Stand by Me

by S. D. Robertson

  She had also considered replying. She’d drafted several texts in response, from a simple query about the sender’s identity, to counter-insults and even threats to go to the police. But ultimately it had felt more powerful to do nothing. Chloe had some experience of bullies from school and they tended to thrive on their victims’ responses: especially fear and anxiety. Whoever was sending her these texts wanted to upset her. So there was power in not letting them know they’d succeeded.

  Chloe had tried ringing the number once, although not straight after receiving one of the texts and not from her mobile. She’d used the home phone and dialled 141 beforehand to hide that number. However, it had gone straight to a standard pay-as-you-go voicemail greeting and she’d hung up without leaving a message. She assumed whoever was doing this wasn’t using their main number but rather some anonymous sim card they’d picked up from a supermarket or phone shop.

  Not responding could go one of two ways, Chloe felt. They might get bored and stop. Or it could lead them to step up their campaign, like by coming to the house when she was home alone.

  Calm down, she thought. How could they possibly know that she was by herself?

  Holly was still the only person Chloe had told so far about the messages. She had invited her best friend over today, but she’d already had a shopping trip planned with her Mum that she couldn’t skip. Chloe had exchanged messages with her earlier, as Holly was in the car on her way to Manchester, but the picture message hadn’t arrived at that point, so she hadn’t mentioned that one yet.

  Chloe suspected that the sender was someone from school: most likely one of the girls who’d bullied her in person at some point, of which there were a few. She could handle that. But what if it wasn’t one of them? What if it was someone altogether more creepy, like a stalker or something?

  When she’d mentioned this to Holly, her friend had suggested she ought to tell her parents. Maybe she was right. But they had so much of their own stuff going on. They hadn’t seemed happy together for a while now. Since Dad had stopped teaching, basically. The idea that they might split up and get divorced, like the parents of many other kids at school, terrified her. The last thing she wanted to do was bug them with her problems and give them something else to worry and argue about.

  For what felt like ages Chloe remained there at the top of the staircase, frozen and hugging the wall to avoid giving herself away. The doorbell rang again – the last time, surely – and then the figure moved at last. Instead of going away, though, they dropped down and next thing the letterbox rattled. Fingers were reaching through, flipping it up on the inside and revealing two beady blue eyes.

  Chloe gasped, raising her hands to her mouth to hush herself and wishing she was invisible. She didn’t dare to move, for fear of giving herself away, but she knew all the eyes had to do was look up in order to see her.

  Then came a voice. ‘Hello. Is anyone there?’

  Chloe recognised it straight away and immediately felt a wave of relief wash over her. There was no mistaking that part-Australian, part-northern English accent.

  ‘Elliot,’ she said instinctively.

  The eyes looked up at her, guided by the sound, and she caught a glint of a toothy smile. ‘Chloe! What are you doing hiding up there? It’s only me.’

  Despite the whole special abilities thing – the fact that he might be a vampire – Elliot didn’t scare her. Quite the opposite, in fact. She’d never felt anything but comfortable in his presence, despite only meeting him two days ago.

  Yesterday he’d saved Ben’s life when he’d started choking. There hadn’t been any really obvious special powers involved this time. And yet it had felt like Elliot’s reactions were super-fast: as if he was able to see the danger ahead of everyone else and get to her brother’s side in almost no time. One minute he was sitting eating and the next, before Chloe had even realised what was happening, he was doing that whatsaname manoeuvre on Ben.

  No, there was an aura of safety and reassurance about Elliot, which hit Chloe as soon as she recognised his voice.

  It never crossed her mind to do anything but open the door to him.

  She was also interested to see what he looked like in direct sunlight, bearing in mind that the skin of the Twilight vampires was said to sparkle like diamonds in this situation. In other vampire stories, according to what Chloe had discovered so far online, vampires could actually be weakened or even killed by the sun.

