‘Mum?’ Lydia whispered.
‘Frances is still unconscious,’ Mum replied.
‘Is she going to die?’
Lydia’s heart lurched violently at Danny’s question, leaving her with a dizzy, nauseous feeling. She didn’t wait for Mum’s answer, but turned away and walked back into the front room. She sat down and curled her legs under her.
‘No, Danny, leave her be. Lydia wants to be alone for a while,’ Mum said softly.
Danny ran upstairs to his bedroom, while Mum disappeared into the kitchen to start a late lunch. Lydia heard pots and pans being banged and bashed and clattered and kitchen cupboard doors being slammed shut. Upstairs, Danny started playing his radio at a volume that soon had Mum hollering up the stairs for Danny to turn it DOWN!
Lydia closed her eyes. There was Frankie losing her balance, her arms spinning frantically. Then they spun more and more slowly until Frankie was moving in slow motion; falling in slow motion. And through it all was the high-pitched screech of brakes, a sound so unbearable that Lydia put her hands over her ears but still it wouldn’t go away. Lydia opened her eyes and shook her head as if to shake the image right out of her mind. It didn’t work.
The long empty minutes dragged by as Lydia sat statue still in her armchair, watching the empty road.
Please let Frankie be all right. Please let her wake up. Please . . .
The words played over in Lydia’s head like an iPod track on repeat.
Unexpectedly, the phone in the hall rang, making Lydia jump. Danny came charging down the stairs.
‘I’ve got it, Danny.’ Mum beat Danny to it. ‘You can go and turn that music down so I can hear myself think.’
Mumbling under his breath, Danny charged back up the stairs.
‘Hello? . . . Hang on a minute. DANNY, TURN THE VOLUME DOWN OR I’LL TURN IT OFF!’
The noise from Danny’s music was instantly reduced to a distant hum.
‘That’s better!’ Mum muttered. ‘Hello? Sorry about that. Hello?’
Lydia didn’t pay much attention to Mum’s conversation until she heard Mum say in a shocked whisper, ‘Who is this?’
Lydia went out into the hall.
‘Who are you? You’ve no right to say such things. You’re sick!’ Mum was livid. She was clenching the phone’s handset so tightly that Lydia wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d snapped it in two. ‘You’re a sick scumbag who needs help. I suggest you phone your doctor but don’t phone here again.’
Mum slammed the phone down so hard that the telephone table rocked for a good few seconds.
‘Who was that, Mum?’ Lydia asked.
‘No one,’ Mum said, tight-lipped.
Danny started down the stairs.
‘Danny, go back to your room – now,’ Mum ordered.
For once, Danny didn’t argue. Mum’s tone made it clear that now wasn’t a good time to whine at her. The phone rang again. Mum snatched it up.
‘Hello?’ Her voice was granite-hard. Mum listened for a few seconds, then slammed the phone down without saying a word. Time stood still as she and Lydia regarded each other. Lydia didn’t know who’d phoned but she could guess what they’d said. It had to be really bad to make Mum see red like that.
A key turned in the front door. Dad stepped into the house. His expression was something to see. Lydia had never seen him so blazing angry.
‘Have you seen the car?’ he asked without preamble.
Without a word, Mum stepped out of the house after Dad. Lydia followed them, a few steps behind. She got to the gate and gasped, horrified. Thick white paint had been thrown all over the bodywork of Mum’s and Dad’s gleaming new midnight-blue car. It covered the bonnet, the windscreen, the roof; it was everywhere. Lydia watched as drops of white fell past the mudguards onto the road. The drops seemed to beat time – drip, drip, drip . . .
Lydia looked around. Net curtains fluttered back into place.
‘Thank you all so much for making us feel so welcome,’ Dad called out bitterly. ‘Welcome to Tarwich!’
And Mum burst into tears.
‘Come on, Roxanne. It’s all right. Don’t let them get to you. They’re not worth it.’ Dad led Mum back into the house, his arms around her as Mum leaned against his shoulder. Lydia stepped aside as Dad and Mum walked back into the house. It was as if she wasn’t there – as if she didn’t exist. Dad didn’t even look at her. Lydia trailed behind them, lost in misery.
