Three Strikes

by Lucy Christopher

  ‘She doesn’t need to tell us.’ Lorelei answered for her, taking her own plate from Jacob’s hand. Jacob reached behind Lorelei and grabbed a present. It looked squishy and soft. Maybe clothes?

  ‘That one is from me!’ her father announced as he handed over the beautifully wrapped gift.

  He’d used silver and gold paper and wrapped it all up with a tiny red ribbon. Nia undid the ribbon carefully, not wanting to tear it or the paper. It was a very long, bright-red scarf, so long that it went around Nia’s neck three times.

  ‘Perfect. Thanks, Dad.’ Nia kept the scarf on as she leaned over and kissed her father.

  ‘And here’s mine.’ Lorelei pulled a box out of the bottom drawer in the kitchen, where they kept the pans.

  ‘What’s it doing in there?’ Nia asked.

  ‘I only finished wrapping it earlier and you came into the kitchen, so I had to think fast.’ Lorelei tapped the box, impatient to see her reaction. They nearly always made her presents, separate ones, which was fine by Nia as it meant more than one present to open. This was perhaps the only downside to not having a brother or a sister; surely a sibling would have to buy a present too? Nia peeled off the tape and opened the lid of the box. Inside was another box, a smaller one. She took it out and set it on the table wondering if her father knew what it was.

  ‘I hope this isn’t going to be a Russian doll kind of present, Mum, with smaller and smaller boxes.’

  ‘Keep going,’ Lorelei instructed, giving nothing away. Nia opened the box and sure enough inside was another box. She kept opening boxes and peeling off tape until she came to the last box. It was bright red and small and covered in velvet. Lorelei grinned as if to signal the end. Nia lifted the lid of the box and inside sat a silver necklace. Hanging on it was a treble clef, a tiny sparkling symbol of music. Nia held it tentatively in her hands, as if she might break it. Her mother stood up and took it from her and placed it around Nia’s neck, securing the catch.

  ‘I had it made just for you. Happy birthday, my darling.’ She kissed Nia as Jacob cut one last slice of cake.

  Lorelei pulled away to look at the necklace. ‘It fits. Do you like it?’ she asked.

  ‘I like it. I love it! It can be my good luck charm for tomorrow.’ Nia ran over to the hallway mirror to see what the necklace looked like on her. Lorelei followed her over and wrapped her arms around her tightly, studying their joint reflections in the mirror. She tucked away the strands of hair that were already escaping her ponytail before whispering warmly in her ear, ‘Sometimes wishes do come true.’

  And then the match went out.

  Chapter Twenty

  Nia took out the last match. She tried to remember what she was going to do with it; there’d been a plan, hadn’t there? She was going to do something with the match, wasn’t she? As she struck it the colours curled up into the air and then down again, a flaming sunset.

  Nia relaxed into the heat of the moment and the memory that followed.

  Tonight was the finale before her mother’s choir went off on tour, and the last evening of the year. It would be their last night together for a few weeks. Nia had mixed feelings: she was excited for her mother but selfishly knew she’d miss her.

  Nia and her father were going to collect a takeaway on the way home and wait for Lorelei to catch them up after she’d packed up her dressing room. They’d see midnight in together, but after that Lorelei was setting off. Nia wanted the night to last as long as possible before the new year started and brought with it change. She knew they could talk on the phone and Skype, but it wouldn’t be the same as having her mother in the house. It would be strange and new with just the two of them at home, Nia and her father.

  Nia leaned forwards on her plush red seat, peering over the mahogany edge of the grand box to look down at the audience. She held her opera glasses to her eyes, watching the crowd below. People were still arriving; the house lights were on and hadn’t flashed yet. Women in dresses and heels were walking carefully down the aisles, clutching The Immortal Hour programmes with her mother’s photograph on the front. Men in bow ties stood up to let people past into their seats. The air was crisp and crackling.

  Nia never came on the first night. That’s when the cast were nervous and tense and waiting for the first reviews, and she didn’t want to see her mother’s face strained when the curtain came up. Tonight would be different. This was no matinee, this was like the last night at the Proms, and after the final curtain call the cast were going to go out onto the balcony with a skeleton orchestra so that when the audience left the theatre they would be met with a surprise encore. They’d never done this before, but it was the hundreth anniversary of the theatre being opened, the first tour of The Immortal Hour and of course New Year’s Eve, and these occasions needed marking. Even better, it was a big surprise for the audience, and for anyone walking past at the time.

  Nia had kept her mother’s secret – apart from telling Sol. But at least she’d waited until the last moment; she’d managed to hold out until she saw him in the foyer earlier. They stood together under the magnificent Christmas tree, admiring its height and splendour.

  ‘Don’t go straight home after the performance. Make sure you stand outside the balcony, something’s going to happen!’ Nia whispered quickly in his ear. ‘Promise me you’ll wait?’ She pulled on his arm until he agreed.

  When the red curtains opened, Nia saw her mother’s face lit up by the footlights. Lorelei was dressed as Etain, the faery princess. She was wearing a purple headdress and a wig that tumbled down her back. Her face was painted with symmetrical markings of a butterfly on her cheeks, which looked like wide-open eyes watching everyone. Her gown fell past her feet like a waterfall so that when she moved she looked like she was floating across the Wildsee.

  Lorelei looked up at Nia and sang the first long high note as if there were no one else in the theatre. Every face in the auditorium was on hers, every pair of eyes was fixed on the faery in the spotlight. Lorelei sang as if it were just the two of them, at home practising at the piano together with Jacob listening in the background. She sang a solo accompanied by a golden harp, in front of a full house on a stage flooded with light. But in her heart, she sang to her daughter and her husband.

