Phoenix

by Alison Ashley

  – chapter three –

  Daylight finally filtered through my bedding and I peered cautiously over the covers. The sun shone brightly outside, the bedroom was stuffy but still and normal, and I wondered if I’d dreamt the whole thing.

  But my shoes, wrestled off by the side of my bed yesterday, weren’t where I’d left them. One was now in the far corner, the other, I gulped, was on top of the wardrobe.

  “Breakfast!” Mum yelled from the kitchen.

  Maybe Mum had tripped on it when she came in last night and stuck it up there out of the way?

  The aroma of toast made my stomach growl and rising acid made me a little nauseous. I gratefully snatched a piece of toast off a stack on the kitchen table.

  “Did anyone hear that noise last night?” I asked, scoffing a slice. Although the dark rye was bitter, it was bearable thanks to the honey smeared over it. “Sounds like something’s in the roof.”

  There was no answer. Mum was busy in the corner wrestling with the kettle and Dad was lost in his newspaper.

  I dropped into the seat beside Grandad at the window and stiffened. The shadow drifted in and out of view between Grandad and the sink, swirling, converging, thickening, a blast of icy air in the warm room.

  “Morning, love.”

  Grandad’s friendly greeting was heart-warming. He spoke as if we’d known each other forever, not united for the first time just the day before, and even though the shadow remained, I felt strangely safe with him there. The shadow had drifted through the wall which divided his room from ours in the night and he was still here, unharmed, so maybe this thing was part of him, part of his past. I wondered if he even knew it was there.

  “Could be the pipes clanging,” Mum finally suggested. “These old buildings creak and groan all the time.”

  The kettle clicked off and she manoeuvred Dad’s black coffee between his arms and the paper. He looked up at her and smiled; his fixation with the tabloid world broken.

  “This building is over a hundred years old, you know!” Dad exclaimed.

  “I thought old buildings were supposed to have character,” I said, twisting awkwardly to avoid the August morning sunlight burning my back. Although welcome after the cool winter I’d just left behind, the heat was a little too intense through glass.

  Mum poured more water into a cup and jiggled a tea bag in it.

  “You remember when it used to be Eddington’s Hotel, Kathy?” Grandad asked.

  “Um, no,” I mumbled, pushing crumbs around my plate with my fingertip. “I’m not sure who this Kathy chick is, but my name’s Katie.”

  Grandad grasped my hand and gave it a squeeze, smiling. “I know who you are, love.”

  I swallowed hard and moved my hand in the pretence I needed to eat more toast, unsure what he meant by that. I was surprised to see my hand was shaking.

  “The council owned the land around it,” Dad explained. “Well, you can imagine how angry the family was when a compulsory purchase order was slapped on them so the whole site could be turned into a housing estate.”

  “Serves ’em right,” Grandad muttered.

  Dad and I both frowned at him and Dad continued his story. “And to save costs,” he said. “Rather than demolish the hotel, council simply had it converted into flats to match the rest of the estate.”

  Mum slid a cup of dark brown tea in front of Grandad and Dad folded his paper out of the way, perching it at an angle across the corner.

  “No offence, Grandad,” I said, glancing through the window, “but it’s hideous.” Grandad closed his eyes and I worried that I’d upset him. “Oh, I’m sorry…” But my words were severed, my hand frozen midway between my mouth and plate, when he suddenly looked me right in the face.

  A scene seemed to play in his eyes and I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or actually seeing into his mind. Grandad was sitting on cushions, hugging his knees in a candlelit room. He was young, eleven, twelve maybe, even thinner than now, and the woman from that imagined wedding photo paced in the background. The candlesticks and a bucket in the corner trembled with the sounds of distant rumbling and explosions and the air was tainted with damp earth and a waxy odour.

  The flump of the newspaper dropping to the floor interrupted Grandad’s memory and our connection was broken. I blinked, bewildered, as Dad retrieved the paper and placed it beside Grandad’s cup. The image had been so vivid it was almost as if he’d just relived that moment. I’d felt the anguish; felt as though I should have been with him, as if me being there would have made things better. Was I part of Grandad’s childhood or was Grandad really just muddling me up with someone else?

  On impulse, I squeezed Grandad’s icy cold hand and his eyes smiled and watered at the same time.

  “Look, Mum and I have a million and one things to sort out today.” Dad stretched, glancing from me to Ally. “Can I get you two to make a start on cleaning this place up?”

  Ally’s slumping shoulders mirrored mine and the thought that we both hated the idea of staying in a stinking flat while our parents went out, filled me with more unease. If it had just been from the prospect of cleaning, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but I knew there was more to her dismay than that.

  Maybe that’s why I was a twin, so I could live this new parallel life, Ally in the here and now, me in the past resolving unfinished business. Maybe I was just seeing my own mind when I saw into hers.

  “Ally?” I asked, licking honey off my hand. “This is gonna sound weird, but do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “Yeah,” she said, scowling at Dad. “That they’re using us to do their dirty work.”

