Mirror, Mirror

by Cara Delevingne

  29

  Some kind of force is trying to propel my guts out of my mouth, so I sit up abruptly, waking up to a world of pain, just in time to avoid throwing up on myself.

  I struggle to my knees, my head following a few seconds later, and I shudder and retch again, a pool of clear fluid forming in the dirt.

  ‘Fuck. Shit. Fuck.’ I know I say those words out loud, but they don’t sound like me, they are deep and rough. Fuck. It’s properly dark and I’m freezing. I wind my arms around myself trying to hug some warmth into my painful bones, but there isn’t any. Everything hurts, my face throbs, my head pounds so hard, and worst of all, I think I must still be drunk, as when I try and stand, the world does its best to fling me out into space.

  Christ. I climb out from under the slide and force myself upright, holding onto the rough rusty metal as I suck in the cold air. That’s when I see that I am not alone any more. There’s a figure on the swings, dressed in dark clothes. I might not have noticed them except for the squeak of the rusty chain as the swing moves back and forth. Hood up over baseball cap, shoulders hunched. I should feel a prickle of fear, a sense of danger looking at the kid. Because no kid is ever out here at this time of night to have fun on the swings.

  Still not afraid. So that’s what vodka does to you.

  It takes away every last emotion and leaves you fearless. Stinking and in pain, but fearless anyway. For one fleeting second I almost feel sorry for Mum; if this is what she needs to be able to get through the day, she must be terrified all of the time.

  I sit down next to the kid on the other swing, and I feel like a dick because the other swing is a baby swing and I can only really perch on the top of it. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, but I can’t move now. If I move now then I’ll look like even more of a dick. The kid doesn’t move, their face hidden, lost in the dark of the hoodie, but I can’t see a weapon, just pale, slim, familiar-looking fingers wound around the chain. And then I realise where I’ve seen that daisy ring before. It’s Naomi’s, she was wearing it just before she went missing.

  ‘Naomi?’ I whisper her name. Has she died? Is this her ghost? I look back at the slide, in case my body is still there, but it’s not; it’s me, and it’s her, her long fingers exactly. ‘Nai?’

  ‘Oh you fucktard.’ Ashira turns to look at me, her face crumpling into disgust as she does. ‘Jesus, what happened to you? No wonder you think I’m my sister’s fucking ghost; you’re pissed. And, FYI, she ain’t dead. Yet.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask her. ‘It’s not safe!’

  ‘No, not when you’re here. I came here to think,’ Ash says. ‘I can’t think at home, or in the hospital and I’m trying to figure out the tattoo.’

  ‘What?’ I seem to be lagging behind reality by one or two beats and nothing she says makes sense.

  ‘I know why you are fucked up,’ Ashira says, when I don’t reply. ‘I didn’t bring it up at the hospital because, well, you looked like you were handling it. Now . . . Anyway, that shit’s been going round and round in circles all day. First you kissed her, then you grabbed her tit, then you stuck your hand in her pants. Best of all, last post I saw, it said you made yourself a fake dick, whopped it out on the bed.’

  ‘Oh God,’ my whole body seems to cringe itself sober in horror. ‘I made myself a dick, out of what? Some toilet roll tubes and a washing-up bottle? Christ, I’m a girl who fancies girls, why would I want to get anywhere near a dick?’

  Ash laughs. ‘Trolls never get that sort of shit.’

  ‘Fuck, I can never go back to school. Never.’

  ‘You can.’ Ash looks straight ahead, between the tower blocks where lights of the fancy penthouses, and the cranes that are building even more of them, twinkle high in the sky. ‘Try having your sister disappear and maybe attempt suicide, and see what crazy shit gets chatted over that, and then you’ll know that you can go back to school. Trying to snog fucking Rose Carter, isn’t anything. Fucking everyone’s snogged her anyway.’

  ‘Not everyone,’ I say. ‘Shit, now I feel like even more of a dick.’

  ‘I thought you said you don’t like dicks?’ She laughs and so do I.

