No True Echo Page 11

  ‘Hey, no!’ I exclaimed. ‘Scarlett’s protecting you. Tell him you’re here to protect him.’

  Maguire was looking at her, not me. ‘Is that right, Scarlett? Are you here to protect me?’

  ‘I’m here to do my job,’ she replied.

  ‘No matter the consequences?’ he said.

  ‘It’s the law. You know that. Now, tell me where to find you and let’s resolve this.’

  Maguire took a side step, keeping the gun levelled at Scarlett. ‘Why did you send your boyfriend echo jumping?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not her boyfriend,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t think … That’s not to say … ’

  ‘He’s not important,’ replied Scarlett.

  I tried to hide my disappointment.

  ‘He said he was shot,’ said Maguire. ‘Don’t say you broke protocol to save his life?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what happened.’

  Maguire eyed her suspiciously. ‘No, that’s not it, is it? There’s no sentimentalism here. Oh, I see … He’s your witness.’

  Maguire pointed the gun at me.

  ‘Don’t make matters any worse,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘I’ll break this jump cord and end this version anyway,’ said Maguire. ‘It makes no difference.’

  ‘You know that doesn’t excuse your actions. It’d be easier for everyone and better for you to come quietly.’

  ‘Sorry, Lauren,’ said Maguire. ‘I need a little more time.’

  Maguire pulled the trigger.

  The gun was still pointing at me.

  The Resilience of Ruby Dane

  No one at the trial showed much interest in Eddie’s grandmother but, as far as Liphook was concerned, Ruby Dane had been an important part of that evening at the hospital. She had admired this strong old woman for her resilience, stubbornness and determination. Now Liphook had reached a similar age, she had even more appreciation for her.

  Ruby had held it together even when the doctor explained to her the seriousness of her grandson’s condition. Liphook had given her several opportunities to change the subject but Ruby didn’t mind going over the details.

  ‘So Eddie was supposed to be tree climbing with his friend, Angus … ’ Liphook checked her notes. ‘Angus Sandling.’

  ‘Yes, Angus came round to call for him this morning but we both assumed that Eddie must have got mixed up and gone to his house.’

  ‘And David Maguire … You knew that he was living nearby and that he might be Eddie’s father. Is that right?’ asked Liphook.

  ‘I honestly assumed he had moved.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never saw him around.’

  ‘Had he never tried to make contact with Eddie?’

  ‘No. I don’t think he ever wanted anything to do with the boy. He came round once after Eddie’s mother died but that was it. I think he was relieved to be turned away.’

  ‘So he did try to be a part of the boy’s life at one stage?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it trying. He offered.’

  Liphook snapped her notebook shut. ‘Presumably Maguire changed his mind and got in contact with him.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You said you didn’t know the girl Eddie was with. What about the teacher, Mr Cornish? How well did Eddie know him?’

  ‘He used to give him a lift home sometimes. I think Eddie looked up to him.’

  ‘Like a father figure?’

  ‘You’re asking all these questions,’ said Ruby, ‘and I’m doing my best to answer them, but does any of this stuff make sense to you?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Liphook.

  The silence that followed was broken when the swing doors at the end of the corridor burst open and a gaggle of medics charged in with a boy lying on a stretcher. Both his legs were badly cut. As they passed, Liphook took a sharp intake of breath at the sight of the exposed bones and torn flesh. From the fast-talking medics, she picked out the words ‘suspected concussion’, ‘both legs broken’, ‘damaged vertebrae’ and ‘potential hypothermia’.

  They disappeared as quickly as they had arrived and Liphook turned to Ruby, to find that the colour had drained from her face.

  ‘That was him,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That was Angus. That was Eddie’s best friend. He must have gone climbing without him and fallen.’

  Liphook could hear the confusion and fear in Ruby’s voice. She wished there was something she could do to help. Something she could do to make sense of it. There was nothing.