Look at all the chaos she was causing. All the unhappiness and destruction. Everyone would be better off without her. If she went away, everyone would be glad. No one would even miss her.
What am I going to do? Lydia wondered desperately. What am I going to do?
And as she watched Dad take Mum into the living room, it came to her. The clearest, calmest thought she’d had in a long, long time.
Go, Lydia. Just leave. Get away.
Within moments, she had on her winter jacket and was out the door without saying a word to anyone. Raindrops began to spatter on her face, but Lydia didn’t care. She needed to get away – more than ever. Within seconds the rain was pelting down.
Lydia walked along, not going anywhere in particular. The rain beat at her, forcing her to turn up her jacket collar and clutch it tightly around her neck. She passed a bus-stop, just as a bus drew up beside it. Lydia glanced up at it. After a quick look around she jumped onto it, flashing her bus pass.
‘Where’s this bus going?’ Lydia asked.
The bus driver raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘Tarwich Moors West. It says so on the front of the bus. Can’t you read?’
Lydia walked to the first empty seat and sat down. She turned her head to stare out of the window. She was glad it was raining. She wanted it to rain. She wanted it to pour.
The clouds above were almost charcoal-grey now, yet bathed with a strange yellow light. Huge droplets slapped against the window. They danced into each other as they ran down the grimy windowpane. Lydia squeezed her eyelids tight shut, trying to stop her cheeks from getting any wetter. It didn’t do much good.
Lydia had never felt so tired. So tired and alone and lonely. She opened her eyes and leaned her head against the cool windowpane. The bus meandered through the Tarwich streets on its way to the moors. It chugged to a halt by a bus-stop outside a baker’s shop.
I hate you . . . Lydia directed the thought at the shop. And I hate that bus-stop and I hate this bus and I hate everything in Tarwich. And I’ll get back at all of you, the whole town. All the people and everything in this rotten place – you just see if I don’t.
The rain pelted down harder as if goading her on.
The bus continued on its journey until there were the moors, stretching out as far as the eye could see. The rain was teeming down now. Lydia rang the bell and sprang up. She moved to the exit.
‘Are you sure it’s here you want, love?’ the bus driver asked with concern. ‘There won’t be another bus along for at least half an hour.’
‘This is my stop,’ Lydia replied.
The bus driver opened her mouth to argue only to snap it shut again. With a sigh, she stopped the bus and with a hiss the doors flew open. Lydia stepped down and watched the bus move off until it was out of sight. In seconds her whole face was wet from the relentless rain. Lydia sighed. Now that she was here, she wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do next. With another deep sigh, she decided to walk over the moors for a while. She wouldn’t go too far by herself – she’d been warned about how easy it would be to get lost on the moors – but she wanted to get off the road. The thought of meeting anyone . . .
‘Please, God, please let Frankie be all right,’ Lydia begged.
It had been an accident. Lydia hadn’t wanted anything to happen to Frankie. But now everyone thought she’d been responsible for Frankie getting knocked over. Gossip and innuendo travelled around the small town of Tarwich quicker than summer lightning. And when Frankie woke up she’d probably say the same thing as Anne. Lydia burned with hatre
d for everyone and everything around her. She gulped back a sob when she remembered all that paint on Mum’s and Dad’s car . . . and the phone calls . . . and the net curtains fluttering . . .
Everyone in Tarwich was so nasty – cruel and nasty.
If only she could just stop the world for a moment, just long enough to catch her breath and think. If only . . . But what good did ‘if only’ do?
The ground beneath Lydia’s feet grew softer and stickier as she left the road and started out over the vast moors. The rain lashed at her face and the wind howled like a banshee. Lydia was bent almost double as she struggled against the wind. And still she walked on, letting her feet choose her path as she tried to figure out what she should do next.
Please let Frankie be OK . . .
Please let her say it wasn’t me . . .
