Phoenix Read online

  Poor Zac, I had to warn him! I logged into the account Zac’s mum, Sandy, had set up for us both before I’d left. Sandy was really choked when I’d told her we were moving. I think deep down she wanted Zac and I to get together so that Stacey would be off the scene and setting up an account was her guarantee that we’d stay in touch. We’d tried telling her we could use what we already had but she’d wanted something different for her own peace of mind.

  I tried to navigate my way around the unfamiliar site but the time difference made it difficult. Eleven in the morning in England, so it’d be about eight at night there. The party would be happening right now! My heart leapt. I needed to call Zac, but without my phone I had no idea what his number was.

  I glanced at the top of Ally’s head above her pink computer. “Ally?”

  She peered over her screen, her eyes smiling.

  “You got Zac’s phone number?”

  She scowled and went back to her messages. I guessed that was a no.

  All I could do was send an email and hope. I focused back on my screen but a box flashed in my icon strip. Zac Brandon was online! My heart thundered as I clicked on his name and quickly typed.

  Hey Zac!

  I tapped the table impatiently as I waited to see if he’d respond.

  My whole body prickled with excitement when the screen told me Zac Brandon was typing.

  Katie! Wot you up 2?

  No time for my adventures.

  How come you’re not at Stacey’s party?

  Read the comment she left u. She’s nuts if she thinks she can tie me down. Just wanna have fun.

  I must have been holding my breath as I exhaled so deeply Ally looked at me.

  Wot u gonna do? I typed.

  Haven’t u checked my status?

  No, what?

  I’m single.

  U ok?

  Guess.

  I’m always here 4 u Zac, u know that.

  Wish u were here, Katie. Miss u.

  My eyes watered.

  Miss u2.

  The squirt of body spray alerted me to Ally standing by my shoulder and I hastily lowered my laptop lid.

  “Long-distance relationships,” Ally said, drenching her clothes in fruity scent, “never work.”

  “You read my conversation!”

  “What are these?” Ally put the aerosol can on the table and picked up the beads as the sound of vacuuming drifted down the passageway.

  “Found them…” I broke off when Ally staggered sideways and flopped into the seat beside me. “You okay?”

  Ally gulped, dropped the beads back down and licked her lips.

  “Ally?” I prompted.

  “Huh?” Her gaze stayed on the beads, her right hand poised beside them.

  “Go on,” I urged. “Pick them up and tell me what happens.”

  “I-I… er…” She blinked rapidly and snatched her hand away. “Think maybe I caught whatever you had yesterday.”

  “You can’t catch jet lag,” I said. “Or d’ya mean my earache?”

  “Must be that,” she said, standing up. “Got dizzy, that’s all.”

  She stepped towards our bedroom but Mum beat her to it with the vacuum cleaner and Dad emerged from the lounge, virtually trapping Ally in the narrow space between the kitchen, master bedroom, lounge and our room.

  “Ah, just in time,” Dad said, smiling. “Be a good girl and keep Grandad company for a while, will you?”

  “Why me?” Ally moaned. “Why can’t she?” She nodded at me.

  “Why not you?” Dad said tersely.

  Dad offered me a strained smile before thrusting his bedroom door open. Thumps and dragging sounds of furniture being moved soon followed. Ally dithered in the passage before stomping into the lounge and returned Freddie’s friendly greeting with a grunt.

  I opened up my computer again but a message told me my session had ended unexpectedly and would I like to restore the previous session or start a new one. I clicked restore but Zac was offline now and although I could have sent a message it wasn’t the same.

  I shut the computer down and grabbed the beads. A violent explosion tore through my blocked ears, and my stomach lurched. I needed answers but I couldn’t face the fear the blasts had stirred within me, nor the pain the sound brought to my ears. I tried to change my thoughts to something more pleasant to quash the vision of fighter planes and bombs but nothing came to mind. In desperation, I darted into the lounge and dropped the beads onto the cluttered coffee table.

  Freddie was in his armchair having a conversation with himself as Ally played with her phone on the sofa. By the vague look on his face he probably wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t there.

  “Freddie?”

  His gaze fixed on my face and a smile stretched across his. The shadow seemed like a permanent attachment to his right shoulder now and the realisation of who it was left me feeling slightly dazed. People weren’t meant to see their own ghosts, were they? It wasn’t Jack. I knew that now, Jack was the one on the train. It was Kathy, so it was no wonder the spirit was so vague, not only was she haunting Freddie, but me as well.

  “Kathy!” he said.

  I offered him a resigned smile and crouched beside his chair.

  “D’ya know what these are?” I asked, picking up a bead.

  The explosions sounded again and I grasped the chair for support as a sudden cloud of choking dust painted the vision grey.

  Freddie’s cold fingers as he plucked the bead from my palm startled me back to the present.

  “Aw gawd blimey,” he said. A blue shadow fell across his face as he held the glass bead to the light from the window. “But no, can’t be, they’ve been missing for years.”

  “What have?” Ally asked, glancing up.

