He smiles, like he’s imagining the shock of someone suddenly being confronted by their identical twin.
‘Talking of complications, Lord and Lady Crendon, who you just saw going in there? – well, they keep it a secret from each other of course, but they frequently come in separately. Lady Crendon so that she can be a lady of the night for a weekend. Lord Crendon so that he can be transformed into a young rake. And they’ve become lovers, without realising who they’re really with!’
It looks like Freak is on the point of bursting into raucous laughter, but manages to stifle it just in time, as Lord and Lady Crendon exit from the back room. At least, I presume it’s Lord and Lady Crendon, as they’re the only couple I saw heading in there. But the couple who’ve come out look nothing like them anymore of course; rather, they’re now a gorgeous young couple, only just out of their teens.
The other Freak is with them, smiling happily, the contented shopkeeper showing his most favoured customers out of his shop after they’ve made another expensive purchase.
‘Actually, they’re not at all what they seem,’ Freak whispers to me mysteriously, making an odd twirling of his hands. ‘They’ve – how shall I put it? – added to the frisson of excitement by changing roles.’
‘Ah,’ I reply, briefly wondering how that works out for them before deciding I really really don’t want to think about it anymore.
‘And the condition they bring them back in!’ He shakes his head in disgust. ‘You wouldn’t believe the extent of the repairs we have to make!’
As Lord and Lady Crendon leave, a handsome young boy slips in through the open door behind them. As soon as he’s inside the shop, shutting the door behind him, both Freaks and the assistant bow down so low before him that they’re all basically kneeling on the floor. Their heads hang down, as if they daren’t look at him.
‘Bow!’ Freak hisses at me, grabbing at me to pull me down alongside him.
There’s a part of Anne Morrow that doesn’t want to bow. No matter how important this prince or whoever he is happens to be, Anne seems to think she’s in a powerful enough position to snub him.
Then again, like me, she might just be wondering who he is.
Playing it safe, I bow as low as I saw the assistant bow.
‘Your Majesty!’ they all intone.
Through a corner of my lowered eyes, I can see the Prince observing me closely, as if he’d noticed my reticence to show subservience. He steps forward, cups my chin in his hand. He makes me raise my face to look up at him.
‘Morrow, isn’t it? Anne Morrow; I’ve seen you at my brother’s court.’
My brother’s court? He’s Edward’s brother? Now history isn’t one of my very few strong points, but even I’m sure Edward didn’t have any brother. Isn’t that why Edward’s sister became queen?
‘You need to watch yourself, girl!’ the Prince continues. ‘I know of many courtly beauties who get above themselves and come to a bad end; and their beauty is never enough to save them from that! See that you’re not one of them!’
‘Yes, yes, of course Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty!’
The Prince nods and smiles, like he’s satisfied that he’s said enough to either help me or warn me off for my brief rebellion.
He’s still holding my chin. We’re all still kneeling on the floor. Everyone else still have their heads bowed.
The Prince twists my head back and forth slowly.
‘Then again, you would make an exquisite costume my dear.’ He turns towards the earlier version of Freak. ‘Mr King, if she ever becomes available, please be sure to inform me immediately!’
He stares appreciatively at me again.
‘It would be such a loss to the world to lose such beauty! And a particular loss to me as well, of course!’
He smiles, like this is a wonderfully pleasant joke and I should be grinning along with him.
‘Up, up; you can all get up now!’ he commands, impatiently waving his hands. ‘Mr King, I need a touch of truly regal glamour for my appointment tonight! I trust that, as I ordered, you’ve kept Helen purely for my use?’
‘Of course, Your Majesty. She’s as untouched and unblemished as she was for your last assignment.’
The Prince confidently strides towards the door, with Mr King uncharacteristically quickly following on behind.
‘I note that your own costume is suffering a little from wear and tear, Your Majesty!’ he breathes. ‘Should we go ahead with the usual reconditioning while you leave it with is?’
I don’t hear the Prince’s reply as the door closes to behind them.
I turn towards Freak.
‘Not another change of roles?’
‘No, no; didn’t you hear? She’s not really the boy you’ve just seen. That’s a costume she purchased just to help her get around without being noticed. She’s Princess Elizabeth, the future queen; as, of course, our Mr King is fully aware!’
‘I thought you said your future selves didn’t bother telling your earlier selves everything?’
‘It would be foolish not to keep ourselves informed of the future importance of some people! Didn’t I also say we needed protection?’
‘And this Helen she wants to be is…?’
‘Helen of Troy, of course!’
‘No! That’s impossible! What sort of condition must she be in?’
‘Immaculate, of course! Despite being one of Elizabeth’s favourites. And later, as Elizabeth ages, she’ll make even more use of poor Helen and the other beautiful women I can help her transform into. At her height, she’ll own a whole walk-in wardrobe of my creations! Simply to keep her younger lovers satisfied!’
Yet again, the door to the back room swings open. The woman who exits in front of a subserviently cringing Mr King is a vision of beauty, though not what I was expecting. She’s in a cumbersome Tudor dress, rather than the simpler white one I’ve always imagined Helen wearing.