  ‘That’s the worst thing.’ Ash looks at me, and I see the pain in her face. ‘I can’t move on, Red, I can’t see a way out of this. Not until I figure out what happened.’

  ‘Look, it’s Friday, and she might wake up on Monday and tell us,’ I say. ‘Maybe it would be better, saner to just wait. Because she’s going to wake up in a couple of days.’

  Ash is quiet for a very long time, the chains of the swing stop creaking as she stills.

  ‘Or she might not.’

  ‘Wait a minute . . .’ Something comes back to me as my brain starts to sober up. A flash of an image, of something where it shouldn’t be. I get up off the swing and turn around, staring at the slide.

  ‘What?’ Ash frowns.

  ‘I’m not sure if it was real or imagined but . . . ’

  Turning on my phone torch I go back to the slide, careful to step over what I threw up a few minutes ago.

  ‘Bloody hell, you’re disgusting,’ Ash says as she follows me. ‘To think I wanted to kiss you.’

  ‘Wait. What?’ Did she say that or did I imagine it?

  ‘What?’ She holds my gaze, and I’m trying to figure out what happened when something occurs to me.

  ‘Oh my God, I just remembered. . .’ I crouch under the crook of the slide and look. We sit here a lot, talking and messing around, but we never look up, never even thought about it. I never would have if I hadn’t been unable to stand up any more.

  Shining a light right up into the crook I see it, duct-taped into the narrowest angle of the triangle.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I whisper, sending spiders and bugs scurrying down my arm as I reach up and rip it off, carrying it outside to look at it in the torchlight.

  ‘What is it?’ Ash asks me and then she sees and her face changes.

  ‘It’s Naomi’s phone. It’s her phone! She must have hidden it there!’

  We stare at each other in the dark.

  ‘This changes everything.’

  I don’t want to face either of my parents, so I guide Ash through the alley to the back door. Hopefully they are in the living room, ruining each other’s lives.

  ‘Take your shoes off,’ I whisper to Ash, before we go inside. ‘And try not to make any noise.’

  ‘This is your house, right?’ Ashira asks me, her eyes widening as I shush her. ‘Drama, much.’

  The door jams, something is caught underneath it and it’s not until I dislodge it that I see it’s Mum’s purse; coins are scattered across the floor and her bag is upside down, lipstick with a lid off, her keys. Her empty upturned bag thrown against the wall, slumps against the skirting board, like it’s been knocked out for the count.

  ‘I think she was really pissed off that I nicked her vodka,’ I whisper as we creep through the kitchen. The living-room door is slightly ajar. Mum is asleep on the sofa, no sign of Dad. Did he go out again?

  I jerk my head up the stairs, and Ash follows my lead walking upstairs in her socks. Gracie’s door is open, her nightlight on, a sure sign that she was upset before she went to sleep, because Mum only ever lets her keep her door open if she is afraid of something. I’m about to go in when I see Dad stretched out on the floor next to her, eyes closed, phone resting on his chest.

  For a second I remember when it used to be my bed he slept beside when I was scared to sleep on my own, and I feel something stretch and snap inside, happiness and sadness mingled into one moment of loss. There was a time when everything in my house was warm and safe, and good. And I’m pleased that Gracie went to sleep feeling that way tonight. I wish I could, too.

  Ash looks around my room, the drum kit in the corner, the clothes on the floor, and sits on my bed and stares at the phone.

  ‘Do you think she put it there?’ I ask her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. I think she put it there and I t
hink she thought you’d find it weeks and weeks ago.’

  ‘But why?’ I sit on the floor, leaning my back against the bedroom door. ‘If you were running away, why would you do that?’

  ‘Because whatever it was she was doing, she had doubts. Not enough to stop her going through with it, but enough to want to leave us a way to find her. Only we didn’t fucking find it, did we? Not until it was too late!’

  ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve sat under that slide since she vanished,’ I say staring at it. ‘Will it still work?’

  Ash presses the home button. It’s dead.