  “Ally!” Mum scolded. “Dad and I will help as soon as we get back. Unless you’d rather do the grocery shopping, find the local naturopath…” She broke off, staring at me, guilty. “Oh Katie, I totally forgot! Guess the jet lag got me too. How are you feeling now?”

  My ear was still blocked but at least the pain had subsided to a pulsating throb. “Okay.” I shrugged. “But I was wondering…”

  I contemplated the best way to delay my chores – there was something way more important I needed to do – but I didn’t think telling them I’d rather go out would go down too well.

  Mum and Dad looked at me, waiting.

  I considered what might be in Mum’s handbag and our cases: tissues, notepad, pen… what could I possibly need that she hadn’t already thought of? Maybe a battery for the MP3 player which I’d scored for $1 at the charity shop? With a disposable battery and tiny 256MB capacity, it must have been one of the first to be made, but it still worked brilliantly.

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got any triple A’s?” I asked, leaning back in my seat. “Only, if I’m gonna be stuck indoors cleaning, I’d rather do it listening to music.”

  “Sorry,” Dad said. “But give us a minute and I’ll get you some from the corner shop.”

  “Don’t want to be buying anything in there,” Grandad muttered. “Nasty piece of work he is and the prices he charges! Daylight robbery!”

  “I don’t mind going to the shops in the town centre.” I wiped my plate and licked the last crumbs off my finger.

  “Really?” Mum said, sipping her tea. “You’re not worried about getting lost?”

  “This is me we’re talking about,” I said, grinning at Ally.

  Ally pouted back.

  Mum grabbed her handbag from the cluttered work surface as I stood up and dropped my plate in the sink.

  “If you’re going to be helping,” Mum said, locating her purse, “you may as well make it less of a chore. Here.” She handed me a twenty pound note. “Some fresh air would do you good too after all that travelling. Dad’ll draw you a map to the shops. And Andy?” she said to Dad. “Can you write your dad’s home number on it, just in case, you know?”

  I kept my face to the wall to try and control my grin but Grandad chuckled and I hurried to my room before I started laughing too.

  Clothing spilt over the floor as I rummaged throu
gh my case for summer clothes. I quickly changed, stuffed the money in my shorts’ pocket then gingerly reached for my skate shoes, half expecting them to skitter away or be covered in some ectoplasmic residue. But they were quite normal.

  “See you later then,” I yelled, heading to the front door.

  “Wait up, Katie,” Ally called from the kitchen. “Dad’s not finished the map.”

  Dammit, why did she have to come? I had a feeling there’d be something by the church that’d jog my memory about my previous life and I would have preferred to explore alone.

  I wandered back to the kitchen while Dad scribbled on a ragged piece of cardboard, showing Ally the roads we needed to take. She gloated with self-importance when he gave both map and pencil to her.

  The layered smells bombarded us as we raced down the stairs – bacon, garlic, coffee, and a reminder that some people mistook the building for a giant public toilet. We tiptoed over the stain inside the front doors and fled into the sunshine and the droning, alien sound of traffic.

  Dandelion stalks whipped at my bare ankles as we cut down the side of the flats to take a short cut to the town centre. “Hey, that makes life better,” I said, peeking inside a singular glass door at the back of the block.

  The floor inside was dry and someone had put a prickly brown doormat both outside and inside the threshold. Slim frosted windows either side of the door were decorated by green stripy-leafed plants in terracotta pots. Such simple touches but they completely changed the feel of the flat.

  “At least we won’t have to wade through pee to get back in,” Ally muttered, peering in beside me. “Anyhow, we have to follow this.” She hesitated beside a window that was aligned with Grandad’s kitchen and lightly traced a line on the back of the teabag box with the pencil. She tapped a cross Dad had marked. “Until we get to here.”

  “Yeah,” I said, frowning as memories of my whereabouts struck me. “Up ahead, on the corner, will be a brick hall, home to the Royal British Legion. Opposite that, on the junction, is the corner shop.”

  A wet towel flapping in my face brought my recollections to a sudden halt. We negotiated strings of washing strewn between the rears of the blocks, some clearly had been freshly hung and securely fastened, some faded from too much UV and hanging lopsided by one peg. Although walking amongst strangers’ laundry – intimates, longjohns and baggy knickers included – was detestable, the sight left me strangely reassured. Clearly there was considerable trust amongst the estate’s inhabitants for all this property to be left out so openly, so maybe it wasn’t quite as dodgy here as I’d thought.

  My steps shortened as we neared the corner and I eyed the brick hall. The side facing us was windowless, and the front had two sets of double doors. The wide outer doors were open, the inner white ones closed, the paint fresh and clean in comparison to the spray-painted shop opposite.

  “How did you know?” Ally stopped beside me, frowning at the wording on both buildings. “This isn’t the way the taxi brought us.”

  I shoved my hands deep in my pockets and faced her.

  “I’ve been here before.” I shuddered. “Years ago, in a former incarnation.”

  Ally wrinkled her nose and tilted her head sideways, assessing me. “Hah!” she finally said. “You checked it out on your mobile.”

  She crossed the road and continued along a side street in totally the wrong direction.

  “Ally!”

  She faltered and turned.

  “This way.” I pointed to the town centre.