  “Lord Worthingdale’s eyes,” he replied.

  “Lord Who’s what?” She wrinkled her nose.

  “The guy who founded the town,” I explained as another thread of memory weaved through my mind. “There’s a statue of him behind the church.”

  “I never saw one,” Ally said and looked back at her phone.

  I frowned, trying to picture the church grounds. Neither had I, but then I hadn’t been looking for one either.

  “But trust you to read the plaque,” she said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Course you didn’t,” she said, standing up. “Guess it’s something else you know from the last time you lived here.”

  “Why don’t you show her?” Freddie suggested as Ally hurried from the room. “You know, for a great-niece, she really looks like you.”

  “She’s my twin sister, Freddie,” I said.

  “You’d think so, eh, Kathy?” Freddie chuckled.

  I kissed his bald head, tucked a bead in my pocket and left Freddie with the other bead and his memories.

  “Wanna come back up the road with me, Ally?” I asked in the kitchen doorway.

  “Better than staying in this dump,” Ally said, glancing up from her computer. “I used up all my internet.”

  “Already!”

  Kathy and Jack kept doing laps around my head on the way back to the church. The fact they were both haunting me made it clear they’d both died, so why did Freddie think his sister and cousin were coming back?

  “Where d’ya get that?”

  Ally nudging me broke my thoughts and I frowned at the half-eaten chocolate bar in my hand, unaware I’d even been eating it.

  “The plane?” I mused, not really sure.

  “Yeah, right!”

  “I’d offer you some, but…” I demonstrated how little there was left.

  She marched to the alley by the tearooms and I quickly finished the chocolate and tossed the wrapper in the bin at the alley entrance.

  “So where’s this dumb statue then?” she asked.

  The back of the church where I’d thought the statue was had a semi-circle of seats and an arched recess in the rear wall. Yet I’d been so sure.

  I gazed perplexed at
the stone wall, hands on hips.

  “You alright, love?” An old lady with thinning grey hair smiled from a nearby bench. “You seem a bit lost.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s just that I thought there was a statue here,” I said. “Lord Worthingdale.”

  “Ah,” she said. “You’re going back a bit, love. It’s not been here since the Second World War.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Did it get bombed or something?”

  She shook her head but her hair, crusty with spray, didn’t move and her pink scalp shone through the grey. “But they were afraid it might so they moved it into a shelter. Just as well, as it turned out, because the abbey took a hit. You know, it used to be thrice the size it is now.”

  Snippets of recollection limped into my mind at her words and I screwed my eyes shut and touched the bead in my pocket. Choking dust mushroomed into the air as I helped the Smith’s pick over their flattened house for anything that had survived. But the scene was no use in answering questions about the statue and I hastily let the bead go.

  “Damn shame if you ask me,” the old lady said. She glanced at me and then down to the ground. “Couldn’t believe it when I heard. Well, I hope he’s happy, wherever he is, living on his spoils of war.”

  Ally’s face reflected my own confusion as the old lady talked to the handbag clutched on her lap.

  “Wouldn’t be surprised if the whole family was in on it and Freddie moving into those council flats was just a pretence at being poor.”

  “Excuse me?” My mouth was suddenly dry.

  “Would’ve fetched a pretty penny, those sapphires.” She sniffed. “Dunno what they’d have been thinking all those centuries ago when they made that statue, but I guess back then people was more honest than what they are now.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  The old lady looked up, her eyes wide, surprised we were there maybe, or surprised we didn’t know the story.

  “Why, Jack Stewart, of course, and that tomboy cousin of his…” she broke off, eyes cast downwards as she searched her memory for my former name.

  I stared at my feet, squirming inwardly.

  “Ah, on the tip of my tongue, but.” She shook her head. “Anyhow,” her focus returned to my face and a frown crept across hers. “Thieves, pair of them I reckon, made off with the jewels and disappeared into the night.”

  I sank onto the vacant bench beside her.

  “Yep, whole town sent the Stewarts to Coventry.” She brushed her hands together as if ridding herself of something bad. “Surprised they had the guts to stick around here after that.”

  “You just said they went to Coventry!” Ally said. “Now you’re saying they stayed here. Did they stay or go?”

  The old lady tucked her chin into one of many and peered over the top of her glasses, first at Ally, then at me.

  “Coventry. Tis a figure of speech.” Specks of spit sprayed from her mouth as she spoke. “Means no one spoke to them, ever again.”

  “You mean they still don’t?” I gasped.

  “Maybe folk new to the town,” she said. “But I, for one, have never forgiven them.”

  I stared at her, dumbfounded.

  “Why didn’t they bring the statue back out after the war?” Ally asked.

  “Without the eyes? And remind everyone of the badness in the town? Don’t think so,” she said. “Besides, knowing it would take a good few years to make the Abbey safe again, they rebuilt the statue in the shelter.”

  My heart seemed to sink heavier with every word the old lady uttered.

  “I-I can’t believe it,” I mumbled. “It can’t be true!”