  The match flickered dangerously and nearly went out, butflared up again, highlighting her mother’s silhouette in the exit of the underpass. She was coming closer, now walking towards her, now floating: her purple outline fluttering in and out of focus. Despite her best efforts, Nia’s eyes began to flutter too, opening and closing like the wings of a butterfly.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jacob had heard the music in his truck as he drove along the forest road towards the craft market. He changed the station quickly, wanting to avoid the sound, searching for news or sport or even weather, but every station seemed to be playing the same annoying song. He thumped the dial on the radio hard with his fist. It switched back on again. He turned it off firmly. But the music returned, harp strings filling the cab of the truck with a woman’s voice, a soft soprano. ‘Lorelei?’ he said out loud. He hadn’t said her name in some time.

  Nia wasn’t waiting on the steps in her usual spot. Jacob sighed, then saw Caleb outside the hall, locking up.

  ‘Have you seen Nia?’ Jacob shouted over the music.

  ‘They had a fight,’ Caleb answered, his back still to Jacob.

  ‘Who did? Fight about what? Where’s she gone?’

  ‘She ran off, towards town, Sol thinks. They had a fight about something, he won’t tell me any more than that. Believe me I’ve tried.’

  ‘And you let her go? You just let her run off on her own?’ Jacob shouted in disbelief, his eyes scanning the road as the tempo of the music became faster, quicker, more urgent.

  ‘She hit Sol. He was bleeding.’

  ‘Nia did? Nia hit Sol? Are you sure?’

  The music stopped.

  ‘That’s what he said. Look, let’s walk into town. I’m sure we’ll find
her. Sol tried ringing, but it went to answerphone.’

  ‘Maybe, I don’t know… Look, you stay here in case she comes back. I’ll find her, OK?’ Jacob ran down the road into town.

  ‘I think she went that way,’ Caleb called after him, but Jacob didn’t need any directions. He didn’t need to know which twists and turns his daughter might have taken. The singing grew louder and stronger as he followed his wife’s voice and the notes she dropped for him, like clues, in the snow.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nia crawled along the wet floor on her stomach, the ridges of gravel and stone scraping against her skin. Her body was so numb she almost didn’t register the pain. Movement was becoming difficult, but she was aware enough to know that if she didn’t keep going, moving, pushing and pulling her body along, she could die.

  And she didn’t want to die in here, on her own, in the dark.

  She really didn’t.

  The ringing was high-pitched. She tried to lift her hand to her ear to push the sound away, but she couldn’t concentrate on anything other than moving towards the tunnel entrance. She could hear her mother’s singing behind her, accompanied by a repetitive beat which sounded like wings flapping or a dress blowing in the wind, pushing her onwards.

  Nia knew just enough about concussion to keep inching closer to the light, to an escape. She tried to talk to herself, to say reassuring things, if only to hear someone’s voice, but the words came out in the wrong order, slow and sloppy. She sounded drunk. But the singing didn’t stop; her mother’s voice rose softly up into the arches of the underpass and fell back down around Nia like a shawl, comforting, encouraging and vital. It was her favourite song, the one about the blackbird.

  The beeping was unbearable now, clashing with the scales of her mother’s soprano. The beeps were coming quicker and faster, relentless. Nia had to stop, to breathe properly. She lifted her head and saw she was still so far away from the entrance to the underpass. She breathed in and out, the cold catching in her sore throat. Something was vibrating against her hip and Nia forced her hand down to her pocket. Her frozen fingernails scraped and scratched until she managed to pull out her phone. She had turned it down when she was singing and since she’d been attacked she’d completely forgotten about it. There’d been no signal in the middle of the underpass anyway.

  The screen wouldn’t light up properly when she touched it; the battery symbol was flashing pathetically. It was going to go flat. Going to die. But she wasn’t. Nia pushed down hard on the phone symbol, not caring who it would connect with. It rang.

  ‘Nia? Nia! Where are you?’ It was her father. She tried to shape her mouth, to get the right sound out before her phone cut out.

  ‘Underpass,’ she managed. The phone clattered onto the floor as the dim screen light went out.

  Two hands wrapped around Nia’s body, lifting her off the cold damp ground and carrying her away.

  ‘You’re safe now, Nia.’

  Nia felt fingers of frost on her face, the heat of the match fading, now a failing flame.

  ‘I just couldn’t let you go. I’m so sorry, Nia, sorry for everything.’

  Outside the snow had fallen thick and fast; the mountains were white porcelain mounds.

  ‘I’ve got you, you’re safe with me.’

  The wind scurried up snowflakes.

  ‘I love you, Nia.’

  Woodsmoke and pine needles filled her senses as radiant heat passed from father to daughter.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I was wrong. I can’t lose you too. Stay with me, Nia. Stay with me?’

  Nia forced her eyes open and looked over her father’s shoulder down into the underpass as the singing swelled in a grand finale.

  ‘Nia? Are you listening to me? Stay with me!’ Her father stopped walking as if unable to continue until she’d answered.

  The last match illuminated the shadow of her departing mother, burning almost down to the tip. Nia whispered, ‘Yes,’ into her father’s shoulder. ‘Yes, I’ll stay with you.’

  As the old year began its graceful retreat from the stage, Nia welcomed the new year in, singing the softest of goodbyes to her mother.

  And

  then

  the

  match

  went

  out.

  First published in 2018

  by Firefly Press

  25 Gabalfa Road, Llandaff North, Cardiff, CF14 2JJ

  www.fireflypress.co.uk

  ‘The Darkness’ copyright Lucy Christopher

  ‘The Twins of Blackfin’ copyright Kat Ellis

  ‘Matchgirl’ copyright Rhian Ivory

  The authors assert their moral right to be identified as authors in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781910080863

  ebook ISBN 9781910080870

  This book has been published with the support of

  the Welsh Books Council.