Chapter 20: The Freak in the Mirror
Even though I lay in the warm embrace of the Lidens’ bath my whole body suddenly felt freezing cold. I didn’t want to see any more, but I couldn’t bear to stop looking. The girl had both hands in Eddy’s hair, while he rested one of his on her shoulder and with the other held the small of her back. They had to be at Kieran’s party, but what was he doing? The strange expression on his face, his glazed eyes, and the slight unevenness of his movements suggested he might be drunk, but still, how had I misjudged him so badly? I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, but I kept my toe in the tap and my mind’s eye focused on the staccato, coming-and-going image.
Eddy bent his knees to get his face nearer to the girl’s, then slipped sideways, jerking his mouth away from hers. Scarlet lipstick smeared his face.
She moved her hands from his hair and turned him by his shoulders, so that he could sit on the edge of the bath. Following him, she sat on his knee, and I got my first good view of her face.
I sighed with relief. The girl was me. I wasn’t watching something that was actually happening now, but something produced by my own imagination. I frowned. Kissing a drunk Eddy in his bathroom wasn’t my dream scenario. Maybe I was watching the future, not ideal, but actual.
I gasped as I watched myself grab Eddy’s t-shirt and pull it over his head. The spare muscles of his back, broad as the bathroom door, were breathtaking, but I couldn’t imagine myself being so forward. Maybe I was going to change?
Then I took off my own lacy vest. My mind’s eye flickered in surprise. What the hell was I doing taking my top off in some random bathroom? That wasn’t a wish of mine, or a plan, or anything I could imagine happening anytime ever. What was happening? What was I seeing? Exhausted by the confusing images I opened my eyes and let my toe fall from the hot tap. The bathwater was starting to cool and it could do with a bit of warming up. I narrowed my eyes at the faucet, but no water came. This wasn’t like our house in Chalice Drive, where the taps were just for decoration. When these taps were turned off, they were really off, blocking the water’s flow. I decided not to bother, got out of the bath and wrapped myself in the warm, white robe Dora had hung on the back of the bathroom door for me.
After seeing Eddy like that, my urge to speak to him felt stronger than ever. I hurried to my room, lay across the big double bed and dialed his number.
No response.
I peered at my phone. Why wasn’t he answering? I couldn’t imagine him taking part in Kieran’s eighteenth birthday party, but maybe he couldn’t avoid it. He did live in the same house, after all.
I puzzled over how I should address him in an SMS. I’d never used any kind of cute name with him before, and it felt weird to start now. I kept it simple. “Hey, thanks 4 visitin mum. U ok? Hows the party? X.”
I changed into my pajamas and crawled under the covers. At first the freaky vision I had just had flickered back and forth through my mind. Mum’s grasp on reality had become shaky, what if the same thing was happening to me? After a while, though, weariness overwhelmed me. The thought of not having to wake up for school in the morning was amazing and I drifted to sleep with images of myself and Eddy tearing off our shirts and throwing them on the ground.
I woke at the exact same time as if it had been a school day and scowled at my phone when I read its little clock. I cheered up at the sight of a message and opened it excitedly, thinking it must be from Eddy.
It was from Sarah. “U R so rock and roll! Hope the trip went ok! xxx”
I frowned. How was I rock and roll? I replied that the trip was fine, then emerged from the guestroom, peering around the door, worried about getting in the Lidens’ way. Dora and Tom were in a completely different mode of operation from the night before. They bustled to and fro, passing each other cups of coffee and clean socks. Dora worked in a publishing house, while Tom taught at a university.
I perched on the edge of a stool in the kitchen, feeling a bit useless and embarrassed by my lack of purpose. “What shall I do?”
“Maddie...” Tom lowered one hand from knotting his tie and pointed a finger at me. “You should do absolutely nothing. Heaven knows last night you looked like you needed to rest for a month. How much would I love a chance to do nothing?”
“You?” Dora smirked at him as she passed by. She seemed to be stowing half the contents of the apartment in her cavernous handbag. “What about the chance to do nothing you seize firmly every weekend and most evenings?”
“What?” He stared at her over the top of his glasses. “I never stop.”
I chuckled at their pantomime. In five more minutes, it was over, they had gone, and I wandered between the rooms of an empty apartment. How would I spend the day? Returning to bed felt like an appealing option, but if I was going to miss school I should probably do something constructive and I had my art supplies in my bag.
I made myself a mug of tea and sat on the balcony before the spreading, muddy expanse of winter London. I smiled. This was a sketch I would enjoy. I made the first, light line of the horizon and my phone announced the arrival of an SMS.
Eddy. “What do you mean, how was the party?”
I scrunched up my nose. The question seemed perfectly clear to me. I rephrased it. “Well, did u have a good time?”
I waited, staring at my phone, but there was no answer. I sighed. He was on his way to school, so he probably couldn’t reply straight away. I began sketching in leafless trees in the foreground. The hum and clatter of north London floated up to me from the streets far below. I sipped my tea and smiled. I realised that I felt safe for what seemed like the first time in forever.
My phone rang and I jumped.