Would that reporter really put pictures of her and her house in the Tarwich Mercury? Maybe Mum and Dad would lose their jobs because of her? Maybe Mr Simmers would believe that she really had wanted to hurt Frankie – or worse still, kill her . . . Maybe . . . Lydia bit down on her bottom lip – hard. She’d had enough of maybes and if onlys.
She rubbed a weary hand over the back of her neck. A sudden flash of lightning made her jump. It was almost immediately followed by a deafening boom of thunder. Lydia looked up at the sky. The charcoal clouds made the sky almost as dark as twilight. It couldn’t be that late already. Surely she hadn’t been walking for that long? Rain-water ran into her eyes and over her lips into her mouth.
Lydia straightened up to get her bearings. She gasped. The strange, swirling colours she’d seen in the car-park were back . . . They filled the sky ahead, moving ever closer towards her. But directly above her the sky was still dark grey. The rain-water running into her eyes made everything around her swim and blur. Lydia blinked heavily and turned to try and spy the road. What was that in the distance? It had to be the bus-stop. She thought she saw it, way over to her left. She couldn’t have walked so far away from it – could she? Lydia headed towards it, keeping her eyes on it. She didn’t even want to look at those strange colours in the sky any more. Ahead, it was getting darker. With each step she sank up to her ankles in mud. The rain battered at her, making her face tingle, almost hurting her skin.
Then came a thudding sound, so faint at first that Lydia could hardly distinguish it from the rain. The sound came out of nowhere. Closer and closer it came. Closer and closer. The thudding changed to a pounding. Lydia looked in the direction of the noise. Through the dark sheet of rain she saw something making for her at great speed. Lydia opened her mouth to scream. The next moment a moor pony crashed into her as it galloped by in a panic. The force of the collision spun Lydia violently around and the ground came up rapidly to meet her. Lydia felt herself falling. She felt a sudden, sharp pain as her head hit the ground, but the falling didn’t stop. Round and round Lydia spun like an autumn leaf dancing with the wind. And then she was falling through all the colours in the sky. Lydia’s last thought before darkness closed over her mind was that the strange, swirling storm had trapped her. Would it ever let her go?
Chapter Ten
A Change In The Weather
Sunlight warmed Lydia’s face. Daylight, bright and welcome, seeped past her eyelids. Lydia thought about opening her eyes, then decided against it. If she didn’t open her eyes then maybe the relentless pounding in her head would fade. She was wrapped in a cloak of silence and, in spite of her throbbing head, felt strangely relaxed, peaceful. It was an almost forgotten feeling. But then she remembered . . .
With a start, Lydia sat up. Her eyes flew open to their limits. Her right hand flew to her head as the pounding intensified. It all came flooding back. Thief . . . and the accident and running away . . . The storm . . . What had happened to the storm and the rain and the sky full of rainbow colours that had rushed towards her and swallowed her up?
There’d been a moor pony, galloping in a mad panic straight towards her. Lydia looked around, mystified. She must have fainted. No . . . she must have been knocked unconscious. But for how long? Long enough for the clouds to disappear and the sun to come out? Lydia put her hands down on the ground to steady herself, her head swimming and spinning again.
Something was wrong.
She filled her hands with earth and let it fall off her palms and trickle between her fingers. It was dry. The ground was dry. Lydia wiped her hands on her jacket. Her jacket was wet. It didn’t make any sense. How could her jacket be soaking wet from the storm and yet the ground be bone dry? She looked around again. The moors stretched out all round her and the ground was not just dry, but cracked and parched. Lydia looked around for the bus-stop. It wasn’t there.
She scrambled to her feet, her head turning this way and that. There was nothing – just space and silence. Something was wrong. Something was different – but Lydia had no idea what. She wasn’t even sure why things felt different. Except for the ground being dry and the disappearance of the bus-stop, everything was the same as before, more or less. More or less.