  “I knew that,” she muttered, coming back. “Just taking the scenic route.”

  “So how’d I check my phone?” I asked. “You know the removal guys packed it by mistake.”

  “Dad’s laptop then.”

  “Since when did Dad let anyone touch that?”

  “Then I guess Grandad told you.” She scowled at me sideways.

  “No, he didn’t.” I walked backwards in front of her but she didn’t look at me.

  “You are so full of it, you know that?” she said, crossing her arms. “And I’m sick of you sucking up to Mum and Dad, you make me seem like the bad guy all the time…”

  “Well, you deliberately antagonising them is incredibly tiresome!” I stopped with my hands on my hips.

  “Antagonising? Incredibly tiresome?” Ally mimicked me and mirrored my pose. “Why can’t you talk like a normal person?”

  “What’s wrong with the way I talk?” I exclaimed.

  “It makes you sound so old!”

  “I never knew words had an expiry date,” I replied.

  “You never knew that about fashion either,” she said scornfully, looking me up and down. “It’s like you’re stuck in a time warp.” I drew a sharp breath when she said it but it just fuelled her barrage. “I mean, will you ever catch up to the 21st century?”

  I let out a long breath. I really had no answer to her question.

  I cast my gaze to the triple-storey flats that were set off the street to our right. Although the grassed area in front was much smaller than at Grandad’s, the building itself at least looked semi-decent, as if it was meant to be medium density accommodation. Grandad’s looked exactly as Dad suggested, like an old building restructured, but badly, and the dodgy work hidden beneath a skim of concrete with stones thrown at it.

  To our left though, the terraced houses with their low brick walls, metal railings and gates stirred recognition in me, as if they had some real significance in my memory, yet there was something about them that didn’t sit right. Maybe it was that some of the sash windows, two up, two down, either side of the front doors, had been replaced, or it could have been that three had porches jutting from the front. But my focus kept returning to the metalwork; it belonged there, that was obvious by the rusty stains on the brickwork, but my subconscious couldn’t recall it. I shuddered as the realisation hit me: the last time I’d seen Trentham Terrace all the metal had been removed in a salvage drive.

  A salvage drive? What the hell was that?

  As I tried to delve deeper into the memories the church bells began pealing, and my spine tingled with the happy sound they brought from another childhood. I closed my eyes, tilted my head towards the sun and let the sound pull me to a different plane. Faint voices filtered through my subconscious, so real, so close, yet I knew they weren’t.

  Ally’s sharp elbow jolted me. “Must you do that in public?”

  “Do what?” I asked, perplexed.

  “You looked like a right nutter. Talking to the fairies, were you?” she said sarcastically. “And who the hell is Jack?”

  My eyebrows knitted together. Jack? Had I spoken the name?

  “Glad to see you moved on from Zac so quickly,” Ally said. “Thought I’d need a chainsaw at Melbourne airport to separate you two.”

  “It was a platonic embrace, that’s all!”

  “Good job Stacey didn’t see you.”

  “I’d never do anything to come between Zac and Stacey,” I said. “Zac’s my best friend!”

  It wouldn’t have been fair to Zac, knowing I’d be gone from his life so soon. Although I wondered what it would have been like to kiss…

  “So?” Ally’s voice scattered my thoughts. “I’ll ask again. Who’s Jack?”

  Did my subconscious know? Was Jack the guy in grey? Somehow the link sat right in my mind, but who was he? “Some guy I used to know?” I mumbled.

  “First I’ve heard of it.” Ally screwed her nose up and started walking again.

  As I tried to recall more, my mind became swamped with more recent memories of music lessons and I became aware of the faint guitar music drifting from the pedestrianised high street. I could never keep up with the one tune our teacher had wanted us to learn for the end of year performance. Not that it mattered now.

  Whoever was playing was out of sight and Smoke on the Water rose and fell with the breeze. Of all the tunes the guitarist could have chosen, it was the one I’d tried to learn.

  An informat
ion board beyond the bollards and in front of the bank informed us that a general market was held once a month, and gave a list of dates. It was a pity today wasn’t one of them as I loved picking through secondhand treasures.

  I about-turned towards the supermarket at the start of the shopping strip, then faltered. The clock above the bank’s door suggested it was almost eleven, but the second hand wasn’t moving and by the length of Ally’s shadow across the red zigzagged paving, I could tell it was nowhere near that late. But it wasn’t the time that bothered me – it was the vague smudge of my own outline.

  In duplicate.

  “Ally, d’ya think that’s odd?” I pointed at the ground.

  “The engravings in the tiles?” She stared at our feet. “No different to what we did back in prep.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “My shadow’s weird.”

  “You’re weird.” She pulled a face.

  “But look at it!”

  “Shadows aren’t really my thing,” she said, scrolling through the applications on her phone.

  “What are you looking for?” I squinted at the screen but all I could see from my angle was sun glare.

  “The shadow society?” Her lips twitched when she looked at me. “They’d love to put yours in a museum.”

  I thumped her arm, but my unease had been diluted by her sarcasm and by a fleeting patch of white cloud that erased our shadows.