“Maddie. She’s looking for me.” Mum’s voice creaked, high and strained.
Anxiety tightened my face and my stomach churned. “Mum, what is it, who?” I knew who she meant, but hoped for a moment that I may be mistaken.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “That Morgan.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know where I am, Maddie. I’m in bed and my arm hurts.”
I gulped, desperate to calm her down. I should never have come to London. What was I thinking leaving Mum all by herself? “Mum, look around, are you in the hospital?”
She paused. “Yes. I think so. Yes, oh she won’t find me here Maddie, but she’s looking for me. I feel her mind flashing across mine, like a light house.”
“Mum, there’s nobody who can hear you is there? I mean, you know you need to be careful?” All we needed now was for Mum to be sectioned or something for being crazy.
“No. There’s a woman in a... A nurse. But she’s busy.” Mum’s voice had changed already. Her tone sounded steadier, more even. “Morgan’s looking for me and she’s, you know, strutting. She wants us to know how she’s succeeded in something. She’s pleased with herself.”
I couldn’t guess what that might mean. Maybe Eddy would know.
“Listen, Mum, I was thinking about coming back. I could stay in Weston, maybe.”
“No, Maddie. You’re definitely in the best place. You’re...” Her voice brightened further. “You’re with Dora and Tom. Oh how are they? Please give them my love and tell them how grateful I am.”
The exchange became much more like the standard kind of conversation I had with Mum, and I settled back into my seat with its view over the city. Eventually she put the phone down and an idea that had been niggling at the back of my mind suddenly jumped front and centre.
I walked through into the Lidens’ stylish stainless steel and marble kitchen and began running the tap into their big, gleaming sink. Maybe the visions I saw through the water were unreal or fantasies, but they were so captivating I couldn’t resist looking again.
Though I could manipulate water from a distance, I had to be in contact with the liquid to see through it. I placed my hand under the water, then chased my mind up its flow, I followed the same path as the night before, but much faster. As my
senses filtered towards Glastonbury I gave them a new target. I held before them the images of the women with shopping baskets and motorbike helmets I had seen at various times in Chalice Drive.
I stood there for twenty minutes, my water sense circling and weaving into and out of Glastonbury, towards Weston and the hospital and to the shores of the sea. At the sea itself I was halted. The water there felt different, thick, almost as heavy as soil. I could do nothing with it. I retreated, circled south of Glastonbury, and there suddenly, I felt a shiver of recognition. My mind’s eye burst from a tap, into a bathroom again, but this time much less glamorous than the one where I had imagined Eddy and myself.
A woman stood a foot away from the basin where the water ran. Her eyes fixed on something above it, out of my sight. She must have been looking at herself in a mirror. I recognised her as the motorcycling blonde whose helmet had morphed into a light-swallowing sword.
Morgan.
My hand twitched away from the water, but I forced it back.
She smiled at herself and seemed pleased with her appearance. Turning to one side she pulled up her black vest top and admired her board-flat stomach. My own stomach was pretty sharp, but hers was truly impressive.
Then, as I watched, something really weird happened. Her stomach expanded. Not as if she was pushing it out, but as if it was growing. The abs disappeared, replaced by the slight curve of a newly pregnant belly.
With my free hand I grabbed hard at the edge of the sink.
The belly expanded further and she ran a hand over it.
I gasped, my eyes drawn back to her face, which transformed to that of the old woman with the shopping basket, folding and wrinkling. The belly stayed pregnant, but the skin turned papery looking and sagged. I retched and stared at the seventy year old woman with the wrinkly, pregnant belly. I’d never seen anything so gross. Then she winked at her reflection and morphed back into the young woman again.
I pulled my hand out of the water and stepped away from the sink. What did it mean? I shook my head, trying to rid it of the horribly weird image of the pregnant old woman.
My phone rang and I jogged out onto the balcony where I left it.
Eddy’s name flashed on the screen.
“Hi, um...” Again I didn’t know what to call him. I really wanted to be affectionate, but in my head all the affectionate names sounded horribly cheesy or awkward. “Mr. Moon,” I finished, lamely.
“Hey Maddie.” For once his voice didn’t ring with deep confidence. It was half a beat behind and a tone flat.
“So how are you?” I tried to compensate with extra brightness.
“I’m feeling a bit rough.”
“Oh really?” I honeyed my voice with sympathy. “Oh you poor thing. Did you have too much to drink?”
“You know I did. God. I feel terrible.”
A tinny little alarm began sounding in my head. “Why Eddy? What’s wrong?”
He paused. “You know, I can’t believe how fresh you sound, it’s as if...”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“So what’s wrong?”
He halted again. “Maddie, I feel really bad about what happened last night. I don’t think I should have done that.”
“Done what?”
For a third time Eddy left a massive pause. “What do you mean, done what? I don’t understand. Can’t you remember? Or are you messing with me?”
I scrunched my eyes closed, trying to make sense of Eddy’s rambling. “I’m sorry Eddy. I don’t know what you’re on about. What are you trying to say?”
He took a deep breath. “Maddie, you and me. I don’t think we should have done what we did last night. I don’t think we should have had sex.”