  ‘I can try and charge it, but she didn’t put it in a bag or anything. It’s pretty good at keeping the rain out, that slide, but it’s not watertight. Before I can charge it, I’ll take it apart and dry it out in some rice.’

  ‘Should we—’

  ‘No, we aren’t calling the fucking police!’

  I exasperate her.

  ‘For a rebel, you are very keen to get the pigs involved, but they don’t give a toss, Red. You got to remember that.’

  ‘I . . . well . . . maybe.’

  ‘She was leaving us clues, laying a trail of breadcrumbs to be able to find her.’ Ash gazes at the dormant phone as she talks. ‘The playlists, the song she recorded and uploaded after she left. The phone, DarkM00n’s Insta account. She must have had a new phone, or an iPad or something, something to keep her busy while she was locked away, maybe at first it even seemed exciting, an expensive gift.’

  ‘Oh yeah, her Instagram account,’ I say at once. ‘I forgot about that, but I checked it out and . . . ’

  Picking my phone up I search her profile.

  ‘There’s nothing. Just these drawings and boring views of London. Virtually the same photo every time.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Ash takes the phone out of my hand, and slowly scrolls through the photos. ‘You’re right. These are the same. Same angle, same view every time, just different times of day . . . Oh fuck it, Red. We are morons.’

  ‘Why?’ I stare at the grid of photos.

  ‘Because she was trying to show us where she was. She had one view from the place she was kept in and this was it. But we didn’t see it in time to stop her being hurt.’

  ‘She must have had access to the internet, but it was being controlled and monitored by someone else,’ Ash continues, angry and excited in equal measure. ‘That has to be it.’

  ‘Shit,’ I say. Ash’s eyes glitter as she looks at me. ‘It all fits.’

  ‘Maybe, it maybe fits, Ash . . . ’

  ‘I’m taking the phone home, and I’ll work on the tattoo code. There must be more clues. More answers that might help us crack the tattoo.’

  ‘Ash,’ I stop her as she heads for the door, ‘what if we let her down by not finding her phone until now?’

  ‘I can’t think like that,’ Ash snaps. ‘And neither can you. And look,’ her voice softens, ‘those fuckwits at school will be on to the next big drama before you know it, but if they aren’t, and if they keep getting at you, I’ve got your back . . . and all of their passwords, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Thanks, Ash.’

  She frowns as she looks at my face in the bright light of my room, her hand rising to my face, fingertips touching my cheek just below where it hurts the worst.

  ‘Shit,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry this happened to you, Red. I know she’s your mum, but if you like I could probably frame her for some kind of fraud, get her sent away for a few months, cheaper than rehab?’

  It’s so typically Ash, and so weirdly sweet that this time it’s me who smiles, even though it makes the break in my skin crack afresh and sting.

  ‘I’m not quite at the putting-my-mum-inside stage yet,’ I say. ‘But it’s good to know you are on my side.’

  ‘For now.’ She hugs me tightly, and we hold each other for a moment, and I feel her thighs against mine, the small of her back against my hand, and something in my chemistry fizzes and pops in a most unexpected way. When we let each other go, I can feel the heat in my face, I only hope my bruises mask it.

  She walks downstairs, slamming the back door behind her. Once she’s gone I miss having her around.

  When I go back to my room, Dad is waiting for me on the landing.

  He reaches out to touch my cheek and I back away.

  ‘It just hurts, that’s all,’ I say.

  ‘Who was that, in your room?’ he asks me.

  ‘Ashira, Naomi’s sister. She’s a friend.’

  He nods. ‘Look, love. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I had no idea how bad it was getting here.’

  I just look at him, and his shoulders drop.

  ‘I know how that sounds. I realise that. I realise I’ve failed you all.’

  Nodding in the direction of Gracie’s open door, I motion for him to follow me into my room.

  ‘Dad, it has got to change. We can’t go on like this.’

  ‘I can see that,’ he says. ‘She really hit you.’

  ‘Yes, she really did.’ Even so, the hate I felt earlier is all but gone, and I want to make excuses for her, I want to find a reason behind what she did that I can understand, but despite wanting that, I don’t try. I can’t hide how bad this is. I love her, but I can’t help her now.

