

I shook my head. ‘No. I don't believe that.'

Dawn didn't let it go. ‘Well, maybe not a twin. But a sister. A sister so like you no one can tell the difference. Maybe your mum had her before—' She almost said, ‘before she was married.' But she blushed and just said, ‘It could happen.'

A sister.

‘Maybe she's just found out about you, and she's jealous because she was given up for adoption and now she thinks you've got her life.'

‘And she wants it back,' Dawn finished.

A sister. Was that the explanation?

I thought about it all that day, not knowing if it was
better than the alternative. But I knew I had to find out. I had to know the truth.

That night, I waited for the right moment to confront Mum. My eyes didn't leave her all the while we sat in front of the TV. Watching her, wondering if she really had given my sister away and if that sister was back now, watching
me
.

When Dad went in for his bath she turned to me and asked, ‘Is something bothering you, Fay?'

I wet my lips nervously. ‘Mum, have you got any secrets you haven't told me?'

Her face grew stern. ‘I don't have secrets any more. Right!' She nodded towards the bathroom. ‘Has he put you up to this? Is he telling you I'm still seeing—' she blushed. ‘I go to work. I come home. I don't even go out with my friends. No secrets. Not any more.'

I shook my head. ‘I didn't mean that. Honest, Mum. I meant ...a long time ago. Before I was born.' I was trying to find the right words. Not making a very good job of it. ‘Have you ever had another baby?'

Her face crumpled into a relieved smile. She was suddenly on the sofa next to me. Hugging me close. ‘You know I lost two babies before you. I am so lucky to have you. My only precious baby.' She kissed my brow.
Normally I would be dead embarrassed if she did that, but now it comforted me. It felt good to be hugged.

‘Now, what brought that on?' she asked.

‘People keep seeing someone who looks like me. They think it is me. She seems to be following me. I thought maybe . . .' I let the words drift into the silence.

‘You thought you had a sister somewhere? A daughter I'd given up before you were born?' She shook her head. ‘You read too many books. This girl probably doesn't look a bit like you really. Not half as pretty. She'll be jealous of you, I bet.' She pulled me to my feet. ‘Come on. Let's make some cheese on toast for supper. We'll have it ready for Dad when he comes out of his bath. Give him a treat.'

I knew it wasn't a satisfactory explanation, but I pushed it away, refusing to think of it anymore. Because this was what I loved best. Me and Mum and Dad, sitting round the table eating cheese on toast, just like old times.

I decided that night would be the end of it. It would never happen again.

‘So, no sister?' Dawn sounded disappointed.

Kaylie was still determined that a sister had to be the explanation. ‘What about your dad? Did you ask him?'

‘I think Mum would know if she'd had another baby.'

Kaylie tutted. ‘I don't mean your mum's baby, silly. I mean ... maybe your dad had a girlfriend, and she had a baby. A girl. Same age as you. And now she's stalking you, because you're the one with the dad.'

She really did have some imagination. ‘You watch too many soaps, Kaylie. This is real life, remember.'

‘Truth,' she said, with a sniff, ‘is stranger than fiction.'

I dismissed her suggestion. ‘Even if that
was
true, she wouldn't look so much like me. I don't look like Dad at all.' I looked just like Mum. Same fair hair, same turned-up nose, same smile. Her mirror image, people
who had known her as a girl would say.

‘Well, I've run out of ideas then,' Dawn said. ‘Are you sure you're not just potty?' She grinned at me, and Kaylie giggled. So did I. Not letting them see how scary that suggestion actually was.

I was hardly listening as Mr Hardie the science teacher droned on. It was not my favourite subject, and I had another rehearsal tonight. Under the desk I had my
Macbeth
script open and was trying to memorise the lines.