‘…and remember that Paris should be kept aside; I’ve someone in mind who I wish to make use of it.’
‘As you wish, Your Majesty!’
This time, Mr King doesn’t just see his customer to the door but helps her board a waiting carriage.
Freak watches himself, wryly smiling at his own cloying, deferential actions.
‘I’m afraid our young Princess doesn’t quite pull off the transformation as well as she could. She still thinks too much of herself, of her own importance, to fully immerse herself in her new character.’
He turns to me, now smiling proudly. He takes my hands in his.
‘Unlike you, Anne Morrow! You, Jill, you could be Helen better than anyone I know!’
‘Me?’ I laugh, even though I’m flattered. ‘Why me?’
Now he’s the one who laughs.
‘Because you don’t realise it, do you? – but you look so much like her!’
Ah, so it is just flattery.
‘I’ve just seen her, remember? I don’t look like that!’
‘And have you already forgotten that I said Elizabeth still let’s too much of herself come through? With you, that wouldn’t matter so much anyway; because if you’d had the wealth and privileges offered Helen, you’d be surprised how much you’d naturally look like her!’
I don’t believe a word of it, of course – but I’d like to! I’m enjoying being compared to Helen of Troy, even if I know Freak’s probably got some hidden motive behind all his flattery.
I know; I’ll challenge him by putting him on the spot.
‘Okay, so when we get back, show me Helen; and let’s see how I look as her!’
He shakes his head sadly.
‘She no longer exists in our time; she was stolen!’
‘Stolen? Who’d do such a thing?’
Strange, isn’t it, how I’m no longer fazed by the way Freak has turned all these unfortunate girls into haute couture for his clients, yet I’m shocked that someone might steal one?
‘Well, I’ve been reliably informed how
it was done,’ Freak says, ‘but I can only take an informed guess at who I think did it.’
‘I think it’s awful that, even though you know it’s going to happen, you can’t prevent it.’ I shiver uncomfortably. ‘It’s awful knowing we can’t change anything, that everything’s all sort of written down for us somewhere, saying what’s going to happen to us!’
He grins.
‘Now, I didn’t say that at all. You can determine whatever you want to do, as can anyone else. It’s just that in my case, I can know about things that have already happened to my future self. And somewhere, too, there’s a future lying ahead of my future self that even he doesn’t know anything about.’
‘It’s all a bit complica–’
‘Anne, Anne Morrow!’
Whirling around, I see that Mr King has rushed back into his shop.
‘The real Anne Morrow!’ he adds frantically shooing us back towards the rear room.
Freak takes my hand.
‘Ready to go back?’ he asks.
‘Ready,’ I answer. ‘But Anne; she shops here too?’
‘Naturally,’ Freak says as we begin to travel back to our own time. ‘What sort of accomplished lover would she be if she’d never worn a pair of our gloves?’
*
Chapter 30
You can certainly tell that Cath now frequently wears a pair of Freak’s gloves.
‘Scatty’ has gone forever. So, for the most part, apart from when she’s taking calls or text from Jase, has her phone.
Whenever I catch them hanging out together in the school yard, or making eyes at each other throughout class, I can’t help but feel a twinge of jealously, of regret. Even worse, though, is when I come across them walking hand in hand down a street, making each other laugh, stopping now and again for a cuddle, a kiss.
Damn! I didn’t know it was going to hurt this much!
And Cath, of course, is the lucky one. Unlike the way it happened to me, there isn’t going to be a gorgeous Fiona who suddenly turns up to steal Jase away from her and break her heart.
Of course, I should be glad for her. And, in most ways, I am. I’m the one helping her, aren’t I, with the gloves and everything? The way I’m standing aside to give her a clear run at Jase?
Who knows, though – if I let Jase know I was interested again, would he…?
He might, don’t you think?’
Well, you never know, do you?
We did have something good going between us.
I’m sure that, sometimes, when he catches me looking at them together, there’s a hint of regret in his expression.
Like he wishes we could go back to how it used to be.
If it was anyone else but Cath…
But I can’t put Cath through what I went through.
Can I?
*
Strangely, there’s no sign of Jackie anymore.
We’ve been told at school that she won’t be in for a while. That she’s had to take a great deal of time off, as she’s very ill.
Every time I pass her house, it looks like there’s no one home. Perhaps the whole family has gone off somewhere.
‘What’s happened to Jackie,’ I ask Freak when I call in his shop one day.
‘I’ve no idea,’ he replies, like it’s an odd question to ask him.
He’s busy delicately and fussily readjusting the frills, the laces, on his ‘costumes’.
‘She seems to have just disappeared; along with her parents. Is that possible?’
I ask this because, as far as Freak’s concerned, I believe it’s highly possible.
‘I wouldn’t think so; would you?’ he says casually.
‘You’ve forgiven her, right?’
‘What’s to forgive?’
I’m getting nowhere fast here, am I? Perhaps I should just leave it for now.
‘You know,’ I say, ‘I was thinking; about Jase and Cath.’
‘It’s going well, isn’t it?’
At last he looks my way, like I’ve finally touched on something that interests him.