  I am still just a kid after all.

  ‘I don’t know what to say . . .’ Dad shakes his head. ‘Gracie wouldn’t stop crying, and your mum, she wouldn’t talk to me. What have I done to you all?’

  ‘Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Dad,’ I say. ‘She drinks. Because she misses you. She hates herself for not being enough for you. She knows you’ve got someone else, more than just one. It’s bloody obvious. And it’s not just that . . .’ I struggle. ‘She hates me, too. Because she hates who I am, Dad. I disgust her. Some stuff has happened recently and she . . . she looks at me like I’m dog shit on her shoe. And I’ve got to tell you, it fucking breaks my heart. Because sooner or later the way I feel about her, it will be gone for good. Sooner or later, I’ll just hate her right back.’

  Finally, I let him hug me, pressing the sore side of my face into his shirt, and I cry, because I’m sad, because I’ve missed him so much, and more than anything, because I miss the way he used to make me feel so safe, safe in a way I haven’t felt for the longest time.

  ‘I miss you, Dad,’ I say. And I don’t just mean him, but the idea of him I used to have in my head, before I realised he was normal like everyone else.

  ‘I miss you too,’ he says. And we stand like that for a minute or two and when we step apart I feel like I know who he is again, in a new way. In way that I will be able to like one day.

  Back in my room and my head hurts like a bastard, but I can’t sleep, not after finding Nai’s phone. Instead, I pick up Nai’s notebook and I read every single song through again. They are love songs, lust songs, call them what you want, but there isn’t anything in any part of them that could tell me who they are about. Then stuck in between the pages I see the tiny corner of a ripped cigarette packet. And I remember all the other stuff that Nai kept stuffed in this book. I assumed it was disposable, and shook it out on my floor. I never even looked at it.

  Thank God Mum never comes in my room. On my knees I scour the carpet picking up everything I find, throwing it all back onto my bed. When I’m sure I have everything, I lay them out on my bed in a kind of grid.

  Fragments of lyrics.

  A ticket to Hampton Court.

  More of her words written on the back of a torn cinema ticket for exactly the kind of romantic movie she hated.

  A label from a beer bottle.

  An empty packet of Maltesers.

  As I look at them I begin to see they aren’t just ideas scribbled down, they are mementoes. Moments that belong to one story. The story of whoever it was Naomi wrote those songs for.

  Finally I see the rest of the cigarette packet, the one that left its corner still lodged in the book, and at least I know something about whoeve
r it was that Naomi was seeing, because she doesn’t smoke.

  When I turn it over I know something else, too.

  There’s a handwritten note on the back, and it’s not Naomi’s handwriting.

  ‘You belong to me now. Remember that, whatever else happens, you are mine.’

  I take a photo of it and I send it to Ash.

  ‘That’s him,’ she sends back. ‘That’s the bastard that took her.’

  And I’m starting to believe that maybe she’s right.

  That’s him right there.

  But who is he?

  30

  Morning, but it’s dark under the pillow and if I press it down hard against my ear, it’s almost quiet except for the sounds inside my head, but if I do that the dull throb in my cheek turns into a sharp stab that seems to radiate through my body. But it’s more than just the pain from being hit, it’s everything. And there are so many things that are out of place and wrong, it feels impossible to imagine how life might be normal again. Stop. Open your eyes and feel your heart beating, feel the pain in your face and remember you are alive.

  There’s a way out of this mess, and I am going to find it, not just for me, but for Naomi. Because even though I don’t know what happened to her, I know it nearly killed her and even if she thought she wanted it at the start, I know she was terrified.

  I want Rose, I need to talk to her about this, I need her help. Which means I need to fix us, to show her that her friendship means so much to me, more than the way I feel about her.

  But when I unlock my phone she’s not there, not in any of the places where she always is, only a few seconds away from any message. I go from account to account and I can’t find her anywhere, and for a moment I think, oh fuck, she’s left social media because of me, and then I realise, of course she’s blocked me. Everywhere.