  As it turned out, Elliot’s skin didn’t sparkle. He looked very comfortable in the sun’s warm rays. Come to think of it, he was also pretty well tanned, whereas vampires were supposed to be deathly pale. Chloe pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind and explained that she was the only one home.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Elliot asked, looking at her eyes, which she guessed were still red from crying.

  ‘Hay fever,’ she lied, before offering Elliot a cup of tea. Because that was what adults expected when they called in somewhere, right?

  CHAPTER 20

  NOW

  Monday, 23 July 2018

  Elliot took a seat at the kitchen table and watched Chloe put the kettle on. He wondered if he ought to offer her some help, since she was only twelve, but she looked comfortable enough and he didn’t want to sound condescending. He was more concerned about the fact that she’d clearly been crying before he arrived and hadn’t dared to answer the door, although she seemed much brighter now.

  ‘I’m sorry for calling in unannounced,’ he said. ‘Now I think about it, your mum did mention that she and your dad would be out today. It totally slipped my mind.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Chloe replied.

  Elliot asked her how Ben was doing after his near miss at the dinner table yesterday.

  ‘Yeah, he’s good,’ she said, avoiding his gaze. ‘He’s just popped out for a few minutes, but he’ll be back soon. How do you take your tea?’

  ‘Milk and strong, thanks.’

  ‘Coming up.’

  ‘So how long do you get off over summer?’ Elliot asked, tapping his fingers on the table.

  ‘Six weeks.’

  ‘Nice. And you’re only at the start now, right? That’s the best time of all. I remember it well: the whole holidays spread out before you. Nothing better.’

  Chloe nodded, lifting two mugs out of the cupboard and dropping a tea bag into each before walking over to the fridge to take out the milk.

  ‘It was early in the summer holidays that I first met your mum,’ Elliot said. ‘We were both eleven, a year younger than you, in between primary and secondary school. It’s a bit of a funny story, actually. Did Lisa ever tell you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, believe it or not, she found me hiding in a bush with nothing but my underpants and socks on,’ he said, getting an open-mouthed stare in response. ‘Not out of choice. Some bullies had stolen all my clothes.’

  Having recounted the tale to Chloe, Elliot added: ‘It all came good in the end, thanks to your mum. But it didn’t feel that way at the time. Not when I was standing there, shivering my arse off in the bush, wondering how the hell I was going to get home. It wasn’t the last time I was bullied. Not by a long way. I was an easy target as a kid: chubby with glasses and curly hair; no father.’

  ‘What happened to your dad?’ she asked, handing Elliot his tea and joining him at the dining table.

  ‘That looks great, Chloe. Thank you. My dad died when I was a sprog. Motorbike crash. So it was just me and Mum.’

  ‘How awful.’

  ‘I never knew any different. Mum did a great job by herself, although of course I would have preferred him to have been around.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Elliot took a sip of his tea. ‘Oh, that’s a lovely brew,’ he said, grinning. ‘They don’t make them like this in Australia.’

  ‘Glad you like it,’ Chloe replied, blushing as she took a sip from her own mug.

  ‘I guess your dad’s around heaps these days,�
� Elliot said. ‘That must be nice for you and Ben. Terrible how it came about, mind. What a nightmare he’s been through.’

  Chloe nodded rather than replying, giving Elliot the impression that she wasn’t happy chatting about this subject. ‘So where’s that brother of yours got to?’ he asked instead.

  ‘Um, I’m not sure. I thought he’d be back by now. He probably bumped into a friend or something.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Er—’

  At that moment Elliot heard the sound of a cat meowing, which caught him off guard and almost caused him to spill his tea. ‘Where did that come from? I didn’t know you had a cat.’

  Chloe giggled. ‘Sorry, we don’t. It’s just my mobile receiving a text.’

  ‘Seriously? I can’t believe how realistic it sounds.’