‘Yes, yes,’ I say a touch more miserably than I’d intended, ‘but, I was thinking, you know; what would happen to Cath if, well, if Jase went off with someone new?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that!’ He returns to the fussy preening of his creations, as if my worries are of little concern. ‘She’s worn the gloves; no one, but no one, could steal him away from her!’
‘Fiona stole him away from me!’ I snap bitterly.
Far from being intimidated by my anger, Freak remains undistracted from his task.
‘Oh, but Jill! Fiona’s on an entirely different level! And, believe me, Fiona won’t be turning up this time! I assure you!’
‘How can you be so sure? Like Jackie, she just seems to have disappeared.’
He looks my way again at last. He touches his nose.
‘I know she won’t be turning up, unless you want her to!’
‘Me?’
I giggle nervously. What is he on about?
‘How’s Fiona turning up or not got anything to do with me?’
‘Tell me,’ he says, finally giving me his full attention, ‘didn’t you ever wonder how wonderful it must be to be a goddess like Fiona?’
‘When she was stealing Jase from me, I would have given anything to look like her,’ I admit sourly.
‘You could be Fiona, you know?’
Oh oh; here comes all that wild flattery again, like he swamped me in when he was telling me I could be Helen. What’s he after? What’s he wanting me to do now?
‘No matter how I dress, no matter what I do with my hair, I could never be Fiona!’
I realise I’ve been gradually following him down towards the end of the back room as I’ve watched him tidying up his costumes. He steps towards one of the doors that leads off to further rooms, inviting me to follow.
Inside, it’s dark. He switches on the spotlights.
In the sharp brightness of the lights, I can’t mistake her.
It’s Fiona.
*
Chapter 31
‘You’ve killed her?’
I’m stepping back, back into the light of the larger room.
‘You’ve killed Fiona?’
‘Of course I haven’t killed Fiona!’ he declares, obviously affronted. ‘She died almost a hundred and fifty years ago!’
‘But…but I saw her!’ I insist. ‘She took Jase from me!’
‘Just like you saw Helen of Troy step from my back room! Just like you helped Anne Morrow finally gather enough sense to bow to her future queen!’
‘But if she’s here; then you sent her to take Jase off me?’
‘No, not me! I didn’t know she’d been borrowed to do that! Why do you think I’ve been so angry with Jackie?’
‘Jackie? Jackie dressed as her? Dressed as Fiona? To take him off me?’
‘She was in love with him too! How was I supposed to know that? This was the only way she could win him off you!’
Despite being perfectly still, Fiona seems to blaze with life. It’s the incredible lustre of her hair, the brightly glittering confidence of her eyes. (How do they do that? How do they keep the eyes sparkling? How do they blend into your own face?) No one would guess she was almost a hundred and fifty years old.
‘Wait; you say she died a hundred and fifty years ago? But she’s not wearing Victorian dress. This is wholly modern; the sort of stuff I wish I could afford.’
‘Of course; because most of my clients aren’t really interested in experiencing past, historical lives. They want to be young and beautiful now, in the present. Just as Princess Elizabeth and Lord and Lady Crendon wanted to be able to go out and about in their own
town, their own time, possessing a beauty that could never be theirs in reality.’
While he’s talked, a number of his freaks have quietly entered the room and set about swiftly removing the unfortunate Fiona from her supporting mannequin.
They hold her out towards me, inviting me to try her on.
It’s gross, totally totally gross!
But Fiona; she’s just so alluringly beautiful!
*
Just walking down the street is a revelation.
Fiona gets the type of furious, envious glares from women you think only exist in the imaginations of movie directors.
But no; when you look like this, you get them everywhere you go!
As for the men, the boys – they’re all just so incredibly pathetic.
They stop what they’re doing to stare.
Some are quite open about it, mainly because they seem to be caught in some kind of daze. Well, bewitchment is probably a more apt term.
Other boys – I can’t be bothered thinking of them as men anymore – they try and act like they’re not watching me, glancing up out of the corner of an eye. But I can feel their gaze on me, sense their longing.
Fiona’s used to this. She knows all the tricks. She knows that any man who’d like to think he’s not enamoured by her beauty is lying to himself, pure and simple.
And no, she’s not being immodest. That’s just the truth of the matter.
But…there is a lie floating around in all this.
Fiona; Fiona itself is a lie.
She’s not called Fiona.
She’s Mary. Mary Coulson.
Now, why would Freak call her Fiona?
Ah, of course; because Mary’s history isn’t important to Freak’s clients. It’s been deliberately closed off to them.
Chances are, no one but me has ever worked out her real name.
So, I wonder; can I tap deeper into Mary’s history?
*
Chapter 32
It’s a huge dance, a ball.
The most resplendent dresses, every colour imaginable, with layer upon layer of lace and silk, spreading out wide from delicately thin waists.
Most of the men are wearing colourful uniforms, mainly red. But there are blues, greens and yellows too. Despite the expense and immaculate tailoring of the dark evening dress worn by some of the men, they seem dull by comparison.
The room is lit by the most amazing chandeliers, glittering like a shower of diamonds high above us. Huge mirrors, with elaborate gold leaf frames, reflect the light, enhancing it, multiplying it.