LITMIR.BIZ

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even Hal had to admit that what happened next was no accident.

      Mrs Mumm was checking last week’s homework, which had been to memorise the months of the year and the days of the week. She went round the class, asking each pupil in turn. Slim, pretty Mrs Mumm was another one who made Mardy think about her perfect weight. She seemed almost too young to be a teacher and so demure that an angry word would probably make her burst into tears – though her pupils soon learned that with Mrs Mumm appearances could be deceptive. Mardy liked her classes, but thought her far too fond of the language laboratory. The headphones made Mardy’s ears sting.

      Mrs Mumm was talking to Rachel. It seemed that Rachel had asked a question about one of the days of the week.

      “Gras means ‘fat’, literally,” Mrs Mumm was saying. “So Mardi Gras is just the last day before Lent – the last day of feasting.”

      “Thank you,” said Rachel. “Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. I get it.”

      “That’s the literal translation, yes,” Mrs Mumm agreed cautiously. “But Fat Tuesday isn’t really a phrase in English, is it?”

      “Not yet,” said Rachel, in the same neutral voice she had used throughout. She hadn’t emphasised the words, not in the least. But then she hadn’t needed to.

      By lunchtime Mardy simply was Fat Tuesday. It was the Bluecoat girls who took to it most enthusiastically. Rachel did not need to say anything. She had lit the touchpaper; now she could stand back and watch.

      “Pass the ruler, Fat Tuesday!”

      “Shouldn’t you be in the salad queue, Fat Tuesday?”

      “Need some help squeezing through the fire doors, Mardi Gras?”

      Mardy was glad to get to the end of the day. All the same, the prospect of visiting Alan was beginning to send a series of nervous shivers through her mind.

      She dawdled, going home. As she reached the park she heard again the strange plucked instrument she had noticed on the way to school that morning. It was this, as much as a wish to drag out the time, that led her through the wrought-iron gates and up one of three forking paths, to a circle of flowerbeds and asphalt. The Undesirables were nowhere to be seen. In the middle of the circle stood a granite cross. Steps led up all around the cross, and on the side visible to Mardy a bunch of winter roses had been laid. Lest we forget. She began to read a dizzying list of names, each belonging to a dead soldier. Terence Appleby, William Aston, George Aston, Charles Ayling … Once she had begun, in fact, she found she had to carry on. The music, which was very close now – just on the far side of the cross – seemed to insist upon it. Lest we forget. She could not move further until she had dutifully read and remembered the name of each Burgess, Butterell, Chandler and Crisp; and so to the next side of the cross, and the next, until John Zipes had at last been laid to rest. And still there was no sign of where the music was coming from, or who was playing it.

      Even now she could not move away. Mardy had heard that just before death a person’s life flashed past – all in a moment. What happened to her now was like that, but much slower. She was unwillingly engaged in a laborious act of memory, unwinding each moment of her past like thread from a bobbin. She felt as if she had to or be turned to stone herself.

      Finally – finally – the many-stringed instrument (a harp, was it, or a mandolin?) began drawing its threads of sound together. The tangle of arpeggios became more dense and knotted. Harmonies and discords vied dangerously, and at last a vast, enmeshed chord threw a net of closely-woven sound over her head. It billowed out and settled, dissolved at its edges and tightened at its centre, and bound her hand and foot. For a few moments she was no more alive than a wax doll.

      Then the music was not there any more.

      Mardy gasped, as if she had just broken the surface after a long, lung-bursting swim. She was panting. About fifty yards away, at the far end of one of the paths, a dark figure carrying a black instrument case was leaving the park. The musician – if it was the musician – must have stopped playing some time ago, to have packed up and be leaving already. But that final, calamitous chord was still shaking Mardy, body and soul. It seemed only a few minutes since she had entered the park and seen the granite memorial. Since the music stopped it had been no time at all. Yet her watch told her that an hour had passed.

      The hospital! Her mother had been expecting her home thirty minutes ago! Mardy ran up the path and the short streets to her own house. She was there in less than five minutes. Her mother’s car was still parked in the road and the door was on the latch.

      “Mum?” gasped Mardy breathlessly to the empty hall.

      Mrs Watt was sitting on the living room sofa. Her visiting bag was beside her. She didn’t look up. “Haven’t you changed yet?” she asked coldly.

      Mardy was too flustered to notice the oddness of this question. She plunged on with the excuse she had hastily prepared. “Sorry, Mum, I got held up at school. Mr Lorimer wanted to talk about the rehearsals.” She added quickly: “Hadn’t we better get to the hospital?”

      Mrs Watt stood up. She was a tall woman and she towered over Mardy now. “I don’t know what you’re babbling about, Mardy. Rehearsals? What are you sorry about?”

      “About being late from school. A little bit late.”

      Mrs Watt shook her head. “I worry about you, Mardy, I really do. It was a good half hour ago you clattered up to your room to change. My only question is why you’re still in your school uniform. Well, there’s no time now. You’ll have to go to the hospital as you are.”

      “Half an hour ago?” repeated Mardy, dumbfounded.

      “At least. Now please get in the car. I don’t like to keep Alan waiting. Do think about someone other than yourself for a change.” Mrs Watt reached for her keys and purse. “Mardy! What are you doing now?”

      “Just a moment!” yelled Mardy as she ran upstairs. She flung her school bag down on the landing and then stopped. She still had not got her breath back after her dash from the park. But something her mother had said was alarming enough for her to need to go to her room at once, even if it meant a shouting match later.

      She had not gone upstairs half an hour ago. So who had?

      Mardy opened the door of her room. Perhaps her mother was simply mistaken. But her mother did not often make mistakes – and there was something odd about this day which had made her nervous. That final chord from the War Memorial was still quivering through her.

      But – no. The room was empty, and as familiar as her own skin. She would have felt at once if an intruder had been hiding there. She knew every stuffed toy and CD box and pile of unwashed clothes in the place, and not a stitch of it had moved since she had left the house that morning.

      On her desk lay her page-a-day diary. She kept it only occasionally. Daily life already seemed wearing enough: why fire herself out twice by writing it down? But sometimes she felt she would overflow if she couldn’t let out some of the things she couldn’t even tell Hal. Some of these were about Alan – especially just before Christmas when he seemed to have had a relapse and was terribly close to death again. That had been a long, dark festival. But in the last weeks most of the entries had been to do with Rachel. On the page that lay open was a single jagged sentence, obviously written in a hurry:

      Rachel Fludd is a witch!

      Mardy stared at it hard and wrinkled her nose.

      “Mardy!” Mrs Watt was calling from the hall downstairs.

      “Coming, Mum!”

      Mardy gave one last glance round her room. Everything was as it should be. Everything was in its place … Except for that last sentence.

      Rachel Fludd a witch? It was a suspicion she had often entertained, half seriously. It was certainly the kind of thing she might have put in her diary.

      But, try as she might, Mardy could not remember

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