  Third Thursday

  I shut my eyes in agony as the bullet tore through my body but the pain vanished as though it had never been there. I staggered back but my head hit something hard. The collision brought new pain. I opened my eyes and found I was no longer in the farmhouse. I was outside, under the bus shelter in the pouring rain. My clothes were wet. I tapped my school bag but my copy of Frankenstein had gone. The bus arrived with a splash in the puddle.

  ‘Ready, Eddie?’ began Bill. ‘Then hold on steady —’

  ‘I’m back here again?’ I said.

  ‘Yep,’ said Bill, ‘and if you’re wanting the school, you’re in luck because that’s —’

  ‘The only place you go,’ I interrupted.

  I could see Angus wiping away the condensation on the window to see out.

  ‘Come on, Eddie,’ said Bill. ‘I can’t wait around all day. We’ve got places to go.’

  ‘Not this time,’ I said. ‘I need answers.’

  I turned and ran. Bill shouted after me but his words were lost amongst the shifting memories in my head, each of which wriggled and writhed whenever I tried to see it clearly. In amongst this storm of confusion, I heard the sentence, ‘A monotonous yet ever changing scene.’ I knew it was from Frankenstein but I had no idea what it meant or why I had remembered it. It felt like a memory someone else had left behind.

  I grabbed my bike from the shed and spotted Ruby’s silhouette behind the frosted glass of the bathroom window. There was no point talking to her. She had lied to me my whole life.

  I rode my bike hard up the hills and allowed it to go so fast down slopes that I almost lost control. I approached Maguire’s farmhouse from the lower road, but slowed down as I got nearer. Something was different. There was an old brown car parked outside.

  I leaned my bike against a wall and walked to the front door. This time I knocked and quickly stepped to the side just in case, having no desire to be shot at again.

  ‘One second,’ said Maguire. He opened the door and I kicked it hard to get it past the floorboard. It swung open, taking him by surprise, and sent him staggering back into the room. Had the piles of books been there, he would have knocked them over, but they had gone. He glared at me angrily. ‘Eddie? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Which one are you, then?’ I said.

  ‘Missed the bus again, did you?’ he said. ‘Well, come on.’ He grabbed a set of keys from a bowl by the door and stepped out, pulling the door shut behind him.

  ‘I … What?’

  ‘Otherwise you’ll be late.’

  I followed him to his car. He got in and I was clearly expected to do the same.

  ‘But … You know me?’

  ‘Sorry, you know I don’t really understand your jokes, Eddie. Buckle up.’

  I got in and pulled the seatbelt on. Maguire did the same. ‘I thought it was your mother when you knocked. We have a busy day ahead of us.’

  ‘My … my mother?’

  ‘We’re almost ready for human testing, would you believe it? Tomorrow, I think. A few more wrinkles to iron out.’

  ‘My mother?’ I repeated.

  ‘The rodents have responded quite well so far. I mean, except for the deaths, of course.’

  ‘You said my mother.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Maguire. ‘You appear to be stuck in a loop.’

  ‘In a loop?’

  ‘You’re repeating yourself.’

&nb
sp; ‘My mother’s alive?’

  ‘Ha! Still in bed, was she? Dead to the world? We were working late last night, I suppose.’

  ‘If she’s alive, I want to go home,’ I said. ‘I want to see her.’

  ‘You’re already late for school. It’s better if I drop you there, then pick her up on the way back.’

  Maguire turned on the radio. A crackly voice was talking about something or other but all I could hear was the buzzing of my brain as I tried to come to terms with what was happening to me. Had I somehow landed in a version of the world in which I had a mother? If so, I needed to see her, but what could I do? Jump out of the car?

  For a moment, I considered jumping out of the car.

  ‘I can’t go to school today. I don’t feel well,’ I said.

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Yes. I keep going back in time, except things are different each time and now Melody has come back to life and I need to find out what’s going on and not spend the day listening to the same lessons for the third time in a row.’

  Maguire nodded. ‘That sounds about right.’