  “See for yourself, if you like.” The woman shrugged. “It’s in the museum, off the high street.”

  I hauled myself to my feet and headed towards the museum.

  “You reckon what she says is right?” Ally asked once we’d rounded the bend.

  I plucked the sapphire from my pocket, held Ally’s palm up and pressed it between us both. I kept my focus fixed on her eyes as my mind flashed to the Dig for Victory patch, but Ally cast her gaze to our feet, gripping my hand so tightly the jewel dug into my flesh.

  “Let go,” she moaned.

  “Tell me what happened,” I begged, taking the jewel away.

  Ally shook her head. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “Never,” I said.

  But Ally continued towards the concrete bollards.

  “You saw a vision of the war?” I offered, racing after her.

  “I-I… No, I don’t know what I saw.” Her shoulders straightened. “Felt like I was about to pass out, that’s all. Everything went dark, kinda hazy.”

  “You didn’t imagine it, Ally,” I assured her. “I think you, we, are both psychic and…”

  “Psycho,” she said, striding away. “That’s what you are.”

  The sign for the museum directed us down a cool, narrow cobbled alleyway between two shops. The mortar was old and crumbling, the bricks tinged green and stinking of damp.

  One wall stretched right to the toilet block at the far end by the car park. The other wall went halfway then turned at a ninety-degree angle to the right. Sunlight managed to creep in there and the heat was crisp, intense. Two metres further back another wall joined it. That too stretched to the car park but had a dusty garden bed sunbaking in front of it. A wooden door tucked in the corner of the wall was open and a sign in the garden bed told us it was the museum.

  “Good afternoon,” an elderly voice quavered from the dimly lit interior. A shrivelled old lady sat hunched behind a counter. Her heavy woven jacket was way wrong for the heat and her hat was the kind of thing people crocheted to use up scraps of wool. Glasses were perched at the end of her sharp nose and red lippy bled from her thin lips into her wrinkled skin. Her twisted hands held a pair of skinny knitting needles, which clacked together even though she was looking at us, and an ugly multi-coloured scarf, which clashed big time with the hat, grew beneath them. A lapel badge told us she was Mrs Edith Rosemount.

  “Do we have to pay?” I asked.

  “No.” Her smile revealed yellow teeth. “The museum is run by volunteers and funded by the council.”

  “Can we see the statue of Lord Worthingdale?” I asked.

  “But of course, my dears!” Her gnarled hands grasped the edges of the desk as she tried to stand. It was then that I noticed the walking stick hooked over the edge.

  I waved her back to her seat.

  “Just tell us which way to go,” I said. “We’ll find it.”

  “That’s not possible,” Mrs Rosemount said. “No one’s allowed access without being accompanied, not since that Jack Stewart and his cousin…”

  “Kathy,” I said, grunting. “His cousin was called Kathy.”

  “Yes!” She gasped, and then her eyes narrowed into slits. “How do you know that?”

  My shoulders slumped; I could hardly tell her I was Jack’s cousin.

  “Kathy’s brother,” I sighed, “is our grandad.”

  “Freddie Stewart?” Her voice carried a note of suspicion.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Get out!” the old lady screeched.

  I jumped, startled. “But you said we could see the statue!”

  “You’re not welcome here!”

  The knitting thumped onto the counter. She grabbed the walking stick, pointed it at us like a spear, and charged forward, forcing us outside. So she didn’t need the stick for walking then.

  “And don’t ever come back!” she shouted.

  The door slammed behind us, but she tugged it slightly open again so people could see the museum wasn’t closed.

  “Hope you drop your stitches!” I yelled at the door.

  “So people really do think Jack’s guilty,” Ally said. “I wonder if he did steal the jewels.”

  “Pretty certain he didn’t, but I’m gonna find out.”

  “Yeah? How?” Ally walked back down the alleyway.

  “First up
we need to look at the statue to make sure this jewel really is one of the missing eyes.”

  “But we can’t get in there,” she said, turning to me.

  “Dunno about you but I didn’t see a sign in there for toilets. Mrs Rosemount has to go some time. As soon as she comes out, I’ll sneak in.”

  “You don’t think she’ll lock the door behind her?” Ally asked sarcastically.

  “Not if my plan works,” I said. “Wait here.”

  The heavy door snagged on the frame when I pushed it and Mrs Rosemount reached for her stick as soon as I nudged inside.

  “Out before I call the police!” Mrs Rosemount yelled.

  “Did I leave my purse in here?” I pretended to focus on the counter as I fumbled with the deadlock.

  “No.”

  “You sure that’s not it, there?” I pointed at a small black book beside her ball of yarn and took advantage of her momentary distraction to flick the lever. Hopefully it would keep the lock in an open position. “Oh, guess I didn’t then,” I said as she held the book up.

  I ran outside and turned to look for somewhere out of sight to wait. The car park was too vast and if we hid between cars we’d look like we were going to steal one. We could have hidden in the loos themselves, but by the smell emanating from them they were no better than Freddie’s; and the high street was no good as the alcove put the museum in a blind spot.