  Chloe pulled her mobile out of her pocket and, angling the screen away from Elliot’s view, she unlocked it. He saw the blood drain from her face as she read it.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked after a long moment of silence.

  ‘Um.’

  Her eyes flicked from side to side as she appeared to weigh up internally what to tell him. He said nothing further, giving her space to make whatever decision she was wrestling with, and then she said: ‘Could you excuse me for a minute? I really need to make a quick phone call.’

  ‘Of course. Give me a shout if there’s anything I can do to help.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She disappeared into the lounge, shutting the door behind her.

  When she re-emerged a few minutes later, she looked even more flustered.

  ‘What’s the matter, Chloe?’

  ‘Um, I think I might need your help. Well, it’s Ben actually who needs it.’

  She showed Elliot the text message he’d sent her:

  Help. In big trouble. Can you call me NOW? No credit.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said, looking up from the phone. ‘And that’s what you just did, right? Is he okay?’

  She nodded. ‘He says so, but he’s stranded in Manchester without any money and no way to get home.’

  ‘Manchester? I thought he’d just popped out for a few minutes.’

  Chloe looked at the floor. ‘Sorry. I promised not to say anything.’

  ‘Can you see him anywhere?’ Elliot asked Chloe a couple of hours later.

  They were now at Manchester Piccadilly, the city’s principal railway station.

  ‘No,’ she replied, frantically scanning the busy area around the ticket office again.

  As Elliot also looked around, he observed a sea of faces: some saying hellos and goodbyes; some glued to arrival/departure screens or mobile phones; others staring blankly ahead. But not the face they were looking for.

  His eyes darted from a man ordering a baguette at a food stall to a mum bending over a buggy to retrieve her little one’s dummy. There were people of all ages everywhere – waiting on benches, finding change to enter the toilets, sipping from disposable coffee cups – but no Ben.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Elliot told Chloe, whose wide eyes and heavy breathing suggested she was on the verge of a major panic. ‘Ben will be here somewhere. This is where you arranged, right? No chance of any confusion?’

  Chloe took a deep breath. ‘This is definitely it. One hundred per cent. He suggested it, because we’ve both been here before. It’s where we had to pick up our train tickets when Mum and Dad took us to London for the weekend.’

  ‘Why don’t you try calling him?’

  She did so, only to jerk the phone away from her ear a moment later, head shaking. ‘Voicemail. It’s either turned off or he’s got no signal. What if something’s happened to him?’

  ‘No need to panic. He was fine the last time you spoke to him.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have had to come here to get him if that was true. Mum and Dad will go ballistic if they find out about this. You’re not going to tell them, are you?’

  Elliot pursed his lips. ‘Let’s concentrate on finding Ben and getting him home.’

  As discreetly as possible, while Chloe was busy scouring the crowd for her brother, Elliot stretched his right hand across his forehead, so his thumb and middle finger were pressed into his temples. His eyes flickered shut for a brief moment before he announced: ‘Over there.’ He stretched out his right arm, pointing across the train station into the distance.

  ‘Where?’ Chloe asked him, keeping her eyes trained on the crowd. ‘Are you sure? I don’t see … Wait. There he is!’

  Chloe tore off towards the public toilets, where Ben’s face had just appeared out of the door of the gents as he took his turn in the line at the exit turnstile.

  Elliot watched with amusement as Chloe greeted her elder brother first with a kiss on the cheek and then thumped his arm. By the time he caught up with the youngsters, Chloe was still berating Ben for not being at the meeting place on time or being contactable on his phone.

  ‘Calm down, sis,’ Ben told her. ‘I was desperate for the loo, that’s all. I had to beg someone for a coin to get in first. Then I guess there was no signal in there.’

  Ben’s eyes looked a little puffy and red around the edges. Elliot got the impression he’d just splashed water over his face, which was still wet in places, to hide this fact.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, to which Ben replied, somewhat unconvincingly, that he was fine.

  ‘Let’s hit the road, then.’