  ‘You believe me?’ I said.

  ‘Sorry, Eddie, I was listening to the radio. Did you hear that? They just said we’re heading for the wettest month since records began. Not hard to believe. Seems like it’s been raining for weeks.’

  The Middle of Nowhere

  Maguire waited and watched me from his car, making sure I walked all the way up to the school building. Once inside, I was stuck on the slow-moving conveyor belt of that school day. Short of running out of the front door, there was no way off it. I signed the late register, then went into assembly. Mr Cornish sat by the side of the hall. PC Liphook stood at the front, speaking to Mrs Lewis. My class was already sitting down so I had to push my way along the row to get to Angus.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked when I sat down.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I replied honestly.

  ‘I saw you at the bus stop. You ran off.’

  ‘How can everything be just the same?’ I said. ‘I mean, if so much is different, then how can all this be the same? I don’t see how it can.’

  ‘It is confusing,’ agreed Angus.

  ‘Wait. Do you know what I’m talking about?’ I said.

  Angus laughed. ‘No, but I agree that what you’re saying is confusing.’

  Mrs Lewis stood up. ‘Now, everyone, we have a very special guest so let’s show her what a polite and well-behaved school we are as we welcome Officer Liphook.’

  The usual round of applause followed.

  ‘Community,’ began Officer Liphook. ‘Who can tell me what that word means?’

  Something inside of me snapped.

  ‘Oh, come on.’ I didn’t bother raising my hand. ‘It means looking out for each other, being selfless and sticking to the rules,’ I shouted.

  Mrs Lewis was on her feet, scowling at me, but I didn’t care.

  ‘Well, yes, that’s right,’ said PC Liphook, looking a little thrown by the interruption.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Now can we move on to the bit where everyone asks about guns.’

  ‘Edward Dane,’ yelled Mrs Lewis.

  ‘Well, look at her. She’s as bored as I am and this is her first time around. And do you know why she’s bored? Because this valley where we live is nowhere. Actually, no. It’s worse than that. It’s the middle of nowhere. Do you know why people come here on holiday? It’s because they want to get away from it all and you can’t get away from everything unless you’re visiting somewhere where there isn’t anything – and that must be nowhere.’

  ‘Enough,’ shouted Mrs Lewis.

  ‘I don’t care. None of this matters,’ I said.

  I could see Cornish looking concerned. I glanced at Angus, smiling nervously. None of them seemed real to me. I felt dizzy. The voices were back.

  ‘There’s no medical reason for him to be in this state,’ said one.

  ‘Eddie, can you hear me?’ said Ruby.

  ‘Can you help? I’m lost,’ said a third voice. Scarlett, I thought. It was Scarlett’s voice but none of them remained and the next one I heard belonged to Mrs Lewis.

  ‘My office, Eddie, please.’

  I nodded, and made my way out of the hall, feeling the weight of everyone’s eyes upon me.

  Mrs Lewis turned to PC Liphook. ‘Sorry, Officer Liphook, you appear to be the unlucky recipient of one of Eddie’s jokes. Please, do carry on.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘So, what does community policing involve? How do the police help maintain a stable society?’

  PC Liphook continued but I was no longer listening.

  I had heard it all before.

  Ask Yourself Who’s Laughing

  Sitting in Mrs Lewis’s office, I could hear the scraping of chairs and thundering feet as the assembly came to an end. I was thinking that if these events could happen over and over, exactly the same, then these students and teachers had no choice but to behave as they did. The chattering and clattering was meaningless. None of us really had a choice but to cling on to the swinging branch. I wished I could be so ignorant, but it was different for me. I understood that the world wasn’t as it seemed. I had never felt so alone.

  Mrs Lewis entered the room and sat down behind her desk. ‘Is everything all right, Eddie?’ she asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I answered honestly. ‘Is this normal? For me, I mean. I don’t even know what I’m like here.’