Lydia slowly rubbed her nape. Why was her skin prickling? It was as if every hair on the back of her neck was standing to attention. Just at that moment, Lydia got the terrifying feeling that there was someone – something – behind her. Her head whipped around. Far off, above the horizon, the sky was ablaze with colour. Lydia stared, stunned, afraid. Flaming pink, orange and yellow swirls of colour whirled around and around. Lydia could see lightning crackling between the horizon and the sky, although she couldn’t hear a thing. But the mad storm was still there.
What was it?
For a brief moment, she’d thought she’d only dreamt about being caught up in the strange storm. But there it was . . .
And one thing was certain – the storm was once again heading her way. The look of it, the feel of it, sent a chill stealing down her spine. Lydia had to get away. Fast.
She turned and started running in the opposite direction. She stopped abruptly. There, in the distance, a figure was running along. Lydia was too far away to see if it was a woman or a man, a girl or a boy, but someone was definitely there.
‘HEY! HANG ON!’ Lydia shouted. She ran to intercept the person. Halfway towards them, she shouted again.
‘STOP! PLEASE STOP!’
Lydia kept running, perspiration trickling down her forehead. The person turned in Lydia’s direction, then walked a few steps towards her. Lydia was now close enough to see that it was a girl of about her age, wearing a neck-to-ankle overall, dotted with different-coloured speckles and swirls. Lydia had never seen anything like it before. The material shimmered like glittery paper. Lydia looked around. Where had the girl come from? There was the road, but where was the bus-stop? And what had happened to the rain? Why was the ground dry? Questions buzzed around Lydia’s aching head like angry flies.
‘Who are you?’ the girl called out suspiciously. ‘I don’t remember seeing you before.’
‘I’m Lydia. When did the storm stop?’ she asked, still running.
The girl frowned deeply but said nothing. Lydia was close enough now to see the girl’s face. Her eyes flew wide open.
‘Frankie? You’re OK? Thank God, you’re OK! What are you doing here?’ Lydia rushed forwards. The girl took a hasty step back.
‘My name’s Fran, not Frankie,’ said the girl. ‘Who are you?’
Lydia blinked hard. Now that she’d had a longer look, she could see that it wasn’t Frankie. This girl’s hair was longer and a darker shade of brown and her eyes were dark brown, not green like Frankie’s. But in everything else she looked exactly the same . . .
Lydia stared at the girl. ‘Are you Frankie’s sister?’
No, that didn’t make sense. Two sisters would hardly have the same name.
‘I don’t have a sister. My name is Frances, but I hate Frances so everyone calls me Fran.’
Frankie’s real name was Frances too . . .
Lydia’s hand flew to her pounding head. She closed her eyes, sw
aying unsteadily.
‘Are you all right?’ Fran was immediately concerned.
‘I . . . I don’t know. I d-don’t think so,’ Lydia replied faintly.
Fran raced forward, only just managing to catch Lydia in time before she keeled over. Lydia breathed deeply, trying to fight off the feeling of nausea that was tumbling her stomach around like clothes in a washing-machine.
‘You’d better come with me,’ Fran said. ‘We can’t stand here chatting all day. We’ve only got ten minutes before curfew and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get caught by the Night Guards.’
‘The Night Guards? Who are they?’ Lydia asked.
‘Huh? Don’t they have Night Guards where you’re from?’
‘I’m from London. I mean . . . I was, until I moved up here,’ Lydia said, confused.
‘London! You escaped from London?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Never mind that now. You can tell me how you escaped later. Right now, we have to get home.’ Fran helped Lydia to walk, still supporting her weight.
Lydia noticed the road in detail for the first time. Before it had been smooth tarmac, but not now. Now it was rucked and the tarmac was broken. Broken blocks of concrete were scattered here, there and everywhere.
‘What happened to the road?’ Lydia pointed.
‘What d’you mean?’ Fran frowned.
‘Did the storm really do this? Or has there been an earthquake, or something?’ Lydia asked, confused.
‘It’s always been like this.’ Fran looked as confused as Lydia felt.
Lydia watched Fran. If Fran was playing a trick on her, then it was a very good trick. Fran even managed to keep a straight face so that she didn’t give the game away. And Lydia still couldn’t get over just how much Fran looked like Frankie.