  Chloe protested. ‘I’m just trying to find out—’

  ‘Not now. We can talk in the car.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts. Both of you: follow me.’

  The car park was nearby. Before unlocking the light blue Fiesta, Elliot turned to Chloe and Ben. ‘Cash?’

  ‘Well, we all know that he hasn’t got any,’ Chloe replied. ‘We wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

  ‘Good point. What about you?’

  Chloe shook her head. ‘I didn’t think of it.’

  Elliot raised his eyebrows.

  ‘What? I’m twelve years old. I don’t have much money. I’m usually with adults who pay for things. You have money, right? A credit card?’

  Elliot frowned. Shuffled his feet.

  ‘Hang on?’ Ben piped up. ‘Isn’t this Nana’s car?’

  ‘We had to get here somehow,’ Chloe snapped. ‘Elliot’s car is in Sydney. Probably at the airport, I’d guess. What would you have suggested?’

  ‘Not nicking Nana’s car, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Why’s it nicking? Don’t be ridiculous. She’s on holiday. We borrowed it so that we could rescue her grandson. What’s the problem?’

  Elliot, who’d been watching the pair argue with arms folded across his chest, took his chance to intervene. ‘Are you two finished? How about we all get in the car and head home?’

  ‘But we can’t leave the car park without any money to pay, can we?’ Chloe replied.

  ‘Leave that to me.’

  Elliot pulled the car up to the barrier and wound down his window to speak to the grumpy-looking female attendant in the booth.

  ‘G’day,’ he said, flashing his warmest smile. ‘How are you this afternoon?’

  ‘Ticket?’ she replied.

  ‘This should be fun,’ he heard Ben mutter from the back seat, as Chloe, who’d called dibs on the front passenger seat, twisted round in her belt and shot daggers at her brother.

  Meanwhile, Elliot reached into the side pocket of his door for the ticket they’d got on arrival at the car park. ‘It’s a freebie,’ he said, injecting false confidence into his voice and waving the ticket in front of her before handing it over. ‘Nothing to pay.’

  The parking attendant frowned. She looked at Elliot, who kept his eyes locked on hers. Then she stared down at the ticket and her expression changed to a smile. ‘Of course, sir. You have a nice day.’

  ‘You too,’ he replied, trying not to look too relieved as the barrier raised and he drove off into the road.

  ‘What the hell?’ Ben said once the
attendant was out of earshot. ‘How did you do that? It was like a Jedi mind trick or something.’

  Elliot laughed it off, claiming it was because they hadn’t been there very long and there was a free grace period. However, judging by the looks on Ben and Chloe’s faces, neither was convinced. Elliot had noticed Chloe in particular studying the car park charges sign on the way out, but fortunately rather than saying anything, she turned her attention on her brother. ‘So are you going to tell us what happened today, Ben?’

  Elliot pulled the car up at a red traffic light as Chloe asked this. He twisted round in his seat to see Ben’s response, only to get the shock of his life when a strange grey-haired woman in a green parka coat started thumping on the rear side window next to where Ben was sitting.

  CHAPTER 21

  THEN

  Saturday, 12 February 1994

  Wendy was heading out on a date. She was playing it down as dinner with a friend, but Elliot wasn’t stupid. That friend was a man; it was the Saturday before Valentine’s Day and she’d been behind the sewing machine all week making a posh new dress.

  He wasn’t sure what he thought about it. His mum attracting interest from the opposite sex was nothing new. For some time now Elliot had noticed the way that men looked at her, with her long black curls, big brown eyes and dainty figure. They went out of their way to help her with things: in the supermarket, the post office, you name it. Even Mr Armitage, his primary school teacher who’d coached him to take the King George’s entrance exam, had fallen under her spell. Elliot had found it hilarious to see him stumble over his words in her presence, while constantly trying to compliment her on everything from the colour of her nail varnish to her choice of net curtains. Not that it had done him any good.