  ‘Since you ask,’ she said, ‘I would say you are a bright boy with a very individual sense of humour, but you need to understand when it is appropriate to make jokes and when it is not.’

  ‘Maybe you should call my mother?’ I said.

  Mrs Lewis bit her lower lip. ‘I don’t think there will be any need for that. Perhaps there’s something you want to talk about.’

  ‘I don’t think I could explain it to you.’

  ‘Try me. Maybe I’ll understand.’

  ‘Nothing that’s happening makes any sense.’ I heard my voice break and I blinked back my tears.

  ‘This is about your mother, isn’t it?’ Mrs Lewis picked a pen off her desk and placed it carefully into a pot. ‘I know she and your grandmother have been arguing a lot recently but you mustn’t worry on behalf of other people.’

  ‘How do you know that they’re arguing?’

  ‘Mr Cornish mentioned it,’ she said. ‘It’s good you feel you can open up to him about these things but I’d like to think you can speak to me about them too. I’m trying to help here, but you need to understand that your behaviour this morning was totally unacceptable.’

  ‘I understand that. I’m sorry, miss.’

  ‘And do you have an explanation?’

  ‘It’s like you said. It was a stupid joke.’

  ‘Yes, well, the thing about jokes is that you have to ask yourself who’s laughing.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  After Mrs Lewis let me out, I was straight into lessons, so I didn’t get a chance to speak to Angus properly until lunchtime.

  ‘These meatballs are amazing,’ he said, taking a bite. ‘I mean, you forget how good they are.’

  ‘Angus, we have them every Thursday,’ I said.

  ‘Seven days is a long time without meatballs, Eddie.’

  I knew Angus was trying to make me laugh because he was worried about me but it annoyed me when he asked, ‘How are you?’

  ‘Don’t you start,’ I replied.

  ‘Start what?’

  ‘This asking How are you? and looking worried business. Everyone wants to know how I am. I don’t even know myself.’

  ‘I can help you with that. You’re Eddie Dane.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ I asked, because I no longer knew.

  ‘Here, at this point in time, he’s my best friend,’ said Angus.

  It struck me as odd that he hadn’t brought up my behaviour in assembly when half the school was looking at me like I was crackers. I put it down to Angus not wanting to
cause me any more embarrassment than I had already caused myself. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for it.

  Questions and Answers

  ‘I want us to name as many monsters as we can, comrades.’

  Cornish’s repeated words were nothing to the crackling and spitting questions in my head but I was dragged into the present by a new response from Angus.

  ‘Frankenstein,’ he called out.

  Angus had been acting strangely all afternoon. He had seemed more engaged with the lessons and kept jiggling his legs under the table.

  ‘You mean Frankenstein’s monster,’ replied Cornish.

  ‘No. I mean Victor Frankenstein, the man,’ said Angus. ‘It seems to me the monster only becomes a monster when his creator rejects him. Before that, it’s innocent, isn’t it? Frankenstein is the real monster.’

  It was rare to see Cornish lost for words but he was clearly thrown by this. ‘Impressive,’ he said. ‘Have you actually read the book, Angus?’

  ‘No, but I saw a really good film of it once,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s great, but in a film the story has already been interpreted numerous times. The screenwriter, director, actors and all the countless others who made that film gave their interpretations. With a book, the reader must do all that him- or herself.’ Cornish grabbed the pile of books from the desk and began distributing them amongst the class. As usual, the same copy with the yellow-faced man landed on my desk.

  ‘So, who can tell me this book’s alternative title?’

  By now, I had learned to drift off at the first sign of repetition. I stared at the book. The man in the picture stared back with his dark eyes. All of this time I had thought of him as old but, now I looked, I saw the lines on his forehead were the product of a frown rather than of age. Under that beard was a man no older than Cornish. I opened the book and flicked through, looking for the sentence that had popped into my head with such determined clarity. I failed to find it, then realised I could no longer remember it. Instead, I turned to the final page of the book and read the last line.